| |
|
The end result makes me ask: why would anyone define such a large portion of their identity with Britpop? Or, if he's connected to Britannia rather than britpop, is it a little silly to assume the spirit of Britain was asleep before Britpop and went under immediately after? Was the rise and fall of Britpop really that big a deal?
I suppose in David Kohl's case, the Britpop years (roughly speaking about 1993 to 1997 - you're right to say it was short-lived, but up to a point that's what pop movements are like in the UK; Punk had arguably run out of steam after two years, three years or six months, depending on who you're talking to,) are identified with his early-to-mid twenties, I'm guessing; as much as anything else it's this, his unambiguous youth, that he can't let go of.
As far as Britpop being a big deal goes, well it was and it wasn't. On the one hand, it produced about ten good albums (off the top of my head, two by Blur, two by Pulp, two by Oasis, one by Elastica, one by The Manic Street Preachers, one by Suede, and, um ... oh yeah, I suppose a couple by The Auteurs) and even that's fairly controversial. The Manic Street Preachers, for example (and if you've not heard it, 'The Holy Bible' by them is really the cat's pyjamas, if said cat was in sort of a bad way while wearing them) had other things on their minds at the time. Belsen, the Republican party in the States, suicide as a solution to the problem of ageing - this was largely where they were at at the time, in a particularly slate-grey, but uplifting somehow, way. James Bradfield, the singer, said recently that in terms of rock and roll disappearances, Richey Edwards, their guitarist/icon deserved points for style, because it wasn't a bath tub in Paris, with a hot rock lady beside him, it wasn't even the poor guy sitting in a mansion on heroin, shooting himself as an odd sort of statement, it was a crap car with a stuffed ashtray in the rain on a motorway bridge, and he was alone. So the triumphalist Britpop spirit wasn't really anything to them, I'm sure they'd argue.
There was a sense though (and it must seem ridiculous now, even though it's ongoing) that when Britpop started, England was a second-rate country. That what emerged artistically from the UK was always going to have to play second fiddle to whatever was happening in the US. That while it was all right, quite quaint actually, that The Smiths existed, they were never going to be as good as Bruce Springsteen. Who was 'The Boss.' Not that I mean to pick on Bruce, particularly. The UK gave birth to such trans-Atlantic artistes as Annie Lennox from the Eighties, after all.
Anyway, and while it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination the only thing that was going on at the time, culturally, Britpop seemed to restore Britain to a sense of it's sense of cultural primacy, however vacuous it is was - Imagine George Bush Junior inviting Trent Reznor to the White House for cocktals, nibbles, and a brain-storming session, for example;
'Ok Trent ... Pleased to meet you ... Please don't do any, uh, what do you call it smack? In the White House's facilities ...'
But this was exactly the situation when Noel Gallagher (from Oasis) arrived at Number Ten Downing Street, at the personal invitation of the new PM. Tony Blair's ideas people must have felt that the glamour would rub off, somehow.
I could go on for hours here. But it's late, I'm rambling, and, I dare say, more later!
Hope this has been helpful; basically, imagine the POTUS taking advice off Robert Mapplethorpe and Sonic Youth. |
|
|
