Q for Brits...Britpop New Labour

by Huxley 7 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Huxley

  I just finished watching a documentary entitled, "Live Forever". (No intentional JW reference there..) It was about the time period in the early 90's to about 97 when Britpop was huge.

  I've been listening to a lot of music from that period lately. Early Stone Roses, Pulp, etc...The whole Britpop thing went pretty much unnoticed here, actually a fellow bethelite introduced me to a lot of it..he snuck out to see Echobelly when they played in NYC!

  It was pretty interesting. I was fascinated by the Blur/Oasis rivalry along class lines. Blur being presented as upper-middle class musicians and Oasis the rougher working class band. Was this mostly media fabrication?

  There was a lot of commentary on a general feeling of giddy enthusiasm for the labour party, and the end of the conservative rule. Was this a reality for you? If you were a JW at the time, was it a big deal? Did the whole 'neutrality' ideal come into play?

  I'm interested in your experience during that time period...

  Huxley
• 

  glitter

  1989 to 1997 were great years for music - well for me as I loved Indie and 1989 was when I started to appreciate it as a nipper (Stone Roses, Happy Mondays).
  
  Blur come from wealthier backgrounds and are uni graduates - I think that much is true - but if was more a North vs soft-Southerner type thing. Blur have been around quite a bit longer than Oasis and were cleverer than them with their lyrics etc - though I've never really got into them, I was a massive Oasis fan. Noel(?) Gallagher once said he hoped 2 members of Blur "get AIDS" which wasn't nice, but it was all good PR - though Oasis could easily have battered Blur and I'm sure they genuinely wanted to. Blur didn't seem to say a lot back to them. The media hyped up a simulataneous single release in 1995 though - Blur won but at least partly due to a cockup with the barcodes on the Oasis CDs or something.
  
  Labour kinda jumped on the bandwagon - especially with Tony Blair being a young leader, they invited all the trendy people to number 10 and things - it was "Cool Britannia". Brit Pop as it was was dying by the time Labour got in, well in comparison to say 1990 or 1995 it was.
  
  The Tories had been in power my whole life -I was a JW *and* below voting age so I didn't vote in New Labour, but I was thrilled as it was obviously a Good Thing - but Labour have been a massive let-down... and Cool Britannia was really just embarrassing "Cool Dad" :)
  
  Stone Roses we incredible. I need to go and listen to them now!
• 

  LittleToe

  Blur and Oasis certainly did have a rivalry thing going on, but I suspected that much of it was hype for the advertising. Oasis, especially, bandied threats around to pretty much everyone (one such being thrown at Jarvis Cocker).

  Everyone was pretty p*ssed at the way the Conservatives were handling the European issues, which divided the party, at the time. John Major had taken over from Margaret Thatcher, after a series of will-he, wont-he debates and votes for a new party leader. Ironically it was the Party itself, not the public, who ousted Thatcher.

  Hence the Party was pretty screwed up when "Tony" came along and won a landslide victory as the most likely Party to oppose the Tories (Conservatives). Here in Scotland the Liberals where a close second, and a deal had to be later struck, to get some kind of cohesive government.

  Since that victory Labour have seemed little better than the Tories, and their majority in the House of Commons has eroded. Many of their new Bills have been turned back by the still Tory dominated House of Lords. They, too, have had internal disputes and Party (rather than constituent) representation, which so often loses them credibility.

  Bear in mind that a lot of all this was based on a context of a deflated economy.
  Thatcher had been big on privatization and personal house ownership.
  When the bubble burst it left a lot of people broke, disenchanted, and with negative equity in their property.

  Coming back to the music, the scene was set for rebellious-style pop groups to show an expression for the resentment that had built.

  Hope that perspective helps (though I was VERY JW at the time).
• 

  Huxley

  Glitter, and LT thanks for the firsthand input.

  A few years back I bought an import bootleg cd..Stone Roses live.

  The music was great, But Ian's voice, yeesh..not so good!

  Huxley

  "I'll have what Mr. Brown is drinking."
• 

  Simon

  Labour got in on lots of false promises and "image over substance". Hell, they are even digging up the "we'll ban fox hunting" crap to get in again (as if there aren't more important things happening in the world right now!).

  At the end of the day, the tories lost their way and after 4 terms in office, people had forgot what the previous labour government had done to the country (3-day week, rubbish piled in the streets, power-cuts).

  As for the music? Fantastic ...

  Oasis are our local Manc band (like many other great groups) and as well as the great songs they are City fans to boot !

  The rivalry with Blur was hyped but the music was still great. "Definitely Maybe" is a classic album and "Married with Children" a masterpiece.
• 

  Celtic

  I'll have to pass on the views of my experiences with both Blur and Oasis, Little Toes summed that up very well anyway I thought.

  Towards the end of the 18 year reign in British politics by the Conservatives, the country was pretty much on it's knees, the rich had got richer by their very corruptness and the poorer working classes were increasingly being left out in the cold. Interests rates were soaring close to 14 and 15%, it was a terrible time, friends going bankrupt, losing everything left right and center.

  Along came Labour, who at first seemed to pick the country up into more of a bouyant mood, albeit there let downs have been too much spin and too much introduction, even more so in the system than ever before. They have been big on selling ideals, but the practical reality of bringing these social engineering systems into fruition has been courting much trouble from day one. The country however, has felt better since they came to power, though time will tell whether they really are the people in power for the working classes or not.

  Market forces have compounded the age old problem of the gap between the rich and the poor, with interests rates recently at record lows, now slowly rising again to try to stop people every where spending so much money on credit, the country is now a trillion pounds in debt, plus the gold reserves have been sold off pretty much too.

  I could trunter on, but a conversation would only suffice to explain the full picture.
• 

  City Fan

  Every time I hear Gordon Brown say 'Boom and Bust Economy' I cringe. What an arsehole. If Mr Brown ever becomes Prime Minister I'm off. I'm having a house built abroad just in case, no joke. Bring back Ken Clarke.

  Anyway, as for the music. Early nineties music was fantastic. The US had Nirvana, Chillie Peppers, Faith no More, Metallica. The UK had the Stone Roses, Oasis, Blur, The Charletans, The Happy Mondays. Dance music and the rave scene was at its peak long before big business made dance music into the boring pap it is today. I'd just left the JWs when Oasis released 'What's the Story' and I used to go into the local pub The Tavern which had about 400 people in on a Sunday night and the last song they played was always Champagne Supernova off that Oasis album. Fantastic.

  A lot of JWs still went into the Tavern pub then (and I mean at least 40 - 50 of them) and I started to get really annoyed with their double lives. Most of them still talked to me even though I'd stopped going to meetings and was smoking at the time. I even went out with a couple of JW girls who I met in the pub after I'd stopped going to meetings. They knew I'd been a JW but it didn't seem to matter too much to them. But eventually I got more friends who were normal people than JWs and knew then that I'd never go back.

  They were happy days though, before a mortgage, bills and boy-bands spoiled it all.

  CF.

  Edited to say - get the DVD '24 hour party people' which is a good film about the record label run by Antony H. Wilson and the Hacienda night club around this time.
• 

  Huxley

  Simon, Celtic, and Cityfan...

  Thanks for sharing your views/ and experiences!

  Cityfan, I loved 24hr party people! I guess I'm a coming out Anglophile.

  I've been spending way too much time here...my local English style pub.

  Actually had my first scotch egg here too...

  Huxley