Bring Back Top Of The Pops?

Over the last ten to fifteen years it’s become more difficult to gain access to new, up and coming, good quality music.  That isn’t because there’s less of it around; far from it, but there seems to be a far less TV shows and so on that actually feature it.  As far as the media is concerned, we seem to be stuck in middle-of-the-road, middle-brow, mediocre loop that seems to favour only a certain type of artist, who will be comfortable appearing on the BBC’s The One Show and allowing Jools Holland to molest their material with boogie-woogie piano solos.  This is perhaps reflective of a music industry that won’t invest in new talent but instead favours releasing the same back catalogue in increasingly elaborate formats.

I bring this up because I often hear people of a similar age to myself complain about the lack of decent bands around at the moment.  Personally speaking, I don’t feel that is the case at all.  The problem is the lack of opportunities available for new bands; there is a very good live circuit which is in better shape than it has been for years, but too many bands seem to subsist at the same level, without ever breaking through to bigger venues.  For various reasons – not just illegal downloading – it is prohibitively hard for artists to earn any money from recordings and instead have to rely on revenue from other sources, such as; touring, merchandise, etc.  I can’t actually remember a more difficult time than now for musicians to earn money.

Popular music has always been as much a visual experience as an aural one.  I remember when I was growing up that people often complained about shows like Top Of The Pops, The Tube, etc, but at least such shows were a shared experience, the occasional band would offend our parents and provide us with a rallying point.  Where are such shows today? How can new bands find the same sort of spotlight?

Let’s Hear It For The Girls!

It’s no secret that some of the greatest popular music ever made will never make Top Hundred lists of Rolling Stone or Uncut. There are a number of reasons for this but the most important is that much of it was released on singles rather than albums. Furthermore, rock ‘n’ roll music is very male dominated and so some extremely good music has been criminally overlooked and undervalued, for instance; the girl group genre of music.

Mr Lee– The Bobbettes (1957)

The Bobbettes were the first girl group to make it into the charts with this, a doo-wop ode to a teacher they despised. In fact they disliked this particular teacher so much that the original title of the song was ‘I Shot Mr. Lee’, and those sentiments were reflected in the lyrics of the original recording. Although Atlantic Records sensed they might have a hit on their hands, the murderous element of the song made them a tad nervous and so they asked the group to record this more sanitised version.

Maybe – The Chantels (1958)

The Chantays were the first to craft something that more noticeably all the hallmarks of what the girl group became . The pain and longing in Arlene Smith’s vocal is so audible that teenagers everywhere must have instantly been able to relate to it and they bought the record in droves. It sold over a million copies when it was first released. Lead singer, Arlene Smith, also wrote the song.

Be My Baby – The Ronnettes (1965)

By the mid-60s , this was released. Be My Baby is perhaps the most legendary girl-group record of all time – some say the greatest pop record ever made. Phil Spector may be more notorious than famous now, but in the mid-60s he was at the peak of his powers. Even so, the lyrics of Be My Baby are rather disturbing; ‘So won’t you say you love me, I’ll make you so proud of me, we’ll make them turn their heads every place we go…’ The words almost suggest that the singer is happy to be the object of her love’s possession – quite ominous in retrospect.

Don’t Say Nothing Bad About My Baby – The Cookies (1963)

The Cookies were a prolific girl group who recorded under several different names, including; The Pasilades, The Stepping Stones and The Honey Bees; usually with Dorothy Jones on lead vocals. They were a very successful session group too and can be heard supplying backing vocals on many of Neil Sedaka singles, Little Eva’s ‘Locomotion’ and its follow-up hit, plus Mel Torme’s ‘Comin’ Home Baby’. They were Goffin and King’s demo group of choice and recorded some of their songs as singles, including ‘Don’t Say Nothing Bad About My Baby’, which became The Cookies’ biggest hit. Check out the way Dorothy Jones says, ‘So girl, you better shut your mouth,’ they were the epitome of cool.

Tell Him – The Exciters (1963)

Produced by the legendary Leiber and Stoller, The Exciters were quite different from the girl-groups who preceded them. They were noted for having a ‘tougher’ sound and a more aggressive variety of femininity. Fronted by Brenda Reid, this was their first hit:

Nowhere To Run – Martha & The Vandellas (1965)

Another record from 1965, this is a far more up-tempo R&B number and Martha Reeves had the vocal chords to carry a song like this off. Before The Supremes arrived on the scene, Martha & The Vandellas were one of Tamla Motown’s most commercial acts and they hit after hit, most of which haven’t dated one jot. Vandellas records were typically dancey, R&B powerhouse numbers, which went on to be covered by many of mod bands, such as; The Who, The Kinks, etc. None of those cover-versions surpassed the originals though.

Baby Love – The Supremes (1964)

According to Supremes mythology it was Florence Ballard who had the vocal talent, but whatever the truth is, Diana Ross went on to front the band and there’s no denying her charisma. However, the hit-making team placed with The Supremes (Holland, Dozier and Holland) realised that Ms Ross’ voice was not remotely in the category of a powerful singer like Martha Reeves and so they had to take a different approach to accommodate it. The Supremes wanted to record Vandellas style records but instead were presented with more subtle songs like ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ and ‘Baby Love’. The young Diana Ross’ breathy, kitten-like voice suited the syncopated style of those records in a way that Martha Reeves’ would have been too powerful.

Baby It’s You – The Shirelles (1961)

The Shirelles were one of John Lennon’s favourite groups and The Beatles even went on to record a version of this on the first album. The Shirelles’ version of ‘Baby It’s You’ has a unique, weird sound all of its own though, and that’s why I’ve included it here. The record has a disconcerting atmosphere and this is quite typical of the Shirelles, whose imperfect harmonies add depth to all of their recordings. Even their most famous single, ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’, shares this quality.

Out In The Streets – The Shangri-Las (1964)

Some of The Shangri-Las’ records are, quite simply, masterpieces. The Shangri-Las’ producer, George ‘Shadow’ Morton was heavily influenced by Phil Spector, but unlike Spector was less overbearing and temperamental. Although The Shangri-Las’ quickly became associated with a short 60s phenomena known as ‘the death ballad’, their records always had a sense of humour and fun about them and the group embodied streetwise glamour.

Nobody Knows What’s Going On In My Mind – The Chiffons (1965)

The Chiffons were one of the most successful girl groups of the 1960s and they had many hits, most of which were pop at its purest form (‘He’s So Fine’, ‘Sweet Talking Guy’, and ‘One Fine Day’, etc). Their records were very stylish and had a great deal of natural poise and elegance. This record is no exception but it has far more in common with R&B than their earlier pop hits. In fact, it’s very easy to imagine this being a hit in Northern Soul clubs.

Attack – The Toys (1966)

The Toys scored a Number One single in the US with ‘Lover’s Concerto’ in 1965 – they only managed to get to Number Eighteen with this, but I like it. Again, it has a Northern Soul style quality and should be heard more often.

The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game – The Marvelettes (1967)

The Marvelettes are one of the great girl groups but perhaps owing to the fact that they shared the Tamla Motown label with The Supremes, they have been too often overshadowed. They recorded the original version of ‘Please Mr Postman’ and took it to Number One in the Billboard Charts and recorded many equally memorable singles. In fact, they were Motown’s most successful girl-group for a short time.

