The other 90's

luka

Well-known member
Just read Luke's post - that is true of the Roses, but I thought that was watered down by Oasis. Seems totally bound up in my head with Loaded magazine and a kind of revival of white hetreo blokeiness.

It is, it is. I'm not really contradicting you or Craner. I'm talking about trace elements.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
That whole Northern Lad Rock thing that Oasis distilled from the Stone Roses (but also The Las and Inspiral Carpets!) was almost separate to the first wave of Britpop which was very Londoncentric and, like Danny says, tied up with journalists from NME, Select, Melody Maker etc.

The whole thing got rolled together in the end, but there is the story of the Gallagher brothers making a special trip to the The Good Mixer in Camden specifically to persecute a drunk Graham Coxon. Any connection to dance music was dead by this point.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
The idea of 4th generation Small Faces impersonations, handed down via The Jam, with more dilution each time.

Yeah, it's a classic example of reductive imitation, isn't it. Take a previous phenomenon, flatten out any diversity, trim out any inconveniently weird bits, distill it down to a minimal template and make endless copies of that. Baggy without the funk and psychedelia. Mod without the modernism. Punk and post-punk boiled down to the upfront riffs and straightforward structures. Etc.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
One of the most important points about The Stones Roses "connection" to rave was the fact that they fluked upon one of the best drummers in the country at the time and managed to keep him.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
The whole thing reminds me of the relationship with Guy Ritchie films and the actual East End but with music instead.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Basically, the Northern lineage that spawned Oasis partly emerged alongside and was tangentially related to dance music via Madchester, while the Southern groups that pioneered the initial Britpop wave were on offshoot of and reaction to late-80s/early-90s UK indie.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The interesting question is: why did it go mainstream? How was that able to happen?

It was embarrassing reading the music press at that time - the triumphalism of it, "finally our bands are in the charts!" etc.

And it all ended up in the ludicrous press embargo on Be Here Now and loads of the journalists finally losing their jobs in 1999 or whenever.
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
Yeah, 2 Unlimited, Wet Wet Wet, Mr. Blobby, East 17, Take That, Gabrielle, Haddaway...

Every single one of which has aged better than Parklife.
 

luka

Well-known member
Also lots of British stuff then, just not parochially British in the same way. Not British as an identity.
 

luka

Well-known member
I mean east 17 are a very British group, Gabrielle is distinctively British. You can hear cups of tea, low grey cloud covering the sun, mildness, kindness, small gestures, comfort, heart fm.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Yes, it was mostly British, American with a large dose of Eurodance. But "British Identity" was not a thing at all, Blur looked really odd and took a big risk when they released Modern Life is Rubbish with its British Image #1 press campaign in 1993. This was at the same time as Morrisey wrapping himself in a Union Jack in front of a audience of skinheads in Finsbury Park to the total condemnation of people who were writing 'Yanks Go Home' cover features a few months later. It was fucking ridiculous.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
East 17 were not deploying signifiers like Blur were or trying to revive a glorious British pop tradition like Oasis. Their influences and reference points were contemporary, urban and international.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
This does make me miss the idea of a shared culture tbh. A universal set of talking points and references, that near everyone in your given demographic would know. Has that gone for good? Am I projecting?
 

luka

Well-known member
This does make me miss the idea of a shared culture tbh. A universal set of talking points and references, that near everyone in your given demographic would know. Has that gone for good? Am I projecting?

I don't know if you're projecting. It's of a piece with your nostalgia for 'facts' that is to say, shared articles of faith which underpin group cohesion. There were obviously benefits gained from that kind of large scale social engineering and manipulation which we have now lost. Equally there were problems.

So for example I'm always perturbed by the depth of Craners knowledge of pop culture. We are more or less the same age (although I'm in my 30s and he's well into his 40s) but I don't have anything like that familiarity and the reason for this is I wasn't forced into listening to radio one and watching television for the want of anything better. I did have something better, I had the Pirates.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I'm barely 41, Luke is only 39 for a short while longer. Otherwise an accurate post. The pirate stations would've mopped up most of my teenage subcultural energy. My pop knowledge is an indicator of a provincial youth.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Even pirates were also a shared culture. They had geographical range, were rooted in club scenes and DJing. Listening to Kiss FM early on made me want to go to places like The Wag Club even though I was too young and uncool. The later rave stations had even more cultural pull and reach - Centre Force completely dominated out East and into Essex.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
One strange outcome of the cultural flattening that has occurred in the last 15 or so years is that bands that we all thought were dead and buried now have miraculous afterlives. All the shoegazing bands confined to oblivion by Britpop were rediscovered by American indie kids in the Noughties and all began to reform and record (Ride, Slowdive, Swervedriver, Lush). Absolute 90s promotes mini-festivals where bands like Dodgy and Sleeper and The Bluetones star on the bill. This was both unexpected and unwelcome, to say the least.
 
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