Looking back at Britpop from the vantage point of the 21st century, it feels much more like a moment than a movement. Many of the bands were the same bunch of Madchester survivors, shoegazers and post-grunge rock outfits we were listening to anyway. Just reshuffled and dealt for public consumption in a new pattern. This eclecticism, and this continuity with the past, is what stands out for me in Britpop, despite media attempts then and now to impose this or that narrative upon it. And nothing reflects this better in my view than the Shine compilations.
Thanks be to Wikipedia, the track listings from all ten Shines, 1995-1998 can now be viewed online. Go on, have a look. Any nods or winces of recognition? Sighs at the inclusion of your then-favourite band? Manchester calling
The first one - the ur-Shine, if you will - supports our vision of a Britpop steeped in continuity. It was certainly not shy about joining the dots between the turn of the 90's indie-dance boom and the uptick in chart-bothering several years later. So while Blur and Oasis - the conscious and unconscious artists of Britpop - are both present from the beginning, so are New Order, James, The Inspirals, The Farm, Electronic, Charlatans and more. All of whom or their offshoots continued to make Britpop-aligned music throughout the period, by the by, and continue to feature in Shine after Shine. As broad a church as your typical indie disco What these compilations also dispel is the idea that Britpop was simply parochial in its tastes. They include a fair selection of American artists (Beck, Belly, Ben Folds Five, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Garbage, Gin Blossoms) as well as those who desperately wanted to be American (hi there, Bush!) and those who for various reasons simply wouldn't have existed without grunge (Placebo, Radiohead and, yes, Suede too) And then there's the electronic and dance contingent (Republica, Sneaker Pimps, Underworld and the like), reminding us that even Noel Gallagher managed to collaborate with The Chemical Brothers. To observe that not all of these tracks were much cop, or that their inclusion smacks of tokenism, misses the point. What matters here is thatBritpop was as broad a church as your typical indie dancefloor. In fact you had to be willfully perverse to avoid its touch - you'll notice there's nothing by The Auteurs on the Shines. Fourteen bands you'll have probably forgotten Given its ancestor worship and the preponderance of established acts, it's perhaps no surprise that Britpop didn't break many bands in its own image. Take a look at this long list of the fallen in Shine Valhalla: Blameless, Whipping Boy, Salt, Joyrider, Elcka, Ruth, Bawl, Sussed, Geneva, Symposium, Bennet, Jocasta, The Candyskins. Hurricane #1! Which ones evoke fond memories in you, even if they have nothing to do with the music? For me, it's Bennet, who I saw supporting Number One Cup in 1997 at the Roadmender in Northampton. Happy days. Can a compilation be worth a thousand words? To call Shine and its offspring the definitive artefact of the Britpop years is on the face of it laughable. But the fact that they were compiled with no regard for anything other than what would make the best Halls of Residence party makes them much better at managing the continuity and contradiction of the music than your average journalistic or historical narrative. And by mixing what will last - your Elasticas, Supergrasses and Pulps - with stand-out tracks from the second and third rank bands, Shine does illustrate that Britpop was a time of great pop singles. Truth in trivia, then.
“Do you fancy writing a review of a Britpop album for the blog? @magpiemoth asked one evening. I pondered and said if I had time I’d write something down but never got round to it. Then we ended up in a local pub for an after work drink that turned into several soundtracked by an ‘Indie DJ’ and conversation turned back to Britpop, indie, alternative music and me writing something. The conversation we had led me to thinking more widely about music of the Britpop era and where it fell in terms of my life story. I was lucky musically in that my dad was obsessed with music in all forms and the lullabies of my early years were mainly courtesy of the Rolling Stones. An early start My first record player was a Christmas present for my 3rd birthday – I couldn’t yet read but could lower a stylus safely so the A sides were marked with a cross to foster independent use. My first gig was Altered Images at the Manchester Apollo when I was four and for the next 10 years I was lucky enough to be taken to see everyone from Squeeze to Madonna to Fleetwood Mac (seminal moment – Stevie Nicks remains a hero of mine). However I was a fairly introverted child, insecure in my appearance and social skills (like so many teenage girls) and as music became more about boybands, pop and commercial dance music I wasn’t sure where I fitted in. I found other things that started to point me in the right direction - step up The Housemartins and Suzanne Vega. Talk about the passion Then I discovered the band who provided my introduction into a lifelong love of indie/alternative tunes. The first time I heard REM suddenly I got ‘it’. I found lyrics that talked about things more meaningful and esoteric than anything I heard in the charts and it opened up a whole new world. I was introduced by a friend to indie and rock clubs that played music I was otherwise unaware of and into a social setting where being shy, not having Kylie as a style icon and being able to dance all night or sit in the corner if I chose to was normal and not weird. So how does this link to Britpop you ask? Well despite my new social whirl and increasingly large record collection I still felt a little like an outsider in the wider world. This was the mid 90s when wearing stripy tights, cut-off denims and band t-shirts got you some funny looks even in Manchester. Being an increasingly confident, assertive girl with opinions was also still not really socially acceptable.