Bad Boy – The Donays (1962)

‘Bad Boy’ was the A-side of ‘Devil In His Heart’, which went on to become a vehicle for an early George Harrison vocal performance (as ‘Devil In Her Heart’, of course). As far I can make out, it was sadly the only single The Donays ever released.

He Was Really Saying Something – The Velvelettes (1964)

This was the original version of the song Bananarama and FunBoy 3 had a hit with in 1982. The Velvelettes were another first-class Tamla Motown girl-group and they specialised in street-wise anthems like this (another was ‘Needle In The Haystack’). The Velvelettes were unfortunately another great girl-group who suffered as a consequence of Motown’s relentless cash-generating machine.

Nothing But A Heartache – The Flirtations (1968)

Play this record to most people and they will immediately think that is one of the best Supremes songs they’ve never heard or will at least imagine that it’s a Tamla Motown single. Not so, this was a group of US émigrés recording for British record-label, Deram (which was Decca’s more ‘with it’ younger brother). This was the best record The Flirtations ever managed to release though as they were never quite able to find the right producers or material to match their potential. This is an undeniable masterpiece though.

Mama Didn’t Lie – The Orions (1963)

The Orions were primarily renowned for realeasing dance-craze singles like ‘The Wah Watusi’, but the foursome had far more range, as this early Curtis Mayfield composition demonstrates. Rosetta Hightower was their lead singer and they were one of the forerunners of the early Philadelphia Soul sound.

I Wanna Love Him So Bad – The Jelly Beans (1964)

The Jelly Beans were signed by Leiber and Stoller and placed with production and songwriting team, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. This was their debt single and it peaked at Number Nine in the Billboard Charts. Apparently the group did a lot of recording but much of it was remained unreleased. Two further singles came out with little interest being generated at the time and so their label Red Bird didn’t put out an album, despite ample material being available. The group split up in 1965.

Brothers Gonna Work It Out (or maybe not in some cases)

There is long history of sibling rivalry in bands. In the 1990s, it was one Oasis’ biggest marketing tools, so much so that there is even a rare bootleg of the Gallagher brothers rowing during an NME interview, called ‘Wibbling Rivalry’. Journalists compared the friction between the Gallaghers with examples of the tension between the brothers in bands of the past. For example, the rivalry of Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks is the stuff of legend; it even resulted in the band being banned from playing some venues in the USA, since it actually resulted in onstage violence.

However, there had been a long tradition of brothers making music together, which probably stretches back for as long as people have been making music. Arguably it was most noticeable in country music, when the brother duo became a rather commercial proposition from the 1930s onwards. The Everly Brothers were of course the most commercial and famous of these, but they were aware that they were steeped in a whole tradition of brother-acts that had gone before. In particular, they were both were huge fans of The Louvin Brothers, whose harmonies had a big influence on the Everlys and they even covered some of the songs the Louvins had popularised.

The following list contains some examples of brother duos, some more famous than others:

The Louvin Brothers – Kentucky

The Osborne Brothers – White Dove

Blue Sky Boys – On The Banks Of The Ohio (it is unknown if The Blue Sky Boys chose their name because they didn’t want to be known as The Bolick Brothers. Yes… Bolick was their surname).

Rusty & Doug Kershaw – Louisiana Man

The Delmore Brothers – Freight Train Boogie (some claim that this was one of the first rock ‘n’ roll recordings ever made)

The Stanley Brothers – Man Of Constant Sorrow

The Monroe Brothers – Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

The Callahan Brothers – She’s Killing Me (1934)

The Lilly Brothers – Dig A Hole In The Meadow

Jimmy and Jesse Reynolds – Are You Missing Me

The Crowe Brothers – Jane (a very rare bit of rockabilly).

The Everly Brothers – When Will Be Loved

‘I like music made with proper musical instruments played by proper musicians’

Am I the only one tired of hearing that phrase?  It’s usually uttered by people who feel that their taste in music is far superior to everybody else’s, thus unassailable.  These people usually have two things in common; they hate anything to do with Hip Hop and Dance music, and they usually worship at the altar of ‘authenticity’.

Ewan MacColl – A man and his ‘rules’

For the uninitiated, ‘authenticity’ can actually also be applied to some forms of Hip Hop, but in the case of that genre the terminology is to ‘keep it real’, use straightforward language and/or strip the arrangement down to the traditional ‘two turntables and a microphone’ set-up.  In rock music authenticity is an even more  anal concept and it was possibly brought into play during the merging of folk/blues with rock ‘n’ roll during the mid-60s, a time when an artist was expected to write his/her own songs, henceforth reveal their own emotions in their songwriting and performance.  Since then, the parameters have shifted and arguably tightened.

 

The Yardbirds – Blues Revivalists bring the brth of the ‘guitar hero’

Artists like The Beatles – at least in the early days – were unashamedly commercial, and played pop, but their more middle-class counterparts like The Yardbirds made it their role to play ‘authentic’ blues (in reality it was not in the least authentic).  Guitarists of the time, like Eric Clapton, have since revealed that they would even mimic what they perceived to be the lifestyles of their favourite blues musicians; drink gallons of bourbon, and so on.  Of course, Clapton and his contemporaries didn’t want to emulate the poverty of the original bluesmen and were more than happy to reap the rewards of their record sales.  The blues revivalists considered what they were playing to be automatically better than popular music, because they thought it was more emotional and ‘real’ than the popular music of the day.  This also had another component; they felt blues to was better because it was the music of Afro-Americans and therefore it enabled the blues revivalists to feel morally superior to their more populist contemporaries.

Ironically, what actually escaped the attention of blues revivalists is that the original bluesmen were often encouraged to play blues by their record labels, because it was considered to be the most commercial part of their repertoire. Many country blues artists like Charlie Patton played as much and country, folk and ragtime in their live performances as blues, but since most of this didn’t make its way onto recordings it was largely forgotten about.  Blues revivalists also didn’t seem to notice that some of the best popular music of the time was being made by Tamla Motown, a label owned and entirely made up of Afro-Americans – how could the music being made by these artists be less ‘authentic’ than the output of some middle-class, white, British kids trying to mimic old bluesmen?

Nevertheless, arguably the authenticity-badge was imported into rock via folk.  Everybody knows about the story about when Bob Dylan plugged in an electric guitar, the folk fraternity went crazy and began calling him ‘Judas’ and so on.  The biggest culprit for causing folk music’s obsession with authenticity was the UK’s own Ewan MacColl – an admirable man in many ways, but not renowned for his tolerance of other people’s opinions.  MacColl insisted that folk singers should only sing songs from their own place of birth, and this was curious since MacColl himself sang Scottish songs, despite being born in Manchester (his parents were both Scots but even with that being considered, he was still bending his own rules somewhat).  He was also known to sing Joe Hill, which is an American folk song – so it was certainly a case of ‘don’t do what I do, do what I say’ with our Ewan.  It was not only MacColl who caused folk music’s rather insular attitude, but this may be one of the reasons why it has fallen out of favour as a genre.  Folk music had a lasting effect on rock though, ever since Dylan went electric.

One of the most damning charges that can be made against an artist nowadays is that they don’t write their own material, being a great interpreter of other people’s songs is no longer enough.  Being an Elvis fan, I have constantly heard people dismiss him for this reason, despite the fact that when Elvis came up in the music industry no-one was expected to write their own songs; Sinatra never wrote a song in his life!   For this reason it is now common for artists to be described as singer-songwriters, but if one investigates further the facts are rather different (this was true of Katie Melua and James Blunt – both of whom I can’t abide for different reasons, but that’s beside the point).

