Britpop Guitar Heros.

Bellycaster · October 2013

Deadman said:

What about best looking bird of Britpop? I'd have to say the lass out of Salad (particularly when she wore black leather trousers) or Echobelly (Asian looking and cute).

I thought the rhythm guitarist from Elastica was well fit too.

Beth Gibbons from Portishead was a cracker at the time. Also Kelli Dayton from The Sneaker Pimps.

I know they are not exactly Britpop, but these acts were sort of involved in the movement at the time.

not_the_dj · October 2013

ICBM said:

Louise Wener. (Sleeper)

Swoon

randomhandclaps · October 2013

ICBM said:

I'm maybe showing my age here but he's never come close to anything he did in the Jam. His solo stuff has always sounded like old-man's music to me - when I first heard Sunflower on the radio (not very clearly I have to say!) I actually wondered if it was something new by Clapton.

I did love that era of Weller, though I have to agree that the added fire he seemed to have in his belly during the Jam just edges it for me.

IanSavage · October 2013

Deadman said:

What about best looking bird of Britpop? I'd have to say the lass out of Salad (particularly when she wore black leather trousers) or Echobelly (Asian looking and cute).

I thought the rhythm guitarist from Elastica was well fit too.

I had a 'thing' for Cerys Matthews for a while. About as close as I got to Britpop though; found the rockier British bands kicking around at the time (I think some magazines attempted a 'BritRock' movementl

) far more interesting. Manic Street Preachers, Feeder and Stereophonics before they all went shit, Terrorvision, Reef, Skunk Anansie, The Wildhearts, 3 Colours Red, Pitchshifter, The Almighty, Therapy?, Kerbdog, even Radiohead and Bush found their way onto my turntable. We woz spoiled for rock.

Majorscale · October 2013

Killed his career with some misguided comments/beliefs, but Kula Shakers Crispian Mills is a killer guitarist and I still love their first two albums. Britpop was a great time for the British music scene.

johnnyurq · October 2013

I had a thing for Cerys Matthews too but the judge said I wasn't to take it out within half a mile of her.

On topic I liked a fair bit of what they called Britpop, especially the cute girly guitarists/bassists.

Bucket · October 2013

I'm not totally sure I know what Britpop is. Recognise a lot of the names in this thread though...

Does John Squire count, then?

Bucket · October 2013

Majorscale said:

Killed his career with some misguided comments/beliefs, but Kula Shakers Crispian Mills is a killer guitarist and I still love their first two albums. Britpop was a great time for the British music scene.

"Tattva" is awesome.

Bellycaster · October 2013

@Bucket

Britpop is a very Shite term really come to think of it. Great British music spanned most of the decade and you could tell there was going to be a turning point in the very very late 80's

I would call John Squire and The Stone Roses the "Madchester" scene circa 1989-1992 and other terms were loosely applied to it like "Baggy"

Bands Like.

Happy Mondays

Inspiral Carpets

James

The Charlatans etc.

It was sort of a pre cursor for what was to come in hindsight.

Bucket · October 2013

Bellycaster said:

@Bucket
Britpop is a very Shite term really come to think of it. Great British music spanned most of the decade and you could tell there was going to be a turning point in the very very late 80's
I would call John Squire and The Stone Roses the "Madchester" scene circa 1989-1992 and other terms were loosely applied to it like "Baggy"
Bands Like.
Happy Mondays
Inspiral Carpets
James
The Charlatans etc.
It was sort of a pre cursor for what was to come in hindsight.

OK, cheers.

I love Radiohead but I never really see them spoken of as Britpop, there's a lot more to them than that. I don't really like Oasis, never really listened to Suede... anyone here familiar with the Mock Turtles?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGSHIidlesQ

Upon further research it would seem that they are also "Madchester". Oh well. I like them.

Aidanspaghetti · October 2013

Personally hated most of it except for Dodgy for some reason?!

Played plenty of it in the band at the time but just personally hold no love for it all...

Was on a big Janes buzz at the time...

At least they were bands

Bellycaster · October 2013

@Bucket

It's hard to categorise everything in the 90's, but there was a massive surge of successful charting acts coming under all sorts of descriptions.

Stuff like this was very popular too.

and this

It was quite a unique period of music history.

Col_Decker · October 2013

Oasis at Knebworth '96. Roll call who else was there apart from me?

Aidanspaghetti · October 2013

Hmm 96....

Worst year of life iirc...

Breakup from the love of my life... On the beer solid for the year, never busier with gigs, truly got into Janes Addiction, got my first motorbike, crashed my first motorbike

Left my valvestate - got a JMP and 60's 4x12 and fuzz pedal.

