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90s british 'alternative' music - it was shit wasn't it?

Vixen said:
they sure are!
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Aww, I liked the first album...'Queer' and 'Stupid Girl' were top drawer tunes...! :( :o

Renegade Dog: Garbage contained one Scottish member and relocated to the UK for much of the '90s IIRC. But you're right, they did owe a major debt to Curve, who were another overlooked gem of a band.

Three more: The Cranes, Verve (pre-The...) and Moose. I'd also mention Lush and Swervedriver, but I reckon their debuts were also in '89.
 
acid priest said:
Aww, I liked the first album...'Queer' and 'Stupid Girl' were top drawer tunes...! :( :o

Renegade Dog: Garbage contained one Scottish member and relocated to the UK for much of the '90s IIRC. But you're right, they did owe a major debt to Curve, who were another overlooked gem of a band.

Three more: The Cranes, Verve (pre-The...) and Moose. I'd also mention Lush and Swervedriver, but I reckon their debuts were also in '89.
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I was thinking of Lush, Ladykiller is a brilliant track.
 
If we can have Lush - then I'd like to include The Sundays who were excellent - but I think their debut must have come out around 89.
 
Major Tom said:
If we can have Lush - then I'd like to include The Sundays who were excellent - but I think their debut must have come out around 89.
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Yeah, twas February '89 IIRC. It took them more than 18 months to get the first album out though. Strange how they lost that initial inky press-fuelled edge they had, though - they somehow drifted into pre-dance makeover EBTG coffee table obscurity afterwards.
 
Chorlton said:
has someone recently covered a swervedriver song recently? (mustang ford?) i thought i heard it a while back on the radio....
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no idea, but a best of comp came out on sanctuary this year, so maybe it was the original being played off that.
 
to be honest i think it's a bit daft of people (including myself) to discount bands as being "90s alternative bands" just becsue they started out in the 80s. any band that had a significant output during the 90s should surely count? we can't just discount primal scream and PWEI just cos they started in the 80s - PWEI did some fine work in the 90s - the PWEI cure for sanity, the looks or the lifestyle, dos dedos mes amigos....
 
milesy said:
to be honest i think it's a bit daft of people (including myself) to discount bands as being "90s alternative bands" just becsue they started out in the 80s. any band that had a significant output during the 90s should surely count? we can't just discount primal scream and PWEI just cos they started in the 80s - PWEI did some fine work in the 90s - the PWEI cure for sanity, the looks or the lifestyle, dos dedos mes amigos....
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Including their greatest '90s moment of all IMO, '...Auslander'. A vicious track. :cool:
 
10 years ago this would have been abuot 80s music being shite, and how the smiths were the only good band

and in 10 years time.....
 
I think it's quite interesting, there really wasn't much going on, compared to the US. Never thought of it before.
 
milesy said:
to be honest i think it's a bit daft of people (including myself) to discount bands as being "90s alternative bands" just becsue they started out in the 80s. any band that had a significant output during the 90s should surely count? we can't just discount primal scream and PWEI just cos they started in the 80s - PWEI did some fine work in the 90s - the PWEI cure for sanity, the looks or the lifestyle, dos dedos mes amigos....
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...especially as the sound of both groups changed so significantly with the decades. poppies went from buzzsaw pop to their fucked up take on hip hop, primals went from perfect byrdsian pop to being kasabian's granddads.
 
acid priest said:
Just checked on discogs.com - 'Scar' was out in September '89. :)
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anorak.jpg


;)
 
ianw said:
...especially as the sound of both groups changed so significantly with the decades. poppies went from buzzsaw pop to their fucked up take on hip hop, primals went from perfect byrdsian pop to being kasabian's granddads.
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fuck off tony parsons
 
ianw said:
...especially as the sound of both groups changed so significantly with the decades. poppies went from buzzsaw pop to their fucked up take on hip hop, primals went from perfect byrdsian pop to being kasabian's granddads.
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There's nothing quite like the shock of the new though - a completely fresh band coming from nowhere with an untainted take on the sound of the moment. A little like it felt to encounter The Smiths, The Jesus & Mary Chain and SFA for the first time. :cool:
 
i remember that program abuot britpop last year, and the thing that hit me was that while london and manchester were all doing their 70s revival crap. bristol came up with massive attack (and tricky) and portishead and roni size etc

(newcastle meanwhile, was into dutch happy hardcore)
 
Ninjaboy said:
i remember that program abuot britpop last year, and the thing that hit me was that while london and manchester were all doing their 70s revival crap. bristol came up with massive attack (and tricky) and portishead and roni size etc
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because, of course, there was no jungle or house or techno or anything coming out from manchester and london in the mid nineties. it was just blur and oasis.
 
milesy said:
because, of course, there was no jungle or house or techno or anything coming out from manchester and london in the mid nineties. it was just blur and oasis.
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pop music i meant....
 
MysteryGuest said:
There was a band called Thule (not to be confused with a dodgy right-wing outfit called Ultima Thule or a later Scandinavian band with the same name) who did some mindblowingly original music around 1989-92. They used guitars and samples/keyboards to utterly unique effect. And they were astounding live as well. Never heard anything like them before or since.
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I remember them....whatever happened to....??
 
easy g said:
I remember them....whatever happened to....??
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Blimey - nobody else does... though I'm not surprised you do :p


By curious coincidence, the receptionist in the place I worked at in 1997 or so was friends with their lead singer, and brought in a demo they'd done of one of their new songs. But I forgot to ask her to have a listen, so I never heard it. They apparently changed their name to xx-NIL, where "xx" was the last two digits of the current year. So if they were still going, they'd be called 05-NIL I suppose...
 
Another vote for the stuffies here (except the really jangly-jangly cheery stuff)

And if we're being pedantic with the eighties thing, you can't have pulp (best. band. ever.) either, obviously.

But isn't it a matter of did they make great tunes during a large chunk of the eighties?

and if we play on that field - I'd like to stick Blur back in to the running (ignoring Great escape and swathes of parklife, natch.)

Mind you, I loved sleeper at the time... :o
 
spanglechick said:
And if we're being pedantic with the eighties thing,
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I don;t know if its being pedantic - its more to do with what happened in the 80s in "alternative" music - there was a massive wave of new bands - on that thread about the obscure 80s indie bands - the list went on and on - and they were all new bands.

Try that with the 90s and there just isn;t the same number of bands - as others have pointed out there were in America - but not in Britain.

although that's probably because dance music had hit big and no-one was interested in guitar music any more.

I don;t want to quibble with the "was the debut released in 89 or 90" thing - more that I am struck by the fact that at no point in the 90s did a new alternative music scene appear - more that people spent the 90s discovering how good the 80s were - in indie at least.
 
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