Scratch DJing – Not as easy as it looks…

So what is real musical instrument?  It wasn’t too long ago that people considered the guitar to be ‘not a serious instrument’, and considering that it is now the most macho and phallic of all rock instruments, it used to be more often played by women.  Rock guitarists will instantly claim that DJs certainly aren’t musicians because ‘all they do is play records’.  If, like me, you have ever tried to ‘scratch DJ’ and been rather embarrassed by the results, then you’ll know there’s a lot more to it than that.  I can play the guitar reasonably well, but when I attempt to scratch DJ it sounds like a washing machine falling down the stairs while remaining switched on.  The same people dismiss rapping, but that is another skill that requires as much hard-work and discipline as singing – and it is certainly more creative than most of what I hear in mainstream rock.

It is however unfair of me to blame just rock musicians for all of this backward thinking.  The worst offenders at the moment are Indie musicians.  They will dismiss DJs, rappers and anybody who uses any musical instrument that wasn’t around in the 1960s – apart from when it suits them (this is why I have spent most of this particular blog discussing what went on during that period).  They will use basic dance beats, for instance, but will at the same time complain about ‘music made with computers’ and ‘sampling’.

Oasis – Don’t use many samples but they did get ‘inspiration’ from other people’s songs.

Yes, sampling.  I’m hardly the first person to write about the ethics of sampling.  However, many artists who have been sampled have had their careers revitalised as a result, rather like the blues musicians who benefitted from renewed interest in their music during the 1960s.  It was a result of sampling that I first heard great funk bands like The Meters, for example, and for that I am grateful.  Another point is that at least artists who such recording techniques now clear and give credit to the samples they use (most of the time); Indie musicians don’t credit The Velvet Underground when they rewrite Pale Blue Eyes for the millionth time (they will talk at great length about the band during interviews though), and how many times did Oasis get sued for infringing copyright?  All of that seems to be far more dishonest than sampling, to be honest.

Indie musicians believe that they are more authentic than pop musicians, that what they do is more intellectual, and nowadays they even seem to think that they are more ‘ethical’.  Indie musicians may write their own songs, but does that make them better songs?  Does that make their performance of them more real?  Anybody who knows anything about the music industry knows that that is nonsense; Indie bands are under as much pressure to create hit records as any pop singer, the criteria is just different.  This is why there are record labels for Indie bands (very few are actually independent any more) and record labels for pop-stars – there are also record producers who specialise in every genre that one hears.

Indie musicians may not use computers to create their music, but it will probably be digitally recorded, and they will probably use digital effects during their live performances.  Their producers will often edit and quantise their performance of their music before it is even considered for release.  This is the final irony – most music we now hear was doctored on a computer, just like the films we see, the TV programmes we watch and so on.  This is not even a recent development – even in the theatre, actors have a director, a producer, a script; composers would write to order; artists would be commissioned; authors write to be published and so on.

To return to that old blues music I discussed earlier it is important to remember that when John and Alan Lomax recorded those old blues and hillbilly musicians, they were looking for a specific type of sound that conformed to their own prerequisite view of authenticity, and this was music at its most basic and ‘primal’.  There were plenty of Afro-Americans and hillbilly musicians at the time who were playing far more complex music, but this didn’t fit in with their criteria.  Authenticity is in the ear of the beholder.

Parental Advisory – Your Grandparents Had Very Dirty Minds

The original blues age was responsible for some of the dirtiest songs ever recorded, some of which would still struggle to get past the censor now – the fist title of this list certainly would anyway. Our ancestors obviously loved to groove to a filthy record as much as we do nowadays. A more innocent age? Obviously not as it turns out. For your… erm… pleasure… I have assembled a list of ten of the most disgusting blues classics I could find. I’m not an expert on this genre by any means, so if anybody can alert me to any more of these nasty ditties I would be really grateful (please add them in the comments below). In the meantime, happy listening!

1) Lucille Bogan – Shave ‘Em Dry (1935)

2) Laughing Charlie Lincoln – Doodle Hole Blues (1930). This blues singer was the brother of the more well-known Barbecue Bob and occasionally recorded with him.

3) Harry Roy – My Girl’s Pussy (1931). Not a blues song but absolutely hilarious.

4) Bo Carter – ‘Please Warm My Weiner’ (1934)

5) Blind Boy Fuller – ‘Sweet Honey Hole’ (1937)

6) Clara Smith – It’s Tight Like That (1929)

7) Ruth Brown – If I can’t sell it, I’ll sit on it

8) Victoria Spivey – Black Snake Blues (1926). This version was recorded at The Folk Blues Festival of 1963.

9) The Clovers – Rotten Cocksuckers’ Ball (1954). Although this might seem like a hoax, it is not. Doo-wop groups often recorded ‘dirty’ versions of their songs and some of these have since been collected on compilations.

10) Hattie Hart – I Let My Daddy Do That (1934)

Great Musicians Who Probably Live Down Dark Alleys

There are some people who make great records and are actually really amazing people in real life too; Vic Godard, as is Pete Wylie, Edwyn Collins and the whole line-up of Dodgy (more about them in later blogs). There are others, however, who come across at least as really unpleasant people, even if their music is really inspiring. I have to admit that I haven’t met any of the following people but nor would I want to particularly:

1) ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ – The Smiths (Single – 1984)

Okay, most of The Smiths’ line-up seemed nice enough, but Morrissey? It’s bad enough hearing the stories about his cavalier behaviour but can you imagine being in a band with him? That sounds like absolute torture. Morrissey is a genuine one-off; his lyrics were unbelievably clever, sometimes downright hilarious and he is a truly original performer, but – hand on heart – who but the most ardent fan would want to hang out with him? I think he would try the patience of Job. I want to carry on enjoying his music and to do that I think it’s best to keep this one at a wide berth (not that I’m likely to run into at the supermarket or anything).

2) ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On’ – Jerry Lee Lewis (Single – 1957)
It’s even more unlikely that I would ever encounter Jerry Lee Lewis, but let’s add him to the list anyway. He may be pretty advanced in years now but this is a man who once shot his bass-player for looking at him the wrong way. Not to mention the time he famously married his own 13 year old cousin. I try not to think too much about Jerry Lee’s lifestyle when I listen to his records. He was brilliant though.

3) ‘Bournemouth Runner’ – The Fall (from ‘Bend Sinister’ – 1986)

I’ve admired Mark E Smith’s work with The Fall for many years but I hope I never meet him, mainly because I want to continue to be a fan. The seemingly endless tales of abusive behaviour with band members doesn’t exactly paint the nicest of picture of him as a person. It may all be exaggerated but let’s stay on the safe side.

4) ‘Licking Stick’ – James Brown (Single – 1968)

James Brown was one of the most important musicians of all time. I do realise that he’s been dead for a few years now but he’s certainly another musician I would not like to have met. I’m sure he had numerous good points but the violence against the numerous women in his life would seem to offset all of that.  Not to mention the fact that he used to fine musicians every time they made the slightest musical error. What a tyrant.  His music was wonderful of course.

