You could take Brazil in an afternoon, sure. Knock yerself out, call me when yr done, etc. Consider that continent's arc: it's gesturing across the Atlantic, towards Ghana, or was it Côte d'Ivoire, or both? — you decide, call me when it's done. Let us speak of it forever, or more. Speak of vast hillsides slipping into a river, the minute sunsets, postcards, babies, paperbacks: everything at once, yet nothing at all to remember or recall, situated as you are inside a hand-drawn map of Minas Gerais, weeping over Nascimento's 'Os Povos'. Your ... move, perhaps? Vast as a view across an ocean, invisible strings, dotted lines stretched out: sewing the imaginary gap shut. Stick figures tumble overboard; waves do nothing but leer, their foamy peaks a bit like tankards raised in empty bars (by persons 'sketchy', you add, but then why bother? The effect has already been achieved, its correspondances noted. AO.
Author: David Prater (page 8 of 25)
David Prater is an Australian-born writer, editor and parent. His interests include mince pies, ice hockey and Joy Division.
I come to the railway crossing and stop.
No sounds, except the wind in the pine trees. Is the train even coming? How will I know? Should I crouch down, put my ear to the tracks and listen? I’ve seen countless people do this in movies but never believed in it until now.
Then I hear a high-pitched whistle. And the chug-a-chug of the steam train’s engine. Yep, that’s it, I think. That’s the Ångtåget på Österlen I saw 15 minutes ago at Brösarp Station, about to depart for Sankt Olof. And now it’s headed this way.
I cross the tracks, alight from my bicycle and lean it against the fence. Then I pull out my mobile telephone and open its native camera application.
Holding the phone in front of my face with both hands, I turn to landscape view. My eyes train on the screen, in which I see the still-empty railway track and the cutting and the pine forest. Patches of blue in the overcast sky.
At last, sensing that the train is about to round the bend, I press record.
The spectacle that unfolds on the screen in my hands is nothing short of mind-blowing.
As I stand there spellbound, the old steam train comes barrelling around the bend in full cry. Its funnel jettisons smoke into the sky with majestic power. Its black fuselage tears through the cutting. Its whistle howls like a banshee.
Within seconds it’s past me, its packed carriages hurtling by. I swing around to capture the caboose disappear around the bend.
Within that brief period—twenty seconds, no more—an array of thoughts flit through my mind.
I think about Paul Theroux’s journey in The Old Patagonian Express. About his maddening companion, Thornberry. I think about Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum. I think about my four-year-old son, and wish he was here with me to watch the train careening past.
And I think about my bike trip through Osterlen, which I am about to complete.
Once the train is definitely gone, I press the button on the screen once more to end the video. As I do so, a thrill runs through my body.
I have created a masterpiece of amateur cinematography, that much at least is certain. I will show the clip to my son and he will be awestruck. I shall post it to various social media services and then sit back as the torrent of likes and comments come in.
“Did you take this on a phone? Wow!”
—Nobody, ever.Tweet
But as I press the screen, I hear a click. It is the sound my device usually makes when I’ve taken a photo.
That’s when I realise I haven’t filmed the train bawling through the cutting at all.
In fact, I’d pressed the button at the beginning and taken a photo. (I hadn’t heard the click that first time, in the bedlam of the train’s approach). I’d then panned around and taken an imaginary video. And then I’d taken another photo once the action was over.
It would be too easy to think of this non-event as an indicator of the mindlessness of modern-day tourism.
I do indeed take a moment or two to reflect on my utter stupidity as I stare in turn at the two photos I had taken. They aren’t bad photos, by any means.
But neither of them features a train. Not to mention a mighty, old-fashioned steam engine. Spewing black smoke as it carves its way through a primeval Swedish forest.
Then I think of my son and feel a familiar wave of self-pity, tinged with self-hatred. A heady combo, that one. A kind of depression-induced cocktail I’d imbibed for over 30 years. (I’d actually stopped drinking more than a year before the day in question. But I still recognised the emotions that coursed through me back then.)
