Britpop and the English Music Tradition

Author: Jon Stratton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317171225
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
Britpop and the English Music Tradition is the first study devoted exclusively to the Britpop phenomenon and its contexts. The genre of Britpop, with its assertion of Englishness, evolved at the same time that devolution was striking deep into the hegemonic claims of English culture to represent Britain. It is usually argued that Britpop, with its strident declarations of Englishness, was a response to the dominance of grunge. The contributors in this volume take a different point of view: that Britpop celebrated Englishness at a time when British culture, with its English hegemonic core, was being challenged and dismantled. It is now timely to look back on Britpop as a cultural phenomenon of the 1990s that can be set into the political context of its time, and into the cultural context of the last fifty years - a time of fundamental revision of what it means to be British and English. The book examines issues such as the historical antecedents of Britpop, the subjectivities governing the performative conventions of Britpop, the cultural context within which Britpop unfolded, and its influence on the post-Britpop music scene in the UK. While Britpop is central to the volume, discussion of this phenomenon is used as an opportunity to examine the particularities of English popular music since the turn of the twentieth century.

Britpop and the English Music Tradition

Author: Professor Andy Bennett
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409494071
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
Britpop and the English Music Tradition is the first study devoted exclusively to the Britpop phenomenon and its contexts. The genre of Britpop, with its assertion of Englishness, evolved at the same time that devolution was striking deep into the hegemonic claims of English culture to represent Britain. It is usually argued that Britpop, with its strident declarations of Englishness, was a response to the dominance of grunge. The contributors in this volume take a different point of view: that Britpop celebrated Englishness at a time when British culture, with its English hegemonic core, was being challenged and dismantled. It is now timely to look back on Britpop as a cultural phenomenon of the 1990s that can be set into the political context of its time, and into the cultural context of the last fifty years – a time of fundamental revision of what it means to be British and English. The book examines issues such as the historical antecedents of Britpop, the subjectivities governing the performative conventions of Britpop, the cultural context within which Britpop unfolded, and its influence on the post-Britpop music scene in the UK. While Britpop is central to the volume, discussion of this phenomenon is used as an opportunity to examine the particularities of English popular music since the turn of the twentieth century.

The Birth and Impact of Britpop

Author: Paul Laird
Publisher: White Owl
ISBN: 1399017500
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
Remember the ninteties? Of course you do. Cool Britannia, New Labour, Blur vs Oasis, Geri Halliwell’s Union Flag dress, TFI Friday, “wasssssuuuuuuppppppp”, Opal Fruits turning into Starburst without anyone asking your permission...crazy times. This book doesn’t have anything to say about Geri’s dress or Opal Fruits but it has lots to say about Britpop. But this isn’t a book about the Britpop you think you know about, this is the story of a truly remarkable period of creativity in British guitar music told through the experiences of someone who was there from the first note of “Popscene” through to the run out groove of “This is Hardcore”. This is the story of the Britpop that didn’t make it onto the evening news or the cover of The Face. This is the story of the bands nobody remembers but that everybody should. This is the story of what it was like to be an outsider in 1991 and be too cool for school by 1994. This is the story of a magnesium flash in British popular music that has, for good or ill, defined British guitar music ever since. Here are Flamingoes and Pimlico, Strangelove and David Devant and His Spirit Wife, The Weekenders and Thurman...and Blur, Pulp, Oasis, Sleeper and Elastica too. These are Britpop memories from someone who was actually there. The definitive story of Britpop...

While We Were Getting High

Author: Kevin Cummins
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1788402545
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Book Description
A ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR "To flip through the book is to be immersed back in the glory days of Cool Britannia... and it's just as cool as you remember" GQ Remember Britpop and the '90s through hundreds of its most striking images - with many seen here for the very first time. Taken by renowned photographer Kevin Cummins, chief photographer at the NME for more than a decade, the images in this book explore the rise and fall of Cool Britannia and all that came with it. Nostalgic, anarchic and featuring contributions from icons of the Britpop era including Noel Gallagher and Brett Anderson, While We Were Getting High is a seminal portrait of a decade like no other. Artists featured include: Oasis Blur Suede Pulp Elastica Supergrass The Charlatans Gene Sleeper Kula Shaker Echobelly The Bluetones ...and many more

Coal Black Mornings

Author: Brett Anderson
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
ISBN: 1408710471
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 88

Book Description
Evening Standard Book of the Year. Observer Book of the Year. Guardian Book of the Year. Sunday Times Book of the Year. Telegraph Book of the Year. New Statesman Book of the Year. Herald Book of the Year. Mojo Book of the Year. Brett Anderson came from a world impossibly distant from rock star success, and in Coal Black Mornings he traces the journey that took him from a childhood as 'a snotty, sniffy, slightly maudlin sort of boy raised on Salad Cream and milky tea and cheap meat' to becoming founder and lead singer of Suede. Anderson grew up in Hayward's Heath on the grubby fringes of the Home Counties. As a teenager he clashed with his eccentric taxi-driving father (who would parade around their council house dressed as Lawrence of Arabia, air-conducting his favourite composers) and adored his beautiful, artistic mother. He brilliantly evokes the seventies, the suffocating discomfort of a very English kind of poverty and the burning need for escape that it breeds. Anderson charts the shabby romance of creativity as he travelled the tube in search of inspiration, fuelled by Marmite and nicotine, and Suede's rise from rehearsals in bedrooms, squats and pubs. And he catalogues the intense relationships that make and break bands as well as the devastating loss of his mother. Coal Black Mornings is profoundly moving, funny and intense - a book which stands alongside the most emotionally truthful of personal stories.

