10 ans déjà

siam · Message par **siam** » 12 août 2005 18:20

1994

1995

Noel a écrit :Il faudrait un peu arrêter avec ces conneries sur Blur et penser aux fans des deux groupes. Si j'avais 16 ans, j'aimerais Oasis et Blur à la fois

Message par **bruno** » 12 août 2005 18:40

dc pour suivre de dix

joli article du guardian a propos de cette periode faste en uk qui nous as tant fait rever, et qui etait tout de meme beaucoup plus excitante , au vue des groupes en vogue aujourd'hui. je me comprend

avec en prime le cox qui en parle(normal il aime desormais bien la promo et est le seul a faire encore de la britpop, c'est une remarque gratuite mais tout de meme , on ne peut plus vrai) et alan Mc GEE, qui se livre sur le fameux coup du combat des singles.
l'article est long si il y en a qui veulent un ti résumé traduit je veux bien faire, j'accepte les tickets restau.

Without Britpop, would we have had hit guitar groups, stadium anthems or rock stars on Newsnight? Ten years on, John Harris looks back on how Blur, Oasis, Pulp and co changed the face of UK music

'It was just a period of time that I felt totally confused by, really," says Graham Coxon in between gulps of his second pint of Coca-Cola. "I would do as I was told, but I had a growing resentment about what was happening. It damaged my relationship with the rest of the group and it made my personal relationships very difficult. And there was so much drinking."
It's a sun-kissed Friday morning in Camden Town, north London. Blur's one-time guitar player - now a happy and productive solo artist, about to release his sixth album - has arranged to meet me in the Good Mixer, the pub that was once a magnet for droves of pop-cultural tourists. The nominal hook for our meeting is the 10th anniversary of the episode that probably drew more people here than any other: the week starting August 14 1995, when Blur's Country House raced Oasis's Roll With It to the top of the charts, and just about every voice in the media felt compelled to express an opinion on the freshly inaugurated age of Britpop.

Coxon dispenses his memories with an expression that somehow mixes disquiet with a wry amusement - not least when he is unpicking some of the period's more ridiculous aspects. When I remind him of how absurdly nasty the Blur-Oasis rivalry became, for example, he expresses a backhanded admiration for the Gallagher brothers. Noel may have provided an ugly coda to the supposed battle by expressing the wish that Blur's Damon Albarn and Alex James would "catch Aids and die", but Coxon will at least credit him and his brother with an admirable honesty. "At least they were outright about it," he says. "At least they said, 'We hate you, you bastards.' They weren't pretending to like us and then slagging us off, which is what we'd been used to. In that way, I quite appreciated them."
He is not the only one who looks back on the time with a mixture of humour and unease. When I meet Justine Frischmann, Albarn's one-time partner and the former leader of Elastica, her recollections betray much the same qualities. "The whole thing was so bitchy," she marvels. "I always feel kind of dirty after I've talked about Britpop. A bit tainted, somehow. Even at the time, it seemed vaguely nauseating."

For her and Coxon, Britpop was ultimately something to reject rather than embrace. Looking back, they both suggest that rather than the garish, Austin Powers-esque party suggested by some of its celebrants, it was actually a time of grinding dysfunction. Certainly, the Britpop era's hedonism eventually led Elastica into the heroin problems that would stymie their once-breathtaking talent. And, by Coxon's own admission, it marked the start of the tensions that would end in his spell in rehab and exit from Blur in 2002.

"The underbelly of it was all quite sinister to me, despite how it might have seemed on the outside - champagne with Tony Blair and all that," he says. "Grim resentments and backstabbing. That was when things were getting bitter."

He thinks for a moment. "What's that thing - the line about all the great minds being destroyed? I forget the quote ... "

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" - that one by Allen Ginsberg?

"That's it. And you did, really, in the 1990s. You saw a lot of great minds just get ... fucked."

Most of the alumni of the musical moment that lasted from around 1992 to 1998 are now scattered. Only the Gallagher brothers have remained pretty much where they always were, delivering their strait-laced facsimiles of classic rock to a vast audience whose attachment to the anthems they first heard 10 years ago seems unshakable. Most of the musicians and associates who once shared their company, however, have taken paths that have led them well away from the places they occupied in the mid-1990s.

