"Any quarter-decent three-chord knobheads could and did get a deal in the ’90s." POLL

Ride will take this in a walk, but I expect Curve to finish a solid second.

Original Robbie blog:
http://www.robbiewilliams.com/news-blogs/just-musing-a-supposed-brett-anderson-quote

Salad were really good and enormously underrated.

I'm slightly obsessed with the money-drunk signing spree of the 90s - like that great recent list of the weirdest post-Nevermind major label deals. It was the last blowout.

nah the 00s landfill indie era was way worse

Much worse

Sorry, that sound like I was correcting your use of English when in fact I was agreeing with you... probably should be "far worse"

... and "sounded", of course

Best??? this isn't in the spirit of shit 90s Brindie polls

If I had to prepare a thesis on one of these bands actually being objectively good, if there is any such thing, it would be Ride, which is a really boring answer.

So I'm voting Salad, just for "Drink the Elixir", which I find as strikingly inexplicably transcendent as I find pretty much any Robbie Williams single striking inexplicably horrible.

that is impressive knowledge on Williams' part, though of course any cratedigging is likely to be done in charity shops for these lot. Still astounding after all these years that Northern Uproar got a record deal.

I know nothing of this Salad tbh

i might vote Shed 7 because a) i have oddly warm feelings to the odd single as being "decent" and b) fuck off the ILM shoegaze massive

Wik tells me however that one of them ended up in Gay Dad... not the drummer :( (xp)

Cud don't really belong here, post C86 chancers who i'm sure couldn't believe their luck at getting a major deal and probs pished it away without a thought

Please remove CUD and Ride
by I know you dran… - 21 Mar 2013 - 7:04pm
Please remove CUD and Ride from that list. You obviously don't own anything of their music and have probably been trawling through old NME's indie charts for bands around at that time to take a swipe at.

xxxp their Wikipedia entry is really something: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shed_Seven

With five UK Top 40 entries in 1996,[3] Shed Seven had more hit singles than any other act that year,[1]

Robbie Williams' titular description of these is pretty much otm tbf to the lad

iirc did robbie himself not try out an edgy indie alterna-phase for a brief bit

i was gonna say Britpop was his whole shtick when he first left Take That

Robbie Williams still taking potshots at Sophie Ellis Bextor after all these years.

took me 18 months to realise Robbie's songs weren't written by the bloke out of House of Love

Despite Noel Gallagher describing him as that fat dancer from Take That (xxxp)

only when Noel Gallagher tosses a lazy zing in one's direction does one know one has truly arrived

was Symposium that bunch of 13 year-old Finnish psychobillies?

i wonder how long the band meeting was that settled on "Powder"? or if they rejected "Deodorant" and "Toothpaste" and "Old Spice" first?

look back fondly on the heady days of saying rude things about Kingmaker in interviews in our local fanzine

oh god i've wasted my life

Kingmaker, the band perpetually in the shadow of The Wonderstuff.

re: Shed 7..

I was sent a promo of one of their singles, the press release with it stated the proud boast that "all of their singles have hit the top 40"

funnily enough, so did the single they sent me. But that was the last time...

Enticed by the promise of free stuff I filled in a BMG Music questionnaire once and ticked the "indie" box so they spent the next 2 years sending me Northern Uproar and Out Of My Hair badges

i hope you learned your lesson

I learnt the lesson of free stuff but not the lesson you're thinking of, no :(

Someone needs to do a where-are-they-now? feature on all of these bands

there's only so many ways you can write "Call Centre"

I'd love it if Crispian Mills was my Job Centre advisor.
No wait I wouldn't.

In 2010, Spacehog guitarist Antony Langdon gained notoriety for his role in the controversial mockumentary starring Joaquin Phoenix I'm Still Here. Langdon, who was one of Phoenix's assistants as well as a musical partner,[14] staged a falling-out with the actor during the documentary's filming and is shown (in the film's most shocking scene)[according to whom?] defecating on the troubled actor in retaliation for an earlier argument. In an earlier part of the film, there is a similarly shocking scene involving Langdon getting out of the shower.

Pondering The Zutons.. They got dropped by Sony about 6 months after their last (top ten) album, the websites have gone, but no official 'split' as such..

Probably living off "Valerie" royalties..

I hate Ride. Nowhere is just useless rubbish, taking shoegaze and showing how it can also be used to make boring rock songs just like they've always been make. So dumb. So it was hard to vote for anything, but I ended up at Kula Shaker, as I've actually heard their albums... Not good, not really.

