there's nothing more out of fashion than that which is only recently out of fashion. *however*...

Actually no, and they were baggy anyway.

Northern Uproar are in with a shout, but the real undiscovered classic Britpop album must surely be Mornington Crescent by My Life Story.

Supplementary question: when the music mags start writing their articles about how great BritPop was and publishing their lists of "100 Best BritPop albums", and the record labels start releasing endless variations on the theme of "Greatest BritPop Album In The World.... Evah!!!!"; which band that was actually reasonably significant at the time, will inexplicably have been air-brushed out of history and not appear in any of these articles / charts / compilations?

My money's on the Boo Radleys.

It's been done already!

Oh, that's something to look forward to...

Besides, Britpop is already being revived! All these books, that film, the Guardian retrospectives... it's already happening!

from the same shop last year i got the double vinyl (with free
'canadian french bean soup' 7 inch) version of the 'c'mon kids' lp
for 50 p.

Big hiatus prevented Elastica from having the same kind of profile as bands like Supergrass though, didn't it? Kind of bullet-in-foot thing there.

True; and now I come to think of it, it's already far too late for Blur to be able to avoid making a mockery of anything they might ever have been.

I don't know - but they released a "Best Of" a few months ago and that's frequently a bad sign!

Dubstar def not britpop.

the Inspiral hem "reform" will set the world on fire. in my small world

Also a member of Elastica just released a 7" with her new band. Don't know which ex-member, but it's not Justine Frischmann.

It's weird -- they've been playing a quick American tour, and friends who saw them in LA and SF raved about the shows (and Damon apparently has been showing signs of -- whisper it -- humility, as when he realized they were playing a small 200-person club in Phoenix but apparently put on a spectacular show nonetheless). So who knows -- but I'm reminded of the comment I heard that with the success of the Gorillaz Blur is now Damon's experimental side project.

I'll believe it when I see it. And I don't plan on seeing it.

You'll note I didn't go to the shows.

Guess what, Suede have a 'Best of' coming soon.

Klang = k-boring live, at least when I've seen them.

My prediction: Shed Seven

I hope it does -- it's a good album.

Heh, well, I think everyone did really. But I always had a soft spot for them, if only cause the NME seemed so hell-bent on Crushing Them Like Leetle Tiny Ants and making it genuinely socially unacceptable among its readership to have any positive thoughts about them whatsoever. When I was 13 things like Inbetweener and Nice Guy Eddie were ace and bouncy and great, and if Pleased To Meet You wasn't by any means a classic fantastic-difficult album, it was a pretty good one.

they were v definitely in their own 4 band scene
that was st et, w.o.t, paris angels and flowered up.

Also: Denim reissues please YES.

it was considered extremely funny a year later.

Blur in particular probably won't be understood by a lot of people til many years down the line.

I can imagine that a critical reevaluation of Oasis will eventually occur, but that music won't age very well.

Could this possibly mean that Mr Shillingford and crew are still out there somewhere, possibly playing to 5 men and a dog every Friday and Saturday night on the Northern club circuit)

Also, and perhaps more importantly, has anyone heard Joined Up Talking and if so, what's it like?

Thry split up after "If You Can't Live Without Me Then Why Aren't You Dead Yet" (best title EVAH btw), as I recall, so the tail end of 2000.

Could this possibly mean that Mr Shillingford and crew are still out there somewhere, possibly playing to 5 men and a dog every Friday and Saturday night on the Northern club circuit)

Try this for starters: http://www.exileinside.com/

It's Jake's latest project, a Marrillion-esque exercise in online self-sufficiency. Not sure if it actually worked, but the album's a great electro-pop-baroque thing, and his voice is still wikkid.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, has anyone heard Joined Up Talking and if so, what's it like?

I own this record. It's patchy but there are three or four slices of brilliance including the above-mentioned "IYCLWMTWAYDY" and the "It's A Girl Thing" single for which I've always had a soft spot. I'll dig it out and have another listen, now you come to mention it.

Never mention my name in that company again. Feh. I think they became Four Stories, or however the fuck they spell it. Yeah. Who cares. Die, wibbling Oxford indie bands, die!

and this is a BAD THING ?

how about - you know those cloying remixes of the cure that go on for ages? for no apparent reason? o.k., picture that, but minus the cure song.

My earliest memory of Pete Baran is him singing "Girl A, Girl B, Boy C".

(Look, what do I know, OK?)