5) ‘Cold To The Touch’ – The Brian Jonestown Massacre (Single – 1995)

The leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre is the hugely talented Anton Newcombe. Despite having battled drug addiction throughout his career he is one of the most prolific musicians of his generation. He is the kind of man who could release an album even if was stranded on a uninhabited desert island with no musical equipment whatsoever let alone a post office. Easy going he is not, though. Apparently he makes Mark E Smith seem like the most reasonable man in the business. He’s prone to violent outbursts (some directed at fans in the audience) and is totally self-destructive. I like his records but I think I’ll admire from afar.

6) ‘Public Image’ – PIL (Single – 1978)

I’ve enjoyed John Lydon’s work over the years and sometimes found him entertaining in interviews but I still wouldn’t want to meet the man. Something tells me that he’d find me annoying and the feeling would be mutual. I might be wrong but I wouldn’t want to take the risk. Better to keep enjoying the music I think.

7) ‘Love Minus Zero/No Limit (from ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ – 1965)

I’ve admired Bob Dylan’s music for such a long time and am so in awe of his talent that I would hate to meet him. He is famously so difficult. I realise that a lot of years have passed since ‘Don’t Look Back’ but…

8) ‘Waiting For The Man’ – The Velvet Underground (from ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico)

So there’s no chance of me ever meeting Lou Reed now, is there? But I don’t think I’d ever want to bump into him in the afterlife either. I love his records as much as anybody (well with the exception of Metal Machine Music, of course) but Lou was famously a hard man to get along with and meeting the man even put Lester Bangs off his music. Hope you’re having a good time wherever you are, Lou, anyway.

Does Politics Belong In Popular Music?

While writing the John Lennon piece yesterday I was reminded of his song ‘Working Class Hero’, which in turn made me think of songs with a political slant. Working Class Hero is an often misunderstood song, I think. Most people assume that it celebrates the idea of being a ‘working class hero’, but closer examination of the lyrics reveals that it was actually a critique of the entire concept. This is often the case with ‘protest songs’ since they are often taken at face-value rather than studied properly.

So does politics actually belong in popular music? Can music really change anything? It could be argued that everything is political and so the very act of making music is a political act. Elvis Presley was famously apolitical; he never recorded an overtly political song, but his very existence changed American society for ever. The fact that Elvis performed rhythm and blues songs ensured that young American teenagers would become aware of Afro-American culture, which in turn helped lead to desegregation. Anything cultural becomes political eventually.

What about political songs though? Do they have a function in themselves or are they really just about egocentric singer-songwriters thinking that their opinions are more important than other people’s? I think there may be some truth in either of these views. We’ve all become a bit tired of rock stars like Bono making grandiose pseudo-political pronouncements but a good protest song can be a strong rallying cry and can help give voice to real life concerns. There are many examples of this; the songs of Woody Guthrie; Gospel songs being adapted for protest marches (We Shall Not Be Moved, for example); early Bob Dylan songs; Billy Bragg songs during the Miner’s Strike; The Special AKA’s ‘Free Nelson Mandela’; the list goes on.
I have made a list here of ten of the political songs I like. They’re not in any particular order and I’ve tried to pick the less obvious ones. If you are reading this and think I’ve left out your favourite, please feel free to add it in the comments section below.

1) ‘All You Fascists Bound To Lose’ – Woody Guthrie

Wow,, this is a really hard to find Woody Guthrie song. Well certainly I’ve never been able to find it on any collection and we have a lot of his records in our house. I dread to think of what Guthrie would have thought of the world nowadays, with its neoliberal fundamentalism, but then again he might be heartened by the internet and how much free information can be shared on it. Who knows? This is a fine example of Guthrie’s talent for writing simple, optimistic sing-alongs that can serve to unite people to a common purpose. And he was right, there’s still time left to defeat the fascists and we will in the end!

2) ‘Love Me I’m A Liberal’ – Phil Ochs (from ‘In Concert’ – 1966)

Much more than his contemporary Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs followed in the tradition laid down by Woody Guthrie. The occasionally mean-spirited Dylan famously told Ochs that he considered him to a ‘journalist’ rather than a songwriter – he was palpably wrong, of course, but there was a journalistic quality to many of Och’s songs. There was much more than that though and on occasion Ochs could be just as poetic as Dylan, if not quite as blessed in terms of popularity and sixties mystique. Ochs could be extremely witty too and his humour took absolutely no prisoners. On this song he even satirised people who would have made up most of his fan-base in very savage style. Not even his own middle-class, liberal audience were safe from Ochs, he seemingly had no time for weekend activists who took on fashionable causes. Ochs knew the revolution demanded full-time commitment and he lived that way all the way through his tragically short life.

3) ‘Universal Soldier’ – Buffy Sainte Maria (from ‘It’s My Way’ – 1964)

Although Donovan is associated with this song it was Buffy Sainte Maria who wrote and recorded her original version in 1964 for her debut album. The album became a favourite on the British folk music scene and that’s how Donovan heard it. Buffy Sainte Maria’s version is still the best though; there is much more commitment in her performance and her voice gives the lyrics a chilling resonance lacking in Donovan’s. Perhaps it’s because she had some direct experience of the legacy of war, having grown up on the Piapot Cree First Nations Reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley – whatever the case, her version of the song is the most powerful.

4) ‘Fortunate Son’ – Creedence Clearwater Revival (from ‘Willy And The Poor Boys’ – 1969)

Staying on the subject of anti-war songs, this is one of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s best songs. This is different from most of the anti-war songs of the period in that it brings class into the equation; asking the question why a disproportionate number of those being drafted for the Vietnam War were from blue-colour backgrounds. John Fogerty’s vocal performance on this track was particularly passionate and the band were equally hot.

5) ‘Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) – Marvin Gaye (from ‘What’s Going On’ – 1971)

Marvin Gaye had to fight to get ‘What’s Going On’ released and it was testament to his strength of character that it was it came out at all. Tamla Motown had no faith in the album and were put off by the political nature of the songs, but Gaye was right, the album resonated with the public and became the label’s biggest selling album until his next release (the sexed up ‘Let’s Get It On’). The early seventies were a period of political consciousness in soul music and ‘What’s Going On’ is one of the era’s key albums. In fact it is still one of most important records ever recorded. Inner City Blues is the climactic track of ‘What’s Going On’ and the single version made number nine in the Billboard charts. The song has a low-key funk groove and is very dark, listing a litany of the social troubles familiar to Afro-American in the inner-cities of the time (and probably even today). Marvin Gaye’s singing adds huge weight to the lyrics; it is an incredibly moving performance – heartbreaking, in fact.

6) ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go’ – Curtis Mayfield (from ‘Curtis’ – 1970)

Perhaps Gaye was inspired to record ‘What’s Going On’ by hearing the work of Curtis Mayfield, particularly the album this song was from. Mayfield had previously been the main man in The Impressions and his writing had always had an element of social consciousness in it, even the group’s biggest his ‘People Get Ready’ was as political as it was gospel. ‘Curtis’, the album, was released and it was brimming with songs about race relations, Watergate, social unrest, drug addiction, teenage pregnancy and much more. This particular track is almost apocalyptic and Mayfield’s keening falsetto in this context is practically chilling.