Hoping it's past the bed time
by karen490 - 21 Mar 2013 - 10:42pm
Hoping it's past the bed time of the silly idiots who seem to have found their way here today to post their nasty small minded and mainly inacurate crap. Wouldn't you think they would at least get the facts right -----------------------Just wanted to say congratulations on yet another award and i loved your baseball cap.

*yoink*

Anyone who doesn't vote Curve is a disgusting savage iirc

I still have something of a soft spot for 'Tranquiliser' and 'Into The Blue' by Geneva. I remember when they first appeared and the press was all 'lol he sings like a girl' and now you'd be hard pressed to find an indie frontman who doesn't attempt an excruciating falsetto.

That dude must shake his fist at the capricious gods every time Chris Martin appears on TV.

You left off Ocean Colour Scene by the way...

Think they fall short of the quarter-decent requirement

Ride, obviously. Wasn't a massive Salad fan at the time, but their singles do still stand up. Chapterhouse/Cud/Curve/Adorable/Kingmaker I kind of think of as being from the era previous, but I don't know if that's just me? Not all good, obv (though I was a 12-yr-old Kingmaker fan, I confess).

Chorus:
Hey dude
Don't lean on me man
Cause I'm losing my direction
And I can't understand, no no
Hey dude
Well I do what I can
But you treat me like a woman
When I feel like a man

^ these guys were being ironic right?

Adorable for "Homeboy"

xpost to emil.y -

If Chapterhouse etc are a previous era, then so are Ride surely, esp since they predate some of those!

Ride were basically shit by the time the other bands were around.

At some point in my life I have owned things by 12 of these bands :(

It was quite fashionable at the time to diss Salad because their singer was a) female and good looking and b) an MTV presenter but I liked them. Their 2nd album was a bit of a let down though.

Crispy Mills was many things but ironic was not one.

Anyway, I voted for Ride, even though, after the second album, they were exactly the kind of "quarter-decent three-chord knobheads" RW is moaning about.

The frequency with which Slight Return by The Bluetones pops up on 6music does my head in and makes me think it's some kind of NHS prescription for sad sack 30-somethings. Like me.

Col Poo, yes, Ride count as the previous era too, sorry, that really wasn't clear on my part. Salad don't, obviously.

I prefer Drugstore to Salad but I guess it's purely the 'foreign female singer' thing that makes them comparable.

At some point in my life I have owned things by 12 of these bands :(

Hmm, good point, I shall go count up:

Right, my definition here is "Things", i.e. more than one single/album by the artist listed.

Two.

(Menswear (2 singles, one album) and Sleeper(most of their stuff) )...

I'll rep for one other, "Dark Entries" by Echobelly, that were good that..

HI DERE!

i'm not really here, obv, but:

Crispian Mills directed a film with simon pegg in, the early interviews for which entirely failed to mention Peela Tater

Symposium featured young polish lads, not finnish one of whom is now in Thee Faction with Billy Reeves from the audience.

Menswe@r (call them by their name) drummer Matt everett is now the music news guy on 6music

ride and hurricane #1 gtrist andy bell was is oasis and is now in beady eye

pearl from powder is now best known for being Daisy Lowe's mum

any more questions? *britpop face*

Back to Rob:

NOW THIS WAS AT THE HEIGHT OF WHAT WAS BRITPOP AND MAINSTREAM INDIE.

RECORD COMPANIES DON'T/DIDN'T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO GAMBLE?

I THINK NOT …

ANY QUARTER-DECENT 3 CHORD KNOBHEADS COULD AND DID GET A DEAL IN THE 90'S ….

I wouldn't have thought signing 1/4 decent 3chord knowbeds in the age of Oasis and Blur was much of a gamble, we're not talking CabVolt are we?

As long as those bands sold slightly more value than they cost, and could get dropped before the balance sheet got too claret, what gamble are we thinking of?

I have tried searching for some of the more distinctively named minor members of these groups and disappointingly they all seem to be on linkedin and doing respectable music-related jobs.

Things mostly meant singles there but I did have albums by some of these.

In retrospect I'm most embarrassed about owning an album and 2 singles by the Bluetones. That can only really be explained by peer pressure I guess. I didn't even like them then, I saw them twice in 1995 and they were shit both times. But some of my friends liked them. I dunno, the follies of youth.

I'd much rather listen to a Bluetones record than the lumpen laddishness of a lot of these twats.

Probably didn't have anything by the laddish bands, maybe one or two depending on which count as laddish.

xp co-sign. First album is p decent if you can ignore all the "New Stone Roses" nonsense.

