The Birth and Impact of Britpop

The Birth and Impact of Britpop
Author: Paul Laird
Publisher: White Owl
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2022-09-15
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1399017500

Remember the ninteties? Of course you do. Cool Britannia, New Labour, Blur vs Oasis, Geri Halliwell’s Union Flag dress, TFI Friday, “wasssssuuuuuuppppppp”, Opal Fruits turning into Starburst without anyone asking your permission...crazy times. This book doesn’t have anything to say about Geri’s dress or Opal Fruits but it has lots to say about Britpop. But this isn’t a book about the Britpop you think you know about, this is the story of a truly remarkable period of creativity in British guitar music told through the experiences of someone who was there from the first note of “Popscene” through to the run out groove of “This is Hardcore”. This is the story of the Britpop that didn’t make it onto the evening news or the cover of The Face. This is the story of the bands nobody remembers but that everybody should. This is the story of what it was like to be an outsider in 1991 and be too cool for school by 1994. This is the story of a magnesium flash in British popular music that has, for good or ill, defined British guitar music ever since. Here are Flamingoes and Pimlico, Strangelove and David Devant and His Spirit Wife, The Weekenders and Thurman...and Blur, Pulp, Oasis, Sleeper and Elastica too. These are Britpop memories from someone who was actually there. The definitive story of Britpop...

The Birth and Impact of Britpop

The Birth and Impact of Britpop
Author: Paul Laird
Publisher: White Owl
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2022-09-15
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1399017489

Remember the ninteties? Of course you do. Cool Britannia, New Labour, Blur vs Oasis, Geri Halliwell’s Union Flag dress, TFI Friday, “wasssssuuuuuuppppppp”, Opal Fruits turning into Starburst without anyone asking your permission...crazy times. This book doesn’t have anything to say about Geri’s dress or Opal Fruits but it has lots to say about Britpop. But this isn’t a book about the Britpop you think you know about, this is the story of a truly remarkable period of creativity in British guitar music told through the experiences of someone who was there from the first note of “Popscene” through to the run out groove of “This is Hardcore”. This is the story of the Britpop that didn’t make it onto the evening news or the cover of The Face. This is the story of the bands nobody remembers but that everybody should. This is the story of what it was like to be an outsider in 1991 and be too cool for school by 1994. This is the story of a magnesium flash in British popular music that has, for good or ill, defined British guitar music ever since. Here are Flamingoes and Pimlico, Strangelove and David Devant and His Spirit Wife, The Weekenders and Thurman...and Blur, Pulp, Oasis, Sleeper and Elastica too. These are Britpop memories from someone who was actually there. The definitive story of Britpop...

Britpop and the English Music Tradition

Britpop and the English Music Tradition
Author: Jon Stratton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1317171225

Britpop and the English Music Tradition is the first study devoted exclusively to the Britpop phenomenon and its contexts. The genre of Britpop, with its assertion of Englishness, evolved at the same time that devolution was striking deep into the hegemonic claims of English culture to represent Britain. It is usually argued that Britpop, with its strident declarations of Englishness, was a response to the dominance of grunge. The contributors in this volume take a different point of view: that Britpop celebrated Englishness at a time when British culture, with its English hegemonic core, was being challenged and dismantled. It is now timely to look back on Britpop as a cultural phenomenon of the 1990s that can be set into the political context of its time, and into the cultural context of the last fifty years - a time of fundamental revision of what it means to be British and English. The book examines issues such as the historical antecedents of Britpop, the subjectivities governing the performative conventions of Britpop, the cultural context within which Britpop unfolded, and its influence on the post-Britpop music scene in the UK. While Britpop is central to the volume, discussion of this phenomenon is used as an opportunity to examine the particularities of English popular music since the turn of the twentieth century.

Don't Look Back In Anger

Don't Look Back In Anger
Author: Daniel Rachel
Publisher: Trapeze
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2019-09-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1409180735

The nineties was the decade when British culture reclaimed its position at the artistic centre of the world. Not since the 'Swinging Sixties' had art, comedy, fashion, film, football, literature and music interwoven into a blooming of national self-confidence. It was the decade of Lad Culture and Girl Power; of Blur vs Oasis. When fashion runways shone with British talent, Young British Artists became household names, football was 'coming home' and British film went worldwide. From Old Labour's defeat in 1992 through to New Labour's historic landslide in 1997, Don't Look Back In Anger chronicles the Cool Britannia age when the country united through a resurgence of patriotism and a celebration of all things British. But it was also an era of false promises and misplaced trust, when the weight of substance was based on the airlessness of branding, spin and the first stirrings of celebrity culture. A decade that started with hope then ended with the death of the 'people's princess' and 9/11 - an event that redefined a new world order. Through sixty-eight voices that epitomise the decade - including Tony Blair, John Major, Noel Gallagher, Damon Albarn, Tracey Emin, Keith Allen, Meera Syal, David Baddiel, Irvine Welsh and Steve Coogan - we re-live the epic highs and crashing lows of one of the most eventful periods in British history. Today, in an age where identity dominates the national agenda, Don't Look Back In Anger is a necessary and compelling historical document.

