On a Britpop trip...

underdog

MagicPigDetective said:

Hmmm Britpop. 92-94 I was an indie / grunge kid. Loved bands such as blur, boos, ride, fannies, shoegaze, nirvana, dino jr, soundgarden, pumpkins etc. Saw Blur at Reading 93 and loved Modern Life and Popscene. But girls/boys and parklife turned me right off them for years. Didnt like Oasis. Didnt like the britpop attitudes of laddishnesh, britishness, mod nostalgia, bloody Chris Evans etc etc. Bands and songs seemed to me to be more direct, poppy, not as inventive or interesting musically.  Loved Verve’s 1st two but not UH. Loved Suede’s 1st two albums but nothing after. My tastes had changed to metal, hip hop, techno, drum n bass and I smoked too much dope. The bands I did like during the britpop era were the Super Furries, Manics, stereophonics and Catatonia (yes I’m Welsh) and Gene as they reminded me of the Smiths. Luke Haine’s Bad Vibes book on the britpop era is hilarious. 

Loved Catatonia, really rated the song writing, and honestly I could marry Cerys for that voice alone.

Nunogilberto

At the very tail end of the scene, if you could call it that, I was a fan of Embrace and Travis. The Man Who was a cracking album and the soundtrack to 16/17 year old me...

fob

fob

pintspiller

I loved Elastica and Sleeper. Saw them at Reading one year. Still love birds in tight jeans.

AlexC

I’m not seeing any love for Menswear... why would that be?

Musicman20

pintspiller said:

I loved Elastica and Sleeper. Saw them at Reading one year. Still love birds in tight jeans.

My mate went to see Sleeper this evening!

Placidcasual79

It was a great time for music - I realise this is a guitar forum - but its got to be said that there was some pretty splendid electronic music being realised during this period - from acts that aped rock/guitar bands in that they were album focused and festival friendly - 

The chemical brothers (95)
Lo fidelity Allstars (their first album is a CLASSIC - 98)
Underworld (94 + 96)
Leftfield (95)

Anyone ever listen to Monkey Mafia's album - shoot the boss - great record (98)
 
You also had ground breaking stuff like Portishead and Roni Size happening as well

JezWynd

lasermonkey

It probably won't make me welcome in this thread, but I disliked Britpop so much, I pretty much gave up guitar in disgust for a whole decade and bought a load of synths instead.

At the time, I thought that guitar music had just got really interesting and inventive and then the bubble burst, much of it due to the scene-driven mentality of the music weeklies. Britpop seemed like a massively retrograde step to me. And like @MagicPigDetective I wasn't comfortable with the attitudes that went with it. The bands I liked either jumped on the bandwagon to survive or disappeared. Interestingly, a few of them have reformed and are playing to bigger audiences than they ever did back then.

For me, the 90s was about electronic music, mainly the Warp/Rephlex kinda stuff, Orbital, Meat Beat Manifesto and trip hop. I was, however, very much into Radiohead, Teenage Fanclub and The Posies.

TTBZ

I was only a kid in the 90s so maybe you had to be there, but apart from Blur I don't think theres any britpop that I don't dislike. Just something about that sound is awful to my ears. 90s grunge and metal is where it's at for me.

fields5069

AlexC said:

I’m not seeing any love for Menswear... why would that be?

I hope your tongue was impairing your speech when you wrote that! It was Menswe@r actually.

I saw them in Brighton, they were virtually booed off the stage, and in hindsight booking local favourites Moloko Plus as support was not a good idea.

CHRISB50

fields5069 said:

AlexC said:

I’m not seeing any love for Menswear... why would that be?

I hope your tongue was impairing your speech when you wrote that! It was Menswe@r actually.

I saw them in Brighton, they were virtually booed off the stage, and in hindsight booking local favourites Moloko Plus as support was not a good idea.

They supported Pulp at Drury Lane which I think was supposed to be their seminal gig. My god they were shite.

I used to see them at Blow Up at the Laurel Tree in Camden. They were a right bunch of surly pricks. They definitely believed their own hype.

darthed1981

CHRISB50 said:

I used to see them at Blow Up at the Laurel Tree in Camden. They were a right bunch of surly pricks. They definitely believed their own hype.

Isn't the drummer a DJ on 6Music now?