Affleck's Palace (Manchester's premier provider of stripy tights and band T-shirts, by T R Wolf under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license). From sixth form to the stage
And then Britpop and a wider awareness of alternative music arrived and brought with it a whole host of women whose presence on Top of the Pops and mainstream media empowered me and my friends. Women like PJ Harvey who sang songs we could relate to, who led her own band, who dressed for herself. Elastica and their mini-anthems led by a woman so cool she had caused the likes of Brett and Damon to write songs of (un)requited love. Kenickie, whose wandering onto a stage straight from school made it look possible for any of us to pick up a guitar, front a band and play Reading. As I look back I’m not sure how conscious we were of this happening but in retrospect I am aware of a new sense of confidence I had in myself as a whole person. Women and girls found a music scene that was moving toward acknowledging we had a voice that was worth listening to. Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t always work that way, you only need to read Caitlin Moran’s books to see the attitude many areas of the music press still had to women at the time but it was a damn good start. So, despite my in-built dislike of the term Britpop and the media’s obsession with the role of Oasis in it (don’t get me started – it’s a rage only paralleled by sporks) Britpop did, sort of, change my life. And I will forever be grateful.
Our twentieth anniversary of Britpop series of guest posts continues into week two with Jim Patterson looking at an album which was part of the scene in spirit and in content (and introduced Iggy Pop to a generation) - the Trainspotting Soundtrack Self-defining as good, bad but not evil, Jim tweets at @mrjimpaterson
Britpop's success, and it's eventual downfall, was all tied up in confidence. The confidence of the underdog in their native, initially unfashionable, influences struck a chord, and grew into the confidence to seize the moment and, for a while, the mainstream. But that confidence quickly became arrogance, and led to some odd record deals, a fear of moving forward and Be Here Now. This tipping point happened in or about 1996, when Trainspotting came out, and in many ways it represents the absolute crescendo of that confidence while still retaining the birth notes of why making British art was important. The film is bloody, bold storytelling and its soundtrack, like the best mixtapes, has oddities, bangers and weird unknowns that would go on to be your favourite song.
This was, for me, a Britpop album in feeling if not in classification, and the bands featured from the scene contribute a set of tracks that are cinematic in their ability to capture mood (Sleeper's identikit cover of 'Atomic' aside). Elastica's unsettling 2:1, Blur's euphorically growing Sing, Mile End by Pulp, providing a snapshot of the protagonists' futureless existence "I guess you have to go right down/Before you understand just how/How low a human being will go".
There was also Damon Albarn's 'Closet Romantic', a wistful fairground whirligig of a song. And, from one remove to what was considered Britpop, Primal Scream and their song Trainspotting - a sinuous, smoke-laden hint of what was to come in next year's 'Vanishing Point' and a great walking song - essential for mixtapes. Many of the album's highlights were from older artists - influences in attitude and music on both the Britpop bands and Trainspotting's characters. Iggy Pop, a favourite artist in the novel, appears twice. Opener 'Lust for Life', one of three breakout hits from the album, is a tumbling evil grin of a song, promising adventure, excitement and really wild things. 'Nightclubbing' is a sequel in this context, for when the initial adventure has become something you were not promised. Brian Eno provides the gorgeous, reflective Deep Blue Day - a rare safe, warm space on the soundtrack. And 'Perfect Day' - like the film so ubiquitous. And so misunderstood (including by me). For me, it was the first solo song I'd heard by Lou Reed that wasn't 'Walk on the Wild Side' and sounded so instantly lush and simultaneously lyrically wrong that I was smitten. And a large part of the rest of the country felt the same, given its upgrade to BBC mega choir fodder just a few years later. But that first time, when it felt like a dark message cloaked in strings...
