As the Wisden of Britpop, Select magazine's rise, pomp, hubris and humbling mirrored that of British independent rock before, during and after the double-edged victory of Blur-and-Oasis. Listening to this four-disc set - which is shaped like a red phone box, although it could just as well have come in a Mini, a scale model of the Good Mixer pub or wrapped in a little kagoul - was akin to having my younger life flash before me. The 90s are a little too recent to be loved as unequivocally (and indulgently) as the 60s and 70s. Maybe they never will be, now that the historical reissue has become the music business's main stock-in-trade and nothing is left alone to develop a mystery of its own.

There is, however, no denying the historical fascination. Beginning with The Smiths, ending 75 tracks later with Gay Dad and hygienically free of dance music, The Brit Box shows how we travelled from the charming/twee "hello trees, hello flowers" parochialism of the late 80s to the place British rock finds itself today, a harder-faced environment where the triumphalism of Oasis and their camp followers locked the world of "newindiebands" into a self-perpetuating loop of competitive behaviour and hollow bonhomie. Even a decade later it shows little signs of escaping.

Covering the late 1980s (by which time the 90s had effectively begun anyway) Disc One is pure student disco and endlessly enjoyable: Step On, Loaded, There She Goes, Inspiral Carpets' lovely and undervalued kitchen sink epic This Is How It Feels and Crash, the sole hit by The Primitives, whose comely singer Tracey Tracey was the Fresher's Week pin-up of the pre-Loaded, Student Grant years (Philip Larkin was wrong: sex did not begin in 1963 but a hell of a lot later). Got a hangover and a 9 o'clock lecture? Here are the Cocteau Twins, Felt and The Shop Assistants, bands which led to a multi-lateral treaty banning the word "ethereal" from use outside a medical context. As the CD progresses you can hear British bands acquiring the ambition and flintiness that would raise them high and ultimately lay them low. Still, I can't imagine who would want She Bangs The Drums but not yet own it. This first disc is a greatest hits in all but name.

Disc Two is the sonic sludge of the shoegazing years, the interregnum between baggy and grunge when groups from better schools and nicer houses moved into the place recently vacated by drug-scuppered urchins. They had listened to a lot of early Pink Floyd and it showed, mainly in lots of "soundscapes" and singing of unparalleled weediness. These were the raw materials that we had to work with on Select magazine - a monosyllabic parade of Moose, Curve, Lush, Ride, Bleach; the definitive article missing, presumed dead - and it was a tough row to hoe I can tell you. These were the last days when bands would claim to make music for themselves, and that if anyone else liked it then it's a bonus, and actually mean it. By 1993, anyone with a borrowed guitar and a Brian Jones haircut was honour-bound to claim his was the best band in Britain and punch the journalist, or go home. Though Lush's For Love is sweet, the Dance Energy scratchin'-'n'-breaks on Chapterhouse's Pearl have a certain naive charm and the Manic Street Preachers are present in their transvestite years, there's not much here to sink the argument that 91-92 was a dismal trough for British music.

By Disc Three we have reached the plateau, with the true glories of Britpop - Metal Mickey, Live Forever, Stutter, Supergrass's Alright and the greatest song of the decade, Common People - sharing space with some who'd earned it (Saint Etienne, Stereolab, Gene) and some who hadn't (here are These Animal Men, the Pigeon Detectives of their day). But again, with a few exceptions such as The Boo Radley's Mersey dub excursion Lazarus, it's hard to see who would want this stuff and be unable to find a copy at home. The inescapable conclusion is that a very few bands, Pulp in particular, were disproportionately responsible for making the special moment so golden.

Disc Four confirms it, comprising largely the dregs (Sleeper, Mansun, Catatonia) and the chancers (anyone remember Rialto?). The songs which have lasted from this final CD - The Divine Comedy, Super Furry Animals, both coincidentally entitled Something For The Weekend, neither artist English - did so because they broke the orthodoxy of fuzz-plus-Beatles melodies which Britpop erected so quickly. And isn't that always the way?

From the December issue of Word.