Britpop!

Author: John Harris
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 9780306813672
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Beginning in 1994 and closing in the first months of 1998, the UK passed through a cultural moment as distinct and as celebrated as any since the war. Founded on rock music, celebrity, boom-time economics, and fleeting political optimism, this was "Cool Britannia." Records sold in the millions, a new celebrity elite emerged, and Tony Blair's Labour Party found itself returned to government. Drawing on interviews from all the major bands including Oasis, Blur, Elastica, and Suede, and from music journalists, record executives, and those close to government, Britpop! charts the rise and fall of the Britpop moment. In this wonderfully engaging, page-turning narrative, John Harris, currently the hottest young music journalist in the UK, argues that the high point of British music's cultural impact also signaled its effective demise. After all, if rock stars were now friends of government, how could they continue to matter?"Cool Britannia was an empty promise that was bound to end in tears. John Harris captures the moment when New Labour, desperately wanting to seem hip, invited Britpop into Downing Street. Irresistible."-Billy Bragg

Anoint My Head - How I Failed to Make it as a Britpop Indie Rock-Star

Author: Andy MacLeod
Publisher: Pointy Books
ISBN: 9781838271954
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
A coming-of-age story about pursuing your dreams and what happens when reality gets in the way. Perfect for fans of Caitlin Moran, Nick Hornby & Ricky Gervais. It's 1992 and Horace dreams of becoming a rockstar with his band the Pointy Birds. The only problem is that his day-job (mis-)filing vinyl in a Soho record store is stealing all his time and energy, plus rival bands like Suede, Blur, Pulp and Radiohead are moving on to bigger and better things. But then someone called Ricky offers his services as a band manager and at last the dream can start. Anoint My Head is the tale of a band who didn't become rich, or famous but had a manager who did. It is also the story of a musical era, and documents the rise of some of the biggest British Britpop bands of the nineties, plus a comedian who went on to write quite a successful sitcom about a paper merchants in Slough. 'The Pointy Birds...bland and inoffensive...with a seriously overacting singer.' NME

The Last Party

Author: John Harris
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 478

Book Description
Drawing on interviews from all the major bands of the Britpop era - including Oasis, Blur, Elastica and Suede - and from music journalists, record executives and those close to government, John Harris charts the rise and fall of this cultural movement.

Just For One Day

Author: Louise Wener
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446407926
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Just For One Day takes you on Louise Wener's musical odyssey from awkward 80s suburban pop geek to 90s jet-set Britpop goddess. Of course, once she's living the dream at the height of Britpop's glory, things aren't quite how they appeared from the other side. With her band Sleeper, Louise goes from doing gigs in toilets to gigs in stadiums, and on to the big interviews, constant touring and endless excess via Top of the Pops. These are the hilarious adventures of a girl's journey through Britpop, from the embarrassments of growing up to trying to remember what on earth it was you really wanted while eating Twiglets backstage and enviously eyeing up Damon Albarn's plate of foreign cheeses. PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS

Lunch With The Wild Frontiers

Author: Phill Savidge
Publisher: Jawbone Press
ISBN: 9781911036494
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Phill Savidge is widely credited as being the main instigator of the Britpop music movement that swept the UK in the mid-1990s. Savidge was co-founder and head of legendary public relations company Savage & Best, the company that represented most of the artists associated with the scene, including Suede, Pulp, The Verve, Elastica, Kula Shaker, Spiritualized, Menswear, The Auteurs, and Black Box Recorder. Savidge suggests that Britpop came about "by accident" because he refused to represent any American bands. He subsequently ended up with an extremely accessible, media-friendly roster that "lived ’round the corner" and included the most exciting press-worthy acts of the era. His unique experience at the epicentre of Britpop led to many intimate, not entirely self-congratulatory encounters with a who’s who of popular culture — including Brett Anderson, Damon Albarn, Roy Orbison, David Bowie, Joe Strummer, Lou Reed, Michael Barrymore, Richard Ashcroft, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Mick Jagger, George Lucas, Damien Hirst, and Dave Stewart, among others. But did he really Sellotape a cassette of Suede’s Animal Nitrate single to a purple velvet cushion — with a note that said "another great disappointment" — and then bike it to the NME? And could he and Jarvis Cocker really have fallen out simply because a journalist thought he was more glamorous than the Pulp front man? If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to represent Hirst, Cocker, and The Verve in the same decade, and then wake up in bed with Keith Allen in the Ritz in Paris — courtesy of Mohammed Al Fayed — then you should read this book. Imagine David Sedaris with a hangover and an expense account and you’re halfway to appreciating the delinquent delights of Lunch With The Wild Frontiers.