The energy that holds Trainspotting together though, is dance music. It's a film about heroin addicts, but is cut like a film about ecstasy (which Boyle has acknowledged when talking about editing the film to Underworld's Dubnobasswithmyheadman). New Order's Temptation is the older precursor, while Bedrock's For What You Dream Of and Leftfield's A Final Hit are two sides of a night out - the first forever rising towards a euphoric peak, the latter a sleepy 4am post-club contemplation while the beat carries on in your neighbour's living room. And then, to finish, there's Born Slippy, the amazing track only your mate knows but now will never leave your life. It seems odd looking back, give the subsequent success of Born Slippy, that it only got on the soundtrack because Boyle found the remix (technically, the version we know is 'Born Slippy NUXX) on a CD single. Trying to imagine it as an unknown quantity is almost impossible, since it now lives beyond the film as shorthand for not just 90's music, but the 90s itself. It takes a propulsive rhythm and a melody caught between melancholy and celebration and wraps them up to force us to face forward, even though we fear what we leave behind.
I listened to Trainspotting again for this blog, 18 years on from being 18, remembering what it was like when I heard (most of) these songs for the first time. I played it on Friday nights, I played it on Sunday afternoons. I walked to work with it. It stayed with me through a year of my life while I got embarrassed, got drunk, laughed a lot, made many mistakes and started to learn to live as an adult. I can't feel the same way about it now as I did then, but I still hear the echoes of those first listens, just as we still feel the echoes of this magnificent mixtape in music today.
Patrick Meehan is a Renaissance Man, fluent in Northern Sami, Dravidian, Cornish and English. Today he's joining the dots between the Second Summer of Love and Britpop, making the case for Shaun Ryder being the best thing about both. Britpop always was a strange old beast, a label of convenience that meant different things to different people. Obviously Blur, Elastica, Suede, and Sleeper were Britpop. Then there was the Northern contingent - Pulp, Shed Seven, Oasis. But what about others - The Manics, Radiohead, the Charlatans, the Stone Roses? And what about the band who arguably produced the finest album of the Britpop era - Black Grape? Actually, scrap that. Whether they were or weren’t "Britpop" is as irrelevant as whether the words Baggy and Madchester can be used interchangeably (they can’t by the way), but there's no debate about one thing - Black Grape didn’t produce “arguably” the finest album of the Britpop era, their debut album “It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah” WAS the finest album of the Britpop era. In a period where plenty of records were getting 9/10's from the reviewers, Black Grape scored a 10/10, bettering Definitely Maybe, Dog Man Star, Parklife, Holy Bible. It was in a different class to, well, Different Class. Shaun Ryder and associates had created a stoned-out stone-cold classic. Where Primal Scream and the Stone Roses had belatedly come back several years after their Baggy-best with poorly received homages to the music of the Stones and Led Zeppelin, “It's Great...” was a party from the first blast on the Reverend's trumpet to Shaun's fade-out backward speaking on Little Bob. Let’s begin at the beginning. For those of you who don’t own the album get hold of a copy now. CD, vinyl, cassette, take your pick. Go on, we’ll wait. Done?
Ok, now study the cover in front of you. The Monday's album covers were always important. Bright and brash, like the corridor displays in a primary school, they personified the band's vibe and reflected the music - nick a bit here, drop that there, keep it all nice and colorful. The Monday’s legacy was continued on “It’s Great...” via the bright yellow image of a sunglasses-clad Carlos the Jackal on the cover. It exuded the kind of cool you normally only get in a French cop movie. Ok, so we’ve examined the cover. Now for the music. First out is Reverend Black Grape. In the video for Reverend Black Grape Shaun appeared as a Preacher-man, black circular hat perched atop his head. The first half of the album has that feel; a preacher returned from lands unknown to convert the locals to his twisted Church. A pie-eyed piper leading the children into his magical cave of chemical delights.