You (adj.) idiot! Time for a drink or six, eh?After three drinks, you can post those two photos on Instagram anyway. And to (sheol) with trains.
—My former (dispomaniac) self.
Yeah, that didn’t happen.
Instead, I ride the final two kilometres back to the village of Ravlunda, where I’d first hired the bike. Then I make my way back to Stockholm.
That homeward journey by bus and train takes around eight hours. By the end of it, I’ve almost forgotten my attempt at cinematography.
But I’d be lying if I said it spoilt my trip. If anything, that imaginary video made my four days in Österlen something special.
Something almost hyperreal.
And … that’s a wrap for the decade! This time 10 years ago the K&D Stylingz crew travelled for the first time to “breezy” Karlskrona in the Swedish province of Blekinge.
The entire country was blanketed in heavy snow and, as you can see from this picture, even the sea was frozen. For, like, a very long time.
Speaking of time, little did we know then that we’d still be in Sweden in 2020 with three kids, a mortgage and a serious kanelbulle addiction (not mine—the kanelbulle addiction, that is).
While we left the wilds of Blekinge for the wonders of magical Gustavsberg (the true capital of the Stockholm archipelago) long ago, this Christmas looks set to be devoid of snow altogether.
To make up for that, I have been deep in planning mode for a trifle and mince-pie-studded extravaganza of Oztraylian dessertual bodaciousness.
Stay tuned, and hold onto your crepe partay hats, you all evebahdee!
Size is not everything: just ask My Bloody Valentine
When I think about early-1990s indie, my mind immediately turns to a song by My Bloody Valentine, ‘Soon’. Originally released in 1990 on the Glider EP, it’s a swirling, strangely danceable mish-mash of deep grooves, shimmering guitars and barely-there vocals. It sums up the whole MBV vibe. And it’s also seven minutes long.
For listeners who’ve grown up on free-form jazz or dub—or even Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation—a track of this length might seem trivial. To take one example, there are seven tracks on Miles Davis’ 1970 opus Bitches Brew, six of which clock in at 10 minutes or more. The title track alone is almost 27 minutes long.
In comparison, Wire’s debut album Pink Flag crams 22 songs into its exhilarating 35 minutes. The Pixies have only ever released one song that breaks the five-minute mark. Clearly, size is not everything. And in the context of pop, anything longer than three minutes could also be seen as extravagant.
Remembering My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Soon’
In the case of ‘Soon’, however, the surface-level extravagance quickly gives way to brilliance. Every second of ‘Soon’ is a triumph. From the opening snatches of faraway drum-machine sound effects through to the washes of guitar raining down on the massive fade-out, this is early-1990s indie at its absolute peak.
MBV have not issued a longer or better track, before or since—unless you count Kevin Shields’ own remix of ‘Glider’ which, coming in at 10:20, is surely the most pointless thing they’ve ever done. You could also count every live performance of ‘You Made Me Realise’ (complete, naturally, with ‘holocaust’-style instrumental break) but that would be cheating.
Apart from the towering edifice that is ‘Soon’, MBV are reasonably consistent in terms of song length. This is not to say that anything else about the band is predictable. For instance, 1991’s Tremolo EP lists four tracks but actually contains three unlisted ‘codas’. Oh, and there’s that 20-plus year gap between albums thing.
My Bloody Valentine, ‘Soon’: “the vaguest piece of music ever”
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to think of ‘Soon’ as a remarkable and unusual piece of music. Who else would have the audacity to release such a song as a single? Brian Eno, in a 1990 lecture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, apparently described it as “the vaguest piece of music ever to get into the charts”.