7) ‘The Bottle’ – Gil Scott Heron (Single – 1974)

Gil Scott Heron was one of the finest lyricists of any genre and this is one of his best and most well-known songs. It may not be political per se but its vivid descriptions of the social deprivation that alcohol addiction can cause are magnificent. This song also highlights some of the causes of such addiction, how people living in difficult circumstances attempt to use alcohol (or other substances) as an attempt to escape. Heron was a man who battled many demons during his life and so he knew all about what he was describing – or at least, came to know.

8) ‘Have You Ever Been Away’ – The Beautiful South (‘Welcome To The Beautiful South’ – 1989)

This is another anti-war song but it’s a rather more nasty than the previous ones I’ve included. In many ways it shares some of sentiments of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song, in that it focuses on class and the fact that the poor are usually sent to fight wars for the wealthy and privileged, but this song uses irony to get its point across. Paul Heaton’s lyrics often have this feature and most of The Beautiful South’s songs tend to have a bitter-sweet flavour as a consequence. Even the band’s name is a put-on, since they were famously based in the North of England. ‘Have You Ever Been Away’ targets jingoism, nationalism, classism, Remembrance Day and a whole lot more – nothing is safe. Lyrics like; ‘/ Any last requests / Before you join the dead? / I’ll crap into your Union Jack / And wrap it ’round your head /’ are not exactly subtle.

9) ‘Career Opportunities’ – The Clash (from ‘The Clash’ – 1977)

The Clash were well-known for being a highly political band, even if they were signed to one of the most established labels in the world; CBS/Columbia. This song is from their first album and the lyrics are focussed on not wanting to be tied down to a traditional job – particularly not one in the military or civil service – and wanting to do something more individual instead. Joe Strummer’s vocal performance goes off like a Molotov cocktail and even though the whole track sounds defiant and aggressive there is something amiss. Strummer was a very clever lyric writer; this occasionally gets overlooked partly because of The Clash’s noisy swagger but also owing to Strummer’s hard-to-read voice (apparently this had a lot to do the pitiful state of his teeth, which was not helped by his prodigious intake of cheap speed). Strummer’s lyrics often acknowledged that were most ordinary people were concerned personal rebellion was often doomed to failure and so he wrote this for the final verse; ‘ / They’re gonna have to introduce conscription / They’re gonna have to take away my prescription / If they wanna get me making toys/ If they wanna get me, well I got no choice / ‘ Despite the fact that Strummer was very comfortably middle-class, he had a lot of insight into the reality of working people’s lives.

10) ‘Sound Of Da Police’ – KRS One (from ‘Return Of The Boom Bap’ – 1993)

Being a very politically conscious rapper, KRS One has written a lot of protest songs but this is probably his most famous, since it was practically the law that it was played at every club gathering of the 1990s. The lyrics are extraordinarily clever and KRS One’s flow is magnificently literate, associating the word ‘officer’ (as in police) with ‘over-seer’ (as in overseeing slaves) to point out the similarity of the two occupations in respect to Afro-Americans from the cotton-fields to the ghetto. This is a landmark rap record.

John Lennon And The Art Of The Insult Song

John Lennon was as well-known for his caustic wit as his campaigning for peace, so in his honour I have composed a list of some of the finest insult songs ever written. John’s ‘How Do You Sleep’ comes in at Number One of the first ten insult songs I can think of. If any of you can think of any other great songs that would fit into this category, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

1) How Do you Sleep – John Lennon (on Imagine – 1971)

This is famously John’s riposte to some of the digs Paul made at his expense on a couple of the tracks on Ram. In fairness to Paul, however, they were comparatively mild in comparison to this song, which comes across like a blowtorch of vindictiveness. It culminates in this memorable couplet ‘The sound you make is muzak to my ears / You must have learnt something in all those years…/’ In many respects some of the tracks on Imagine might have quite easily have been included on John’s previous album Plastic Ono Band, and this, along with Gimme Some Truth, is one of them. Plastic Ono Band was a very personal album and most of John’s songs often turn out turn out to be primarily about John (he later claimed that as How Do You Sleep was much about himself as it was about Paul). Indeed, this song could just as easily be an expression of how raw John was feeling after the break-up of The Beatles. Paul has gone on the record about how inconsolable he felt after the band split, indeed he was drugged up and bed-ridden for months and it took him a good few years to get over it. Although John was publicly very aggressive about drawing a line under The Beatles it is not inconceivable to consider that he had some mixed feeling about it. The Beatles had after all been his band and for a long time been the focal point of his life. Bear that in mind and the lyrics to this song take on a very different hue:

2) Positively Fourth Street – Bob Dylan (Single, 1965)

Bob Dylan was always really good at writing vicious put-downs and so there are a number of songs in his canon that could just as easily have been chosen in place of this one – Idiot Wind, for example – but this is still my favourite. As is the case of innumerable Dylan songs there are arguments about who this song was targeted at. However for the purposes of this blog, I personally think that it was probably the folk purists who had turned on him for ‘going electric’. Dylan had only reluctantly been accepted into the Greenwich Village folk community and had often felt patronised by them. When he had initially been signed to Columbia they had been openly sniffy about it and complained that others on the folk circuit would have been more deserving of the record contract. To me the lines that are particularly telling are ‘You say you’ve lost your faith / But that’s not where it’s at / You had no faith to lose / And you know it /.’

http://vimeo.com/71634162

3) Say Man – Bo Diddley with Jerome Green (Single – 1959)

Bo Diddley and his legendary maraca player Jerome Green conceived this work of genius while ‘goofing around’ in the Chess Studios (or so Bo claimed about many of his Chess recordings). Whatever the truth is this is regarded as one of the first ever rap records and it was hilariously funny, being a ‘dozens’ style exchange of insults between Bo and Jerome over that famous beat. Apparently the more rude, dirty insults were taken edited out of the recording but it was so professionally done that it wasn’t noticeable and the record became a hit:

4) I Hate You – The Monks (from Black Monk Time – 1966)

The Monks, on the off-chance that you’ve haven’t heard of them, were formed by five American GIs stationed in Germany during the 1960s. They played an extraordinary kind of avant-rock, which was sometimes not well-received by audiences (one member was nearly strangled by a punter at one gig for ‘perceived blasphemy’). They were possibly one of the most original bands in popular music history; their music had nothing to do with the charts at the time and arguably would never have fitted the musical trends of any era. However, The Monks have an irrepressible charm on it own terms and they have been much imitated by alternative bands. I Hate You has to be heard to be believed; it has minimalist lyrics in which the singer exclaims things like, ‘I hate you, oh I hate with a passion, baby, but call me,’ over a stomping militaristic perverted blues beat. The most alarming element and downright bizarre element of The Monks’ sound is the ever present electric banjo which constantly pounds away on the offbeat. I can’t enthuse about this band enough really.

5) Your Feets Too Big – Fats Waller (Single – 1939)

Going even deeper into the midsts of time, I bring you this nugget. Fats was very fond of insult songs and recorded a number of them, but this was the finest of all. Any song that begins with the lines; ‘/ Up in Harlem, table for two / There was four of us, me, your big feet, and you…/’ has my vote anyway. Even The Beatles, who hated jazz, must have loved Fats because they included this song in their early set-lists. This early example of a video is genius too:

6) Short People – Randy Newman (from Little Criminals – 1977)

Like a lot of Randy Newman’s songs, this record was taken far too literally and people took offence. Even now some radio-stations refuse to play it. Not that Newman is perturbed by that, of course, throughout his career he seems to have relished playing some extremely obnoxious characters in his songs. To him this is the most effective way of unmasking the genuine bigots out there in the world and he has always done that most effectively. Short People should have been seen for what it was; an extremely witty song that employs a cartoon-character narrator spouting some nakedly ludicrous ideas about vertically challenged people. It is so much of a caricature how anyone could do anything other than laugh at it is beyond me. The fact that it was taken seriously tells us everything we need to know about real prejudice.

