The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock

Rating:
Summary: Worthy, if selective, review of the Britpop phase in the UK
Review: Harris looks at the Britpop phenomenon in 1990's UK. Special attention is played to central bands Suede, Elastica, Oasis and Blur and to key personalities like Tony Blair and Alan McGee of Creation records. It's a worthy redux of the underlying commercial, political and drug-addled machinations of the Cool Britannia gang. Only Tony Blair remains newsworthy. Despite their arty, salt of the earth aspirations of these would-be Eastenders, it's clear they were in it for one thing - themselves.

Harris likes to centre the development of the genre around the personal relationships of the central players - in particular, the Justine Frischmann, Brett Anderson and Damon Alban triangle of love, breakup, jealousy and narcissism. This makes for interesting reading as he blends in the context of Tory Britain, the failure of Red Wedge, tiresome US influences of Nirvana and dullards like Bruce Springsteen, post-Duran Duran and pre hip-hop happenings. The Stone Roses, Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, Smiths, Morrissey - they're all here too. Manchester and London are given equal credit.

However, Harris gives far too much prominence is given to Elastica - bizarrely, there is no mention of what they're remembered for best - their Wire and Stranglers plagiarisms. The inclusion of Menswear as meriting any credit is a mistake too. They were purely bargain basement poseurs.

A perfect reprise for anyone who realizes that the codology of Nick Hornby football luvvies and their awful taste in music provides no insight into the human condition, but is little more than middle England menopause.

Rating:
Summary: Well, *I* think it's awesome!
Review: I ran across this book in London in the summer of 2003 right after it had come out. As an Anglophilic purveyor of English Rock music (say that ten times fast!), this book appealed to me from the shelf at least. I took a chance on it, and boy, I wasn't disappointed. For Americans like me who are into English rock, all we know is what we get from the CDs. I lived through 1990's America, while England underwent a cultural shift not seen since 1960's America. You can really experience it in this book, especially if you have listened to all of the great music that came out in that decade (Blur, Suede, Radiohead, Supergrass, Pulp) and avoid the garbage (Oasis, Menswear). Besides in-depth interviews and private photographs from some of the biggest players, you get two feelings from this book: One, the English music scene was really like a gang of friends for the most part (excluding the Brett vs. Damon and Blur vs. Oasis feuds). And two, it was a talentless [...] of a woman in Justine Frischmann who really drove two of the biggest talents of the decade, Brett Anderson and Damon Albarn, to fantastic heights by being the third point in their little love traingle. A fascinating read.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating read
Review: I was given this as a Christmas present and finished it within a couple of weeks. Whether you want to debate the whole issue of the link between Tony Blair and Britpop.....there are some links but they're not interconnected. It's true that Tony Blair ( or for the benefit of some Tony B(liar)) used the whole Britpop movement for political gain.....but that's only to be expected. He probably saw it as a calling from the disaffected nation of the youth ( if you've listened to him sometimes, he desperately wants to come across as a messiah ).

However the political aspects always seem to loom in the background. In the 80s, Paul Weller and Billy Bragg popping up as part of the Red Wedge ( horrible name ), which was a sort of Labour tie-in at the time as " Musicians against the Tories " which admittedly is a good idea but never amounts to much in the end. It ended in failure.....just like now when Bruce Springsteen et al rocking to get Kerry in.....see something here musicians don't make much of a difference!

It digs even deeper into Tony Blair's past when he used to be in a band and could do a striking Mick Jagger impersonation.....so no wonder Jagger got knighted! The 90s though was made up of new ideas. As the " baggy" movement died away and was superseded by America's grunge, various musicians ( Suede, Blur, Elastica etc. ) were thinking of something that was anti-grunge, that was gave themselves a British identity, " a sense of who we are " in a way. Steadily as it was built, the music press got more and more excited and had suddenly forgot about it's past politicking and other things and just forget everything and just be happy to be British and so on. To make this all the more clearer, in 1992, Morrissey was scorned upon for waving the Union Jack flag at one of his concerts. Within 3 years you were hailed as god for sleeping in a Union Jack duvet with your soon-to-be wife or play a Union Jack guitar in front of millions......well you get the drift of it. Funnily, the picture of Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit lying underneath a Union Jack duvet was to be mocked by an Irish magazine called In Dublin, where they had lookalikes under an Irish quilt. I say funnily, but in some ways it was as grotesque as the real thing. That last bit's not in the book but also it will tell you that most ( if not all ) Americans did not get to see that because, hell, an interview with someone from Seinfeld is far more interesting.