Even a glancing review of the song’s lyrics would seem to confirm Eno’s observation. Sing this with me, if you can (otherwise, just hum along):
Wake up
My Bloody Valentine, ‘Soon’ (lyrics by Kevin Shields)
Don’t fear
I want to
Love you
Yeah (doll of pain)
I let you get to me
Yeah yeah
Then again, as MBV’s Kevin Shields himself admitted in a 1992 interview, the ‘official’ lyrics (and therefore any online annotation of them) are a load of absolute gobshite:
These people don’t just not want to talk about their lyrics. They’ll go to any lengths to avoid people even knowing what the lyrics are. They’ve even got round the problem of letting their publishers see the lyrics.
“I give them the titles,” says Kevin. “Then a girl at Creation listens to the songs and writes down what she thinks I’m singing. And that’s what she gives them. They’re actually more her lyrics than mine. And some of the discrepancies are hilarious.”
When Bilinda [Butcher] is asked about this later she bursts out laughing and says she never knew that. She seems delighted at Kevin’s ingenuity. But she then refuses, even in the face of undignified journalistic begging, to reveal so much as the first line of ‘Loomer’ off the [Loveless] album. Kevin himself admits he has “absolutely no idea” what she is singing.
David Cavanagh, ‘3AM Eternal’, Select (February 1992)
Indeed, it now seems quite extraordinary that the Glider EP did as well as it did. Wikipedia tells us the EP reached #2 on the UK indie charts in May 1990. Think about that while listening to the extended version of the challenging title track and let me know what you think about the musical tastes of the British listening public at that time.
But speaking of the UK listening public, it would be wrong to assume that ‘Soon’ was the longest or even the most challenging piece of music inflicted on them back then. There were at least 20 longer songs by indie acts released at the time (see Table 1). Including, ironically, ‘Soon’ itself, which is two seconds longer than the version later included on the Loveless LP.
Table 1. 20 early-1990s UK indie songs that are longer than My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Soon’*
| Rank | Band | Track (Year) | Length | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Swervedriver | Never Lose That Feeling/Never Learn (1992) | 11:51 | First appeared on the Never Lose that Feeling EP; later appended to the Mezcal Head LP. |
| 2. | The Stone Roses | Breaking Into Heaven (1994) | 11:21 | The opening track from Second Coming. |
| 3. | Ride | Grasshopper (1992) | 10:56 | B-side to ‘Leave Them All Behind’. |
| 4. | Primal Scream | Screamadelica (1992) | 10:46 | Appears on the Dixie-Narco EP. |
| 5. | My Bloody Valentine | Glider–Kevin Shields Remix (1990) | 10:20 | Appears on the 12″ version of the Glider EP. |
| 6. | Primal Scream | Come Together (1990) | 10:21 | Album version, not to be confused with the 12″ Weatherall remix (10:12) |
| 7. | Verve | Feel (1992) | 10:42 | Appears on the ‘She’s a Superstar’ single. |
| 8. | The Stone Roses | Fools Gold (1989)** | 9:54 | Released as a double a-side, with ‘What the World is Waiting For’. |
| 9. | Verve | She’s a Superstar (1992) | 8:54 | Released as a single. |
| 10. | Verve | Gravity Grave (1992) | 8:21 | Released as a single. |
| 11. | Ride | Leave Them All Behind (1992) | 8:17 | Appears on Going Blank Again. |
| 12. | The Stone Roses | I am the Resurrection (1989)** | 8:15 | Appears on The Stone Roses. |
| 13. | Slowdive | Avalyn II (1990) | 8:10 | Appears on the Slowdive EP. |
| 14. | The La’s | Looking Glass (1990) | 7:51 | Appears on The La’s. |
| 15. | The Stone Roses | Something’s Burning (1990) | 7:50 | B-side to ‘One Love’. |
| 16. | The Stone Roses | One Love (1990) | 7:45 | Issued as a single only. |
| 17. | My Bloody Valentine | Soon–Andrew Weatherall Remix (1990) | 7:34 | Appears on the 12″ version of the Glider EP. |
| 18. | The Charlatans | Opportunity Three (1991) | 7:29 | Appears on the Over Rising EP. |
| 19. | Verve | One Way To Go (1992) | 7:17 | B-side to ‘All In the Mind’. |
| 20. | My Bloody Valentine | Soon (1990) | 7:00 | Appears on Glider and Loveless. |
** The Stone Roses’ eponymous album was released in 1989 in the UK but not until 1990 elsewhere, with ‘Fools Gold’ added as its final track.