Tell you what, if any of those record labels signed one of those type bands now, that'd be a gamble..

The anti-Robbie Williams

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/mar/21/devendra-banhart-i-love-britpop

Also Johnny Dean from Menswe@r had this to say:

http://nuisanceclub.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/god-bless-johnny-dean/

Is it fair to say you're a Britpop fan?

It's very fair to say. I love almost every Britpop band. I'm going deep here.

Including Shed Seven?

Sure, sure.

Really?

To be honest, no.

xxxp What I meant by "the last blowout" was financial. There were a lot of landfill bands, and he music was probably worse on balance, but there weren't the same torrents of cash behind them as there were in the 90s. Labels were already feeling the pinch.

that may be the greatest thing I have ever seen Devendra Banhart say

Dev would love Shed 7 if he heard them. Willing to gamble on this. Especially 'At The Link' or whatever it was.

pretty dumb question tho Is it fair to say you're a Britpop fan? as if it were controversial somehow to like some rock music that was v popular in the mid 90s. He also collects headshots of TLC, some SWV and some En Vogue. Perhaps he liked those bands at the same time omg.

xpost -- Let us gauge reactions. How does this make you feel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbpVJYh4V_s

As for it being a pretty dumb question, he was in the US rather than the UK, I thought? So it was a little more out of step there.

The Bluetones were regularly playing shitty pubs in Lewisham a couple of years back, amazing they plugged away for so long. Cautionary tale of what happens when you don't split up at the right time, even the reformed Ultrasound* were probably playing bigger venues.

*Speaking of bands with way too much money thrown at them.

The Bluetones' commercial success waned after the fall of the Britpop movement, yet they continued to tour and release new records and were therefore often labelled as "Britpop survivors".

The band's final album A New Athens was released on 31 May 2010.

The band split on 1 October 2011 following a farewell tour which ended with a concert in Osaka, Japan.

I'm trying to imagine any of that.

Man their entire Wikipedia biography reads like a fake band dreamed up by a bad author for a book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bluetones

The second album, Return To The Last Chance Saloon, was released in 1998. While failing to generate the commercial success of their debut, it did spawn hits in the form of "Solomon Bites the Worm" and "If...".

Whilst many of their mid 1990s peers had disbanded by 2000, The Bluetones released their third album, Science & Nature, which again reached the Top 10 and featured the hit singles "Keep the Home Fires Burning" and "Autophilia".

After releasing a best-of album in 2002, the band followed up with Luxembourg, an album which received mixed reviews.

all i remember from the mid-late 90s is dave grohl and johnny depp constantly praising britpop bands, paul whitehouse, black pudding etc. but n/m

Gorblimey.

Madlib time:

Mark G, Is it fair to say you're a Britpop fan?

http://www.dogsandbabieslearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/no.jpg

Northern Oproar

Further investigation into the Bluetones turns up this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Morriss

Which mentions him once headlining this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeeStock_Music_Festival

Which is to be headlined this year by Toploader and Space. Man alive.

Good grief, last year's festival!

It was also revealed that Mark Morriss and Nigel Clark of Dodgy would be returning, this time joined by hit-selling D:Ream and American rock group Wheatus. The acoustic stage was headlined by Nick Howard who went on to win that year's The Voice of Germany.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2wlFZ4hZkFA/Tox0RR9kWxI/AAAAAAAAAR4/DFUYj6raDyw/s320/leon.jpg

So for those people who don't know, explain how the first incarnation of Northern Uproar came to an end in the 90's and what followed.

Well, let's see... things are a bit blurred. After the deal with Heavenly cane to an end we had a pretty big tax debt to pay... that took a while. We did another tour of Japan and started demo's for the 3rd album. It was a struggle to keep our studio goin though... So with some regret we downsized for a while and some of us thought we'd try a 'real' job (laughs). I was a hairdresser for a while, slashed a few ears i can tell you... Customers were terrified so i had to pack it in! (laughs).

I spent a few years in Spain performing with my uncles and my cousin Noel, learnt a LOT of new tricks playing the Catalan rhumba and singing in Spanish... A real eye opener. I love Spain and Catalonia and i usually spend half my year over there . I love the lifestyle and the food. Anyway, that kept me busy for a few years and i got the bug for loud rock'n'roll again.

Underrated band that Catalonia

Dodgy are playing here in a couple of months. I've written to my councillor.

Where is Geir to defend Dodgy's honor?

i'm sort of gutted i dropped my 1992 display name a day early

Nice of robbie to look through his record collection . He must regret jumping on the britpop bandwagon... oh wait it helped sell him shitloads I guess hes now jumped again to pop (after his swing album) When does his punk influenced album come out?

