Chuffing LOVED Kula Shaker! They were around at the same as the whole BritPop phenomenon, but they weren’t really of a piece with it. Well, maybe if the whole movement was referencing 60s British pop groups (another debate for another thread!), Kula Shaker were the psych-pop, George Harrison mucking about with sitars, tie-dyed end of it. But Crispian Mills’ way with a guitar was a breed apart from BritPop; I don’t claim he was a latter-day Hendrix or anything, I just mean his style sounded more like a guitar-worshipping Blackmore fan than his peers’ did.
And if anyone’s cover of Hush was pointless, I’d say it was Purple’s.
Nobody’s mentioned Suede yet: cross-pollinating Bowie and The Smiths was always going to ensure a fairly Anglocentric constituency, but of all the bands of that era, to my ears they’ve lasted the best. And Dog Man Star was a fucking masterpiece: Asphalt World was Bernard Butler and Brett Anderson’s bid to succeed The Who, and it’s fucking immense.
Kind of reminding me, for some reason, what about Teenage Fanclub? I have no idea how big they were in England, but I know they are very well respected in the music world (heck, I remember buying Bandwagonesque back in the 90s even here in the US.) IIRC, I seem to remember them even making a Saturday Night Live appearance, but I can’t ever remember hearing their music on US radio.
There was a time when every vaguely hip US band who passed through Glasgow had Teenager Fanclub as support. I think I only actually went to see them headlining their own gig once or twice (plus one gig they did with Alex Chilton which was p cool), but I saw them a lot of times on other bills.
Shit, and I just realized I wrote “how big they were in England.” I meant “the UK.”
I love their work, but I admit I never explored beyond “Bandwagonesque.” Just quickly looking on allmusic.com, it seems they’ve got a lot of work worth exploring.
Grand Prix and Songs from Northern Britain are probably the best after Bandwagonesque.
Their first album A Catholic Education has some great stuff on it, but the production is ropey as shit. Quite a lot of people have covered the live favourite Everything Flows from that album (J Mascis, Posies, Idlewild, Afghan Whigs) but I have just in the last few minutes discovered Redd Kross’s version which is great
They were big in Scotland and were championed by the UK music press during the britpop era, but despite this and having a long and productive career, they’ve only scored one UK top 20 hit. I never heard a lot of their stuff, but I couldn’t get in to them myself, there just seemed to be lots of more exciting bands around at the time.
Interesting. I always wondered how they managed to snag a gig on Saturday Night Live. I mean, I was appreciative, but it seemed a bit out of left field.
ETA: Just for fun, I decided to check out the five bands before and after them on SNL (Season 17):
MC Hammer
James Taylor
Nirvana
Robbie Robertson and Bruce Hornsby & The Range
C&C Music Factory
Teenage Fanclub
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Garth Brooks
En Vogue
Pearl Jam
Annie Lennox
OK, some of those are really dated now, and very US-centric, but I have no idea how Teenage Fanclub ended up there.
I think their name held them back; the first time I heard it, I assumed they were a manufactured bunch of teenyboppers. But yeah, great power pop band: I always loved the intro to Star Sign.
To be fair I think Numan dined out in the UK a lot on his early work, everyone remembers his first two hit singles (Are Friends Electric? and Cars), but the others not so much, despite the fact he had significant chart success. Even Numan himself has been disparaging of his work after his initial success.
And I know that Psychocandy had all the cool feedback and drone, but for a pair of Scottish smackheads, the Jesus and Mary Chain just wrote great fucking pop songs too. And the world could die in pain, and I wouldn’t feel no shame, as long as it had that filthy chiming William Reid guitar sound.
Loving this. I came to Teenage Fanclub through Big Star. I have their greatest hits album - the name is the number of seconds recorded - and really enjoy it.
OK, that makes some kind of sense. I kind of came to Teenage Fanclub via Nirvana via The Vaselines as well. But it seems really oddball for such a mainstream show and still seem a bit odd-man-out. I can’t see Nirvana having that much a pull on who shows up on SNL.