The track opens with bongos and a harmonica, the funkiest harmonica you’ll ever hear – this ain’t no Bob Dylan revival. Next in comes Kermit, loudly proclaiming that the Preacherman is about to take the stage. Finally Shaun Ryder steps into the limelight hollering about Reeboks, tennis, and singing a version of “Oh Come all ye Faithful” that you wouldn’t find on Songs of Praise. It’s a remarkably confident number from a band led by a man who was considered a washed-up junkie when he was last seen on TV dancing with Zippy off Rainbow. It’s a song with bollocks. Big, swaggering, Salfordian bollocks. Next up it’s “In the Name of the Father”, its Christian title giving no clues to the song itself, filled as it is with Indian sitars and ragga-talk about butt-squeezing. This is one prayer Cliff won’t be releasing at Christmas. Two tracks in and the Preacherman has got the village bouncing. “Tramazi Party” doesn’t see any let up in the good vibes, but Shaun’s starting to weave his malevolent magic. Having won their trust he’s now doling out the sweeties - Temazepam all round… “welcome to your nightmare”. He’s showing a different side - less Preacher, more old time Witch-Doctor - but any doubts the congregation might be feeling are assuaged by the next track, “Kelly’s Heroes”, which goes back to the same celebratory vibe as the first two songs. The side closes with “Yeah Yeah Brother”. This time the mood switches. We’re in the Preacherman’s private quarters now, the public mask drops. And he’s in menacing mood. It’s the Last Supper, only Judas has been invited and this time Jesus is going to fuck him over. The same vaguely threatening vibe starts Side Two. I’ll be honest – I haven’t a clue what he’s on about with “A Big Day in the North”. But “sticks and stones break your bones”, “love will always hurt ya”, and “bloodshot eyes scan the skies”. A bad deal going down?
The next three tracks are straight out of Goodfellas. There’s drugs, money, debt, violence. It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah. It’s still funky, it’s still got tunes, but there’s trouble. Even “Submarine” (the most upbeat of the three songs) contains a character who smokes steroids and puts people in headlocks, whilst in “Shake Your Money” Shaun urges someone to “put down your fists and hit him with a shovel”. And finally there’s “Little Bob”. Then that’s it. Album over. In summary I’ll just refer back to the NME review at the time. 10/10.
For the twentieth anniversary of Britpop, a series of guest posts looking back at the innovators, the opportunists, the individualists who got caught up in a moment, and how they look the other side of the millennium. James Higgott works for digital comms and projects at the Royal Marsden Hospital and tweets as @jiggott. He's also drummed for bands and projects including Cop On The Edge and Dora Brilliant. Here he is in reflective mode, taking a look at The Boo Radleys' Giant Steps - I'd completely forgotten about that very early 90's cover. For anyone who listened to the radio in the mid-nineties The Boo Radleys will forever be associated with the alarm-clock pop of Wake Up Boo, played repeatedly by breakfast DJs until the joke wore molecule thin. But just a few years earlier, Martin Carr et al put out an album that actually bears repeating. Giant Steps is a massive, dense album of many influences, sounds, instruments and emotions. The charming guitars and slightly baggy rhythms of the early nineties are present, but they’ve been marinaded in psychedelia, dub, pastoral and feedback until they’re hardly recognisable. Leaves And Sand, which on the face of it is a formulaic quiet-LOUD-quiet-LOUD standard, deploys the producer’s full box of tricks to become something else: shrieks, effects, layers, backwards sounds, anything to make the quiet part very very quiet and the loud very very loud.
It’s not just this song where the dynamics shift. Throughout the record, the luscious, soporific rise and fall of Thinking Of Ways or Best Lose The Fear swiftly gives way to the more peppy, poppy Barney (...And Me) or Take The Time Around. In I’ve Lost The Reason they’re at it again. The kids who put this together wanted to try everything. They had a lot of ideas and were comfortable shifting from one to another and back again. Listen to the album as a whole and there’s barely a gap between any of the songs. In fact, there’s usually a sonic segue of some kind - another little idea playfully inserted. None of this makes it your typical nineties guitar band experience. It’s not an album of sharp guitar pop with a couple of quiet tracks to showcase the band’s sentimental side. It’s an up and down album of nostalgia and melancholy, wide-eyed wonder and childhood glee, sometimes side by side, sometimes in the same song. If there is one constant it might be Sice Rowbottom’s delicate, fragile voice and the dark wistfulness of the lyrics he sings. He contrasts the brightest, most jangly sounding song on the album by singing, “Wishin’ I was pretty / Wish that I could twist the world round my finger”. Elsewhere, “I’m finding it hard to stay on my feet on my own / I’m thinking of ways I can get out of things just like always”. (It’s little surprise that he moved on to a career in psychology.) The lyrics evoke childhood memories and being trapped by the past (Barney (...And Me)) as well as flight from the everyday (Butterfly McQueen). Even the euphoric closing track, The White Noise Revisited, mixes sunny euphoria with lines about blades and hate welling up inside.
Giant Steps came out before Britpop even knew what it was - the naive, innocent days before Country Houses and Champagne Supernovas. It was inventive, imaginative and playful with just the right amount of self-indulgence. It might not have got them an appearance on Top of the Pops but they made the John Peel Festive 50 for twoyears running, and we all know which of those two things is really most important.