He did "making plans for Nigel" back in his day..

(b-side of "Old before I die")

Is LeeStock a festival entirely run for people called Lee? Wow.

Hang on; from the wiki:

The festival raises money for the Willow Foundation, a national charity that gives special days to seriously ill young adults.

Insert tasteless joke about ex-Britpoppers being "seriously ill young adults".

Completely unrelated but this comment on Robbie's follow-up 'Thank you Brett' post, without me knowing any context, is some kind of astounding rant:

I really wasn't going to go
by scrummy mummy - 22 Mar 2013 - 2:00pm

I really wasn't going to go there... but you know what @Birdless' post got me thinking too... because I'm always me too. Slightly irreverant, often sarcastic, trying my best to be humourous and attempting to diffuse the tensions from time to time.... Well THAT worked well :( I was taught that if I'd done something wrong to apologise and to always stand up for myself... @Frieda. WOW! Is that all you took from my post? Seriously? You took that massive jump and got to there from ONE LINE?? Do you know me? Have we actually met? Have you checked the contents of my fridge and bathroom cabinets this morning? Do you actually know what I choose to feed my child and husband? I'm more than aware of my responsibilities to the planet thank you very much. Which one are you on? As a family we more than offset our carbon footprint annually. MORE than. Nestle? I was protesting about their promotion of formula milk to mothers in the Third World YEARS ago if it interests you in any way at all... None of that GM Monsanta shit will ever enter my family's food chain... I would have answered your questions if you had any but you were too busy TELLING me who I am and jumping to some pretty massive conclusions about me instead. Happy to set you straight. My blog was about how brilliant Rob is and how shitty and stupid this endless round of argument is... Don't get your hemp knickers in a twist... I ALWAYS intend for any of my posts to be read tongue very firmly in cheek. It's the hypocrisy of those who choose to ram their highbrow standards down my throat to prove their point that gets me. I'm only here... don't SHOUT IT. I was making the point in reference to music and likened it to food snobbery, but made it clear - there's a place for it all... Did I say it was a trend? No. Organic, fair trade and even the mass produced... my point was it's all FUCKING chocolate. It's called a METAPHOR.... Give me strength... I'm a lot of things, but ignorant and small minded is a label you'll NEVER be able to hang on me. Earth Song??? I was at the Brits the year Jarvis Cocker stormed the bloody stage... @Ono I'll have one of those hugs please... Is Mercury in retrograde? Is the moon up Uranus? Because this place has gone utterly and stark raving mad..... Rob, I make no apologies for what I posted. it was supposed to celebrate you and your all round fucking fabulousness.... and I'd like to think you know me by now. If I've offended anyone else in what I have said then I am genuinely sorry, but thank you for letting ME be ME. I don't have to or intend take that level of crap from anyone, but I'll not mention it here any more... Am done. Happy Friday folks... :) Here's a bit of fairy dust for you all.......... (lovingly created by tiny little computer pixies...No child labour involved whatseover) + . + + . . * + . + * . ** + * * . + * .*. * + * * . + * .*. +* + * * . + * .*. * + * * . + * .*.* + * * . + * .*. * + * * . + * .*.* + * * . + * .*. * + * * . + * .*.* + * * . + * .*.* + * * . + * .*. * + * * . + * .*.* + * * . + * .*.* + * * . + * .*. * + * * . + * .*.

MONSANTA

Appearing with Nivea at the club

Earth Song??? I was at the Brits the year Jarvis Cocker stormed the bloody stage...

this is also killing me

sometimes respecting our differences is hard

Another one out of Menswe@r defends himself
http://www.nme.com/news/robbie-williams/69348

all of this is just making me want to listen to Menswe@r

iirc menswear's moment in the sun consisted of ripping off elastica ripping off wire.

slur

noun

1. an insinuation or allegation about someone that is likely to insult them or damage their reputation

the verb might be a bit closer to the truth mind

This is between Ride and Geneva. I love Ride, but went with Geneva because they were always extremely underrated and are a much, much better band than everything on this list (Ride aside).

all of this is just making me want to listen to Menswe@r

Rightly so.

Ah, didn't see Adorable there... but could have easily voted for Adorable too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkzJqKumTEI

I think I have a couple of geneva cd singles i got for 99p. You have them turrican?

