Entertainment For Lively Minds
Elegy for forgotten Britpop albums: now with audio from Mr Britpop himself, Steve Lamacq
Posted by Fraser Lewry on 12 October 2010 - 9:16am.
So taken were we with backwards7's Elegy for Britpop albums destined never to be rereleased as Deluxe Remastered Editions that we decided it needed to be read aloud. And who better to provide the right tone than the King of Britpop himself, Steve Lamacq? Steve kindly obliged, we added some Mahler, and clumsily put together a slideshow. The rest, as The Verve so rightly said, is History.
How can pictures of Echobelly...
... and the voice of Steve Lamacq combined with the words of backwards7 stir such emotion?
*cries for his lost nineties youth*
Perfect!
Quite brilliant. Bloody big well done to all involved.
Hats off...
...David, Fraser that is brilliant. B7 take a bow, mate. *Applause* *Author author*
I love it
Just brilliant. backwards7 - fabulous stuff.
I had read..
..Backwards7's beautiful poem in my head using the voice of Sam Hunt. This is infinitely better, thank you.
Excellent!
Can we have it on a cover mounted cassette?
I LOVE this blog.
This is so perfect and such a damn nice thing to do, I find I have more than a little something in my eye. Close to infinite kudos to all concerned. B7 for the words, Steve "Return Of" Lamacq for the voice, and all at Word towers. You lot are the best of good people.
Anthemic.
Sonic cathedrals of sound and all that.
Just wonderful
Thankyou.
Britpop's finest hour
Well done everyone
Wow
I'm speechless, what an amazing 3:24 I've just enjoyed.
Faber and Faber
will be on the phone any minute now..
That
has cheered me up no end.
One of those rare moments when seemingly disparate points of reference have come together and synthesised to create a wonderous synergy in the Universe.
Bravo.
Kudos to all concerned.Loved it.
Great stuff
It's been said before, but backwards7: he da man.
Nitpicking
Sterling effort by all concerned, but why are The Courteeners in the slideshow? A going concern, they would have been in short trousers during the Britpop era.
Nitpick away
That's Google image search for you - search for "Northern Uproar", get The Courteeners.
And since we're nitpicking...
...the first Echobelly album is called "Everyone's Got One", not "Everybody's Got One".
I hate myself.
*gets out the glitter glue and scissors*
*makes Idiotbear an "I'm a Massive Pedant" sparkly badge*
*admires*
(PS I'm a Massive Pedant as well, you're in good company here)
YAY!
If there's a sparkly badge, I'll just get out my Standard Issue Teacher Red Pen™ and get to work!
*Throws guilt and self-loathing to the wind and embarks on a joint honours course of frolicking and pedantry*
You will have to fund that yourself under the new regime!
It's the Big Society in action.
We rely solely on Hannah and her scissors.
Hang on, isn't that a Woody Allen film?
i'd be
pissed off if i'd remembered any of their albums. Though the singer once stroked my dog(Not a Euphemism) outside the Zap club in Brighton,as did Donna and Annie from Elastica.Just realised my dog was a mover and shaker in Britpop.
Just a thought..
Shouldn't we have a Stuart Maconie remix since the word "Britpop" was one of his inventions?
I've been studiously avoiding adding to all the posts
lauding the blog of late. But, damn, that was great.
Heroic. Doomed. Valiant. Romantic. Outstanding.
Iconoclastic blog moment. This is what the internet is for.
THAT needs to be a bonus hidden track on next month's cover CD
Wonderful; big Karma Error to everyone involved in that.
I'd always wondered
what had moved Dirk so
I know realise it was the indy bands of all our yesterdays (or maybe the ghostly forms of bonehead and giggsy, for ever dancing in the waves ... or maybe not).
Every Wednesday...
...during the The Brit Pop era, I would leave the house at the crack of dawn and walk 4 miles to the 7-11. I would loiter there until the surly night clerk unpacked the new copies of Melody Maker and The NME. The weekly music press was where I first read about this new music that was coming out of London and Manchester.
I first heard these bands on the Evening Session. Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley introduced me to some great records that I still listen to, along with a smattering of really terrible ones that I can't quite bring myself to throw away.
Thanks to Dave and Steve and anyone else who had a hand in this. It was a lovely thing to come home to. I really am very touched by what you've done.
Don't mention it
what's that? Oh THAT Dave, silly me.
Brilliant b7, it's a wonderful thing.
Love, love, love, love..............
.........love, love, love it.
When the best of the year cd's are put together and the end of year charts compiled that will be my number 1.
dark days
a great piece.
i don't share the affection of the author for that time, though. abysmal me-too bands, oasis feeder combos, wannabes finding they could actually be in bands due to craven hacks paranoid of missing the next big thing and needing fodder to justify their own existence.
the nuggets compilation of that era would be a drab, thin, synthetic noise.
mascot: graham coxon on his fucking skateboard
Fucking brilliant!!
(pardon my French)
How soon until B7 is hired as a Word scribe?
let's start
a facebook page. C'mon David and mark.
Hats off !
A genius walks among us.
Don't people...
... this clever just make you sick, eh?
A great post.
On the original post by backwards7 my contribution was a "Strangelove" video.
What was I thinking?
Bit like drawing a willy on the Mona Lisa.
Sorry everyone.
Some of us have it and some of us don't.
Brilliant
Couldn't be better. Well done, young backwards7, and well done the Word for what you've done with it
Mr B7
is indeed, The Man.
Not so much a man of his word as...
... The Man of The Word.
Absolute quality
Yet another reason to love this blog, well done B7 and The Word
Brilliant Backwards!
Fantastic work from all concerned,brings back memories of sitting in the Good Mixer a couple of years ago, watching a drunk chap stagger about to Dancing In The Dark. This would indeed make a great extra or "secret track" on the Word Chritmas CD. I guess you'd never get rights to use the Mahler though!
Gasp!
Linked in the Holy Moly mailout. Ready for your close up B7?
Oh Dear
A reminder of how much sludge and vacuous self important drivel this country can produce when it really wants to. A reminder like a half remembered nightmare. I did not realize how many of these smug, thin, whining self absorbed bands there had been!
They were, and I'm quoting myself from that time period- "sh*t!".
The "hilarious" Mr Moyles interviewing Rialto at- can you guess?- Yes 5:19 one morning was a particular low point.
As the arm of history allows us to bring into focus the absolute awfulness of britpop, in all its shuddering horror, we should shiver and look away hoping that maybe, just maybe, there was a silver lining and it would have been fitted- badly (and then disposed of unwillingly) by someone from menswear... oh broken dreams I weep for you!
I feel a burden has been lifted...thank you
OK...
...I didn't understand half of that. But isn't it a bit daft to write off an entire "scene", especially one which was as disparate as Britpop? Sure, Menswear and the like aren't likely to be remembered fondly by many, but Blur? Longpigs? Half the bands on the "Lesser Britpop" thread? For one thing, they don't really cohere musically, so there's bound to be something that someone likes in amongst it all, unless you really don't like guitar music in general.