7) You’re The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly – Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty (Single – 1978)

My reason for picking this is mainly for the title, which has to be one the best lines of all time. Written by L. E. Dean and Lola Jean Dillon this song became more well-known when Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty recorded their version. In fact the whole song has some screamingly funny lines in it, such as ‘/ You’re the reason that my figure is gone / That’s the reason I’ve no hair left to comb /’ Country music isn’t just about misery, there’s lots of laughs along the way too.

8) That’s A Lie – LL Cool J (from Radio – 1985)

This isn’t the most well-known of LL Cool J tracks but it’s a very entertaining one. LL Cool J is generally associated with more slick recordings now but back in the day he was as raw a rapper as anybody out there and his flow was superb. His lyrics were sharp as a knife too. This is just one example of some of the powerful wit that the great MCs can deliver in hip hop.

9) Shit List – L7 (from Bricks Are Heavy – 1992)

L7 were an all-female grunge band that rocked hard and Shit List is a good example of how nasty they could be when crossed. Dorita Sparks absolutely snarls out some extremely venomous venomous lyrics; ‘/When I get mad and I get pissed / I grab my pen and I write out a list / Of all the people that won’t be missed / You’ve made my shitlist /’, while the band thrash out white-hot heavy rock. L7 wrote some impeccably spiteful songs and this is just one excellent example of what they were capable of achieving when somebody had made the mistake of pissing them off.

10) One Way Or Another – Blondie (from Parallel Lines – 1978)

This is one of the those songs that seems so upbeat and catchy as hell that the meaning almost becomes obscured. Almost, but not quite. Debbie Harry actually wrote the lyrics about an ex-boyfriend who was stalking her at the time and a quick look at the lyrics reveals that they are very dark. There are lines that refer to being parked outside somebody’s house in cover of darkness, breaking and entering, and others about ‘rat food’. It’s all pretty nasty and spiteful stuff indeed. Certainly not the innocent pop song we imagined it was.

At which point did rock and pop become separate genres? And why?

This is a question I asked on my Facebook account recently and received a number of very intelligent responses from a wide cross-section of people. This in turn is my own opinion.

Some Beatles fans. Note home-made Beatles jumper in the middle.

One person indicated that they felt that in some respects it may have started with the rivalry between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and their respective fans.  In some ways I would agree with that, but only partially.  If we look at the difference between the two bands in the early days one thing becomes clear.  The Beatles’ hits were all self-penned songs with an undeniable pop slant.  Any analysis of those songs would perhaps reveal that they reveal that they were largely influenced by the pop hits of the day; the songwriting of Carole King and Jerry Goffin, girl groups in general, Roy Orbison, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and so on.  This would seemingly put The Beatles firmly in the pop category then.

The Rolling Stones when they were still blues purists.

The Rolling Stones are another matter.  The Stones’ roots were self-consciously more rhythm and blues based since many of the bands members came from the Alexis Korner stable.  Brian Jones had even written letters to the music magazines of the day, some of which were printed, extolling the virtues of the blues and advocated that the genre should be given more coverage.  The Rolling Stones early records were largely cover versions of some blues staples and featuring very bluesy instrumentation; blues harp, slide guitar, open tunings.  However, purists of the time argued that The Rolling Stones were more of rock ‘n’ roll band, mainly because they played a lot of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley numbers.  Neither of those artists were considered blues because their songs were primarily aimed at the dance-floor and – in the case of Chuck Berry – had lyrics that enshrined youth culture.

A further problem arises when we look at what musical academics call authenticity.  The Beatles were in many ways a far more authentic band than The Rolling Stones in those early days.  The Beatles had served an apprenticeship in a dangerous German red-light district and had honed their craft there.  By the time they returned to the UK they were a self-contained unit, functioning with almost military precision and knew the ins and outs of songwriting intimately, having played hundreds of songs for months on end to keep up with an aggressive audience’s demands.  The Rolling Stones hadn’t been playing for anything like as long before they were signed.  Furthermore, all of The Beatles hits were written by members of the band, while The Rolling Stones were initially reliant on cover-versions, which caused them to struggle for a while.  In fact, it was only at the instigation of their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, that they began writing songs at all.

The intimidating presence Ewan MacColl

So where did this issue about authenticity come from?  Did audiences really care whether artists wrote their own songs or not, or even what genre they were in.  Perhaps a minority did.  In the early sixties the UK still had a jazz scene and some young people were into ‘trad’ and others preferred the more up to date, sharper dressed ‘modern’ jazz.  That is what the original ‘mods’ were; fans of modern jazz, and even in the early sixties, the jazz genre had a lot of snobs in it, who would argue about which artist was ‘authentic’ jazz and who wasn’t.  There were people arguing that 1962 hit ‘Take Five’ by The Dave Brubeck Quartet wasn’t proper jazz because it was played in the wrong time-signature (5/8).

There were other snobs among the music-buying public too; those who listened to or even played folk.  The ultimate folk snob was the late, great Ewan MacColl, who reportedly ran folk clubs with an iron hand and forbade folk singers to sing a song from a culture other than their own, and even banned acoustic guitars .  The latter may have taken place because of the influence of Bob Dylan, who MacColl distrusted and felt had taken folk music in the wrong direction.

A young and already iconic Bob Dylan.

The Yardbirds featuring the melancholic Eric Clapton on lead guitar.

Bob Dylan began his recording career as a folk artist, of course. He was one of most influential figures in popular music industry and in the mid-60s his songwriting was at its most popular.  Both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were caught up in his spell and one only has to listen to their records of 1965/66 to hear evidence of it (John Lennon was showing signs of a Dylan influence as early as 1964).  It was Dylan who proved that lyrics could be used to convey something important rather than just throwaway clichés about teen-romance.  Of course, Dylan wasn’t the first person to do this – Jerry Goffin’s lyrics were never throwaway – but he was the first young, fashionable person of any prominence to do so and the effect it had on popular music was staggering.

Therefore, as we have seen, there were purists among blues fans, the folk community and those following jazz.  An example of a purist working in the 1960s popular music scene was Eric Clapton.  In 1965, Clapton decided that to leave The Yardbirds after recording their breakthrough single ‘For Your Love’ (a surefire hit composed by Graham Gouldman).  His reason leaving was that he felt that the band had moved too far away from their blues-based material.  He then joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, who were totally immersed in electric blues and he took part in recording arguably their best album, before leaving to form Cream – the first super-group.

Personally, I’m not a fan of Clapton, but he was perhaps the first pop musician to be afforded ‘god-like’ status for his prowess on the guitar and for what was considered to be his musical integrity.  He was considered to be a serious artist because he had forgone the hit-making Yardbirds to join a serious blues band at the height of his talent.