Lunch With The Wild Frontiers

Lunch With The Wild Frontiers
Author: Phill Savidge
Publisher: Jawbone Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781911036494

Phill Savidge is widely credited as being the main instigator of the Britpop music movement that swept the UK in the mid-1990s. Savidge was co-founder and head of legendary public relations company Savage & Best, the company that represented most of the artists associated with the scene, including Suede, Pulp, The Verve, Elastica, Kula Shaker, Spiritualized, Menswear, The Auteurs, and Black Box Recorder. Savidge suggests that Britpop came about "by accident" because he refused to represent any American bands. He subsequently ended up with an extremely accessible, media-friendly roster that "lived ’round the corner" and included the most exciting press-worthy acts of the era. His unique experience at the epicentre of Britpop led to many intimate, not entirely self-congratulatory encounters with a who’s who of popular culture — including Brett Anderson, Damon Albarn, Roy Orbison, David Bowie, Joe Strummer, Lou Reed, Michael Barrymore, Richard Ashcroft, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Mick Jagger, George Lucas, Damien Hirst, and Dave Stewart, among others. But did he really Sellotape a cassette of Suede’s Animal Nitrate single to a purple velvet cushion — with a note that said "another great disappointment" — and then bike it to the NME? And could he and Jarvis Cocker really have fallen out simply because a journalist thought he was more glamorous than the Pulp front man? If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to represent Hirst, Cocker, and The Verve in the same decade, and then wake up in bed with Keith Allen in the Ritz in Paris — courtesy of Mohammed Al Fayed — then you should read this book. Imagine David Sedaris with a hangover and an expense account and you’re halfway to appreciating the delinquent delights of Lunch With The Wild Frontiers.

I Was Britpopped

I Was Britpopped
Author: Jenny Natasha
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-11-02
Genre: Popular music
ISBN: 9781908853929

The first truly comprehensive guide to the Britpop movement; for anyone who grew up in the nineties, and for some who didn't...

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2012-03-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0802194753

A New York Times bestseller: The “magnificent” memoir by one of the bravest and most original writers of our time—“A tour de force of literature and love” (Vogue). One of the New York Times’ “50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” Jeanette Winterson’s bold and revelatory novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. Her internationally best-selling debut, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, and has become a staple of required reading in contemporary fiction classes. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a “singular and electric” memoir about a life’s work to find happiness (The New York Times). It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in a north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the universe as a cosmic dustbin. It is the story of how a painful past, rose to haunt the author later in life, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also a book about the power of literature, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, or a life raft that supports us when we are sinking. Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded story of the search for belonging—for love, identity, home, and a mother.

The Giver

The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 054434068X

The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. This movie tie-in edition features cover art from the movie and exclusive Q&A with members of the cast, including Taylor Swift, Brenton Thwaites and Cameron Monaghan.

Hope in the Dark

Hope in the Dark
Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2016-05-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1608465799

“[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes” (Vice). A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of activists at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. “One of the best books of the 21st century.” —The Guardian “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter “An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.” —The New Yorker

It Takes Blood and Guts

It Takes Blood and Guts
Author: Skin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2020-09-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1471194930

'One of the most important females in British music of my lifetime.' Colin Murray 'A beautiful, raw and exhilarating book that will leave you feeling empowered.' Fearne Cotton ‘The pioneering Skunk Anansie frontwoman’s memories offer a very different take on the Britpop era…Skin’s story is one of a rhomboid peg spurning both the round and square hole, drilling dimensions of her own…We now have a lot of language – intersectionality, microaggressions – to describe many of the events in this memoir. However, nothing can really equal candid, first-hand experience, recounted matter of factly here. It would be instructive for anyone who thought they knew the story of the 90s to spend 300 pages in Skin’s Skin.’ OBSERVER ‘The epic tale of Glastonbury’s Black British headliner… Skin is one of the Britpop decade’s forgotten epics… Skin’s feet are positioned firmly on the ground throughout; she’s a winningly genial, sweary soul on paper. 4 stars’ Jude Rogers, MOJO ‘The former Skunk Anansie singer pulls no punches in this heady trawl through her life from tough beginnings in Brixton to work as an LGBTQ+ activist and beyond’ The I 'It’s the story of a trailblazer, and gives a refreshingly re-angled perspective on the Britpop era.' Evening Standard, 'Best music books of 2020' Lead singer of multi-million-selling rock band Skunk Anansie, solo artist, LGBTQ+activist and all around trail blazer – Skin is a global icon, and she has been smashing stereotypes for over twenty-five years. Her journey from Brixton to one of the most influential women in British rock is nothing short of extraordinary. ‘It’s been a very difficult thing being a lead singer of a rock band looking like me and it still is. I have to say it’s been a fight and it will always be a fight. That fight drives you and makes you want to work harder… It’s not supposed to be easy, particularly if you’re a woman, you’re black or you are gay like me. You’ve got to keep moving forward, keep striving for everything you want to be.’ Born to Jamaican parents, Skin grew up in Brixton in the 1970’s. Her career as an artist began in the ‘90s, when Skunk Anansie was formed in the sweat-drenched backrooms of London’s pubs. Since then she has headlined Glastonbury and toured the world, both as lead singer of Skunk Anansie and as a solo artist. Her success has been groundbreaking in every way, which has come at a personal cost. She has always been vocal about social and cultural issues, and was championing LGBTQ+ rights at a time when few artists were out and gay. Told with honesty and passion, this is the story of how a gay, black, working-class girl with a vision fought poverty and prejudice to write songs, produce and front her own band, and become one of the most influential women in British rock.