i turn to you, and with some amusement, yet some disappointment, i say, 'britpop. they did "common people."'
'oh,' you say. you have no idea what im talking about. you notice that i dont move, that i continue perusing pulp cds, occasionally picking one out that doesnt look like it was professionally made. as you are an open-minded person, you decide to pursue a conversation. 'whats britpop?'
i turn back to you and grin. 'its a sub-genre of guitar pop from the uk.' i notice that you look mildly interested. 'do you want the full history?' i ask.
you smile, and say, 'sure. ive got some time.' this is true. its sunday, and you hadnt planed anything for the afternoon aside from buying the cd.
'well,' i say, 'britpop began just as new wave was dying off.' i pause. 'are you familiar with new wave?'
you nod. 'depeche mode, omd, madness, tears for fear and the like?'
'yeah, exactly, brilliant. well, people wanted something new after a decade of synthesisers and femme-boy singers. so they started a new movement, and called it britpop. do you know who the stone roses are?'
you dont, and say so.
'well, if you want to do some finger-pointing, you could say they started it, but britpop was not a phenomenon, so much as it was an eventuality. everybodys heard that history repeats itself. well, that goes for music as well. in the sixties there was mod. then along came the hippies, and style went out of fashion. since someones always got to start a backlash movement, marc bolan (from t. rex) and david bowie basically told the hippies where to stuff their peace and love by starting glam rock.
'glam was about being a rock star. it didnt matter where you came from, you could create yourself as anyone else you wanted to be. it was an "everybodys a rock star" type deal, not just the people on stage. glam only lasted a few years in the early seventies, but those years are incredibly important to music history. now, in america we call glam rock "glitter" rock, so as not to confuse it with the other kind of glam, kiss, alice cooper, and their ilk. (and in fact, those boys would be nowhere today if it wasnt for english glam!)
'okay, so after glam there was disco, and there were more kinds of backlash to that than i can think of, but the one that was most important to britpop was punk. after punk came post-punk and new wave.'
'ah!' you say, glad that ive finally brought 'round the thing you are most acquainted with. 'but whats post-punk?'
'post-punk bands are guitar based, not as angy as punk, stuff like the smiths, the cure (who are often mistaken for new wave), joy division. most true post-punk is pretty dark.' i pause, waiting for a sign of comprehension.
'okay,' you say slowly. 'i know who they are.'
you see relief wash over my face. 'right!' i begin again, 'so what happens when you cross post-punk and new wave?'
'ummm, britpop?'
i beam. 'exactly! and it comes in the form of the stone roses. theyve got the guitars of post-punk, the pop sensibilities of new wave, but theyve also thrown in the feel of sixties mod.'
'and some mod bands are. . .?'
'the who, the yardbirds, the kinks, way, way early beatles.'
'oh! all the boys with the shag haircuts!'
i nod, and continue. 'so the stone roses start making their sound, and everybody loves it. but its not just the sound, keep in mind that the stone roses were working class boys from manchester while margaret thatcher was the prime minister. working class kids didnt like maggie much. on top of that, new wave, to a number of people, represented the excess that went along with the eighties, so the reversion to guitars was quite refreshing. so britpop officially begins in 1989, when the stone roses release their debut album and become pop idols.
'now, some people say it started in 1993 or 1994, depending on which bands you fancy. but i think that instead of britpop starting then, that was really just the beginning of its heyday. the best known official britpop bands in the states are oasis and blur, simply because those are the kids that that got airtime over here.'
'hang on,' you say, 'what do you mean by "official?"'
i half smile. 'some bands, that everyone in the world would call britpop would deny that genre to their graves. suede and radiohead, for example, but we'll get to them in a bit. . .
'after the stone roses comes blur with their 1991 album, leisure.'
'wait!' you stop me again, 'they did "girls and boys," didnt they?'
'yup, but not until 1994. remember, that was when britpop was at its height, so mainstream america finally started listening to stuff that had been big across the atlantic for five years, already. we had been far too into the new-born grunge scene to notice before then.
'so weve got the stone roses with moddy-dancey-guitar-pop, then weve got blur with semi-psychedelic-guitar-pop, and next comes suede.
'suedes music is guitar-pop, but with attitude and style: they picked up where bowie and bolan left off when glam-rock fizzled out. like the aforementioned britpop bands, suede began at a working class level (and actually, the lead singer's dad was a cab driver. . .you cant get much more working class than that, unless you had an after school job in a northern coal mine!), but instead of just being more of the same breed of guitar-pop, they picked up a few of glam's trademarks. one of them was image. just like the glam boys, suede made themselves up to be rock stars. this was a big change of pace from blur and the stone roses, they all came off as regular blokes who happened to be in really famous bands.
'so, their debut record came out in 1993, the same year as the verves first album. the verve were a whole new kind of britpop. . . the drug induced kind. also that year radiohead made their intellectual-rock debut. one single off of that album, "creep," made into the us chart's top 25.'
take me back to
the beginning!!