20 early-1990s UK indie songs that are longer than MBV’s ‘Soon’: the playlist!*
* Note: the above playlist, compiled on Spotify, does not include several of the tracks listed in Table 1. To take one obvious example, My Bloody Valentine removed all of their tracks from Spotify in 2019. Primal Scream’s Dixie Narco EP is also not available on the Spotify platform—at least, not where I live. So, I’ve added Happy Mondays’ ‘W.F.L. (Think About the Future Mix)’ and the Wedding Present’s ‘Take Me’ as special bonus tracks, even though they were both released in 1989. And, to show that there are potentially hundreds more tracks that could go on this list, a couple of extra-special bonuses from Spiritualized and Stereolab.
Excessive and self-indulgent?
The question is: if size isn’t everything, then how should we evaluate these tracks? What’s remarkable is that Table 1 reveals that the excesses and indulgences of the period are concentrated in the releases of a handful of bands. The only big act missing is the Happy Mondays, who released their big remixes in 1989.
The over-10-minutes club
Be that as it may, let’s get critical. At the risk of repeating myself, Swervedriver’s ‘Never Lose That Feeling/Never Learn’ (11:51) is a totally bodacious track, and one that is fully deserving of its spot at the top of the table. If only because its long-form ‘coda’ featured unironic sax and sheets of reverb-drenched guitars.
But the Stone Roses’ ‘Breaking Into Heaven’? Well, it starts off okay, with four-and-a-half minutes of field recordings, tribal drums and atmospheric effects. But, 11 minutes and 21 seconds later, we’re left in no doubt as to who hogged all the cocaine during the recording sessions for The Second Coming.
This feeling of indulgence continues with the next five entries, all of which also ‘break’ through the 10-minute mark. Ride’s non-album track ‘Grasshopper’ (10:56) is all right, I guess, despite its lairy intro and OTT drumming. But, as with Kevin Shields’ ‘remix’ of ‘Glider’ (10:20), you’ll never get any of those 10 minutes back.
Things take a turn for the psychedelic—in a good way—once we reach the first of Primal Scream’s entries. In contrast to another of Ride’s turgid non-album tracks, ‘Going Blank Again’, I have no idea why ‘Screamadelica’ (10:46) never made it onto the Primal Scream album of the same name. It’s an absolute masterpiece.
‘Come Together’ (10:19), on the other hand, suffers from the fact that it has been played to death ever since its first release. To be honest, I’ve never totally understood the fusion of dance and gospel in early-1990s rave music, genre-wise. All that preachy hands-in-the-air crap really just lost me at the time and still does.
The less-than-10-minutes club
Verve’s early works, on the other hand, will never get old for me. Which is just as well, as with four tracks included here, I’ll need to say something significant. I’ve covered this territory before, but ‘Feel’ (10:42), ‘She’s a Superstar’ (8:54), ‘Gravity Grave’ (8:21) and ‘One Way To Go’ (7:17) are all blissed-out and barmy.
The inclusion of two Stone Roses tracks from 1989—’Fools Gold’ (9:54) and ‘I am the Resurrection’ (8:15)—may seem controversial. But in my defence, I only heard The Stone Roses in 1990, and these tracks both belong to that era, too. But the less said about ‘One Love/Something’s Burning’ (7:45 and 7:50, respectively) the better.
I always come back to Ride’s ‘Leave Them All Behind’ (8:17) as one of the cruellest stunts ever pulled on a band’s fans. Coming hot on the heels of the Today Forever EP, ‘Leave Them All Behind’ was a jaw-dropping, if bombastic, statement of intent whose true power was best experienced in a live setting.
