Hi,

Great podcast - as ever! The Word podcast is always brilliant and I look forward to listening to it whenever it's released. The Mary Poppins of podcasts - practically perfect in every way.

During this one - towards the end? - there was a lot of noise of bottles clanking in the background. Was it recycling day at Word Towers?

There was an interesting point raised, by Mark I think, that hardly any of the bands of that Steve championed from that golden age of Indie have stood the test of time.

I can think of My Bloody Valentine, Jesus & Mary Chain & The Blue Aeroplanes that I felt inspired by but for the most part I just can't see that people will be listening to Carter USM, Cud or The Sundays very much nowadays.

Why is it that we can love so much timeless music from every era but just that Indie period has very few really great bands, was it really so bad?

I have been filling in on daytime on 6 Music, and I can promise you, if you play Cud, which I am wont to do, the flurry of positive responses from - I imagine - people of a certain age (ie. in their forties) is a joy to behold.

Other bands from the same era who never quite made it (I give you: Moose, The Family Cat, Slowdive) seem to garner a similar impassioned response from a certain pocket of listeners, in the same way that some unfashionable 80s goth does (I had a request for Fields Of The Nephilim yesterday). How dull if all we heard from the early 90s on music radio was Nirvana.

The indie fans of the early 90s are out there. Not everything from any era sounds as good as it once did, years later, but it's more than just nostalgia in many cases: some fine music was made in the early 90s in this country.

Their albums were rereleased a while back and they are, I think, the most lovingly crafted reissues I own. They are head and shoulders above the so called "Deluxe" editions which tack on a second disc of some obscure live show and charge you 18 quid for the pleasure which seem to be the staple of better known bands. Instead, they are remixed, remastered with b-sides, peel sessions and obscure gems with generous running times and fantastic sleeve notes. Even better, you can pick them up for five or six quid on t'internet.

Additionally, if anyone is curious about Moose, you can pick up the reissue of their first and best album "XYZ" on Cherry Red. It's one of the most underrated albums of the 90s and one of my favourite ever albums. The reissue also includes their first ep tacked on as a bonus. Try it, you'll love it!!

I've been Spotifying the Rich and Strange Anthology and have heard 6+ excellent songs in a row (middle of CD2 onwards - I bailed out of CD1 after a diabolical You Sexy Thing).

For some reason, Cud passed me by. I think I must have put them in with Carter, GBOA and The Wonder Stuff - I shudder at the memory.

Anyone able to put together a Spotify Best of, or is it all on this album?

New Fast Automatic Daffodils please. I remember clearing one student party by playing "it's not what you know it's who you know" which seemed to be Indie #1 for about half of 1992 or 1993.

Also, a big vote for Curve, for purely musical reasons you understand.

I want to expand on what Mark Ellen said about Oasis, the charge against them (as far as I’m concerned) isn’t that they were derivative of Beatles/Floyd/Glitter band but that after a while they were derivative of themselves.

When they burst onto the scene they were genuinely filled with power and glory. My friends and I had just moved to London and everywhere you went seemed to be awash with their music. It was like being a member of the coolest gang around. They were probably like the Faces in their pomp. The fact they sounded like the Beatles didn’t matter because well oddly the Beatles weren’t as famous then as they are now and anyway what’s wrong with sounding like the Fabs or Pink Floyd?

No the problem came after their 2nd LP when they started to recycle their own material. The only innovation being just to make songs longer and louder. This was when Liam narcissism destroyed his Rock Star glamour and Noel turned outsider grit into self deluded self justification. They were victims of their own success; why bother changing/evolving their formula when it still produced stadia filled with shouty lads and flights in choppers to festivals.

But (and their ardent supporters won’t admit this) nobody went to their gigs for their new songs and their first 2 LPs provided enough for the fans to bawl along too. Sure each new LP sold well but how many times did anyone listen to it and for instance how many times have people requested songs from the later Cds on the radio?

So Oasis had a brief marvellous purple patch and then success and a lack of music curiosity killed any interest in them other than for fans of their beery chant along gigs and in the ongoing soap opera provided by the battling Gallagher clan.

Many a 20something newskool indie bod can often be found raving about them on the likes of Drowned In Sound, and there's a hatful of blogs that often bang on about their early stuff. Their debut is still a classic if you ask me and miles better than the debuts by say The Smiths or The House Of Love.

Cracking podcast by the way.

Hadn't had wind of it before this podcast but the Creation documentary Steve's involved in sounds really interesting.