For the twentieth anniversary of Britpop, a series of guest posts looking back at the innovators, the opportunists, the individualists who got caught up in a moment, and how they look the other side of the millennium. Mark Stratton lives in Kent and tweets at @markjstratton. For his contribution, Mark offers us a personal survey of Echobelly's second album and aspirational high-water mark. "WE'RE NOT ARROGANT, WE JUST BELIEVE WE'RE THE BEST BAND IN THE WORLD." - Noel Gallagher I agree with Noel. It was difficult not to pick the debut album by the best band in the world; but for me a Britpop album takes you back to an era of pubescent anxiety, an era of hope and hope lost. Whatever its merits and there are many (Slide Away alone justifies it), Definitely Maybe doesn’t do that; it’s far too important to be limited to such horology. It will, of course, live forever. As I subscribe to the theory that God created Manchester on the seventh day I’m not going to choose Modern Life is Rubbish. Neither can I, with a clear conscience, choose the far superior Suede given their reluctance to hold the coveted founders of Britpop title, let alone, pose with our nation’s flag. Both would be worthy contenders. I have chosen On by Echobelly. It is an album that perfectly mixes the snarling guitar riffs of swaggering youth together with sing-along, fun, playful lyrics so prevalent in the Britpop era. It wasn’t about arrogance; it was all about belief.
The album opens up with the guitar laden Car Fiction (2:31) setting the tone for the album; yes we are a guitar band (and a girl is singing) – deal with it. Next a soundtrack to my Hoffmeister years and forever on the radio and Jukebox: Great Things (3:31). At the time, like everyone around me, I wanted to do something extraordinary and break free from the metaphoric Rousseauian chains - if only I could tell the younger Stratton now that we can find unsurpassable value and achievement in the most ordinary and everyday of things.
Natural Animal (3:27) is all about friendships breaking at the first sight trouble. "Where are you now? You're supposed to be a friend of mine." We have all been there even if we can't relate to the blatant criminality of the song. We move to the moodier Go Away (2:44) where the familiar Britpop narrative of anti-authority is evident in the Oasian "we see things they'll never see" vain. Pantyhose and Roses (3:25) is one of their most famous, best and most played tunes with lyrics clearly approved by Jerry Hall's mother. It’s still a thinking man’s favourite in any Britpop compilation selection though. We slow down for Something Hot In A Cold Country (4:01), which is the closest Echobelly get to an epic on this album and is clearly all about unacknowledged genius – I know, tell me about it. "Love" is the Four Letter Word (2:51) alluded to in the next song which is disappointing because its songsake is rather average when compared to the rest of the album. I stand firmly with Corinthians on this. Thankfully we move to Nobody Like You (3:52) celebrating the prepubescent anxiety that we (hopefully) all felt at that stage of our lives. Extending, so my best history teacher tells me, to even those who held great offices of State: Why do nice girls hate me? Why? In the Year (3:31) is the other decidedly average song on this album; I often wonder if it was recorded at the correct speed. But that doesn't matter because Dark Therapy (5:30) follows. Very nearly an epic; it is a brilliant, moody Britpop song. "If you close your eyes..." A perfect example of the Britpop canon. The weirdly almost electro-acoustic and frankly Morrissyesque Worms And Angels (2:38) closes a great Britpop album which will live through the centuries. I was lucky to be brought up when the British music scene was thriving, the new great British band was always just around the corner and on the front page of Select shortly afterwards, and it provided a soundtrack to my formative years. At the time, I wanted to do great things, I didn’t want to compromise, I wanted to know what life is and I wanted to know everything. Readers, I have no progress to report whatsoever; I still aspire to these things but perhaps a little less blatantly and a little less forcibly than when I first adopted it as my personal mantra. On will live with me forever. Together in Britpop, Mark Stratton
For the twentieth anniversary of Britpop, a series of guest posts looking back at the innovators, the opportunists, the individualists who got caught up in a moment, and how they look the other side of the millennium. James Kennedy writes in and about the West Midlands, and incredibly well to boot - he blogs at http://jameskennedycentral.wordpress.com/ and you can find him on Twitter at @jameskcentral. He's also been kind enough to write a few reflections on Britpop, of which this revisionist review of Blur's The Great Escape is the second.