Salad were cool. I dig "Motorbike to heaven"

I didn't buy any of Geneva's singles, I did invest in their albums though... always thought they got a bit of a bum deal from people, I remember the lead singers voice was a bit of a love-it-or-hate-it thing. Surprised that Marion haven't been mentioned once in this thread so far.

http://static.nme.com/images/article/menswear_photoshot_UKWT_L90409.jpg

they're called menswear and they look like this? okie dokie.

someone i know looks just like the singer from shed 7, that's a lucrative celeb lookalike job there.

Have had 'slight return' in my head for the past two days since seeing the RW blog post. A few weeks ago my parents and my o/h's parents unloaded a ton of boxes of our old stuff on us and we saw our CD collections for the first time in years. At least 50% of these are in there somewhere (not Northern Uproar though, never Northern Uproar)
I saw someone doing karaoke to Menswe@r in San Francisco in 2012

btw Republica are playing in my town soon. They're not really akin to the rest but I did raise an eyebrow and furrow a ... brow

Marion's 1st album was good. Saw them live at t in the park 95 too (prob saw a lot of these britpop bands there but most weren't very good live but Marion & Menswe@r were as were Cast)

Voting Ride, even in britpop era Ride's Carnival Of Light was really good, not a patch on earlier albums however.

Saw Marion sometime in the past... 7 years? when they had their massive comeback

Uh, they had a massive comeback?

http://images.theage.com.au/2011/07/12/2488339/liveaidmain-600x400.jpg

sorry wrong picture

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-af5AeyMpRWg/Tf8dWbGpg-I/AAAAAAAAFFM/TlzLQos-mr4/s1600/20-06-11+011.jpg

The plot thickens:
http://www.nme.com/news/devendra-banhart/69350

Linked that upthread.

xxxp huh, according to Wikipedia, almost exactly 7 years ago, I have a pretty finely tuned internal clock ... Which is actually why I'm such a good natural percussionist

i still listen to, and enjoy, the menswe@r album
(wasn't it rumoured that the band had little to do with it, and it was all production/sessioners etc).
well, a couple of times a year.
the rest, except curve and adorable of course, nah ..

Voted Symposium for their commitment to tune avoidance.

Okay, I'm a bigger fuckin idiot than RW for that

you just realised its a best not worst poll?

*head in hands*

Wonder what Symposium's Spotify stats are.

Who the hell are most of these

robbie otm I'm sure

every time there's one of these polls of a load of lol landfill acts people pop up to say things like "powder don;t belong on this list" or "symposium's first 2 singles were actually quite good" and I just know without checking that this isn't true

both were utter shite so they do

Powder are the fucking worst.

Well, actually, I'm not sure anything could be worse than Northern Uproar. But they make a good stab at it.

oh sub in any name here

Powder were one of the bands I saw at TITP 95 and they are by far the worst band I ever saw in my life

Lodger were just as bad.

Tomorrow sees the 18th anniversary of the day I saw Powder live

is this Powder the same white-power-looking Powder I found on Spotify? because fuck if I'm gonna listen to the Spotify thing I found

iirc this was their album

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/725/MI0001725114.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

so... no

wins otm

Am I reading this right? Was there really a band named Salad?

Am I reading this right? Was there really a band named Salad?

Indeed there was. If memory serves, the singer was an MTV Europe presenter (or something like that)

yes. they werent very good though.

On the 2nd day of titp 95 i walked past her in the street on my way down to strathclyde park. Also bumped into Martin Carr and John Power (who said "alright La" ).
Also saw Rick Witter and Joe Strummer walking past me inside the festival.

i'm not big britpop dude but ride fucking rules

Ride seem quite out of place in this list, but then again he mentions Hurricane #1 in the same breath. I think it's an Oasis thing

Of course Williams' old drummer is now in BDI with Bell

I still have a Powder single but that's only because no-one will buy it off me.

I seem to remember really liking the main Powder single at the time, but I'm sure its actually terrible. I think a lot of my admiration was for how the singer looked as well.

yeah. Ride don't belong here.

sorry, but rudebox is way better than anything these bands released ..

I really love Echobelly's second album "On". I never saw a video until tonight, and never heard them on the radio. I must have bought it from clearance dollar bin of Columbia Record Club. Really good CD.

It's one of those records that I like in a vacuum.

lead singer of powder

http://www.vh1.com/celebrity/bwe/images/2011/01/Powder.jpg

aw, I haven't heard motorbike to heaven since the 90s... it's so nice! lyrics are complete cocaine nonsense.

Never cared for Ride. Liked Echobelly at the time and they sound OK this evening via Youtube. Liked "Daysleeper" by Menswear and that still sounds OK this evening too, though nothing else by Menswear ever has.

