Taking Sides: Grunge vs. Brit Pop vs. The New Rock

So Britpop.

A) didn't suck.
B) was interesting.
C) didn't make my dick go flaccid when I was trying to get it on.
D) had introduced any new or fresh ideas into the rock canon.
E) wasn't so easy to mistake one band for the next.
F) didn't fuckin SUCK.

Anyway, I can't choose grunge or britpop or the new rock, cuz I'm being an angry knee-jerk reaction bloody bastard, so I choose post-rock. Nya.

britpop, though, is another story. i'd have quite a bit of time for all the leading lights: blur, pulp, oasis - all made great records, which i'd still put on every now and then.

Just speaking for myself here... I've found the majority of '90s Britpop very anemic-sounding and (aesthetically/attitudinally) timid.

thank you, good night.

However, when you reduce them down to the band that originated/invented the genre:

Taking sides: Nirvana vs. Blur vs. The Strokes

No bloody contest! Blur are the only band on that list that I'd not pay money not to have to listen to. (bar Out Of Time, which doesn't count, due to loss of principal musican.)

(And that's disregarding my hatred of the Strokes' music.)

setting b-pop,g-runge & g-raj in opposition to one another does nothing but let the dad-rock faction of the brit-pop blow off some steam between footie matches, they're all the same thing - just seperate twitches in the death throes of rock n roll

I think if the shaggs were more in sync with each others instruments and singing they would have invented the strokes in 69.

Kenickie (first album) = Spice Girls + Cheap Trick

Um....What about Korn???? Actually, I guess I might not know what "Britpop" means, either. Does it necessarily just mean BORING bands with guitars and no discernable rhythm sections who came out of England in the mid to late '90s, or what? I LOVE Placebo (their new album's real good, by the way), but the mere fact that I love them might mean that they're NOT Britpop. So: ARE Mansun or Elcka or the Auteurs Britpop? And if Placebo aren't, how come Suede are? Or aren't they? And how come Blur and Oasis aren't mere FOOTNOTES, since they're so much duller than all these other bands?? I'm so confused.

Grunge - I really like Nirvana but even Nirvana at their best aint a patch on top form Suede or Pulp IMO. Still, they were without doubt a great band. As far as the rest of grunge went, I never liked the yank screamy sound - my opinion was always of the 'what can Americans tell me about my life?" which to an extent I stick to (though The White Stripes do move me for some reason and I love them to bits) because I'm a) not American b) can't relate to being American. Plus, bands like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden always struck me as "lads" bands, there was nothing slightly effeminate there - which I think most great music has a little touch of (he says as he is about to defend Oasis).

Which is maybe why Pulp and Suede never broke America as it's about being a Brit and British issues. Maybe if I was American I'd hate Pulp and like Pearl Jam (though Eddie Veder ROCKS for his anti-Bush stance in Denver). The way American record labels work though is that they were fucked from the start, whereas American bands at least have the clout to make it anywhere. I thought it was really shit when Bush came along and they ARE fucking English lads with Seattle accents. Uergh, torrid.

More recently there's some American bands I really will flip over. The White Stripes for one, Mercury Rev and I must admit The Strokes have some pretty damn fine singles (waaaay overrated album though). Still, I do find it a pity that there's not any bands documenting life in the UK the way The Stone Roses or Suede were.

Other Britpop bands - Blur were good circa Modern Life and Parklife and 'lesser' bands such as The Bluetones, Echobelly and Sleeper I really liked. I do like Oasis as well - they are a "lads" band, I guess, but they appeal to such a large amount of people outside of that too. Liam Gallagher is the everyman down the street as well, and I think Brits tend to want their rock stars to be a bit more normal and less 'Axl Rose' like. I mean, guns and heroin say nothing to me, but pissed up arguements down the pub do... so of course I'll choose Britpop over grunge.

Heh, more or less. basically, i think of it as chirpy guitar-pop coming from britain in the mid-nineties, drawing from classic british guitar-pop influences (beatles, kinks etc). a lot of quirky, character-based songs (although this isn't a strict requirement for being britpop. the line "blur"s somewhat. boom boom).