The NME gave this album 9/10 – at the end of the review it was said that Blur fans could expect to have a lot to keep them going until the New Year. On buying this, I listened to the album in my new room, filled with posters and cuttings from the NME and Select, and furtive nudes from Loaded of course – a pretty much best of 1995 culture. Autumn was setting in, and the room was lit to the sounds of this album, which would be a far cry from the nice and clean teeth of Supergrass. After the Blur v Oasis row, the hangover was setting in. From the discordant opening chords of ‘Stereotypes’ and it’s sordid tales of wife swapping in Essex, we are met by the ubiquitous ‘Country House’. With ‘Country House’ comes two motifs that had been heard before in Blur’s ‘Life’ trilogy – seemingly playful and child-like, now signifying an unravelling, a melancholy turning to madness, which is apparent throughout the album. On ‘Country House’, a brass refrain makes like a childish playground taunt (look at the video around 3:22 where Albarn does the old thumbs in ears and waggles his fingers). Yet, in another hark about to childhood, the listener can hear the sounds of a fairground in the distance, which remind me of ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’ – the childish psychedelia of the fairground, the waltzers and merry-go-rounds.
The players throughout ‘The Great Escape’ are seen through ever distorted mirrors, sticky smells of candy-floss and fried onions. The next three songs, ‘Charmless Man’ ‘Fade Away’ and ‘TOPMAN’, have their lead characters ruined and in thrall to recreational drugs, failed relationships and rough sex. The album’s strongest track, for me, Blur’s crowning achievement, ‘The Universal’, possibly offers the only modicum of hope in the album’s hour – however, the song tells the story of a doped, blissed out world. The arrangements are lush – it’s hard to fight back the tears when the song kicks back in. There is grim irony of this song being used in the British Gas adverts, here, seemingly telling the public to inhale the fumes and relax.
From the eerily sublime to the downright frightening. If ‘The Great Escape’ ever gets re-written as a Lloyd-Webber/Ben Elton musical, a cavalcade of cross-dressing Tories with satsumas stuffed in orificies dancing in a grotesque burlesque would now appear to flashing lights and honking brass bands. ‘Mr Robinson’s Quango’ is drugged up, rambunctious and gauche, “He’s gotta hairpiece! He’s got…herpes!” After the song grinds into a filthy, raunchy halt, the fairground ride fades up, morphing into a lurching, grinding nightmare. ‘He Thought of Cars’ is a narrator’s recounting madness, cars in perpetual gridlock, the sky thick with fumes. At the end, the playground taunts of ‘Country House’ are repeated, though this time in a glassy-eyed monotone. The album doesn’t stop there – in fact, a case could be made for a subtler track order and some of the tracks left off completely. ‘It Could Be You’ is a nonsensical piece of light relief about the National Lottery – again, if The Great Escape was an Elton/Lloyd Webber collaboration, this would come as a macabre ballet after the oppressive bad-trip of the last two songs, the smell of gas and orange peel subsiding into the air conditioning. Followed on by the excellent ‘Ernold Same’ – a sad sketch voiced by the Right Honorable Ken Livingstone, narrating the life of a commuter destined to live out his life on repeat until his dying day. Albarn sings the chorus in full Harold Steptoe/Dick van Dyke mode “Nothing…will change…tomorrow-row!” Death’s infinite bliss is ‘The Great Escape’ – the final photo on the CD inlay (a dizzying montage of pie charts and ideal home adverts) shows a body being wheeled to the mortuary. If that wasn’t enough, ‘Globe Alone’ and ‘Dan Abnormal’ (‘Jubilee’ off the last album, but now with hairier palms and an unhealthy gun obsession) offer a concerned look at those who society ignore, brains gorged on the emergent lad culture and fast food. Finally, two songs dealing with the pains of unrequited love of ‘Entertain Me’ and ‘Yuko and Hiro’ – foretelling Blur’s more experimental directions end the album on a despondent note. There is no jaunty kiss off as with ‘Commercial Break’ and ‘Lot 105’ – after a repeated minor chord after ‘Yuko and Hiro’ and slow fade out, the refrain from ‘Ernold Same’ is heard again played on an accordion, again fading out. To me, this is a tough ending to a tough album. There is real melancholy in this offering – best heard as a whole from start to finish. ‘The Great Escape’ wasn’t regarded to be 1995’s standout album, the plaudits going to Pulp, Tricky and Black Grape, and Oasis delivered a knockout punch in the Britpop wars with ‘Wonderwall’ and the accompanying ‘What’s the Story, Morning Glory’ selling by the bucketload, But Blur’s outing, whilst being a tough album to listen to, is best heard from start to finish – a rock opera for the nineties.