Went with Adorable in the end. "Homeboy" got a lot of play on the olde walkman back in the day, though it's a bit soft-loud-soft-loud innit.

At least Robbie had the good sense to leave Elastica the fuck alone.

Kula shaker obv

There are at least 5 artists with the name Powder:

1) Britop, 1994-1997

Fronted by Pearl Lowe, with songwriters Mark Thomas on guitar and Tim McTighe on Bass. They released three singles, “20th Century Gods”, “Afrodisiac” and “Deep Fried” in 1995, and toured in the UK. They released a retrospective album, MCMXCV in 1997 before breaking up.

2) Californian Turbo-Pop, 2001 onwards

Formed in 2001, they appear to be a two-piece made up of singer Ninette and Guitarist Phil X, they are still active as of July 2009. The albums Sonic Machine, Powder and nothing are theirs.

Official site: http://www.powdermusic.com/

3)Mod, 1967-1968

Formed in San Francisco in 1967. They’re early power pop band which influenced by The Who and folk rock. The album Biff! Bang! Powder, released in 1993.

Others?

4) rapper from Long Island, New york

5)An English Drum and Bass artist from Bristol

Released one album named sense in direction(1999) and did the production on a number of artist Roni size’s albums. Sadly he remained undiscovered as his trance influenced D&B is unique and soothing.

Kingmaker had that 'Queen Jane' tune which sounded like a bit of a steal from the Hard Rain version of 'Shelter From The Storm'. That's pretty much the only thing I know from any of these bands and it's not completely awful so I spose I'll vote for them.

Where do Animals That Swim fit in with all this sort of stuff? I quite like 'Faded Glamour' but haven't heard anything else remotely encouraging from them I don't think.

The only Kingmaker song I used to hear a lot was 'Saturday's Not What It Used To Be', did not make the top 40 despite being played a lot on daytime Radio 1

No room for Thousand Yard Stare, NME's "brightest hope for the future" in 1990?

Who could turn down that body.

http://www.rockofages.uk.com/stock/20262.jpg

Love those also rans to the side there too. Wonder what became of those bands?

Band photos where one member refuses to play along... unfortunately

No "public burning" option, no credibility

Chapterhouse have a "Best of" album with more than two songs on it o_O

I think I've spent money of 6 or 7 from the list.

Voted Curve.

I can't hold it in any longer - imo there are a handful of decent songs on the fourth kingmaker album. Not that I expect anyone else to believe me or give a shit or even know that there was a fourth kingmaker album.

Perfectly willing to take your word for it; just a little unclear on what you made give Kingmaker's fourth album a whirl in the first place

i have looked at this list long and hard and decided that i would much rather listen to rudebox than any of these bands ..

I was just talking about Kingmaker today. I've only heard shit from them and don't really wanna investigate further, but from what I remember their general approach and attitude (and song titles and pretend-smart lyrics) would've fitted in better with Britpop than the kinda grebo look (and names - e.g. Loz) that they had when they came out. Would've been better for them if they'd held off a couple of years, but by 1995 they were forever doomed as embarrassing.

just a little unclear on what you made give Kingmaker's fourth album a whirl in the first place

So am I. It's not as if I'd given any time to any of the first three.

i have looked at this list long and hard and decided that i would much rather listen to rudebox than any of these bands ..

I listened to Rudebox about five weeks ago and it is indeed great, but I listened to Pubic Fruit about 20 minutes after reading Bob's blog and it's slightly better.

just a quick straw poll here, if you're American and reading this thread, raise your hand if you had ever heard of this band Salad before today. Ned sit down, I know, but the rest of you...Salad??

Ned doesn't read poll threads so you're safe.

I read The Big Takeover in high school, it was full of bands like Salad.

Their debut album was called Ice Cream iirc

ride and curve are great. chapterhouse has that one album that's really good iirc. echobelly's 'on' lp was totally ok imo, some good cuts on there. not good enough in the right ways for me to seek out their follow ups or the debut though.

neither American nor britishes, have heard of Salad and own >0 recordings by them

Voting Echobelly mainly because of On, which somebody mentioned upthread. Trying to remember how I became aware of them, oh yes, Addicted To Noise.

Sure I remember hearing about anther Salad, a bunch of hippies whose name stood for Sex And Loving All Day and who sued indie Salad over the name, but Internet has NO RECORD.

Salad's first album was in fact called "Drink Me" because I owned it! Unlike Lush and Ride, they never made it to Texas.

Echobelly - Only really remember the singles from the second album like Great Things and King of The Kirb. Think they released a couple more albums after people gave up caring. I think they went in a brave dance direction for those albums.

