the landfill that time forgot: crap uk bands of 00s/10s

LOTP weren't hyped enough! Should have been given the keys to the kingdom tbh.

Matt DC is a known Chap hater and cannot be trusted on this topic lol

Never took to Klaxons. Wonder why

Clearlake's Cedars definitely a glum classic

― unpaid intern at the darvo institute (Simon H.), Monday, 7 September 2020 12:54 (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's really good but Lido is The One for me.

Electrelane fit into this metric somewhere too, as do British Sea Power

I was specifically talking about the nu-rave era fwiw. I had forgotten The Chap existed but they were clearly something entirely different.

I too loved LOTP. gone too soon :(

...well, if they'd bothered to do a second album!

adept sez: "Perhaps those media outlets were becoming more corporatised and needed to sell an "image" of what UK music was to survive, rather than promoting weird/risky stuff?"

i'm not sure that "more corporatised" is the right framework exactly -- to me it's as much abt specific actors in earlier taste-wars (= former writers)* now having the more senior decsion-making role of "publisher" (= further up the corporate ladder, largely off-page but still hands-on) -- except rather than think clearly abt how the music-papers needed to be responding to a changing and multifarious world in front of them**, these specific actors simply preferred still to prosecute the ancient taste wars through biddable younger writers. in a sense this is LESS corporate (the corporate shd be coldly caring abt profit margins not whether the cheesy rock-cliche stance of someone's embittered youth is being manoeuvred towards triumph at last)

*(i have someone quite specific in mind but i'm not writing his name in clear on a public message-board lol)
**(inc.not just weird music but most black music and really a fvckton of "non-rock" non-retro music)

Perhaps a poll of this "sub-genre" could prove illuminating? ie, UK guitar bands that would have been raved about and critically feted had they not had the misfortune of originating in the era of the corporate indie press?

From my own limited knowledge, I would add Brakes to the bands listed already, along with Mclusky, whom I'm staggered didn't even get a mention in the 00s album poll thread.

And side-note, I agree the "nu rave" era is a different beast entirely, perhaps centring on Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours (though it's arguable if that fits the nu-rave criteria and they're Aussie rather than UK) which placed high in the 00s poll.

i'm not sure that "more corporatised" is the right framework exactly -- to me it's as much abt specific actors in earlier taste-wars (= former writers)* now having the more senior decsion-making role of "publisher" (= further up the corporate ladder, largely off-page but still hands-on) -- except rather than think clearly abt how the music-papers needed to be responding to a changing and multifarious world in front of them**, these specific actors simply preferred still to prosecute the ancient taste wars through biddable younger writers. in a sense this is LESS corporate (the corporate shd be coldly caring abt profit margins not whether the cheesy rock-cliche stance of someone's embittered youth is being manoeuvred towards triumph at last)

*(i have someone quite specific in mind but i'm not writing his name in clear on a public message-board lol)
**(inc.not just weird music but most black music and really a fvckton of "non-rock" non-retro music)

― mark s, Monday, 7 September 2020 14:32 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes that's an interesting point. I do wonder if it's the result of 80s/90s "indie kids" becoming middle-aged publishers/owners and looking nostalgically back to music that brings to mind those eras, rather than anything challenging?

Like the generational evolution of baby-boomer Rolling Stone eds trashing Husker Du or whoever in the 80s because they're looking for the next Grateful Dead.

this but with even more spiteful score-settling

Looking beyond the top 100, The Clientele have two albums in the 101-149 range, and there is Frightened Rabbit at 141. Hilariously, the only two "NME bands" in ILM's top 149 are Bloc Party at #146 and Franz Ferdinand at #149, one spot behind Broadcast's 4th best album of the decade.

Needless to say, I find this stuff fascinating.

― Uncle Boomer Who Can Recall His Past Wives (Adept)

They did seem fairly excited about Broadcast around The Noise Made By People. The album and Come On Let's Go got respectable positions in their end of year list. By the time Haha Sound and Tender Buttons came out they seemed to have moved on or maybe they just didn't fit this scene they were desperately trying to hold on to. They did that with a few bands who were way more consistent than their fleeting interest would suggest. The Clientele's Violet Hour got a very good review at the time but that was about it. Same goes for The Radio Dept who featured in their top 10 in 2003 but never again despite making even better albums further on.