For the twentieth anniversary of Britpop, a series of guest posts looking back at the innovators, the opportunists, the individualists who got caught up in a moment, and how they look the other side of the millennium. James Kennedy writes in and about the West Midlands, and incredibly well to boot - he blogs at http://jameskennedycentral.wordpress.com/ and you can find him on Twitter at @jameskcentral. He's also been kind enough to write a few reflections on Britpop, of which this Parklife review is the first this week.
I remember the first time I heard Blur. I had been awoken in the night by a rather nasty bout of pleurisy, and in my vomiting haze I remember hearing the strains of ‘Girls and Boys’ coming through my bedside radio. I didn’t have much affinity with what was to become Britpop then – I’d missed out on the Madchester and Grebo scenes for reasons a bit too long-winded for 800 words – and instead was busying myself with a rabid love of all things REM and the US alternative that wasn’t grunge, the Euro-Pop and Dance revival (thanks to the beautiful MTV Europe) exciting dance music from the Prodigy, Atari ST and Nintendo. This track, this ‘Girls and Boys’ – was a goodie. Yet I remember seeing the video, and the singer was possibly a bit too cool for me in his Adidas and trendy hair, and the way he mouthed ‘love’, all fat tongue and doe-eyes, turned me off them a bit.
The album passed me by on it’s release in that April (come on, Music for the Jilted Generation was out in July!) and the pleurisy song with the fat-tongued singer passed me by. An avid viewer of MTV Europe and The Box on cable, it was in August when the ‘Parklife’ video started getting heavy rotation. This was better – the synaesthesia I got when I listened to my old favourite Ian Dury was there – sepia tones, bygone eras. Back to school and my REM buddy lent me an unmarked cassette tape with the album, also called Parklife. “What’s this you’ve got ‘ere” one of the kids in the classroom said “Blur’s album!” we said. He suddenly became incredibly irate, grabbed the tape off us and hurled it at the floor. “SHIT” was the reply, and as I knew this kid did like his music and wasn’t just being an arsehole, this intrigued me. I got the tape home – “SHIT” still ringing in my ears. The first track was ‘Girls and Boys’ which I knew, and the second track “Tracy Jacks” was good if not a little irritating. I was a bit stumped by ‘End of a Century’ for some reason, and ‘Parklife’ and ‘Bank Holiday’ were rambunctious fun. Again, I was overly-ambivalent about ‘Badhead’ and stumped by the point of ‘The Debt Collector’ and ‘Far Out’. I can’t remember what I thought about the rest of it, although, it didn’t really make that much of in impression. Back to swooning over Michael Stipe and Kim Deal then. We were all however listening to the Evening Session by November, and I remember that I’d taken an interest in the fact that you could still buy 7” singles, which were particularly good currency within the indie/alternative market. I again heard ‘End of a Century’ played on the show, and despite initial groans, gave it a chance, and it was a real winner, particular the instrumental sections by the awesomely named Kick Horns. I was slowly amassing a new vinyl collection to go with my gumpf collected from the 80s, and was already spending pocket money on records – the preceding month had seen me proudly brandishing 12” pressings of Green Day’s ‘Welcome to Paradise’ (on green vinyl!) and Shane MacGowan’s filthy rock n’roll classic ‘That Woman’s Got Me Drinking’ from the Virgin Megastore on Corporation Street. So, armed with pocket money, I used a shopping trip to Merry Hill to buy this new Blur single with it’s fantastic sleeve – it’s bedfellow was Pearl Jam’s ‘Spin the Black Circle’ for some reason other than that I liked it at the time. It was probably a few months later (a look through my photos revealed that my Christmas presents revolved around Veruca Salt, Liz Phair and of course, REM and the Breeders) that I listened to Parklife again. The local library had an excellent collection of CDs (and I was in love with the sad-eyed librarian with cropped hair who worked on the Saturdays) and Parklife was my first port of call – still with a “16” sticker on the front. What really got my attention was the fantastic Stylorouge cover, back sleeve and inlay – giving the whole package a vital, eye-catching look and appeal. The CD finally made sense – I still had problems with the likes of ‘Clover over Dover’ mind you, but the filler tracks really worked, and sent me on real explorations – ‘The Debt Collector’, ‘Far Out’ and the closer ‘Lot 105’ were essential tracks rather than throwaways, influencing my choices of listening in years to come, and one of the standouts was the superb ‘This is a Low’, a stunning psychedelic swoon of a song.