‘Leave Them All Behind’ suggested that Ride would continue exploring the noisy dynamics of earlier releases. It was obvious that this track would kick off the band’s second album, Going Blank Again. It all sounded so promising. And then Ride chose ‘Twisterella’ as the follow-up track and second single, and it all went to shite.
The 8-minutes-or-less club
How relieving, then, to turn to the ultimate shoegaze band, Slowdive, who could never be accused of selling out in the first place. ‘Avalyn II’ (8:10) is literally the blueprint for early-1990s dream pop. It takes a whole lot of time to get where it’s going, and that’s more than all right by me.
We now come to the La’s, the band who should have had it all. They released two single in 1990—I speak, naturally of ‘There She Goes’ and ‘Timeless Melody’—that wiped the floor with every other pop-rock song at the time. ‘There She Goes’ was actually first released in 1988 and has since been re-released three times.
‘Looking Glass’ (7:51), on the other hand, the epic final track on their eponymous 1990 debut LP, showcases frontman Lee Mavers’ gritty Liverpudlian accent. Its slow build and epic climax are reminiscent of the Stone Roses’ ‘I Am the Resurrection’. Sadly, once the song ended, so too did the recording career of the La’s.
And so we come, finally, to the Charlatans, a band destined forever (in my mind at least) to be the poor person’s Stone Roses. But for a while there, around the release of their debut album Some Friendly, the Charlatans had a serious late-60s edgy vibe going on. It was like a duel between the Hammond organ and the indie riff.
‘Opportunity Three’ (7:29), which appeared on 1991’s Over Rising EP, might just be the most perfect encapsulation of that duel. It might also be around five minutes too long. And here we return to the problem of the ideal length of a song. Or to be specific, the perfect indie song length in the early 1990s.
My Bloody Valentine, ‘Soon’ and the ideal song length
Because when it comes right down to it, some of us like long songs and the rest of us prefer something much shorter. The songs in Table 1 amount to over two hours of listening time. That’s about four Wire albums, or the entire Pixies discography up to 1991. It’s longer than a football match, or even a longish movie.
What was the thinking behind the release of these songs? Admittedly, some of them were b-sides, or else appeared on early EPs on which bands were ‘finding their voice’. But for other songs, one can’t help but think that the decision to release a 10-minute-long guitar track was simply self-indulgent.
In this context, My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Soon’ actually seems like an act of self-restraint. It’s also one of the very few tracks discussed in this post that is truly danceable, meaning that its length (7:00) is more than appropriate. There’s also something satisfyingly neat about the exactness of that run time. Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s the luckiest number of them all?
1990s UK indie bands were the best bands. You can take my word for it, even though I wasn’t in the United Kingdom at the time. But the older I get, the more clear it becomes that I’m actually a child of the early 1990s. A hazy period of my life which ended in 1994 with the release of Oasis’ Definitely Maybe.
Or let me put it another way. I’m a child of the 1970s and 1980s who left home in 1990. Which, um, was when early-1990s UK indie began. The fact that I graduated from university and got my first full-time job in 1994 provides a way to bookend that era. It also functions as a symbol of the personal nature of this post.
You could also argue that 1989 was an even more significant year for 1990s UK indie. No to mention indie worldwide. That’s the subject of another post I don’t have time to write. ‘Or at least, not yet’, as David Gedge would say. But before we can get to the end of the era, we have to go back to the start.
1990: [definitely not just] time for Guru
Do you remember Guru Josh? He was the guy who drew a line in the sand between the 1980s and the 1990s. Sure, he was doing so for reasons of self-interest and self-promotion. But the fact remains that 1990 was the start of a decade. One in which 1989 would never play a part. Guru Josh told us so.
I left home the week Oxford shoegazers Ride released their first extended play (EP) record. This was back in the day when a lot of records still came out on vinyl. It was January 1990, the beginning of the greatest couple of years in UK indie. I was living in Australia at the time but in my mind I was living in the UK.