Looking back I find it interesting some of the bands they barely acknowledged during that time. You would have thought that at least one person would have noticed Spoon at some point during that decade. Electrelane, Ted Leo & The Pharamacists, Phoenix (especially It's Never Been Like That which is basically a very good Strokes record in places), Jens Lekman, The Exploding Hearts, Camera Obscura and Cut Copy all seem like artists who could have fit in there somewhere.

FWIW publishers (the job title not the organisation) are usually directly on the hook for the commercial performance of the title down to the balance sheet level. NME had the more nebulously defined title of Brand Director as well which may have had something more to do with what Mark's talking about. In general the more copies you're selling the more leeway your editorial staff will have and if the overall sales trend has been downwards for 10-15 years it's going to hit a point where they go "yeah OK enough, more Oasis more Strokes now."

Obviously the point of all commercial publications aimed at young people is, when it comes down to it, to sell more shit to young people and I'd guess that you could learn a lot from looking at the changes in what's being advertised in the magazine over that extended period. When people fundamentally stop buying the things your advertisers are trying to sell that creates an additional pinch point even aside from circulation issues.

I don't know this for sure but my guess is that editorial budgets would have been slashed again and again over that period and the internet will have exacerbated that. Watering down the product was very much an IPC thing across the board.

So yeah "challenging music" isn't really going to be prioritised up against all that but you can probably pinpoint the legendarily disastrous Godspeed! You Black Emperor cover as the unequivocal end for all of that.

Sorry I should probably say re: publishers - directly on the hook for the commercial performance of the title down to the balance sheet level, but (with rare exceptions) also not powerful enough to be fully corporate, a lot of them are seen as expendable and can and will be moved on if they aren't performing, probably more so than a lot of editors.

re cost-cutting, didn't someone* upthread (or on another thread?) say something abt a fairly good nme website and comments ecology being devoloped in the late 90s and then more or less abandoned, at least in terms of maintenance or further development or even tweaking? -- which definitely suggests significant cost-cutting (as does the closure of MM of course)

*michael jones? koogs? sorry guys i'm usually quite good at telling you apart (applies double if it was someone else)

re publishers/brand-managers etc -- matt is right here of course, i'm half-projecting from my own (much much earlier) time at nme when the publisher was also more or less the brand-manager, and very much not a former writer or editor (at least not a music-press editor)

That happened right across the board after the dotcom bubble and might be a separate issue to the question of print budgets, or it might just be a case of sinking all boats. Pre-2000 NME had maybe twice as many words in it than the later version.

Also fwiw the NME message board was seriously terrible in ways the people running it probably couldn't control. Like it would be a thread entitled 'BEST BAND EVER' and you'd click through the first post would go 'STONE ROSES' and there'd be a loads of 'yes mate' type responses and then maybe a 'fuck off, Manic Street Preachers' and then there'd be a half arsed fight. There's only so much you can do when your readers are right there in large numbers telling you what they are (also why Pitchfork's best move was to allow no comments or community engagement ever).

Best Band Ever. Official Poll

Faux Starp

Tell me more about the GYBE! cover feature at NME and why it was disastrous.

i'd like to hear about that, too

https://www.brainwashed.com/godspeed/deadmetheney/images/nme/nme1.jpg

it was a about a band that (almost) no-one listens to, with no singer, one blurry photo and a couple of short quotes. so no-one really cared

haha just noticed the same issue attempted to stoke the "fight" between Mogwai (see gybe, above) and Blur which was Blur and their fans and whatever NME readship was left not giving a shit and Mogwai getting a good run on merch

I believe at the time it was the lowest-selling issue ever? Also wow they were really going hard on post-rock at that point, the implied 'well if GYBE's not your thing here's some Mogwai!'

At that point NME was reviewing quite a range of stuff, from chart pop to post-rock (that's my memory of it). I started posting on ILM two years after that issue and it didn't seem like a massive leap.

I also remember reading angry letters, some of which I thought were made up but maybe not, given our Landfill future.