Select Magazine thoughtfully gave the poster away as part of a stunning collection – and there it was, the greyhounds above my top shelf, for the while, replacing Stipe and Deal as my poster-children of the day. Britpop had come to King’s Norton.
Following on from reading Phonogram's look back in wistfulness (sorry - couldn't resist) at the so-called Britpop years, it got me thinking. If you stripped away the cliches, ignored the mediocrity and the Blur/Oasis shenanigans, was there enough decent music to justify a compilation? Something akin to the classic singles complilations like the famous Nuggets, which document the unheard treasures of psychedelia and garage?
It's much harder to find real obscurities, but here's my play-list of Britpop nuggets with links where I can find them. All the bands mentioned were either explicitly affiliated with Britpop, helped unwittingly bring it into existence or found themselves affected by it in some sense.
Ahem. Do feel free to suggest your own additions. And links, ladies and gents, links!
Pulp - My Legendary Girlfriend http://www.we7.com/#/album/Pulp/My-Legendary-Girlfriend
Only one of two first division 'Britpop' bands, commercially speaking, included here. And this disco oddity dates just from the start of their rise and reminds me what a unique and brave band they were.
Corduroy - London, England. http://hypem.com/track/816324 Giving a good name to parochialism. And arguably out-Blurs you-know-who during their Parklife pomp.
Retro-futurism par excellence, this was Stereolab's almost-hit and occasionally made a appearance on the better class of Britpop dancefloor. Too political for what was essentially an apolitical (and therefore small 'c' conservative) musical movement.
The Boo Radleys - Thinking of Ways http://www.we7.com/#/album/The-Boo-Radleys/Giant-Steps
Ah, my third band I really fell for (after the Pet Shop Boys and REM). And the first to introduce me to the joys of beauty and noise juxtaposed. Not to be judged by the hit, fine as it was.
How come the Flaming Lips get all the credit when the Boos were doing the fragile psych ballad thing too?
Teenage Fanclub - Neil Jung http://www.we7.com/#/song/Teenage-Fanclub/Neil-Jung+1
Guilty by association with Britpop through Creation records, the Fannies kept on turning out excellent singles like this.
Elastica - Blue http://www.we7.com/#/song/Elastica/Blue
There's an awesome acoustic demo version of this, but the plugged-in version will have to do. One of the best bad-but-sweet sex songs which constitute the Elastica oeuvre. Great harmonies, sez my inner Mojo reader.
Super Furry Animals - Hermann Loves Pauline http://www.we7.com/#/song/Super-Furry-Animals/Hermann-Loves-Pauline+2
Okay, so the chorus is basically Blackberry Way by the Move, but we have to salute one of the few bands inventive enough to emerge from the ashes of Creation intact.
Ride - Leave Them All Behind http://www.we7.com/#/song/Ride/Leave-Them-All-Behind
In retrospect, it's hard not to see this stadium shoe-gaze as one of the signposts towards the misguided epic tendencies of Oasis, The Verve and the irony-free end of Britpop. Especially given Andy Bell's later status as a Gallagher hired-hand.
The Auteurs - Chinese Bakery http://www.we7.com/#/song/The-Auteurs/Chinese-Bakery+
One from the sweeter end of Britpop's own Lou Reed
Shack - Streets of Kenny http://www.we7.com/#/song/Shack/Streets-Of-Kenny+
'Cosmic scouse' elder statesmen - check! Included instead of The La's (too obvious) or Cast (shudder - do you know they are doing a fifteenth anniversary tour of All Change? I'm tempted to picket the Birmingham date with a placard saying 'shame on you'. This is exactly what Phonogram was on about when it was laying into nostalgia)
Black Grape - Kelly's Heroes http://www.we7.com/#/song/Black-Grape/Kellys-Heroes
Demonstrating that the prolongation of certain Madchester careers wasn't all bad if it enabled Shaun and co to do to this in band #2
St Etienne - You're In A Bad Way http://www.we7.com/#/song/Saint-Etienne/Youre-In-A-Bad-Way
Included because 'teh Et''s Electro-Mod pomp coincided with the rise of Britpop. Unfortunately also epitomised the sexism inherent in the times, with front-woman Sarah Cracknell getting much more attention in the music press than the tunes.
Mike Flowers Pops - Wonderwall http://www.we7.com/#/artist/The-Mike-Flowers-Pops
And what better way to end than this Dada-ist protest on the absurdity that Britpop became.
