Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

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

they lingered too long

Wonderwall I guess was the biggest actual US hit by a britpop band right? Blur werent making britpop by song 2

or maybe ONLY hit

I can see, if you wanted to make early connections, some shared sensibilities between Modern Life is Rubbish and the Auteurs' New Wave, of world weary youth playing with 'English' styles

Auteurs didnt sell many records did they so britpop didnt seem to care about them by the time it went mainstream. They did get 1 songon all the 90s indie comps though. Im guessing lenny valentino was popular in student discos

I seem to remember Luke Haines being crabby about everything to do with Britpop in interviews!

been meaning to read this. ive heard good things about it.

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Vibes-Britpop-Part-Downfall/dp/0099522268

Im guessing lenny valentino was popular in student discos

too brief

and no Felix da Housecat remix

Song break: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZksFjV23qYw

Was this Britpop?

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.

― Turtleneck Work Solutions (Nasty, Brutish & Short)

I was a huge fan at the time and when I met Tiny at Leeds Festival 99 I could barely talk I was so starstruck. To me honest their album was never as good as I wanted it to be. They recorded some of their best songs so many times they ended up losing what made them special. Also they pissed away their best song and only potential hit (Kurt Russel) as a B-side to a limited edition single. I could make a great album out of their songs using the album and all the singles they put out. They were great live too.

no cuz they were influenced by sonic youth and pavement. i saw them at t in the park and they were very good.

A band who i saw at titp who i had never cared for but were really good and had been co-opted as britpop were the wannadies. They played just before teenage fanclub (who were magnificent)
xp

Auteurs had a pretty great career really. All four albums sound quite different and are all really solid. After Murder Park in particular is a brilliant album. I've been looking back at the NME and Melody Maker end of year lists a lot recently. I was surprised to see how well New Wave was received. Think the press had moved on by the second album though.

for those who want to check lists
http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/nmeindex.html

http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/select.html

http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/mmpage.html

BRITPOP
Frieze, December 1995

By Simon Reynolds

http://reynoldsretro.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/britpop-dissected-2-1995-and-battle-of.html

I was 25% of the audience at a ocs gig in 2004

your dog escaped?

lol

1. Catatonia – International Velvet

yes thats when MM jumped the shark

Thanks to rave, the most vital sectors of '90's UK subculture are all about mixing it up: socially, racially, and musically (DJ cut'n'mix, remixology's deconstructive assault on the song). Returning to the 3 minute pop tune that the milkman can whistle, reinvoking a parochial England
with no black people, Britpop has turned its back defiantly to the future. Here's hoping the future will respond in kind, and remember Britpop only as an aberrant, anachronistic fad--like trad jazz, the early '60s student craze that resurrected the Dixieland sound of 30 years earlier. Perhaps
Oasis will one day seem as inexplicable as Humphrey Lyttleton!