Shed 7 - Their first single Mark is great song but nothing of any worth after that, maybe Disco Down if I'm being very generous. Changing the lyrics of Speak Easy to "At the link it's easy" for an advert was probably something they'd like to forget.

Symposium - Andrew Lloyd Webber was a big fan of them apparently. Three of them went on to form Hell is for Heroes who were a poor man's Hundred Reasons.

Menswear - Loved them at the time, most of the first album still sounds good today (especially The One and the bonus track) Second album as terrible, I paid a fortune for it back in the day. What the hell was their last single, We Love You? (I bought it on all formats)

Sleeper - I can still enjoy Sale of the Century today but nothing else. She's a writer now and I've read her first book which is about an indie band trying to make it big!

Hurricane #1 - "These days you gotta kill yourselves just to stay alive" I do feel sorry for them as Alan Mcgee forced them to use that song for an advert for The Sun which completely ended their career.

Ride - First two albums and their early EP's are classic, seriously Robbie why are they on the list?

The Bluetones - First and third albums are really good, they have a few other decent songs spread out over their career.

Northern Uproar - Loved their attempt to go Motown for their second album, poor sods.

Chapterhouse - One great single, not much else.

Curve - Never really heard them. Didn't people say Garbage sounded like them when they first came about?

Salad - First album was okay. Drink The Elixir remains a brilliant single. I had a big thing for the singer when they came out.

Adorable - Just listened to one of their albums recently, I don't really remember anything about it right now.

Cud - Never heard them.

Spacehog - They were from my hometown (Leeds) the singer married Liv Taylor which was just strange. The singer's brother had a band called Cube who were equally useless.

Kula Shaker - Nothing really to say about these guys that hasn't already been said. I will say that I did own some of their singles and a B-side called Crispian Reading From The Mahabharata is the funniest song ever recorded. He reads it over the music from Tattva.

The Audience - Still like the Pessimist is Never Disappointed single but the album was rubbish. The guy doing the songwriting was majorly creepy, especially him writing "If you can't do it when your young, when you can do it" for a 18 year old Sophie Elis Bextor to sing.

Powder - I loved that first single she did as Lodger with guys from Supergrass and Delicatessen (where are they on your list Robbie?) Only remember Afrodisiac which they did on that Britpop Now show presented by Damon Albarn. That show is well worth a watch by the way.

Kingmaker - I rememeber a couple of their singles, Queen Jane and Ten Years Asleep. Didn't Justine from Elastica have an affair with the singer when she was still with Damon? Maybe that was one of those odd Britpop dreams I keep having?

Geneva - Loved them at the time. Second album was total nonsense but the singles on the first album remain great, especially Tranquilizer and that bassline on Into The Blue. I always thought JJ72 were really stealing their sound but with much worse lyrics "boo hoo why won't it snow" etc.

Funny that Robbie slagged off all these bands as his first album was probably influenced by him trying to sound like at least half of these bands. Lazy Days, Old Before I Die and fucking South of the Border would fit in with the worst of Britpop. He toured with The Supernaturals and the reason he fell out with Sophie Elis Bextor was because he was desperate for The Audience to support him but she slagged him off calleing him a tart, he went and had a big cry and called her a moon face in repsonse.

So in summary, Ride by a mile. I do still like most of his Robbie's Rudebox album though and No regrets.

Curve is so much better than Ride it's not even a contest

Saw Marion sometime in the past... 7 years? when they had their massive comeback

― kinder

Here is more about their massive comeback.

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=10&title=whatever_happened_to_marion_1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I still like most of their album and the comeback single from their (quite shit) second album was rather excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ER_g3VYBI

Oh man, that's grim reading. Feels almost wrong to let him say all that stuff.

Curve - Never really heard them. Didn't people say Garbage sounded like them when they first came about?

they said this because it was enormously true

Didn't Justine from Elastica have an affair with the singer when she was still with Damon? Maybe that was one of those odd Britpop dreams I keep having?

they were flatmates (post-Kingmaker I think, and writing songs together that never came out, probably bcz drugs)

Curve is so much better than Ride it's not even a contest

'Strue

quarter-decent three-chord knobhead sampler - a spotify playlist

http://open.spotify.com/user/onimo/playlist/7Cwanv1rx9W9EtZotmZe1T

spotify:user:onimo:playlist:7Cwanv1rx9W9EtZotmZe1T

(three or four artists not available on spotify)

That Marion interview is pretty grim, but the most startling revelation is that he still gets four grand a year in royalties.