A lot of + and -

Eye opener I belive is the expression for me

@Bellycaster Thanks for the clips...havent heard that Portishead in a long time....

lustycourtier · October 2013

RocknRollDave said:

Deadman said:

Let's not forget the less famous 'Marion'. I thought they were great:

Great call! Agree with this. I even bought their second LP, and there aren't many people who can say that!

I bought Phils fawn AC15 from him about 6 months ago. . Amazing band, and an amazing singer who had it all and lost it all. The reunion shows a coule of years ago were brilliant though

wordy · October 2013

just to go back to Suede.... I was just reminding myself about Bernard Butler, and having a listen to 'We Are the Pigs' and 'Animal Nitrate'.... and when I listen to his melodies over the choruses I think its just brilliant.

It sounds quite fucked up to me, with plenty of notes that sound a bit 'wrong' if you like, and it can be quite jarring, along with the tone and with Anderson's voice - but IMO, even though I'm not a massive Suede fan - its superb.

RocknRollDave · October 2013

Bellycaster said:

RocknRollDave said:

Bellycaster said:

It was the greatest success in British music for 30 years at the time

?!

@RocknRollDave
I think what I meant by that was at the time (IN THE 90'S) it was a long time since "Guitar driven 4 piece bands" were King. I always thought the era harked back to the 1960's. There was a certain nostalgia for the 60's surrounding the period.
Sure, we had The Smiths and TheThe etc in the 80's and Punk in the 70's, but I think the Britpop era was "Bigger" than those. In reality, it all probably stemmed from the "Real" Indie bands who were going in the 80's.
The 90's music was the complete antithesis to what was "Commercial" in the 80's, but like I said above even the Britpop craze was probably just the "Commercialisation" of Underground "Indie" music.
There was a lot of Cross-Genre type bands who were hard to categorise as being solely Britpop or Britrock or Indie. Bands Like Dubstar and St. Etienne I quite liked too.

All I know is I enjoyed this era a lot.

I see what you mean now, and yes I totally agree - This was the time when guitar playing came back to the fore and the underground scene suddenly became mainstream.
At one point I'd look at my brother's copy of NME and see bands I'd never hear of elsewhere and never ever get to actually hear at all...then suddenly the same bands in the NME were on TV and in the national newspapers and you heard them everywhere you went.
In that respect, yes I totally agree that it was a once-in-a-lifetime era of huge musical change.

FWIW i loved early Oasis - Definitely Maybe and the Manics' The Holy Bible came out the same day and both made a massive impression upon me but in totally different ways - but surely the long-standing guitar hero of that era who has stood the test of time has to be Graham Coxon. I'm not a Blur fan, not even much of a Coxon fan, truth be told, but his style is more individual and creative than any of his contemporaries, by a long shot.

dogload · October 2013

JookyChap said:

Not Brit pop but Terry Bickers with House of Love and then more so in Levitation, was another one that was amazing at the time but seems to have been painted out of history.

Totally. It's a pity they never made it big.

Col_Decker · October 2013

So when the battlelines were drawn between Blur - Country House, and Oasis - Roll ith it, which side did you stand?

Me, I was in the Oasis camp. Death to the poncey arty boys of Blur. (who won iirc)

RocknRollDave · October 2013

Col_Decker said:

So when the battlelines were drawn between Blur - Country House, and Oasis - Roll ith it, which side did you stand?

Me, I was in the Oasis camp. Death to the poncey arty boys of Blur. (who won iirc)

Neither. Both songs were piss poor efforts from bands who should have known better.

As it turned out, Blur, a band I'd never liked much before, got better as time went on and made some genuine classics IMO, whilst Oasis went the other way.

Bellycaster · October 2013

@Aidanspaghetti

It's a great tune ain't it along with Glory Box, 2 cracking tunes.

@RocknRollDave

Agreed with Coxon, he is very inventive and had a great tone that suited the music down to a tee. I do like quite a few Blur tracks.

As I'm from Sheffield I will have to give Pulp a mention too. No knowledge of their Guitarist, but I like a few of theirs, most notably "Babies"

dindude · October 2013

This thread inspired me to pick up a super cheap copy of I Should Coco by Supergrass, forgot how good some of this stuff is, Caught by the fuzz, 2 minutes 15 seconds of genius

skay · October 2013

dindude said:

This thread inspired me to pick up a super cheap copy of I Should Coco by Supergrass, forgot how good some of this stuff is, Caught by the fuzz, 2 minutes 15 seconds of genius

I agree @dindude , what a great debut album, although my personal favourite is their lesser known later album from 2005 called 'Road To Rouen'.

It has been likened to The Beatles White album with its experimental songwriting and mature sound (Supergrass, mature? Yeah, I know, whatever next!), its one of those albums you can easily listen to all the way through every time, it sounds particularly good when driving alone at night i've found :-D

randomhandclaps · October 2013

RocknRollDave said:

Col_Decker said:

So when the battlelines were drawn between Blur - Country House, and Oasis - Roll ith it, which side did you stand?

