The Summer of Britpop - 25 years ago

[CyderInACan]

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/britpop-boo-radleys-oasis-blur-alan-mcgee-simon-rowbottom-michael-caine-a9449311.html

Probably nothing new in here but always good to look back to good times at the moment. Spent a drunken fortnight on the beaches & in the bars and clubs of Kavos that summer and we were there on one of those infamously rep-arranged Bar Crawls on the sunday it was announced that Blur had triumphed over Oasis in the press bullscheisse Battle of the Bands. There were some great tunes around at the time mind and I still love listening to Pulp and Shed Seven, even Oasis or Blur if it comes on, but I won't seek it out. 

Anybody else remember the great Shed Seven/Supergrass gig at the Fleece in 1994?

[RumRed]

Remember Reading ‘95, that was immense.  Was at Uni In Liverpool at the time and saw most of the ‘bands’ on the circuit in The Lomax, less than 250 capacity.  Brilliant times.

Agree with you on Pulp, I can still enjoy that, Oasis not so much. Suede,  Elastica and Marion all get a regular spin too.

I played the Lomax, The Cavern, The Pickett and many others.  Great times!

The colour photo is pre sexual relations with ladies (we were geeks, like you couldn’t tell from the photo). Black and White  picture post sexual relations with ladies.(apart from the drummer which I can think you can tell by the fact he’s wearing a cable knit jumper to a bloody photo shoot. He was also a Man U fan from Leeds)  

Thought you might all need a laugh at this time.

We’d  also swapped out the City fan lead singer who came from Weston for a much more attractive ‘enigmatic’ (I.e barking mad) female.

Still wish I’d had my striped silk scarf tied to my wrist in the black and white shot.

[CyderInACan]

Great pics @RumRed I take it the career in music didn’t last?

[RumRed]

1 hour ago, CyderInACan said:

Great pics @RumRed I take it the career in music didn’t last?

‘Fraid not. We were doing it more for a laugh than anything, didn’t take a real crack at talking to labels or anything.

[City Rocker]

Those Britpop years '94 to '96 were a fantastic, vivid and exciting time to be young (even though I turned 30 in the middle of it). Of course the 'scene' and the term Britpop itself were inventions of the music press, just like punk had been, which ultimately meant it would be short-lived and derided by many.

As it happened, just as American grunge had started to drown us all in misery and dreadful fashion crime, by coincidence a handful of really good British bands (Suede, Blur, Pulp) suddenly started to create brilliant new sounds and energy and aesthetics, then a flood of equally exciting new bands emerged (Elastica, Supergrass, Oasis and so on). For a while it was glorious and that summer of '95 was the zenith.

For me personally it all coincided with me getting divorced at 28, then Kurt Cobain died and Blur released Parklife and the following four riotous single years were a ******* PARTY!

In hindsight, Britpop kicked off with the release of Suede in 1993 and came crashing down when Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee went schmoozing with Tony Blair in Downing Street in 1997. Even though I am lucky enough to have seen incredible bands like The Clash, The Jam and The Ramones play live back in the early '80s, those mid '90s years were the best of times for me.

[Mike Hunt-Hertz]

1 hour ago, City Rocker said:

Those Britpop years '94 to '96 were a fantastic, vivid and exciting time to be young (even though I turned 30 in the middle of it). Of course the 'scene' and the term Britpop itself were inventions of the music press, just like punk had been, which ultimately meant it would be short-lived and derided by many.

As it happened, just as American grunge had started to drown us all in misery and dreadful fashion crime, by coincidence a handful of really good British bands (Suede, Blur, Pulp) suddenly started to create brilliant new sounds and energy and aesthetics, then a flood of equally exciting new bands emerged (Elastica, Supergrass, Oasis and so on). For a while it was glorious and that summer of '95 was the zenith.

For me personally it all coincided with me getting divorced at 28, then Kurt Cobain died and Blur released Parklife and the following four riotous single years were a ******* PARTY!

In hindsight, Britpop kicked off with the release of Suede in 1993 and came crashing down when Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee went schmoozing with Tony Blair in Downing Street in 1997. Even though I am lucky enough to have seen incredible bands like The Clash, The Jam and The Ramones play live back in the early '80s, those mid '90s years were the best of times for me.

That summer of `95 was hot!

[RumRed]

3 hours ago, City Rocker said:

Those Britpop years '94 to '96 were a fantastic, vivid and exciting time to be young (even though I turned 30 in the middle of it). Of course the 'scene' and the term Britpop itself were inventions of the music press, just like punk had been, which ultimately meant it would be short-lived and derided by many.