Damon Albarn, once the most avowed champion of the archly parochial Britpop aesthetic, recently led the charge against Live8's inappropriately Anglo-Saxon lineup, and is currently enjoying international success with his band Gorillaz. Given that that project puts Blur on ice, their bass player, Alex James, is working on a new record under the name of Wigwam with the short-lived 1990s pop sensation Betty Boo, as well as DJing on the BBC's 6 Music digital radio station. Drummer Dave Rowntree, according to his PR, is working on the Transistor Project, a "digital development label" aimed at helping aspiring musicians.

Frischmann is about to begin life as a mature student in the US. Cocker called time on Pulp in 2002, and seems to have settled into a life of semi-retirement. The lion's share of Britpop's mid-table attractions - Sleeper, Gene, Shed Seven - have split up. By the time you get into the bands who fell at the first hurdle, you begin to wonder whether they ever existed at all; who, aside from the most hard-bitten trivia buffs, has any clear memory of Powder, Northern Uproar, Laxton's Superb or Octopus?

The world these people built, however, has endured. It's where just about every worthwhile British band aspires to be: that speedy production line that takes promising musicians from their local pub venue, introduces them to the NME, and then - if everything goes to plan - inducts them into the head-rattling world of mainstream celebrity. The idea that there was ever an "underground", where bands could ply their trade without paying any attention to the world of commerce, seems almost laughable. Less than a year ago, for instance, the Kaiser Chiefs were an unknown, transparently Blur-influenced band from Leeds. Now, their small handful of keynote hits has become inescapable, and their fans include Paul McCartney and Richard Gere.

The best example is provided by the ubiquitous Pete Doherty: on the face of it, a purveyor of the kind of scratchy, lo-fi stuff that once would guarantee musicians nothing more than a regular place on the John Peel show. He is a stupidly inappropriate example of that long-standing showbiz convention whereby fame only arrives when you perform a duet with Elton John. Doherty may not have been invited for canapes at Downing Street, but his unlikely clout was proved by, arguably, an even greater accolade: a half-hour interview on Newsnight with Kirsty Wark.

In the early 1990s, it was all rather different. Daytime radio spurned indie-rock in favour of sedate mainstream stars or production-line pop. The attentions of the tabloids' showbiz editors were similarly myopic. For all their evident talent, Britpop's pioneers were held at arm's length.

In early 1993, it took loud protests from the music press to convince the organisers of the Brit awards to make Suede a last-minute addition (other nominations that year included such cutting-edge attractions as Annie Lennox, Enya, Genesis and the long-lost Curtis Stigers). Blur were similarly marginalised; though Modern Life Is Rubbish was one of the 1990s' most influential records, the highest chart position achieved by its singles was 26. One fact in particular underlines the struggle that once faced those leftfield talents who aspired to push their way into the mainstream: Pulp's Common People made Jarvis Cocker a pop star three months before his 32nd birthday, although he had been mouldering on the fringes for a decade.

Everything belatedly began to align at the end of 1993. Matthew Bannister, the new controller of Radio 1, exiled the old guard of DJs and allowed the cutting-edge to intrude on what the station broadcast during the day. Among the first beneficiaries were the then-unknown Oasis, whose prospects were given a boost when an industry-only demo of Columbia was pushed on to the station's playlists. Blur, meanwhile, had just completed Parklife, the album that would be propelled skyward by the huge success of their watershed single, 1994's Girls and Boys.

"When it happened, it wasn't a shock," says Coxon. "It was something that we'd all been half-expecting. It was, 'When is the world going to realise that we're making excellent pop music?' And they'd finally twigged."

He pauses for a moment. "But in making music that becomes commercially successful, there is some sort of dealing with the devil. You have to alter your art a little bit for it to happen. And I suppose that's when the rot started to set in with me."

Coxon does not need much reminding of the more undesirable aspects of sudden success. "Self-congratulating, coke-and-champagne people," he says, with a shiver of distaste. "It was the first time that I became aware of all that. You'd go to where the famous people were, and you were treated like a worm. They'd look past you to see whether there was anyone better to talk to - you know, that classic thing. So I just used to get angry."

This marks a crucial difference that separates so many of the Britpop musicians from the bands who followed in their wake. These days, being ushered into the world's VIP areas is all but obligatory; 10 years ago, an attachment to the anti-corporate ways of indiedom made a lot of musicians balk at the idea. "I was quite excited by the idea of us actually making a difference and people hearing us," says Frischmann, when reminded that Elastica's first album was at one point the fastest-selling debut in UK history. "But I think quite quickly I realised - especially having been brought up in a country so obsessed with celebrity culture - that it was actually rubbish. All it means is that all the rubbish people say hello to you, and all the cool people don't, and all of a sudden people who don't know you have an opinion about you."