Ride wins due to having the best album, although Spacehog "In The Meantime" is probably the best song by any of these bands. Also I'm pretty sure Adorable's "Sunshine Smile" was cool. I've heard about 2/3's of the others on used/discount comp CD's (which was how I tried to find bands in the late-90s/early-2000s) or in archived "Festive 50" streams, the types of songs that never stuck in my head or got my attention enough to go back and listen again. I also recall Kula Shaker unimpressively covered "Hush."

In other words OTM Robbie.

Why did he feel the need to take a pop, exactly? Obama doesn't have a go at the kids from the debating club in the other school on the far side of his home town.

boost his pop credentials

Auditioning for the role as Morrissey's understudy

Because he thinks that no one ever thought these bands sucked before, and he wanted to be the first one to say it.

He's bitter that he couldn't shift his Shine compilations on ebay.

Thanks, onimo, although surprisingly quite a few of those are unavailable in the US.

One that went missing, Echobelly's "Kings of the Curb":
http://youtu.be/epqZrkxZ3_o

Aargh. It's spelled "King of the Kerb"

Kerb your Enthusiasm

So is the song "Statuesque" by Sleeper built around the metaphor of someone being a statue made of stone?

Kula Shaker is among my most hated ever.

Why the ire? I know they're silly, but Tattva and Hey Dude are jams.

Wait, and Shower Your Love was terrific - everyone forgets that one.

I can't believe I'm forgetting Sound Of Drums! What a band!

Might be inclined to vote for Lush if they had been on this list.

Oh yeah. I just had a big Lush revival and was surprised by how well it held up.

Reviving right now. Forgot about the Jarvis Cocker duet.

the reason why Lush isn't on this list is because even Robbie Williams remembered that they ruled

So he's not all bad?

On December 18 2006, Robbie Williams played the last of 59 stadium shows in a row, announced he was going to spend Christmas at his home in Los Angeles, and then basically disappeared. He was hardly seen at all in 2007. He briefly checked into rehab. He spent quite a bit of time hiking and playing football (he owns a football pitch on Mulholland Drive). Then he stopped hiking and playing football. His record company, EMI, announced he had no plans to release an album in 2008. Today he unexpectedly calls me to ask if I want to go with him to the desert in Nevada to meet UFO abductees.

"I've been spending so much time at home on the internet on sites like AboveTopSecret.com," he says. "I want to do something. I want to go out there and meet these people. I want to be a part of this. I want to do something other than sit in my bed and watch the news. And it starts with the UFO conference in Laughlin, Nevada, on Thursday. We can hear people's testimony about being abducted by aliens. There's an entire family of abductees going to be there, apparently."

I log on to the conference website. It's taking place at the quite down at heel-looking Aquarius hotel and casino. The conference slogan is Educating The World One Person At A Time, which makes it sound as if there won't be many people attending. The speakers will include Ann Andrews, from Lincolnshire, who claims her son Jason has had "disturbing experiences at the hands of many different alien species", and a surgeon, Dr Roger Leir, who claims he has extracted from patients 15 metallic implants that are not of earthly metal.

"I wonder if he'll bring the implants along," I say.

"So you can see with your own eyes whether they're earthly or not?" Robbie asks.

"Yes," I say.

"According to Jon," Robbie says.

He seems a bit disapproving of my scepticism. I tell him that my problem with spaceships is this: if they exist, why do they reveal themselves to the human race only in ambiguous ways? "I think maybe they're making mistakes," he replies. "I think the shield comes off by mistake and they were there all the time." He pauses. "I don't want to hear any debunking because I want to believe."

I wonder if he is a fan of Reality Bites?

now we know why the corrs get a pass

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

One of yr less surprising results.

Kula Shaker 6 votes SMDH

Strange truths

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/401978_10152261293673797_974893272_n.jpg

looking good grady

Top two unsurprising, then it gets refreshingly odd.

did some folk think they were voting for 'worst' not 'best'?

Hallo Spacehog

i still listen to, and enjoy, the first spacehog album ..

revival glam is always going to get airplay @ hq (see that other reviled album by loius xiv !)

OK, Kula Shaker strong showing was a little surprising tbh.

suspect that for others as well as me, the 1st album is massive guilty pleasure ...

Some acquaintances started saying 'kula shaker' for 'cool' around that time; for me that ruined them forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW3LyVPa2gE

"the first time i did Heroin was with Elastica.. " "alex james is the bassist in Blur. my nan could do that" and "here's another song by Damon Albarn, Connection by Elastica."

he likes a laugh and a joke this lad.