The music press of the early to mid-sixties was far different to what it became.  Music magazines were strictly for fans, there was little or no real serious criticism in them, just news about pop-stars.  In fact, it was quite common for some of them to just print the lyrics of chart-topping singles, to enable teenagers to sing along with the radio.  The heavyweight music magazines didn’t come along until serious ‘rock-bands’ arrived.  Remember, this was a time when bands were more commonly described as ‘groups’.

It was people like Clapton and Dylan who began to change this.  Both demanded to be taken seriously.  It was impossible to write about a record like ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ in the same way that you’d approach ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’.  This doesn’t mean one is necessarily better than the other – each has its own merits – but Dylan’s lyrics were complicated and almost invited analysis, and writers wanted to do precisely that.

This is the point where pop and rock divide, I think.  However, on the face of it The Beatles’ ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ is unashamedly a pop song, but it is just as authentic as the Dylan song.  The Beatles were a self-contained band performing just as original material, whereas Dylan’s had only been put together to record.  However, the Dylan record has certainly been afforded more value than The Beatles’.  One is considered art, whereas the other is merely ‘popular’.

There is another interesting component to all of this.  It was male rock critics who decided what the distinctions between rock and pop were.  One of the most noticeable things about The Beatles’ career is the way critics talk about ‘early Beatles’ and ‘late Beatles’ almost as if they are different entities entirely; the former being ‘a group’ and the latter being ‘a band’ (that is, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club ‘Band’).  The early Beatles – the clean cut ‘pretty’ version – are forever associated with screaming female fans, whilst the latter, drug-taking bearded version are preferred by chin-stroking male intellectuals.

As mentioned earlier The Beatles’ early hits were very influenced by the music of girl groups.  Those early Beatles hits will be forever in the rock music canon, whereas only a handful of the girl groups singles that inspired them have joined them there.  This again is an example of male rock critics placing more value on one than the other.  Rock is a very masculine construct, which is afforded far more importance than ‘pop’, which male rock writers associate with female listeners.  The facts are far more complex than that, however, but that seems to be how rock history has been written.

Britpop – Manufactured or Inspired?

The current rumours about Oasis reforming have inspired me to reflect on Britpop and the influence it had on the British music scene.

Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that at least in part Britpop was a manufactured phenomenon.  The term was first used by music journalist, John Robb and it wasn’t genre specific at the time.  However, as soon as somebody put a label on something it tends to take on a life of its own.

Please note: There were lot of bands on the Britpop scene, far too many to include here and so I’ll just stick to the ones everybody seems to agree played the largest part in it.  If you think there is a band I should include please add it to the comments section below.  By the way, Britpop was really about bands rather than solo artists.

Roots Of Britpop

Musically journalists largely claim that Britpop’s origins lie the Camden Town, London scene in the early 1990s but its roots are far deeper than that.  It is true that some of the major players; Blur, Lush, Elastica and Pulp were in the Camden scene, but this doesn’t into account what inspired them.  Britpop didn’t just happen – it took a long time to manifest.

In reality Britpop began as a consequence of the 1980s independent record scene.  The bands and artists who inhabited the Indie Charts of the time have since been referred to as the C86 generation.  C86 – for those who don’t know – was an influential cassette compiled by the NME in 1986 featuring many of the leading artists from the indie charts of that year.  This compilation was not definitive, however; it is limited to artists who could be contractually included and some of the most influential artists of the time are missing, for example; The Smiths.  Furthermore, one of the most successful independent labels of the time was Stock, Aitken and Waterman but, owing to its perceived crass commerciality, it was also left out.  In any case, it didn’t really fit in with the tastes of the NME’s readership.

Most of the key players in Britpop admitted that they were hugely indebted to The Smiths.  Rough Trade’s success with the band demonstrated to the major labels of the time that ‘Indie’ could artists could bring in good business.  Independent labels in the 1980s had largely been the preserve of ‘underground’ music, some of which didn’t seem commercially, or even musically, all that ambitious but The Smiths didn’t seem to fit into that category at all.  They leaped to the top of the Indie Charts with every release and were even a very successful Top 40 band.  They seemed oddly out of place in the Now That’s What I Call Music compilations and they were now steadily being joined by other Indie bands like The Housemartins and The Primitives.

One of the biggest challenges independent labels had always faced had been distribution, but they had managed to overcome this by clubbing together to form a kind of collective, known as The Cartel.  By doing this they could at least ensure they had some of the same clout as the majors by putting their records in some of the shops were Gallup put together the charts.  Even so, having a successful band could be a mixed blessing for a major label; keeping with demand while still paying the bills could be hard and even potentially lead to bankruptcy.

The biggest game-changer of all was Rave and dance music, particularly when it began cross-poillination with Indie bands.  Since bands on independent labels were still at ‘street level’, they were still in touch with what was happening in the clubs.  Rave – and ecstasy – swept through the whole music scene in the late 80s and caught the imaginations of everybody who came into contact with it.  For a short time, Indie bands and their labels were better placed than those on major labels to take advantage of it, at least with more authentic-sounding results.  Bands like Pop Will Eat Itself, The Shamen, The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses, and so on were all signed to independent labels.  It didn’t take the majors all that long to catch on though, and before the end of the 1980s independent labels were being bought out by them, some kept a limited amount of A&R control but others just existed purely as logo.  Many labels just disappeared entirely.

By the 1990s major labels had learnt many lessons from the 1980s.  The biggest of all was that there was now a generation of people who had had their tastes – even their identities – formed by the previous decade’s counter-culture.  What’s more this had happened while they were attending college and university, so these were now people with potential spending power and influence.   Some of them were even writing for the music press, promoting gigs and in charge of booking artists for TV shows.

Britpop Arrives

What do you think of when you think of Britpop?  I doubt it is Goldie, The Chemical Brothers or Tricky. Yet all of these were artists were key parts of the scene and were hugely influential in it.  However, Britpop has now come to mean union-jack painted guitars, Blur versus Oasis, Damon Albarn and Justine Frischmann, Cool Britannia, bands with floppy fringes…

Indie used to mean Independent, which could mean any style of music.  Thanks to Britpop, Indie is now a musical genre that even Coldplay occupy despite having always been signed to a major label and effectively a corporate rock act.  Indie is now a specific sound; guitar-oriented without necessarily being ‘rock’ per se, quite jangly or angular, generally white and either 60s or post-punk.

This blueprint was formed had already been formed by C86 and, indeed, the NME had a large part to play in promoting Britpop, although the most definitive publication was Select magazine.  Music journalists had become bored by the prevailing music scenes; grunge was too American and depressing (particularly following Kurt Cobain’s suicide) and the British shoegazing bands (My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive, for example) were also rather downbeat and insular.  They were looking for something more upbeat, energetic and positive.  The darlings of the British music press had been The Stone Roses but their career seemed to have stalled indefinitely; there had been no new releases form them since 1989 apart from remixes of old songs.  Another band, The La’s, had looked like contenders but after one great album had also become inactive.

When Suede and Blur emerged they fitted the bill.  However, early Blur tracks weren’t too promising being heavily reminiscent of the Madchester-inspired ‘baggy’ sound, by now falling out of favour.  Suede seemed to arrive fully-formed though; there was a distinct Smiths influence; the singer was androgynous, Bowie-esque; the guitarist had a unique, powerful style and the whole package came across as dangerous and transgressive.  Suede had the music press salivating and – not only that – they were a commercial prospect too.  Even Morrissey (who was still the doyen of the music press at this time) attended Suede’s shows.  That sealed the deal.