As it turned out, the flashbulbs popping at the first wave of Britpop groups were quickly outshone by the tabloid spotlight on the Gallagher brothers. By 1996, Oasis had nudged their contemporaries to one side, marking the peak of their imperial phase with a two-night stand at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire when they played in front of a combined audience of 250,000; there had been 2.6 million applications for tickets.

Alan McGee - the one-time president of Creation Records, now in charge of the more compact Poptones label - has little doubt about the episode that played the key role in propelling Oasis to such an elevated place: the week-long battle for the number 1 position that had taken place a year before. The wheeze had been Albarn's idea, and it was Blur who made it to the top: Country House sold 274,000 to Roll With It's 216,000. However, the decisive entry of Britpop into the national consciousness led to an imbalance. Blur, after all, were an angular, arch proposition who had probably reached their commercial limit. The uncomplicated Oasis, by contrast, could now begin working their populist magic.

"Nobody really realises this," says McGee, "but at that point, Blur were three times bigger than Oasis. Oasis may well never have wanted to admit that to themselves, but Definitely Maybe was at around 600,000 and Parklife had sold something like 1.5 to 2m copies. They were miles past us. And Damon Albarn, in his bizarreness, decided he was going to have it with these lunatics from Manchester, thinking it was going to be all jolly hockey sticks. And of course, that meant that the spotlight was on Oasis and it brought them up to a new level. In that sense, he probably did Oasis the biggest favour ever."

As Noel and Liam - replete with Beatles fixation, cocaine habits and designer attire - became Britpop's new dual monarchs, its one-time prime movers sounded a note of complaint. "The Beatles were always a really adventurous, funny, witty band," said Albarn. "But where's the intelligence in this music now?" He had a point, though some of his contemporaries still think Oasis's music was less of an issue than their revolutionary take on wealth and success. Enshrining yet another aspect of Britpop's legacy, the Gallaghers played a key role in ensuring that future generations of musicians would experience very little worry at all.

"I loved their honesty, their openness, the way they treated their success," says Louise Wener, the one-time singer with Sleeper, now a successful writer whose third novel is about to go into print. "They weren't embarrassed or ashamed by it. It was, 'I'm going to be a rock'n' roll star, I'm going to ride around in a Rolls-Royce, if I make a million quid I'm going to roll around in it.' They were the chavs of Britpop."

Towards the end of my time with McGee, we pull apart one last theory about Britpop's legacy: the idea that, three months after the Blur-Oasis battle, when the latter group released Wonderwall, the rules of British music were decisively changed. From hereon in, the lighter-than-air ballad became obligatory, and the leather-trousers era of rock'n'roll was over. When Chris Martin plays his rapturously received songs of plodding redemption, or Snow Patrol deliver yet another mid-paced example of their anodyne craft, you can hear echoes of the song that made Oasis ubiquitous - can't you?

"No, no, no," McGee protests. "I would defend Wonderwall to the hilt. It's an amazing song. None of those people will ever write a song like that in their lives. Ever, ever, ever. They could try for the next 50 years, and they wouldn't do it."

You can pin all kinds of epochal changes on the Britpop generation - but there are, it seems, limits. "I don't think you can blame Noel Gallagher for Coldplay," says McGee. He suddenly looks slightly horrified.

"And you can't blame him for Athlete."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayre ... 68,00.html

siam · Message par **siam** » 12 août 2005 20:15

article interessant effectivement, merci

zazz · Message par **zazz** » 31 août 2005 16:02

10 après, encore et toujours... au coude à coude avec Oasis, mais via Gorillaz cette fois :
http://www.livejournal.com/users/gorill ... tml#cutid1

Stéphane · Message par **Stéphane** » 31 août 2005 23:16

Coude à coude

Gorillaz vend bcp plus qu'Oasis.

zazz · Message par **zazz** » 01 septembre 2005 00:09

Stéphane a écrit :Gorillaz vend bcp plus qu'Oasis.

oui et d'ailleurs c'est un grand bonheur.
Mais c'était pour montrer que 10 ans après il y a encore des articles qui présentent ça comme ça

Là en l'occurence il s'agirait d'un "bras de fer" juste entre singles cette semaine alors qu'Oasis a un single dans les charts UK et que DARE sort tout juste et entre en lice.