Taking sides: Nirvana vs. Blur vs. The Strokes"

None of those bands originated any of their respective genres.

They all had moments, Britpop has Pulp BUT also had Oasis. Grunge has Nirvana BUT Stone Temple Pilots. New has White Stripes BUT Vines.

Oh, you make that sound like a *bad* thing! The first two oasis albums (and even the b-sides collection) are tremendous fun. i'd cite shed 7 and sleeper as the downside to britpop (sorry calum). dodgy and kula shaker had their moments, even OCS wrote "the day we caught the train"

Placebo were always pushed early on, and to an extent marketed as, the first post-Britpop guitar band. The Sonic Youth influences were a definite opposition to what had been heard in the charts beforehand. Plus remember that one of them's American and another's Norwegian (or Swedish. I forget). Britpop always was, amazingly enough, British. Well, actually, it was English. Engpop sounds stupid though.

This is Hardcore is better than Nevermind!

Sorry, Geir, I was unclear: I wasn't trying to imply that OCS were an Oasis clone, but that a lot of people who liked Oasis moved from that into liking OCS, and that whole dadrock scene, via the Paul Weller connection. In the same way, a lot of people who liked Blur moved from that into liking the Camdenite/social-commentary bands, some of whom - Lush for example - had been around for ages (albeit sounding completely different) but then happened to make a record which belonged entirely to that era and subgenre (ahh, Lovelife).

But, yeah, I know: rockist!

OK, now to go into generalization-land: I'm all for "new rock", in the sense of cheering it on and hoping somebody will alchemically transform their next Stooges X Blondie riff into something genuinely NEW and so forth, but here's the thing. It seems to me one of the biggest weaknesses of "new rock" bands is a tendency for their songs to lack a certain 'je ne sais quoi' to hold them together.

Mudhoney and Nirvana's songs came at you with an undeniable cohesion fueled by whateveryouwantocallit (passion, force, lunatic wit)(even if that mean having to sit through a shitty chorus from time to time), as did Oasis et al, in their own way. But listening to many White Stripes songs, for example, is oftentimes like eating a meal on a compartmentalized plate: I can admire the various offerings, but there's something slightly chilling about it.

You might say: who cares if a song "gels"? Maybe it's allright if it falls apart (see Boredoms, DNA, etc etc). Well, I agree. I actually enjoy a song audibly falling apart. A song can audibly fall apart but the energy still somehow be THERE. I'm talking about songs that are not DESIGNED to fall apart. My sense is that the new rockahs want their songs to gel and their crowds to rock out and boogie. I just think it doesn't always happen (having a bassist helps provide at least a semblance of cohesion between the extremes of percussion and lead guitar, but doesn't guarantee it).

And, I must say, there are exceptions. The YYY's phenomenal "Rich" comes to mind.

fukcing seconded there, when I saw them supporting snc yth, they were awesome, certainly one of the best bands i've ever seen.

Well, personally I have never been too fond of Weller's solo material (which is way too bluesy for my taste, plus I don't like his Steve Winwood-wannabe vocal styles much). I do love Oasis though, but I actually like OCS just as much as I like Paul Weller.

And as for "dadrock", if that means stuff like Stereophonics and the debut album by Travis, then it generally leaves me cold because of lack of actually good melodic songs. Again apart from OCS and Oasis.

Britpop was more about refining all those elements and mixing them into a new style of music rather than just repeating them. Blur might actually mix elements from mod, beat, punk and synthpop in the same song, coming up with something that sounded genuinely like Blur, but also very genuinely English. Blur had their own style by mixing elements from other styles.

