Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

Brian thats still setting the bar low

In answer to the thread q, I think it is time. for a Pee-valuation

And landfill indie was basically britpop part 2

― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Monday, April 28, 2014 9:21 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nah, landfill indie was much, much more horrific than Britpop in my opinion. The worst landfill indie bands seemed like they were going for an extremely diluted version of the very tail end of Britpop or post-Britpop.

In summary then, Britpop was shit music which was a reaction against shit music and left shit music in it's wake.

xpost:

I mean, jesus christ, imagine Scouting For Girls appearing in 1996. I'm confident that they would have been laughed at and mocked even then.

Oh im not arguing that it wasnt worse. Of course it was! There was still a couple of good britpop bands at least.
Scouting for girls did appear - Catch 'Bingo'

So why did it (brit indie) go really conservative by 1997 and never really recover?

― ۩, Monday, April 28, 2014 9:02 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's no short answer to this. Obviously, after the massive success of (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, record companies were selling massive amounts of albums (at a time when albums were ludcriously expensive to buy, too), and I guess they wanted that to continue at any cost, by signing bands that they felt they could push onto the same audience, regardless of whether they were any good or not.

The established bands either moved on and did something different, produced sub-par follow-up albums or took a while to make a follow-up record, which meant that in their absence, a lot of newer bands cropped up to tide things over or try to "keep it going".

The dad-rock bands, like Cast and Ocean Colour Scene, were dead on their arse by the beginning of 1998 if I recall.

Not up here. They were fecking massive. Ocs still pulled great crowds here long after til they split. They were far bigger than say blur

Pretty much every ocs fan i ever argued with used the "how can you not like them steve cradock is an amazing guitarist'. They crossed over to the mainstream stadium rock crowd up here despite never playing one (except as support to oasis)

I checked out of the Britpop party the day after Diana's funeral, although that actually had to do with the fact that my first son was born that day

Cast were as popular until they changed their sound on the third album and it flopped. Ppl actually though john power was the second coming of john lennon lol

Alan McGee retired and it all went to hell.

and along comes Tom to remind us of other musics.

xxxpost:

You're kidding me? Jesus christ! It was a completely different story here... I never really heard anyone claiming to be a fan of Cast after their second album. Incredibly, I still come across Ocean Colour Scene (who haven't split up, btw!) fans from time to time, but not very many of them. But I'd say, on the whole, from their 4th album One From The Modern(?) onwards, they were definitely playing to the hardcore fans and nobody else.

was brimful of asha big in the US? I was at a Britpop night (I know, flag post is there >>>) in the US and no-one seemed to recognise it. In the UK it was everywhere.

It was a staple at my indie dance club 2000-2004.

Cast were as popular until they changed their sound on the third album and it flopped. Ppl actually though john power was the second coming of john lennon lol

― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Monday, April 28, 2014 9:52 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, come on! Nobody thought John Power was the second coming of Lennon! Hehehehehe! A lot of goodwill was applied to Power though because of The La's, though. I remember their second album, Mother Nature Calls getting savaged in the press at the time. And rightly so, it was a turd.

album was SPIN's #1 of the year.

xxpost

I'd personally put 'Brimful of Asha' down as a post-Britpop thing.

Turrican i knew ppl who did.
Btw ocs hardcore fans were massive. They still sold out gigs here whenever they played last.

But i am sure it was unique to scotland

When cast first appeared they were good live. Very loud. They supported oasis and played titp95. Then that terrible album came out all polished and you realised the lyrics were awful. It sold shitloads tho as did the second. They were the biggest tshirt band at titp95 by miles

I know ocs and cast outsold the great escape up here by a long way

to me Britpop is Blur (Parklife and Great Escape era only), Oasis, anyone else doing oi-oi type larks (Supergrass) and that's p much it, so it's quite narrow and in no way defines 90% of the """indie/alternative""" stuff I was listening to.