Stéphane · Message par **Stéphane** » 01 septembre 2005 21:42

Yep , mais ds l'article ils présentaient ça comme si Oasis était au même niveau qu'en 1995... Or ce n'est plus trop le cas...

Je vous ai compris

Stéphane · Message par **Stéphane** » 01 septembre 2005 21:44

Oops, je viens de redire la même chose que toi hi,hi... Bon bref de toute façon même si ça n'a plus rien à voir avec 1995, rêver ne fait pas de mal...

davidk · Message par **davidk** » 05 septembre 2005 22:15

Récapitulatif

Blur existe t'il encore ou le groupe s'est t'il dissocié ?

Damon albarn est bien la voix de Gorillaz, ça je le sais mais le reste sur Blur actuellement aucune idée.

Pour vous : la meilleure période de Blur ?

Advert · Message par **Advert** » 06 septembre 2005 12:00

1989-2005

zazz · Message par **zazz** » 06 septembre 2005 19:15

Advert a écrit :1989-2005

Tu l'aides pas beaucoup, là...
Moi je ne suis pas fan depuis très longtemps mais je préfère pour l'instant leur période la plus récente (13 en 1999 et Think tank en 2003)

Sinon pour continuer sur l'article sur le soi-disant coude à coude entre Oasis et Gorillaz, DARE a tout explosé sur son passage (#1 de l'autre côté de la Manche) et la question ne se pose donc vraiment pas...

http://www.gorillaz-unofficial.com/news/

Stéphane · Message par **Stéphane** » 07 septembre 2005 15:52

Ce qui n'est pas plus mal en fin de compte.

Message par **Nico** » 16 octobre 2005 23:25

collector ! qu'il est en forme Alex !

siam · Message par **siam** » 16 octobre 2005 23:47

@#!, vive la coco à cette epoque.

dazed · Message par **dazed** » 17 octobre 2005 18:52

ENORME!

Message par **Charlie** » 30 octobre 2005 00:54

D'oh !!!!
Copiteur !

D'oh² !!!!!

Sa-brina · Message par **Sa-brina** » 30 octobre 2005 02:12

kesk'ils peuvent bien se raconter...?

Liam : tu vois la porte là ?
Damon : Ouais
Liam : et bah tu vas voir là bas si j'y suis !
Damon : Ok

...et il y alla.

c'est quoi ce truc ? c'est un article avec un de ces psychologues à deux sous qui traduisent les mouvements des gens...j'adore ça ! ça me fait trop marrer tellement c'est debile !

ça me parait tellement surréaliste comme photo qu'au depart en regardant leurs visages j'avais l'impression d'une surperposition et que la tête de Liam Gallagher était plus grosse que celle de Damon ( même s'il a l'air d'être un peu plus en avant que lui ) et que du coup c'etait un photo montage...vous trouvez pas ? on voit le mal partout de nos jours...

Message par **Charlie** » 30 octobre 2005 02:12

Sa-brina a écrit :
ça me parait tellement surréaliste comme photo qu'au depart en regardant leurs visages j'avais l'impression d'une surperposition et que la tête de Liam Gallagher était plus grosse que celle de Damon ( même s'il a l'air d'être un peu plus en avant que lui ) et que du coup c'etait un photo montage...vous trouvez pas ? on voit le mal partout de nos jours...

Tu te drogues ?

Sa-brina · Message par **Sa-brina** » 30 octobre 2005 12:50

le pire dans tout ça c'est que non...j'ai même jamais bu une goutte d'alcool de ma vie.

(faites pas gaffe c'est mes crises d'insomnies aigues qui me font faire des posts comme ça

je dois pas super bien vivre le changement à l'heure d'hiver

)

zazz · Message par **zazz** » 30 octobre 2005 13:10

Sa-brina a écrit :kesk'ils peuvent bien se raconter...?

Liam : tu vois la porte là ?
Damon : Ouais
Liam : et bah tu vas voir là bas si j'y suis !
Damon : Ok

...et il y alla.

c'est quoi ce truc ? c'est un article avec un de ces psychologues à deux sous qui traduisent les mouvements des gens...j'adore ça ! ça me fait trop marrer tellement c'est debile !

Mdr pas mal oui on peut faire dire n'importe quoi et interpréter n'importe comment une photo, c'est facile

Si ça se trouve Damon lui demandait juste où étaient les chiottes !
Ou je sais pas, moi, Liam : "Oh un éléphant rose !" et Damon "Gné-é-é ??"