Actually, instead of just pop in to insult you haggard old sods, I shall leave you with an example of what I mean: 'This Year' by Marger, which I think is superb. His mixtape has some excellent tunes on there too.

There's absolutely loads of other stuff knocking about as well. Let go of your 1977-1983 blueprint for what pop music should be.

That tune is quite nice. It doesn't knock me for six, but you need to be in the right mood or the right place to be knocked for six by anything really don't you.

Thing is though, the guitar band was declared dead in the middle of the period you're talking about and I don't think there's been a perception that British pop is all about guitar bands and nothing else since you know, Freddie and the Dreamers or something. That Britpop thing was just a marketing exercise, I don't think anyone actually seriously bought into it. Apart from fucking Tony Blair obviously.

There's always decent tunes knocking about isn't there. Always has been, always will be. I'm sticking by what I said earlier though to be honest.

Oh, and cheers Amor.

Mat wrote:


There weren't any legitimately good bands in the Britpop period? Really?

You probably had to be in England to experience the full horror of Britpop. It sort of came out of a really interesting period in British pop in the early 90's where there were loads of different bands making loads of different styles of music. In about 1994 it got turned into a brand. Cool Brittania. A sort of theme park version of 1965 and 1978, with any political message or contariness turned off, any black music or disco elements ignored or erased and this bland puerile 'things can only got better' bollocks that helped Blair avoid any substantial questioning (e.g. what was that clause that got written out again, what do you reckon to Keir Hardy etc) and ride to power in the biggest political landslide in over 50 years.

Fucking hell, i'm in a bad mood.

Ah, okay. So you're talking more about Britpop as 'a thing' than just saying 'Blur were shite'?

[pre-emptive]

I know 'Common People' by Pulp is going to be held up as Britpop's great political statement, and it is a great tune.

Deffo the exception that proves the rule though.

WOM wrote:


Yeah, I really liked Blur in the mid-90's. I still quite like them now.

Mat, I'm going to use your text for a t-shirt for my first visit to our new, promised land...

For a lark, I scrolled down the Wiki page of 'Britpop bands and artists', and it was a lot of "Who?" "Who?" "Who?" "Who?" "Ah...they were okay." and "Who?"

And if we did owt similar for Canada, it'd be "Guess Who", "Er, that's it..."...

Well, Oasis' first album is brilliant and the gigs around that time were good. That's it though

Gangster Octopus wrote:


Heh, nice one!

[quote="Bored of Education" post=687005]

Dodgy, we hardly knew ye.

Well, Def Leppard and the aforementioned UB40 were great.

Edit: sorry - this is for Mat.

My point is working class kids don't really play rock anymore. They rap, or sing RnB, or produce grime, and so on.

I work at a college with a good music program, and the people who are interested in rock are basically middle-class white kids, and the working-class kids go and do hip-hop, soul, RnB, etc. What makes it a good music program is that they encourage the kids to mix, so the WC kids are rapping over drumbeats provided by some nice white boy from a big house in Brockley, or the WC kids play bass or drum or sing for the rock bands. But there's no doubt there's a class difference in what genre of music they prefer. And that's not good for rock...not to say posh kids can't play music but the vitality goes out the window when you don't have to be a starving artist.

Mat's spot on about Britpop; it was basically the (creative) death knell for most British indie rock at a time when dance, hip hop and jungle were producing amazing stuff. The only vital form of rock I can see nowadays is metal, and the stuff I like most there tends to be the least 'rock' anyway (Sunn O)))) - though I did love the Hold Steady, who are rather hoary. And of course The Fall are fucking amazing. I think the genres are more fluid and malleable than they used to be though.

As for welfare's influence, two fifths of my group are on the dole and it does lend you a certain edge. We're not kids though (nor rock, for that matter)!

What Flynnie said

Flynnie wrote:

Agree up to a point, but twas ever thus; soulboys and girls in the 70s were mainly wc, rock was "student" music, until punk, and punk contained far more crossover and eclecticism than people tend to remember.

It doesn't have to be either/or; since the 60s at least there's been great pop based on what we now called MOBO and great guitar based pop (arguably derived from blues from let's not get complicated). Fool's Gold was heralded as some great new crossover but white guitar bands hung out in soul clubs and listened to Marvin all night long, they just chose to perform the music that best suited their voices or the instruments they had to hand.  In the 90s, following on from hiphop and house, the most directional music came from dance-based acts (like Massive Attack, Basement Jaxx, etc etc) whilst guitar bands seemed knowingly retro, but people listened to all sorts, DJs and producers (like Andrew Weatherall) mixed it all up.

As for class, taking steveee's point, yes instruments and studio time cost money but it's perhaps never been cheaper or easier to make rudimentary music.  Whether it goes further is down to so many factors: talent, originality, the zeitgeist/fashion, connections, LUCK, the music industry's prevailing preferences and willingness to invest (which relates and feeds off and back into all other factors).

Middle class or posh kids might have some advantages: cultural capital and music education, parental support, but the working class may have resilience, resourcefulness, street smarts. Talent can and does come from all directions and backgrounds.

Dunno, I remember in the 70's the town I grew up in used to have a coach that left the town centre on Saturday night for the Twisted Wheel, Wigan Casino and places like that, it was known locally as the soul bus. My eldest brother and his mates used to go regularly. They were all soul boys and girls but they loved Bowie, Roxy, The Faces and bands like that too, all of who up until the mid 70's at least played rock, or whatever you wanna call it. And that's just the stuff they admitted to liking to publicly.

That is the side of punk that gets on my wick to be honest. The way it tried to give certain kinds of music an edginess and socio-economic perspective it doesn't really possess. The classic example of this are certain kinds of music writing that automatically equates black music with some kind of struggle. In the early 70's yeah, with crossover between Huey Newton's organisation, Stokely Carmicheal, Eldridge Cleaver and people like Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets and the way they informed the black music aristocracy like George Clinton, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield and so on. But I don't see it in Jay-Z, or 'Paid in Full', or 'Cash Rules Everything Around Me' or most modern R&B anywhere, which is just an assertion that cash is king, and is a constant affirmation of petit-bourgeois values. I mean I like a lot of it, actually I love a lot of it, don't get me wrong, but I don't see it as taking us to the better world pop was supposed to take us to in the romantic dreams of the 60's and 70's. The worldview and values it expresses are often utterly appalling.

I think it's more complicated than that, basically and i'm sick to death of resourceful fuckers with street smarts, I really am, we've had three frigging decades of them running pop and all they've really got to say is 'make me rich or fuck off' like endless candidates on The Apprentice or something. I'd rather hear from clueless fuckers with no street smarts whatsoever, completely confused and frightened and lost.

Agree pretty much with that, concur totally with first para - the first punks did go to soul clubs, and yes, liked all the bands you mentioned, have written at great length about this elsewhere but yeh, that's it.

Agree with much of the rest of what you've said, it's sort of what I was trying to say but I expressed it poorly. Can't be bothered writing properly here but I raised points you took up.

The point is, it is very complicated and good pop music can come from anywhere, socio-economic factors don't always, well, factor . The "street smarts" I didn't so much mean as being all gangsta or "punk", nor as possessing some great nobility or political awareness, as being able to source an instrument when needed, etc. and having fingers on the cultural pulse, that sort of thing.

My Mainman is and always will be Bowie, his class was pretty much an irrevelance.