What music journalists particularly liked about Suede is their archetypal Britishness.  The band was influenced by British music they could identify with and cite; Bowie, The Smiths, glam and furthermore their lyrics reflected upon the experience of British suburban life.  They also signed to a British independent label, Nude.  Tellingly, however, Nude – although independent – were effectively a subsidiary of Sony by this time.  Suede were not only British, they were as English as rain.

Nothing demonstrates how incestuous the Britpop scene was more than the fact that when Justine Frischmann’s relationship ended with Suede singer Brett Anderson, she began dating Blur’s Damon Albarn.  This seemed to have a very positive effect on Damon Albarn’s songwriting though, because when Blur returned with a second album, it virtually defined Britpop.  Modern Life Is Rubbish was the result of Albarn’s latest obsession with The Kinks, the most English 1960s band of all-time and the fact that their label Food (again, independent but effectively a subsidiary of a major, this time EMI) was considering dropping them.  This was despite the commercial success of their first album and because of the media’s dislike of it.  This shows how important the favour of the music press was at this time.  As expected, the music press adored Modern Life Is Rubbish and this ensured its success.  Blur didn’t rest on their laurels though, they followed that album with the even more successful Parklife, which drew on the same formula but expanded on it, including all kinds of uniquely English references, both musical and lyrical, and this made music journalists ecstatic.  Blur became the most popular band of 1994.  Damon Albarn therefore revealed that he was a canny songwriter who could write songs to match public and critical taste and this would lead to him still being active on the music scene today.

From the North, Oasis emerged.  Unlike their southern rivals, Oasis were far more belligerent, arrogant and abrasive, in keeping with their manager and label boss’, Alan MacGee’s style (Creation had allegedly already hatched a deal with Sony by this time although a few years would pass before it was announced publically).  They were just as British as their southern rivals though and had many of the same influences that the London bands had.  Oasis wore their Beatles influence on their sleeves and proudly told every music journalist who listened about it.  Although the Gallagher’s passed themselves off as rowdy, rude and uneducated, it became obvious that this was actually a clever marketing ploy, designed to play into the prejudices of the South-based, music press.  It had worked for other Manchester bands like The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses so why wouldn’t it work again?  It did and this time it paid off dividends.

Despite Oasis’ fanfare of all-things Beatles, there was just as much punk, glam and straight-ahead rock on their debut album as any mop-top influence.  Definitely Maybe was nakedly ambitious and laddish – the latter quality was not as present Blur and Suede albums.  After a decade of independent bands being shy about wanting to be rich and famous, Oasis came across as refreshingly honest about wanting to be ‘a rock and roll star’.  It seemed liberating to hear and male music journalists seemed to feel that they could live vicariously through Oasis.  Futhermore, although the Noel Gallagher’s songs seemed to thieve from all and sundry, there was an obvious craftsmanship and wit at work.  In his hands, stealing the odd melody or riff was more akin to sampling than genuine plagiarism.  Oasis may have feigned ignorance but they also very funny and entertaining.

It was obvious that Justine Frischmann’s influence had been key to both Suede and also Blur.   She had even been a founder member of Suede but when she left Brett Anderson for Damon Albarn it caused tensions in the band which caused her to leave.  It took a while for her to finally get a band of her own together and this eventually became Elastica.  The project was musically quite different from Anderson and Albarn’s, possibly to avoid any critical comparisons.  Frischmann seemed to be more interested in exploring punk, post-punk and new wave than the music of the 60s, so Elastica had an angular, aggressive sound.  Their self-titled debut is one of the few albums of the era that still doesn’t sound dated.  It was both a critical and a commercial success.  It threatened to be overshadowed at the time by accusations of plagiarism by punk bands Wire and The Stranglers, both settled out of court.  This had already happened to Oasis, so it was becoming a theme in Britpop.  And if Oasis were ‘lads’, Elastica were (mostly) ‘laddettes’ – open about sex, drugs and drink in interviews.  After the ‘just say no’ 80s, this was also becoming a key component of the scene.

I haven’t mentioned The Spice Girls, who I would argue were part of Britpop in many respects, although musically and lyrically they may not fit the criteria.  Their image was ultimately similar to Britpop and they incorporated many of the same ideas; a relatively clean-up version of ladette phenomenon, the Union Jack dress, the arrogant in-your-face attitude, and so on.  The same argument applies to All Saints and any number of mainstream pop acts of the time.

Cast were quite similar to Oasis in some respects but had more in common with The La’s, hardly surprising since their main man, John Power had been one of the key members of that band.  The La’s were unashamedly very retro and were vocal about wanting to return to musical values of the 1960s and Power carried that sentiment through to Cast.  The La’s had dried up essentially because the main songwriter, Lee Mavers, seemed to hit a permanent dry-spell, which eventually lead Power to form Cast in order to start making music again.  He quickly discovered that he was also capable of writing 60s-style songs, some of them rather anthemic.  This is essentially the formula that Cast’s debut album sticks too and made it become a success.  Cast were signed to a major label, Sony but by this time that was no longer an issue at the NME it seemed.  Perhaps Power’s previous involvement with The La’s granted him the benefit of the doubt?  The La’s were on Go! Discs.

Cast were eventually included in the backlash against Oasis other similar bands who became labelled ‘dad-rock’.  This was in many respects unfair because Cast had always been outspoken about their fondness for all things 60s.  This perhaps led to Power trying to modernise the band’s sound on their second album with less success.

Pulp had been going for years by the time Britpop arrived but they were hitting their creative peak.  Pulp’s first release had been back in 1983 and so they were no strangers to the independent music scene, this had brought them few rewards though and so they were ready to make a change.  In 1992 the band had been frustrated by their label, Fire Records, who were still sitting on their album, Separations, which had been recorded the previous year.  Pulp left Fire and signed to a Warp Records imprint Gift (distributed by Island Records) and this resulted in a sudden burst of superlative singles, the most remarkable being ‘Do You Remember The First Time?’, which was their first Top 40 hit.  This single bore all the hallmarks of what Pulp would become famous for and it was a distinctly Northern, British sound.  If anybody deserves the title of Britpop’s poet it is Jarvis Cocker, nobody defined the lyrical template of the period better than him; his songs were witty, sometimes exhilarating but also deeply sexualised and dark.  He captured its mood at the height of the era and charted its eventual demise just as honestly.

Pulp’s biggest success was their fifth album, Different Class in 1995.  Unlike the other leading exponents of Britpop it is less easy to pigeon-hole Pulp, perhaps because the band – being so long established – already had their own individual style.  They were, however, strongly influenced by Bowie, glam, The Smiths, 1960s bands and post-punk, but they were just as influenced by Scott Walker, French pop, techno and disco.  It was Cocker’s vocal style, the subject matter of the lyrics and Pulp’s background in the British independent music scene which put them at the heart of Britpop.

I many respects Pulp were one of Britpop’s most defining bands.  They had their roots in 1980s Indie, had been there for all the ups and downs of the 1980s and eventually achieved mainstream fame and success, even if Jarvis Cocker evenutally became disillusioned by it.

In conclusion, Britpop was the result of the major record labels realising that the music on 1980s independent record labels had commercial potential.  Thus ‘Indie’ became another marketing term and eventually even a generic term.  For a brief period, however, it resulted in some very exciting pop music.