The Select 'we'd rather (Union) Jack' issue is for me the first time that scene actually registered as Britpop. That and an issue of The Face where Louise Wener claimed to be 24. I liked Louise Wener a lot, but I could see people NOT liking her because of the way printed conversations were mediated. And journalists who did not get Riot Grrrl and used it in formulating interview questions to female groups in the three years that followed tended to be pejorative about it, creating a rift. Also, Louise and Sonia weren't scenesters who had insinuated themselves over the previous five years,like a Damon or a Justine or a Jarvis. The Pulp/St Et axis was important because lots of people in it had connections, thus:

Pulp's renaissance began when Bob Stanley released My Legendary Girlfriend on Caff (a year earlier, they'd approached Nicholas Currie of this parish to produce them, and he thought they were way OMD so turned them down). They did a LOT of work/touring together: BS' girlfriend at the time, Selina Nash, was the cover star of Foxbase Alpha, in a band, Golden, with her sister - who were the sisters in the video for Babies. The Nash sisters were the daughters of a 60s Kings Road hairdresser and his French model wife, and they grew up in Windsor with Andy Weatherall and Sarah Cracknell, who went out with Lawrence from Felt for ages and used to get all these people in bands on Cherry Red and Creation work as extras in the period dramas directed by her dad at Shepperton. So you can turn on these old teatime dramas of a Sunday afternoon and check Lawrence and various Servants and members of Biff Bang Pow! as costumed extras. and Pete Wiggs' girl Jane had a little sister, Carrie, who with her best friend Jacqui were Manics freaks with a fanzine. They formed Shampoo after a stint writing sassy reviews for the NME.

Bob Stanley was here a really great conceptualist who got hold of Pulp and the Manics and Stereolab and understood them before all others. And for his own group, just applied his aesthetic to manufactured pop and manufactured some, while directing the listener towards a visual/cinematic syllabus ('pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' being the rule for pop Svengalis). His aesthetic involved rainy afternoons, Joe Meek and French ya-ya pop, but it didn't feel retro or Anglo at the time, because of the technology and Francophilia involved.

Look, just because you're trying to exorcise your love of Radiohead, there's no reason to attack the Jazz Butcher!

You can do what you like to Ride and Hurricane No. 1 'though.

I'm not saying MLS were a good band but they were a band who released an album where they did what they did as well as it could be done.

Tom, that's the single most Euphemistic sentence I think I've ever read. Brilliant!

Die, wibbling Oxford bands, die. Cause Radiohead are from Abingdon anyway, so there. (And Ride from Banbury, la la la la la)

Radiohead went to school together in Abingdon, true, but they're not *from* Abingdon any more than I'm *from* Tonbridge, or Leicester, or Hamburg, or Sydney, or any of the other places I've been forced to live in to further my "education".

They're from Oxford, and that's that, and they wibble, let's face it, so Kate, you clearly must want them DEAD!

And they are SO from Abingdon, they lived there as well as going to school there, and erm... MELISSA TO THREAD, STAT!!!!

Thanks for the props, people. I thought it was known around here that I met with 4th Estate in '98 at their behest, as they were looking for someone to write a Britpop book (which I wanted to call Cruel Britannia) who was an insider, but literary and published in a not-rock-biog way. A few things mitiated against: my hatred of Wazzes, many concerned parties not willing at the time to unburden themselves of drugs or telling about them, and I have to say also that the amount of social involvement I had would have made the book less journalistic and more emotive. So really I had to pass, even though I'd started meeting up with Alan Mc about it (he thinks it all started at Syndrome) and talking to Suede folk before I thought 'too early'. And I like what John Harris made of the opportunity anyway.

Actually Mr Fish was born in London and formed the band while he was living in Oxford; so ner ner ner ner ner to you back with (k?)nobs on times a million million million billion and no returns!

....the twat!

Sadly, no.

It had never ocurred to me before but maybe, after Pat Fish had failed to nick Dave from us, he started to ask himself "hmmm, so where can I find another bass player who can play "Kick In The Eye"?

My role in the devleopment of modern music has obviously been far more pivotal than I had previously realised.

There was the punk one was Sub-Active (80-82)
Then there was the gothy / industrial one called Requiem (82-83 - you wouldn't have seen them 'though 'cos that was while I was in Oxford)
Then there was the jangly / indie one called Three Second Touch (83-84)
Then there was the mad funky one called West One (84-85)

I remember West One, but I don't remember seeing you play.

Pulp - Comsat Angels I think.

; - )

Well it certainly explains why we both know the true definition of punk - you must have been listening to me and taking notes (in fact I bet you've got a secret stash of old copies of Grinding Halt at home)!