CHRISB50

darthed1981 said:

CHRISB50 said:

I used to see them at Blow Up at the Laurel Tree in Camden. They were a right bunch of surly pricks. They definitely believed their own hype.

Isn't the drummer a DJ on 6Music now?

I had no idea, but yes, apparently he's on the news team.

BigMonka

Alnico said:

If you use Spotify, HERE'S the start of a playlist...

I had a great time listening to that on the way in to work this morning - thanks for that!

fields5069

CHRISB50 said:

fields5069 said:

AlexC said:

I’m not seeing any love for Menswear... why would that be?

I hope your tongue was impairing your speech when you wrote that! It was Menswe@r actually.

I saw them in Brighton, they were virtually booed off the stage, and in hindsight booking local favourites Moloko Plus as support was not a good idea.

They supported Pulp at Drury Lane which I think was supposed to be their seminal gig. My god they were shite.

I used to see them at Blow Up at the Laurel Tree in Camden. They were a right bunch of surly pricks. They definitely believed their own hype.

I remember the gig, it was all definitely hyped-up and most of the people there saw through it. I had the impression I was walking into Pete Waterman's attempt at a manufactured Britpop band, but to be fair to Pete he knew how to write a tune.

darthed1981

fields5069 said:

CHRISB50 said:

fields5069 said:

AlexC said:

I’m not seeing any love for Menswear... why would that be?

I hope your tongue was impairing your speech when you wrote that! It was Menswe@r actually.

I saw them in Brighton, they were virtually booed off the stage, and in hindsight booking local favourites Moloko Plus as support was not a good idea.

They supported Pulp at Drury Lane which I think was supposed to be their seminal gig. My god they were shite.

I used to see them at Blow Up at the Laurel Tree in Camden. They were a right bunch of surly pricks. They definitely believed their own hype.

I remember the gig, it was all definitely hyped-up and most of the people there saw through it. I had the impression I was walking into Pete Waterman's attempt at a manufactured Britpop band, but to be fair to Pete he knew how to write a tune.

It is probably fair to say, that Menswear were the first attempt by the music industry to manufacture some Britpop hits out of nowhere.

They nailed it later with Robbie Williams' solo career.  I've never been a fan of his on any level (yes, yes he works hard, hes talented, his songs go over well at weddings, yadda yadda, disclaimer) but they got what they wanted there in spades.

Louise Wener in the Britpop documentary "Live Forever" (which is great) says Robbie told her he had a 10/10 hit ready to go with "Angels" (I wouldnt rate it that high but she did) and she knew Britpop was over when they had learnt to factory produce it that well.

munckee

Nunogilberto said:

At the very tail end of the scene, if you could call it that, I was a fan of Embrace and Travis. The Man Who was a cracking album and the soundtrack to 16/17 year old me...

Just had an email from Portsmouth Guildhall saying travis will be playing the whole album live in December, not a huge travis fan but I might go to that.

stickyfiddle

darthed1981 said:

 

Louise Wener in the Britpop documentary "Live Forever" (which is great) says Robbie told her he had a 10/10 hit ready to go with "Angels" (I wouldnt rate it that high but she did) and she knew Britpop was over when they had learnt to factory produce it that well.

I'm not convinced Robbie Williams was "manufactured Britpop". Angels is just damn good pop writing, in just the same way as Toploader's super-overplayed-at-the-time but utterly-fantastic version of Dancing In The Moonlight.

I think the industry just realised that they'd signed all the good bands and started scraping the barrel signing bands that just weren't good enough. The public didn't want to buy that stuff, especially post-Urban Hymns and OK Computer, so bands like Travis & Coldplay started getting picked up instead, who were less cool but very good on songwriting chops. 

The same thing happened with the landfill indie scene in the 00's - following "the good stuff" from Franz Ferdinand, early Razorlight, Arctic Monkeys and even Kaiser Chiefs first minute-and-a-half-before-they-got-annoying, we ended up the barrel scrapings represented this time by utter shite like Pigeon Detectives, The Courteeners etc, but what was there to replace it wasn't guitar-led songwriting, but hip hop, wafty and somewhat anonymous girl singers and Ed Sheeran. 

I'm very aware that everything is cyclic to an extent, and we're knee-deep in late-80's/early-90's nostalgia right now, so I'm very interested to see if mid 90's stuff comes back in next, which in pop culture terms means grunge and britpop and obnoxious girl bands more than anything else.