Hah! When I saw them in Ann Arbor in 1989, I couldn't wait for the show to end, I wondered why I was paying so much attention to all these stupid Seattle bands that all sounded exactly the fucking same as each other, and it became clear to me once and for all that New Kids on the Block had way more to do with the future of music. And I was RIGHT, of course. (A couple years earlier, I thought it was kind of neat that a bunch of kids in Seattle wanted so much to sound like the Stooges and Black Sabbath when nobody else did, but it got old fast.) A couple years LATER, of course, Nirvana came along and fused (as Frank Kogan put it once) Husker Du style music with Husker Du style vocals, and, um, paved the way for Silverchair and Better Than Ezra and Creed. Except Husker Du were better (before 1985, of course, but let's not quibble.) (And yeah, Nirvana ripped off Die Kreuzen and Squirrel Bait and Dinosaur Jr. and Flipper and the Replacements and the first Soul Asylum album and Scratch Acid as well, but whatever.)Anyway, Chargers Street Gang, the Tie Reds, FM Knives, and the Goddam Gentlemen have many songs more realized than "Anyeurism" ever was. (What the heck does it matter if Nirvana had a bassist, anyway? It's not like the guy ever actually did anything halfway RHYTHMIC, y'know.)

Also, Polyphonic Spree have nothing to do with garage rock; they sound like Up With People, for crissakes. (God, British people are gullible.) And Rocket From The Crypt are just plain clumsy, I'm sorry.

Actually, I think he said they were "an amazing synthesis of Husker Du style music with Bob Mould style vocals." Which is even funnier.

But if that's enough, how come I'm not moved? (Not as flippant a question as it might seem.)

And if you mean this new garage punk in general -- like, if you've been completely unmoved by the Gore Gore Girls, say -- there's always the possibility that (how do they say it here?) you, um, hate fun.

Hey now. ;-) It's possibly because I'm tired today that I'm not responding to this with my usual explosive rampage, but I don't buy this and never have. Apologies for the obvious reference point, but one reason I always liked Stairway to Hell was the open embrace of fun as a straightforward rationale, and that rang true for me and then some. There's always fun to be had, and perceived clumsiness or no (I don't see it myself) RFTC feels far more fun for me than most of the folks you're citing, to take a reductionist example. This isn't a matter of claiming a position in every new switchback of a zeitgeist, it's one of saying, "Hey, I really like this!" I don't think you don't hate fun for not liking RFTC more than the Gore Gore Girls; in fact I'd be annoyed with myself for even thinking that way!

Heh. Drop the second don't, please. ;-)

I meant "lots of stuff THAT'S new and rock doesn't move me either."

Which is slightly different, I suppose. (I mean, the Libertines are NOT "as rock" as the Chargers Street Gang. And they're also newer.)

Hmm...

Two words: George Bush

About to get a second term methinks.

"Who is more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?"

I wasn't saying Brits weren't gullible though (although I've not met anyone yet who thinks Iraq was responsible for Sept 11th)

W-wait... so the british population actually INTENDED to put blair in office and this makes them less gullible?

Not that I buy any of the premises of this argument anyway (or of any of the arguments on this thread really.)

Anyway I pick new rock over britpop over grunge because I know less about it. But I pick Xtina's dirrty over all of them.

You have to be aware what the alternative was. It was either Blair or some pathetic Tory MP. No wonder Blair won that election.

Take 1 part Crypt / In The Red / Sympathy / Birdman sound
Blend in a cup of no wave / Gang of Four / disco not disco
Stir until lumpy

On the other hand, I don't think any of the scores of garage bands that've come out of SWEDEN in recent years have matched the music that the Nomads were making in the mid '80s. For whatever that's worth. (And are Leather Nun and Turbonegro grunge or garage? Or goth?)

starting SOUNDING like the Black Crowes, I meant. (Which is to say, when they *sold out.* They made better blues hacks than avant hacks.)

(and when I called New Bomb Turks "inept," I meant "grooveless," too.)

Er, thanks! Which point, though? :-)

I think it's pretty silly how people distrust the matching outfits thing

Quite. *whistles "Middle"*

Leather Nun were surely industrial garoths (not Gareths). Royal Trux ended up sounding better than the Black Crowes at that point anyway precisely because they weren't the Black Crowes, which every other band but them has the automatic advantage of being (or rather not being).

Except for Otis Redding, who did "Hard to Handle" WORSE than the Black Crowes. (Kogan: Otis Redding was the original Michael Bolton.)

On the other hand, mistrusting four-square oafs whose horns are too close to the swing revival for comfort is no crime, obviously!

(My first thought: "Wait, do Jimmy Eat World wear matching suits???")

I hope there are musicians reading this board. Heed Kris' words.