Me, I was in the Oasis camp. Death to the poncey arty boys of Blur. (who won iirc)

Neither. Both songs were piss poor efforts from bands who should have known better.

Totally agree. It was marketing hype at his best. You could write easily draw up a top 20 of both bands without including either track. It the end it was like a case of whose do you prefer - Tesco Horsemeat Lasagne of Sainsburys Horsemeat Lasagne?

bertie · October 2013

Bellycaster said:
Sure, we had The Smiths and TheThe etc in the 80's and Punk in the 70's, but I think the Britpop era was "Bigger" than those.

bigger than glam-rock of the early-mid 70s ? bigger than punk/alt in the late 70s? sorry, no.

Brit pop, in the mid 90s was the biggest thing for 10, possibly 15 years, but no more

Longtallronnie · October 2013

Supergrass were massively underrated imo. They covered such a wide range of styles without ever sounding contrived. Brilliant band.

bertie said:
bigger than glam-rock of the early-mid 70s ? bigger than punk/alt in the late 70s? sorry, no.

Brit pop, in the mid 90s was the biggest thing for 10, possibly 15 years, but no more

I'm possibly biased as I grew up with britpop (hate that term btw) but I honestly think it was bigger than both of those. If just for the impact Oasis had which whether you like them or not, was massive. At their height of popularity, 1 in 20 of the population applied for Knebworth tickets. They could have sold out 7 nights easily. That's quite simply, fucking mental for a guitar band that's not the Beatles.

I do think the interwebnetsupehighwaythingy has changed all that to the point where I'm not sure we'll ever see another movement of that size again though.

gusman2x · October 2013

Loved loads of it, but don't listen to much of it now. Not really brit pop, but radiohead's the bends is probably the finest album of the 90s, and in my opinion, one of the genuinely best guitar albums of all time. Both thom yorke and jonny greenwood wrote some astoundingly complex yet utterly listenable guitar parts on that album.

bertie · October 2013

Longtallronnie said:

I'm possibly biased as I grew up with britpop (hate that term btw) but I honestly think it was bigger than both of those. If just for the impact Oasis had which whether you like them or not, was massive. At their height of popularity, 1 in 20 of the population applied for Knebworth tickets. They could have sold out 7 nights easily. That's quite simply, fucking mental for a guitar band that's not the Beatles.

I was "alive" during both...

......hence my comment........and I dont even like any of it particularly - .the ability to know about and "apply" for tickets for mega concerts was far far more accessible in the 90s than the early 70s . The overall; impact of bands like Bay City Rollers, Sweet, Gary Glitter, T-Rex etc etc on the "general" public was massive. Pretty sure 3 million people would have applied for tickets to see them, if it had been 'conceivable'

Bellycaster · October 2013

bertie said:

Bellycaster said:
Sure, we had The Smiths and TheThe etc in the 80's and Punk in the 70's, but I think the Britpop era was "Bigger" than those.

bigger than glam-rock of the early-mid 70s ? bigger than punk/alt in the late 70s? sorry, no.

Brit pop, in the mid 90s was the biggest thing for 10, possibly 15 years, but no more

I agree that Glam Rock and Punk were extremely popular, I can't go on life experience though as I was only 7 in 1979 and that is when I first started listening to records, but obviously things like music changes and fashion I was oblivious to back then.

Britpop/Britrock was certainly the biggest thing(in guitar music) in my proper living memory. In hindsight though I would pit Britpop against those 2 genres easily for popularity stakes and it's not like anyone could actually prove which one was most popular, there would be too much bias in there.

I don't know what criteria would have to be used. Album Sales/Single Sales of all related acts? Number of different individual acts? Weeks spent on Charts? I think it has to remain in the domain of opinion.

Britpop/rock was absolutely massive, not saying the others weren't but if you didn't like it and I get the notion you didn't - just going from your responses on Johhny Marr thread and Madchester and I can only assume from that, that you don't like Britpop - then things might sort of "Pass you by" through lack of interest.

It is of course your prerogative to like and dislike whatever you want.

skay · October 2013

Britpop was everywhere for a fair number of years, and I mean in the national papers, mainstream television and radio, hell it WAS the mainstream! I don't know from personal experience, I was 3 when the Sex Pistols released NMTB, but did punk actually replace the mainstream like Britpop did?

I'm not saying that Britpop is better (or comparing it with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is) but punk and new wave were new additions to the popular culture at the time, whereas Britpop became the mainstream culture in music, newspapers, magazines, fashion and attitude (although this last one was unfortunately combined with the 'Lad' culture which jumped on the britpop wagon I feel) and there my honour I rest my case...

Play nicely now ;-)

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