Unfortunately, I knew nothing about shoegazing, Ride or UK indie. So there was a problem. Here’s another: I was a passionate R.E.M. fan, and still thought John Cougar Mellencamp had something. I listened to commercial FM radio. Noiseworks was the soundtrack to my antipodean summer of 1989/1990.
It’s okay, we can all move on now. Okay?
The first rumblings of indie? Maybe . . .
Then again, in my defence, in 1989 I was also into Australian indie. This was the actual soundtrack to my first summer out of high school. Ratcat’s That Ain’t Bad EP was brilliant. ‘That Ain’t Bad’, was not released in the 1990s. But by God Simon Day was indie. Didn’t hurt that he was hot as hell, either.
The Hummingbirds’ loveBUZZ album was also fantastic. They named it after the Shocking Blue song Nirvana covered on Bleach. It was fourteen singles in a row. All with that R.E.M.-style Rickenbacker jangle. Which made sense, as Mitch Easter produced the album. That jangle was so hot at the time.
But by 1990 it had dated a little. Despite my supposed indie credibility, I was in for a shock. I started university in 1990 and fell in with a bunch of guys who were into indie music. They were not only aware of UK indie but also lifetime subscribers to New Musical Express. Or so it seemed.
Through them, I discovered a whole world of indie beyond R.E.M. And let’s face it, by 1990, R.E.M. were no longer indie anyway. They’d left behind the moody jangle of their IRS albums, starting with Murmur (1983). Instead, they’d begun taking a more direct and less mysterious approach. How fast things change!
My quickfire indie education
Well, to bring it back to me again, I started university in 1990. I spent my first two years of university living at a college on campus. I was in for a special kind of musical edumacation during those first heady months. My friend D.—whom I hadn’t seen since primary schol—had a formidable collection of music, all on cassette.
Some of what he played me was from the United States. The first time I heard Pixies’ Doolittle I almost shat myself. Music was not supposed to sound like this. FM radio had conditioned my ears to receive Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2U’. A song like ‘Tame’ was like a bottle of industrial toilet cleaner to the head.
Sonic Youth’s music had a similar effect. Goo, when you think about it, is a terrifying album. Especially its second side. A song like ‘Mote’ or ‘Mildred Pierce’ would never get airplay on commercial FM radio. At first I wondered why a record company would even agree to release such music.
By the time I figured out where Triple J was on the FM dial that summer, it was all I listened to. But a lot of the local indie I listened to on Triple J was less aggresive. Ratcat and the Hummingbirds. Falling Joys, Clouds, the Fauves, Ripe. From across the Tasman, The Bats and Straitjacket Fits.
Even so, UK indie had the biggest impact on me. Radio DJs spoke of these bands in hushed, even reverential tones. My Bloody Valentine, Ride, the Charlatans, the Wedding Present, and on and on and on. But what was 1990s UK indie anyway?
And when did it end?
Definitely defining early-1990s UK indie
Definitions are annoying. But when you’re trying to be specific about something they can also be quite useful. Even when you’re trying to define a concept as slippery as early-1990s UK indie. The big question raised by such a concept, of course, is that of time. When did the early-1990s begin? And when did they end? But here are some more questions.
When did the early 1990s begin?
I define the early-1990s as starting in January 1990. We can argue all day about when a decade begins and ends. This kind of technical pedantry is not important to me. January 1990 is when I enrolled at university. So that’s when it started. 1990 was also the year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, so that’ll do me for significance.
What’s indie music?
I define ‘indie’ as independent. That means music issued independent of mainstream record labels. Or else via small, non-mainstream labels. This can be problematic. Many mainstream record labels own indie subsidiaries. But I don’t think it’s that big a deal. If it looks indie, sounds indie and feels indie, it’s indie.
What’s the United Kingdom?