NME cover connections

https://sites.create-cdn.net/siteimages/5/5/8/55872/69/7/2/6972232/246x317.jpg

Cover connections continued
http://lucyobrien.co.uk/content/5-journalism/youth-suicide-nme.jpg

not quite but

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/8CsAAOSwwiVfEtYY/s-l400.jpg

I did like the long blondes

occasional poster Raw Patrick is married to one of them, iirc, yes

The only Google hits for the phrase "radar in a bikini" are that 1986 NME cover and an excerpt from a 2015 romance novel:

"And we couldn't do that from the Bahamas?" She stroked his neck, letting her thumbs play lightly along the edge of his jaw. "Just picture it. Under the radar...in a bikini."

Wonder what the NME thing was about.

Not married but we do have a joint mortgage, a dog and chickens so that's near enough.

I met Kevin P in NY once and discussed obscure Slampt act the Kid Lemon.

radar was the name the nme's media section (films, tv, comics etc) -- i think there was a special (written by edwin pouncey aka savage pencil) on trashy bikini-beach type movies? blast-off girls and so on? "radar in a bikini" is very much the kind of title they wd have used to trail that

i mean there WAS a special on this, i just don't remember if it was in this issue -- i do remember that the editor of the section misplaced (and possibly completely lost) all of pouncey's precious visual material, posters and stills and such and spent days tidying up his corner of the office in the hopes of turning them up

Radar in a Bikini would be a great band name.

i had the youth suicide cover up on my bedroom wall

lol

in fact there was a run of 4 "issues" issues of the NME that it belonged to, me and my friend rechristened our semi-hypothetical musical project BLACK YOUTH SEX SUICIDE to mark the occasion

i'd forgotten most of this until i saw that cover, including what year these things happened

I remember the reviews section featured headshots of each of 'The Critics' in the late 90s/early 00s which was very comical

I like the Long Blondes too, pass it on!

lol i forgot how hard critics hyped those first couple gybe! albums at the time. it would’ve worked if gybe! weren’t fucking awful.

radar was the name the nme's media section

ah right that rings a bell, thanks!

Randomly thought of this momentous thread yesterday and it turns out it's ten years old :/

Big thanks to kitchen person in this thread for putting me on to The Radio Dept. - have been thoroughly enjoying their output since last September.

Noodle Vague's run-down of the CONTENDERS from 2011 belongs in some sort of ILM Hall of Fame. It really is staggering how many verifiably awful bands all conspired to become famous and inescapable around the same time. I moved to the UK from Oz in 2005 so I blame myself.

Am I a dumbass for thinking “Shut Your Eyes” by Snow Patrol is a good song?

Remember the band South? I actually liked them and it holds up tbh. Are they a CONTENDER here? Or outside the category entirely?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-65558954

pretty funny pearl-clutching in the article:

Fan Saffie Yates, who had waited six years to see the band, said she first thought it was some sort of stunt.

She said: "It was very scary to see someone you respect behave like this.

"The bass player normally plays a couple of songs and it was his birthday yesterday. He wanted to play a third song and the lead singer went for him.

"He punched the bassist. I didn't know if it was part of the act.

"The band left the stage and the fans were hanging around waiting to see what would happen.

funny to see athlete at the bottom. the keyboardist went to my school - he gave a presentation about how the band got started, their influences etc

what was really funny was him talking about how their main influence was, of all things, grandaddy - they were apparently really keen on getting the same kind of decayed, lo--fi vibe as you get on songs like AM 180. i've listened to a few athlete tracks, scouring them for the remotest sign of that influence, and i've never been able to find anything. just another mediocre britpop band

for what it's worth, mornings eleven by the magic numbers still rocks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwobxaEoVaM

I interviewed that Athlete guy - Tim W - just before the release of their third album and he was super excited about some of the subtle production tricks on it; they’d just built their own studio and were self producing for the first time. I haven’t revisited it, but we talked about The Outsiders and Flying Over Bus Stops in particular. https://mikeatkinson.wordpress.com/2007/09/29/interview-tim-wanstall-of-athlete/

congratulations to Toploader for their very late challenge for the title

When the revolution comes they can be put on the queue for the guillotine

No queuing for Toploader, I'll open a new guillotine especially