Half term holidays! Busy doing nothing, working the whole day through.
On the radio mainly we have BBC 6 Music, which normally does OK for itself. This week Radio 6 has been celebrating the “20th anniversary of Britpop”… It had me scratching my head a bit.
Time might have been that I would have pounced on such a one-sided 7″ flexidisc single of an idea and torn it a new centre hole. Not only would I have questioned the arbitrariness of the timing, and the wisdom of giving Damon Allbran further opportunity to wreak his adenoidal miseries upon the populace, but also given detailed Mr Agreeable-styled rebuttals for each of the artists featured:
“Gene. Gene?! F***ing dreary knock-off Smiths b*******s – and that’s taking dreary to depths unknown to the hardiest of miners. Couldn’t carry a tune in a f***ing bucket, no-good sh***hawks. Gene. Dear sweet c***ing Christ deliver us.”
Must have been terrific fun writing the Agreeable columns. But for this grand Britpoppish retrospective, I just couldn’t generate enough spleen. Seriously, My Life Story?
Still, something made me want to contribute my experience in some way. “Maybe I could knock out a list of British artists that I was also listening to in 1994 that weren’t really Britpop.” I thought.
“It would have had The Divine Comedy (Promenade album) on it (despite a later Neil Hannon work managing to squeak an entry on the 6 Music countdown), or Portishead, Dummy… Therapy?…? Er…”
I kind of ran out of ideas. Bands I wasn’t listening to in 1994? Spend holiday time writing about M People? Gah!
Well, OK, “Britpop”, then. Seriously, how hard can this be?
I really liked Suede. Metal Mickey in particular. I saw them live at Leeds T&C… the musical shark was sighted when Bernard Butler left, but look, listen (as politicians and footballers often begin their sentences):
Oh dad, she’s driving me mad!
Oasis… I remember very well the day I chose to wade through the hype and buy the Live Forever CD single (from Fopp in Byres Road, Glasgow). Me and me bezzer Jack sat listening to it, roundly unimpressed with the first three tracks, and then just falling instantly for the live version of Supersonic.
Mind you, it was easy to officially lose interest shortly after hearing the perfection of ‘Acquiesce’. What else can a band say? “Roll with it”? Get off.
Supergrass were awesome. If you do not know Caught by the Fuzz, why, reader, you must.
Yes!
But weren’t they supposed to be part of the New Wave of New Wave or something? Was 1994 simply the year someone thought up “Britpop” to describe everything made by a guitar band in Britain? There were all sorts of things that seemed quite acceptable at the time, that with hindsight look tarnished, horribly insincere. Echobelly. Why, even Parklife, which accompanies some happy memories of driving round Glasgow in a friend’s knackered car, singing along with ‘To The End’. That record had been interesting in sequence, because Blur seemed like a band getting better with each album, constantly prompting the question “wherever next”? The answer to that, of course, was “to a very big house in the c**try and Fat f***ing Les.”
See, that’s how it starts. One could go on. The terrible rest of it, the Sleeper, the Menswe@r… It was actually starting to give me a headache trying to remember them.
There’s that old saying that if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t there. This morning, as we breakfasted with the strains of poll-topping track (and a bona fide classic “Well done, listeners of Britain!” moment of delight hearing it) Common People by Pulp playing in the background – a song I saw Jarvis Cocker introduce at the inaugural T in the Park, 1994, as “A national anthem for the Netto generation.” – I suggested to J that perhaps we need an equivalent phrase for the 1990s. “Such as ‘If you feel like celebrating Britpop then you weren’t really listening to it.'”
J said “That’s… a bit contrived.”
Contrived! Of course! I seized on the notion. Contrivance seemed to sum up both the original Britpop tag – and, in fact, much of the music, which was sloppy second-hand shop versions of better bands or styles – and the need to celebrate any anniversary for it. And certainly this meta-response.
THEN I remembered that Kieron Gillen, Jamie McElvie and Matt Wilson have already inked the definitive look back, not-in-anger-but-a-bit, on Britpop, in 2006, in fact.
It is an excellent comic. If you are of A Certain Age, or interested in pursuing research on this matter, I urge you to the publication. Phonogram Vol.1, “Rue Britannia”. It’s equal parts tender-hearted and unsympathetic, and right. Except about Kenickie. They were f***ing s***-awful.
the mortal bath 