Britpop - The Last Great British Music 'Scene'?

 

Right, please bear with me. The following posts are brought to you as a consequence of sorting through a couple of hundred old cassettes and salvaging some of what I found on them. 

For me, most of the music that I heard in the 1990's was horrible. The Stranglers sounded nothing like The Stranglers and you only have to watch one of the Friday night BBC 2 Top of the Pops episodes from that decade to realise just how formulaic and instantly forgettable chart music had become. Then there emerged a handful of bands that dismissed electronica, preferring to revert to guitar, drum and bass. This back to basics approach to music looked backwards towards the happening bands of the sixties, The Small Faces, The Kinks and The Who, not to mention The Beatles. Just as the music brought back a sixties feel, fashion followed suit too. The nostalgic resonnance of the music and fashion created an easy label for the bands that the music press lumped in to a scene... Britpop.

Other parallels with an earlier age followed. The rivallry between The Stones and The Beatles was recreated for a new generation of record buyers (make that CDs) as members of Blur and Oasis entered into regular slanging matches. Such was the media hype around this rivallry that it culminated in a race to the number one slot when Blur and Oasis released 'Country House' and 'Roll With It' respectively... neither of which represented the best of either band. The race, which Blur won, was the top item on news programmes across UK TV channels on the evening when the new chart was announced. Now even on a slow news day that seems to be a bit over the top!

I am not saying that Britpop was brilliant, but for the first time in years there was something more meaningful to hear in the UK music mainstream. And like punk before it, it has endured. The response to the reformation of Oasis was overwhelming (not to mention overstretching in terms of ticket prices) and Blur have periodically reformed and are capable of selling out large venues. Pulp and Suede too have done the reformation thing too and had a good response. 

So here then is a handful of the Britpop that I didn't mind. Then, normal service will be resumed I promise.