But rewind a little and we find that not only are the music press obsessed but so are the media which means a widespread cultural renaissance is in place. And while the general public are hastily looking for any little tidbit of information from their newspapers, we find that Blur and Oasis, who used to be at least friendly to each other, now go into a full on war for the number 1. The hysteria is palpable and duly enough Blur win and Oasis lose out.

What also should be noted is that there is a growing tapped interest by the Labour Party which started in 1994 and which they have to be seen with the coolest thing on the block. First Blur, then eventually it's Oasis which Noel Gallagher was invited to Number 10 to sip champagne and hobnob with the new prime minister.

And then everything seemed to go sour

With the whole Britpop ideal moving into more paranoid terms what with endless amount of hard drugs it seemed inevitable it would collapse. All the bands in heroin-stooped madness that all the creative juices just seem to curdle up and be spewed out like a really bad hangover. Everybody had moved on. If you were still playing Britpop by then you were sadly laughed at for jumping on the bandwagon while it had no wheels and was about to crash.

And New Labour......well by then perhaps the idea that New Labour wasn't really worth all the hype had dawned on everyone and while there wasn't a case of hopes being dashed but......well they promised more didn't they?

There is a hell of a lot more packed into this book that I'd run out of time and space trying to describe it for you. But to slim this down to an nutshell, to take from the song New Labour used as their party manifesto song from 1997 - D:Ream's Things Can Only Get Better. It was their promise to which the NME replied " Have you ever got the feeling you've been cheated "

Rating:
Summary: What a disappointment
Review: This is a book that attempts to cover the music scene in Britain in the 1990s, contrasting the rise and fall of an indigenous rock music movement with the rise of Tony Blair. The author chooses to focus on a group of bands - Oasis, Blur, Suede, Elastica and Menswear - that were all part of the same incestuous group (The lead singer of Elastica went out with both the lead singer of Suede then Blur for instance). The book is full of minute detail - he said, she said about each other, dates and locations for early gigs, chart positions and such like. I can only say that I think only a real fan would be interested in most of this detail - and if you were a dedicated fan you would probably know most of this anyway.

The author's attempt to make links between the rise of Blair and the development (and fall) of Britpop is tenuous. It is true that there was interaction between the Blair camp and bands like Oasis and Blur, but they feel like adjuncts to the story. Yes, Blair and his people co-opted the rise of 'Cool Britannia' to their cause, and Britpop was a part of Cool Britannia idea, but the author doesn't make a very strong cause for the association with Blair being a major part for the sell-out, and therefore end, of Britpop. It is as though the author wanted his book to be taken seriously, and thought a book 'just about pop music' wasn't enough, so he threw some politics in.

It has been said that 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture' and this book is a good example of that. It didn't make me feel like getting out the Britpop CDs in my collection and giving them a new hearing. Rather, it left me feeling that the people covered were selfish, drugged up self-centred musos that lost all perspective and refused to grow up. I didn't learn much that I didn't already know, and I am not convinced that Britpop was anything special. Rather, I just feel that someone needs to shout 'It's only Pop music!'

I actually discussed this book with Britpop fans who lived in England during the 1990s, and had also read the book. They were disappointed too. So i am not sure who this is meant to appeal to - nothing new for the fans, nothing too interesting for those who aren't fans. And the demise of English Rock? Suede, Blur and Oasis still sell out concerts. Doesn't seem like much of a demise

Rating:
Summary: Whatever....
Review: Whoever wrote this has certainly done a good job. I could not write about "Brit pop" for more than 15 minutes without wanting to fall asleep - deeply asleep.

Whatever is supposed to be going on, I can tell you it has not affected my kids except to make them turn the radio off - or onto Radio 4 on a virtually permament basis. Both kids won't touch it with a barge pole.

My youngest son, now 17, built a dumbed down FM radio while in Australia. This took him about two weeks - he wasn't and still isn't technical. More dad's idea than his. When he finally got it to work, and the first faint sounds came out of the loudspeaker, they all gathered round, like in the old days with cats whiskers I suppose. No, I'm not THAT old. But anyway, he twiddled the dial and the IF coils to make it clearer - and it got louder - and clearer and it was - The Spice girls! Looks of abject horror - his older brother and two younger sisters shouted in panic "Turn it OFF! TURN IT OFF!" like it was a bomb, or something... Simon scrambled around tryimng to find the power supply, located it, pulled the plug or whatever. Silence. Sighs of relief. It had been close.

Both kids are now obsessed with writing or conceiving film music, probably for action movies i.e. third world African music or Indonesian music. Either that or weird orchestral music. One of these guys is going to drown in this stuff pretty soon.