As it happened, just as American grunge had started to drown us all in misery and dreadful fashion crime, by coincidence a handful of really good British bands (Suede, Blur, Pulp) suddenly started to create brilliant new sounds and energy and aesthetics, then a flood of equally exciting new bands emerged (Elastica, Supergrass, Oasis and so on). For a while it was glorious and that summer of '95 was the zenith.

For me personally it all coincided with me getting divorced at 28, then Kurt Cobain died and Blur released Parklife and the following four riotous single years were a ******* PARTY!

In hindsight, Britpop kicked off with the release of Suede in 1993 and came crashing down when Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee went schmoozing with Tony Blair in Downing Street in 1997. Even though I am lucky enough to have seen incredible bands like The Clash, The Jam and The Ramones play live back in the early '80s, those mid '90s years were the best of times for me.

A perfect summary, never really got the American Grunge scene at all, maybe a bit young and musically unaware.  The guitarist in the band loved all of it, Dinosaur Jnr, Sugar etc.

I guess spinning up my mums old records from the 60’s and 70’s as a child made me more in tune with jangly pop and certain guitar sounds.

I was in final year of 6th form when ‘Suede’ came out and in my first year of Uni ‘Common People’ landed. What a time to be at Uni and in a musical City with Manchester just a short hop away. (I lived in Essex before for 10 years so didn’t have bloody anything apart from cheesy nightclubs that always finished the night with ‘New York, New York’ and everyone wasted on MD 2020).

I remember exactly where I was when I heard common people on the radio for the first time, the room in the photo.  I’d loved Pulp for a while but turned to my mate and said ‘they’ve only gone and done it, they’ll be ******* massive now’.

That era was the best of times for me for a lot of reasons.

[City Rocker]

31 minutes ago, RumRed said:

A perfect summary, never really got the American Grunge scene at all, maybe a bit young and musically unaware.  The guitarist in the band loved all of it, Dinosaur Jnr, Sugar etc.

I guess spinning up my mums old records from the 60’s and 70’s as a child made me more in tune with jangly pop and certain guitar sounds.

I was in final year of 6th form when ‘Suede’ came out and in my first year of Uni ‘Common People’ landed. What a time to be at Uni and in a musical City with Manchester just a short hop away. (I lived in Essex before for 10 years so didn’t have bloody anything apart from cheesy nightclubs that always finished the night with ‘New York, New York’ and everyone wasted on MD 2020).

I remember exactly where I was when I heard common people on the radio for the first time, the room in the photo.  I’d loved Pulp for a while but turned to my mate and said ‘they’ve only gone and done it, they’ll be ******* massive now’.

That era was the best of times for me for a lot of reasons.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked Nirvana and Nevermind remains a superb album, directly descended from the punk rock I grew up on. 

But on the other hand, the humourless American 'slacker' thing, with lank greasy hair, dirty jeans and plaid shirts was foreign to us and didn't really fit in with our sharper English sense of style. Like a lot of others my age, we were into mod, dressing in Fred Perry or Ben Sherman and listening to The Kinks and Madness. 

British Image #1. Bring on Blur!

[RumRed]

25 minutes ago, City Rocker said:

Don't get me wrong, I really liked Nirvana and Nevermind remains a superb album, directly descended from the punk rock I grew up on. 

But on the other hand, the humourless American 'slacker' thing, with lank greasy hair, dirty jeans and plaid shirts was foreign to us and didn't really fit in with our sharper English sense of style. Like a lot of others my age, we were into mod, dressing in Fred Perry or Ben Sherman and listening to The Kinks and Madness. 

British Image #1. Bring on Blur!

Once got turned away from an indie club, after we’d done a gig elsewhere, for being ‘too smart’ and we don’t let the likes of you in.

I was wearing a mod suit I’d bought in Oxfam for about a fiver and had been to the club almost every Thursday for two years. Bouncers sometimes aren’t the brightest.

[BS2 Red]

3 hours ago, City Rocker said:

But on the other hand, the humourless American 'slacker' thing, with lank greasy hair, dirty jeans and plaid shirts was foreign to us and didn't really fit in with our sharper English sense of style.

I think music scenes used to come out of reactions to other scenes. American hair metal (Bon Jovi etc) caused grunge to form as an opposite reaction. Britpop was then a British reaction to grunge.

That’s a simplistic way of looking at it, but I think Damon Albarn once said something similar, Blur’s Modern Life is Rubbish was a British “F you!” to the American music that was taking over.

[Kingswood Robin]

It was a great, but all too brief time. Then the Spice Girls came along and 90s music went back to being shit again.