There's a ton of Melody Maker Singles of the Week weighing down the shelves in my living room, and there is a lot from the Shoegazing*, pre-Britpop era in there. From among the Slowdive, Chapterhouse, Moose, Catherine Wheel, Love Kittens, FishMonkeyMan and all the rest, the only band I still dig out on a regular basis is Ride.

Going Blank Again is a terrible title but a sublime album. Even their classic rock pastiche, Carnival of Light, has its seriously wonderful moments.

And, incidentally, I can't speak for the NME readers, but when the Manics first appeared, Melody Maker was incredibly negative about them. It wasn't until I heard the monumental joy that is Love's Sweet Exile that I realised the Maker was wrong.

*MM referred to it as 'The Scene That Celebrates Itself'.

http://www.creation-records.com/blog/2009/11/new-trailer-for-upside-down...

David Hepworth opines that once a band is big in America, it's big for life. But what about all those second generation British electro-pop bands of the 80s that had hits in the U.S. and were never heard from again? I'm thinking here of The Fixx, Wang Chung, and a Flock of Seagulls (although that haircut retains a far more secure place in pop history than the music ever did).

'Name a band that was big in the States that now isn't' i give you The Cranberries. They reformed recently. I don't remember anyone giving much of a toss.

"I Just Shot John Lennon"

It was the fearful night of December 8th.
He was returning home from the studio late.
He had perseptively known that it wouldn't be nice.
Because in 1980, he paid the price.

John Lennon died. [X6]

With a Smith & Wesson 38,
John Lennon's life was no longer a debate.
He should have stayed at home,
He should have never cared,
And the man who took his life declared,

He said I just shot John Lennon.
He said I just shot John Lennon.
What a sad and sorry and sickening sight.
What a sad and sorry and sickening night.
What a sad and sorry and sickening sight.
What a sad and sorry and sickening night.

Ah, ah ah ah, ah...

(actual lyrics)

... I did in fact ask the question about Oasis. I was getting at two things really. Chris G has nailed the first one, which is that Oasis declined into self parody around the time of the second album (or the "Whatever" single to be precise). And while not a massive fan - I do still rate the first album.
I think the second point was about the sophistication of the music. The reason that pre-Oasis indie was inextricably linked to students was because it aimed to achieve somthing a bit deeper and more creative than mainstream pop and rock, whether it be lyrically (the Auteurs, Carter) or sonically (MBV, Stereolab). There was I recall, prior to Oasis, a real feeling of injustice that whatever band you were into were not selling as many records as whatever corporate nonsense was around at the time. So the idea that someone on Creation would break through was quite exciting and with their first album Oasis at least went against the grain of the maintstream. The eventual upshot, however, was that "Indie" became about ambition rather than creativity. Instead of chasing your imagination, these bands were after your cash. Now I know that things are never clear cut; part of what makes the Parklife album so special is that sense of being on the brink of something special. However, post-Oasis, the idea that bands might be driven by a love of creativity over a thirst for success, has become unfashionable. And the fact that some of the early nineties stuff sounds dated is largely due to how well it matches current trends in retro music. There was a time (probably in the early nineties) when 80s music sounded dated, but now with the current crop of bands drawing on that era, it sounds less so.
The challenge for the listener is to try and go beyond current trends and identify the true value of a record. The reason I mention Carter is purely beacuse their sound is one that many would perceive to have dated badly (partly due to the shoestring production budget). And this, unfortunately gets in the way of their brilliantly inspired lyrics, which capture early 90s life in inner London better than any other band I can think of... but then New Cross isn't Greenwich Village...

Noel Gallagher was knocked sideways by the lukewarm Q review for What's the Story. I remember how sore he was about it for months afterwards and I thought it knocked his creativity back - pretty much everything that followed was defensive, big on attitude and small on ideas - not that many of the ideas had originally been his of course. Maybe after he'd exhausted 66-68 Beatles, the Stones, Sly, Slade, Gary Glitter etc influences/borrowings, he just needed someone to introduce him to some new sounds - I wonder what Be Here Now might have sounded like if he'd been trying to recraft Roxy Music, Syd Barrett, Gram Parsons, Joni Mitchell or the Beach Boys.

Of course, whether Liam's voice would ever lend itself to more subtle fare is another matter.

But then to make up for that, Q gave the follow-up 5 stars, losing most of its credibility in the process and beginning its long descent into mediocrity.

Great podcast, kept me entertained through part of my long run in the rain yesterday.

Was watching an "Fools and Horses" the night before listening to Steve on the podcast. Sorry, Steve, couldn't get Trigger out of my head as you were talking. Immensely enjoyable podcast all the same.