Brit pop is now just a very bad joke. No-one can believe that anyone can ever listen to it without laughing their heads off. That's music of REBELLION? Hello?

I read Studio Sound because I need to keep abreast of technical and market news. There are loads of articles concerning stories of performers and the rock industry. All I can say is that what seems to be happening more and more is that the recording studio staff tell increasingly convincing stories about stupid "artists" who arrive, basically unable to play their instruments even notionally, who have to rely on the studio staff for nearly ever aspect of playing, let alone putting an album together. And even worse than that.

I wonder how on earth this all came about. When I came here, after being in Aus for 12 years, it was a terrible, awful shock. I stayed for a while down South, then moved North. My impressions of the kids around about were unforgettable and identical in both places. These incredibly emaciated kids... At first I thought they were recovering from Hep C, or something similar, and I felt sorry for them. then I relized they were (UK) normal. And wearing... sportsgear. Why? Why on earth would they want to wear football shirts and tracksuits when they nearly all looked like they were DYING?

Whatever Blair and Major did for this place, they have undoubtedly sucked the life out pretty well. A slow process of deep cultural attrition. Too much right wing politics, a kind of thantomatic trance leading further and further into the deepest of sleeps.

I believe that, with the author, that there is indeed a DEEP and profound link between the visible politics of this place, and the lack of life. When I was a kids, pop music was about being scruffy, wild, creative and a bit mad. You would do it because your hormones damn well made you do it, and you didn't care what people thought or said. Now we are well into the dance of the dead. Never in my life would I have believed that the only words to describe rock music, once blistering and beloved, were... dull.. .lifeless... hopeless... embarassing.... limp, and worst of all - dull.

Welcome to the future.

Rating:
Summary: Whatever....
Review: Whoever wrote this has certainly done a good job. I could not write about "Brit pop" for more than 15 minutes without wanting to fall asleep - deeply asleep.

Whatever is supposed to be going on, I can tell you it has not affected my kids except to make them turn the radio off - or onto Radio 4 on a virtually permament basis. Both kids won't touch it with a barge pole.

My youngest son, now 17, built a dumbed down FM radio while in Australia. This took him about two weeks - he wasn't and still isn't technical. More dad's idea than his. When he finally got it to work, and the first faint sounds came out of the loudspeaker, they all gathered round, like in the old days with cats whiskers I suppose. No, I'm not THAT old. But anyway, he twiddled the dial and the IF coils to make it clearer - and it got louder - and clearer and it was - The Spice girls! Looks of abject horror - his older brother and two younger sisters shouted in panic "Turn it OFF! TURN IT OFF!" like it was a bomb, or something... Simon scrambled around tryimng to find the power supply, located it, pulled the plug or whatever. Silence. Sighs of relief. It had been close.

Both kids are now obsessed with writing or conceiving film music, probably for action movies i.e. third world African music or Indonesian music. Either that or weird orchestral music. One of these guys is going to drown in this stuff pretty soon.

Brit pop is now just a very bad joke. No-one can believe that anyone can ever listen to it without laughing their heads off. That's music of REBELLION? Hello?

I read Studio Sound because I need to keep abreast of technical and market news. There are loads of articles concerning stories of performers and the rock industry. All I can say is that what seems to be happening more and more is that the recording studio staff tell increasingly convincing stories about stupid "artists" who arrive, basically unable to play their instruments even notionally, who have to rely on the studio staff for nearly ever aspect of playing, let alone putting an album together. And even worse than that.

I wonder how on earth this all came about. When I came here, after being in Aus for 12 years, it was a terrible, awful shock. I stayed for a while down South, then moved North. My impressions of the kids around about were unforgettable and identical in both places. These incredibly emaciated kids... At first I thought they were recovering from Hep C, or something similar, and I felt sorry for them. then I relized they were (UK) normal. And wearing... sportsgear. Why? Why on earth would they want to wear football shirts and tracksuits when they nearly all looked like they were DYING?

Whatever Blair and Major did for this place, they have undoubtedly sucked the life out pretty well. A slow process of deep cultural attrition. Too much right wing politics, a kind of thantomatic trance leading further and further into the deepest of sleeps.

I believe that, with the author, that there is indeed a DEEP and profound link between the visible politics of this place, and the lack of life. When I was a kids, pop music was about being scruffy, wild, creative and a bit mad. You would do it because your hormones damn well made you do it, and you didn't care what people thought or said. Now we are well into the dance of the dead. Never in my life would I have believed that the only words to describe rock music, once blistering and beloved, were... dull.. .lifeless... hopeless... embarassing.... limp, and worst of all - dull.

Welcome to the future.