Listening to all the Nows of the 90s surprised my nostalgia by confirming that 'good' 'britpop' was very, very short-lived - a couple of years max - and that chart music in Britain hit an absolute nadir in 1999 (Texas, Robbie Williams, Stereophonics, Semisonic)

Suede were strictly for the indie kids. Even manics and the verve outsold them tho manics still had the rawk crowd then

Ugh texas. We thought we got rid of them by 1991 how wrong we were. Fuck you chris evans

Can we blame chris evans and tfi friday and his virgin breakfast show for it going so shit post 96?
I know he had some good bands on but he broke the really bad dadrock bands

The other thing about 1994 onwards was that it wasnt just indie or alternative was struggled here but kerrang launched nu metal in 1994 too and those bands got bigger and bigger and all the uk rawk bands copied them. So late 90s did seem bad all-round until napster and i was able to hear what i missed ( a lot of post rock and american stuff here the uk mags ignored) the stuff i did like was new stuff by old faves like spiritualized,mercury rev,flaming lips. Stoner rock was the new stuff i listened to back then otherwise it was old stuff i was discovering .

I still kept buying the music press for some reason.

I knew things had gotten beyond stupid when Gay Dad started getting hyped.

This still raises a chuckle, actually...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClcwKgxu2wk

The funny thing is that post grunge did nothing here except for the inexplicable success of Nickelback.

No jam bands either. Nobody knows who dmb were

Ultrasound were not a great band

― ۩

Lies.

Not sure who was better off mind you

The funny thing is that post grunge did nothing here except for the inexplicable success of Nickelback.

― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Monday, April 28, 2014 10:32 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I seem to remember Bush having a hit here with 'Swallowed', which is about the most that Bush ever did here.

No jam bands either. Nobody knows who dmb were

― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Monday, April 28, 2014 10:33 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, thankfully we were completely spared Phish and DMB!

Nit sure bush giot a hit. Maybe a vid played on the chart show but that was it. Gavin rossdale didnt get famous til he married gwen stefani. It still didnt get him a hit. Hes just a celeb. A trophy husband!

Swallowed was a pretty big hit in the UK. Well it went top ten and they did it on Top of the Pops.

I wrote this on the Worst Music Writing thread:

I love Taylor Parkes and agree that his article does not belong here, but at the same time his prose style remains so redolent of Melody Maker circa 1995 that it produces a weird sense of discombobulation. Every sentence makes me more nostalgic for Britpop (maybe even the experience of hating Britpop at the time) than most of the other shit I've read about it in these terrible weeks.

― Eyeball Kicks, Monday, April 28, 2014 9:52 PM

Some people above talk about Britpop being an early gateway to other kinds of music, and I relate to that. But I also remember the oppositional stance of certain music journalists - among them Taylor Parkes, Simon Price and Neil Kulkarni - being a greater influence on me at the time. Reading the music press encouraged this amazing dichotomy of fully felt youth: lapping it up while despising it.

really like the "we blew it" sentiment of the parkes article.

i do feel like other elements of 'britpop' have been airbrushed out in retrospect, but maybe that was the point all the time.

how was the relationship of pulp to britpop perceived at the time, and maybe more importantly, what did people make of the auteurs?

parkes essay makes me think of the mekons' journey to the end of the night. was it an album about that process?

i mean...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPQG_6EoyPI

Taylor Parkes and even Simon Price (in the early days at least) were quite vocal about liking Oasis

the auteurs were kind of outside Britpop a little bit except for that "Yanks Go Home" Select article, they werent really a Britpop band, they didnt feel like one either - they were constantly being compared to the go-betweens (i dont see it). the first album anyway

"the most disastrous misunderstanding of The Beatles since Charles Manson."

^ my fave description of oasis ever

Agreed

Melody Maker front cover from the week after Parklife came out

http://25.media.tumblr.com/38a287a23929ec55eccee0b3a1110f1b/tumblr_milfktUgUM1rba1qao1_400.jpg

Cranberries - Britpop's Biggest Export

CRANBERRIES BRITPOP'S BIGGEST EXPORT

Ultrasound were not a great band

To be honest, I had very little interest in Britpop at the time (with the exception of Blur), but it was all around me because I'd accidentally found myself living in the middle of it and knew loads of people involved with it in one way or another. I saw an early incarnation of Ultrasound a few times around 95/96 and they *were* very good live, but it was an eternity before their album came out and by then they'd somewhat lost focus and stretched every song out to 30 minutes at half-speed.

Cranberries werent Britpop. They were LimRock jeez