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blahflowersBritpop was mine. The acid house of the late Eighties didn't appeal, Madchester was too far away and I knew nothing of Grunge other than Nirvana and Shoegazing barely registered. But I had Parklife with me when I went to university and already knew I hated Oasis. I'd read the odd issue of Select by the Autumn of 1994 and once I was at university I finally picked up the Melody Maker and NME as well, and immersed myself in the soap opera of the times, how Justine left Brett for Damon so he wrote Animal Lover and she wrote Never Here, how the initial camaraderie between Noel and Damon turned to public hate, and everyone lost their last names and were rechristened with their band names, Matt Dodgy, Loz Kingmaker, Martin Boo... Oh we were so, so young and so very beautiful.
I was unashamedly partisan and, with the exception of Pulp, I was a devotee of London town, even though I would not meet her for another three years. And who could blame me? I lived in Birmingham but we gave the country Ocean Colour Scene, surely a worse crime than Jasper Carrott. I still maintain that the Southern Dandies had more interesting songs, the Northerners might have their Cigarettes and Alcohol but they were lying in the gutters and We were the stars they were looking at.
Of course we spent so much time defending/attacking Elastica's homages/blatant tune-stealing not to worry about the world around us, but it was a defense mechanism, a Tory Government that no-one could really believe still got to decide what to do but was too busy shagging, stealing money or arguing about Europe, New Labour waiting in the wings but we knew already they'd signed away their heart (but we still let ourselves hope that it wasn't, wouldn't, couldn't be true, Hillary supporters take note and don't come crying to me if she wins), we still had Clause 28, we still didn't have the equality to love, I still had bigots on both sides telling me to come off the fence. From the north came the Morlocks, sure, they said they were left-wing, they had the necessary Labour working-class roots but they were the prison we needed to escape from. I may not have been getting any at that time but I didn't need the Northern Uproars or Casts of the world to offer to kick my head in for what was on my mind. Maybe it was class prejudice trying to disguise itself, but the middle class kids from good families around London made me feel included.
And we had our martyrs, bands paid in booze, cash and Coke. Saint Richey wasn't really Britpop but we took him anyway and it mattered that NME wrote a lengthy editorial calling him an arsehole while the Maker tried to have a discussion about why we were depressed.
No-one can really say when the party finished. Instead we realised we were blinking in the cold light of morning. Britpop came pre-digested so it slipped down the gullet of the general public without any fuss and we lost it. Football fans sung 'Wonderwall' and how it hurt to have won a battle only to lose a war. The papers all condemned Jarvis wiggling his bum at Michael Jackson then realised their readers supported the man from Sheffield rather than the boy from Mercury. Damon Blur, to his credit, tried to get a youth that wasn't interested in politics engaged but if anyone stayed sober long enough, their commitment mostly began and finished on the first of May, 1997. John Harris' The Last Party is a key text here, as important as Marcus or Savage.
But it was 1997 and the New Bosses were here to introduce us all to the bottoms of their boots. We didn't have a scene any more. If we looked for music now we had to do it on our own, without the comfort of community, without the training wheels of the shared adoration. It was cold in those days before the Internet really came into it's own. Time to wake up. Time to be born in to the world.
Link to the video because someone has gone round YouTube telling everyone to stop allowing it to be embedded, even though all the other videos seem to be left alone.
I was unashamedly partisan and, with the exception of Pulp, I was a devotee of London town, even though I would not meet her for another three years. And who could blame me? I lived in Birmingham but we gave the country Ocean Colour Scene, surely a worse crime than Jasper Carrott. I still maintain that the Southern Dandies had more interesting songs, the Northerners might have their Cigarettes and Alcohol but they were lying in the gutters and We were the stars they were looking at.
Of course we spent so much time defending/attacking Elastica's homages/blatant tune-stealing not to worry about the world around us, but it was a defense mechanism, a Tory Government that no-one could really believe still got to decide what to do but was too busy shagging, stealing money or arguing about Europe, New Labour waiting in the wings but we knew already they'd signed away their heart (but we still let ourselves hope that it wasn't, wouldn't, couldn't be true, Hillary supporters take note and don't come crying to me if she wins), we still had Clause 28, we still didn't have the equality to love, I still had bigots on both sides telling me to come off the fence. From the north came the Morlocks, sure, they said they were left-wing, they had the necessary Labour working-class roots but they were the prison we needed to escape from. I may not have been getting any at that time but I didn't need the Northern Uproars or Casts of the world to offer to kick my head in for what was on my mind. Maybe it was class prejudice trying to disguise itself, but the middle class kids from good families around London made me feel included.
And we had our martyrs, bands paid in booze, cash and Coke. Saint Richey wasn't really Britpop but we took him anyway and it mattered that NME wrote a lengthy editorial calling him an arsehole while the Maker tried to have a discussion about why we were depressed.
No-one can really say when the party finished. Instead we realised we were blinking in the cold light of morning. Britpop came pre-digested so it slipped down the gullet of the general public without any fuss and we lost it. Football fans sung 'Wonderwall' and how it hurt to have won a battle only to lose a war. The papers all condemned Jarvis wiggling his bum at Michael Jackson then realised their readers supported the man from Sheffield rather than the boy from Mercury. Damon Blur, to his credit, tried to get a youth that wasn't interested in politics engaged but if anyone stayed sober long enough, their commitment mostly began and finished on the first of May, 1997. John Harris' The Last Party is a key text here, as important as Marcus or Savage.
But it was 1997 and the New Bosses were here to introduce us all to the bottoms of their boots. We didn't have a scene any more. If we looked for music now we had to do it on our own, without the comfort of community, without the training wheels of the shared adoration. It was cold in those days before the Internet really came into it's own. Time to wake up. Time to be born in to the world.
Link to the video because someone has gone round YouTube telling everyone to stop allowing it to be embedded, even though all the other videos seem to be left alone.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 06:56 am (UTC)