I define the UK as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. At least for now. The Republic of Ireland is thus excluded from this definition. But bands featuring Irish-born musicians are okay. As long as they signed to a UK-based record label in the early 1990s and sounded indie.
Okay, ‘early-1990s UK indie’ what?
Good question. In this post I’m referring, in the main, to indie rock, or guitar-based indie pop and/or rock. I also have a special fondness for bands who issued EP records rather than singles. Although, as you can no doubt imagine, this is not a hard and fast rule.
When did the early 1990s end, then?
The early-1990s ended when Creation Records released Oasis’ Definitely Maybe in 1994. Which may sound harsh but write your own post if you disagree. Regardless, we’re talking about a very brief window in time. Needless to say, I do not regard Oasis as being an early-1990s UK indie band, in any shape or form.
Oasis’ Definitely Maybe and the end of early-1990s UK indie
But why? I hear you ask. What’s wrong with Oasis, anyway? Well, I need to back up a little and clarify a few things. Even so, Oasis fans are not going to like any of these clarifications, either. So let me state it straight: I dislike Oasis’ style of music. And the rest of this post will be about the reasons why I dislike it.
Okay. The end of the early-1990s came not with a bang but a whimper. This whimper took the form of Oasis’ first single, ‘Supersonic’. But do you know what else happened in April 1994? Kurt Cobain shot himself, that’s what. The fact that he did so six days before the release of ‘Supersonic’ is irrelevant.
By the time Definitely Maybe came out on 29 August 1994, early-1990s indie was dead. You might say the era had been on life support ever since the release of Ride’s third album, Carnival of Light, on 20 June. Definitely Maybe amounted to indie’s grieving relatives flicking off the switch.
To be clear: I don’t mind driving guitar rock, as long as there’s an attitude that comes with it I can also stomach. That’s why I can listen to Bob Mould excoriate himself on the harrowing Sugar EP Beaster. It’s also why Swervedriver are so choice. But I cannot bear the Gallagher brothers’ whining swagger. I can’t stand it.
The casualties of Oasis’ war on indie
The fascinating thing about Oasis is the way they managed to kill off many of their predecessors. Take Ride, for instance. Although Oasis waited until 1999 to recruit Andy Bell, the damage was already done. Many indie bands either disbanded or reinvented themselves around 1994. And for that I also blame Oasis.
Verve were doing great until 17 May 1994. That was when they released the b-sides album No Come Down under the moniker The Verve. Sure, they’d changed their name to head off a legal battle with Verve Records. But when Definitely Maybe came out three months later, Verve were yesterday’s news.
Lush, another of the great early-1990s indie bands, released some top EPs and albums. Then, on 13 June 1994, came Split, a mish-mash of melancholy in search of a pulse. It marked the end of the band’s indie sound. The Britpop style evident on the 1996 follow-up, Lovelife, said it all. Oasis was to blame.
I could go on. Is it a coincidence that My Bloody Valentine failed to release anything at all between 1992 and 2013? Or might Oasis have been to blame for that as well? And why did The La’s find it impossible to release anything after their 1990 debut? Because Noel Gallagher gave them the kiss of death, that’s why.
Remembering (and letting go of) Oasis and the early 1990s
Nostalgia is a complex beast. It makes us long for whatever was good about the past, while shielding us from what was crap. I’ll be the first to admit that my feelings about the early 1990s as a cultural moment remain compromised. I can still conjure up the emotions evoked by the music of that time. But I’ve forgotten the time itself.
This is inevitable, of course. Many people who grew up in the 1990s now find themselves contemplating mortality. We should be so lucky to have lived so long, unlike some of our heroes at the time. I count myself lucky to have seen some bands at the height of their powers. And to have avoided a real run-in with death.
Because death is never far away when you contemplate the end of a specific era. In my case, the death is metaphorical—it’s a letting-go, or an acceptance of time passing. It won’t stop me from slagging off Oasis, or writing blog posts about early-1990s bands I love. But maybe—erm, I mean, definitely—that’s what life’s all about.