When they did PennFest some years back they were the best artist all weekend, got everyone going, even the youngsters. Everyone I spoke to who went said they were the highlight
Think they just loved performing tbh, weren't cool past the 80s probably but made numerous comebacks and played everywhere from the Albert Hall to beer festivals, got to see them twice, brilliant.
Love that song but prefer the Pogues version with McGowan spitting out the bitterness inherent in the words. Second favourite Pogues song after the obvious
In the late 90s, maybe 1997, I ended up in London at a mates halls on Baker Street. It was a Tuesday night and we ventured out to The End in Holburn. £5 entry fee and one of the best DJ nights I've ever been to. Having been to the likes of Gatecrasher, Creamfields, Bagleys on a reasonably regular basis, The End is probably still my favourite place to dance and lose yourself in the music!
That Tuesday we got lucky - Carl Cox, LTJ Bukem and Laurent Garnier all on show. What an evening! Whilst he didn't release this until 2000, this song always reminds me of that night, not sure if he played it or not. Laurent Garnier - The Sound of the Big Baboo
My brother, who is five years older than me, got me into some great Indie bands. One band though we both love and still watch to this day. Pop Will Eat Itself or PWEI. I've seen them live a fair few times now. Favourite show recently was Love from Stourbridge, which featured Poppies, Neds Atomic Dustbin and an acoustic set by Miles Hunt from The Wonder Stuff.
I hope all three bands or on Dan Scarr's playlist! Anyway my favourite Poppies song, which is football related is Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina - she is a famous Italian Pornstar and the first to go into politics apparently!
Finally, so difficult to choose but love Radiohead and Creep. Played as loud as possible and belting the lyrcis out, always relieved my days anxieties....
Isn't music wonderful! Could have chosen so many more on a different day. Love Johnny Come Home by the FIne Young Cannibals which came very close to getting in today...
A rainy night in Soho, is my favourite after the obvious.
Absolutely love The Pogues, probably the only band whose lead singers public exploits, rather than propel them to supergroup status,has undermined the fact that they are a tremendous band with a wonderful back catalogue.
A great song from a great band. I saw them as support for the Ramones (Cambridge Corn Exchange) and was one of the very few times that the support band were actually better than the main act (and the Ramones were pretty good!).
I was trying to think of any bands I've seen in a tiny venue that, years from now, people will be jealous I got to experience it, and I don't think there are any; bands just don't emerge as explosively or have the same seminality anymore.
@ChasHarps Saw the Pogues once at the Town and Country Club (with poor old Kirsty McColl guesting) and once at Brixton Academy...both times were excellent but the years in between had taken their toll on Shane as the second time he could barely stand or 'sing'. Have to be some band to still entertain for an hour and a half when your lead singer is out of his box. You forget what a great lyricist he is...considering how much he puts away.
@bookertease I envy you...never caught them live but 'I Can't Stand The Rezillos' is a favourite album of mine...music with a sense of humour.
Streaming has taken a lot of that away hasn’t it? I saw The Editors and Snow Patrol in a student bar at Reading maybe a couple of years before they were big. It wasn’t even the biggest venue in the Union.
Kings of Leon played at The White Horse a couple of times didn’t they?
For sure - it's given people complete control. I can remember pre-streaming, but I've never really known a time where I didn't have the option of at least looking an artist up on YouTube. I think we're well past the point of huge musical 'movements' - but it's become so much easier to have a more diverse taste.
@floyd I saw the Kings of Leon gig at the White Horse. Their first gig outside of the US I believe. It was rammed, mainly because they'd just started getting airplay on Radio 1 and had been featured in the NME. I've still got the t-shirt I bought that night! I read an interview with them a few years ago where they stated that it was the gig they'd most want to play again. Just the excitement of being in the UK on tour for the first time and mostly I suspect because they were sharing the dressing room with the strippers!
My oldest brother had an interesting relationship with Oasis. He saw them live when they had not made it yet (actually met Richey from Manic Street Preachers at the bar too). He promptly made a bet with someone at his work that Oasis would be a household name within a year, a bet he promptly won.
When Oasis were in their pomp, an acquaintance of mine claimed to have Noel's address in the Camden area. My brother stole my thunder and went down himself to have a snoop. The address was incorrect, but someone in the area directed him to the right house, he knocked on the door, and Noel invited him in for a cuppa.
I find Oasis massively overrated now (though they made the most of their limited talents), but being a teenager in the mid-90s, they were absolutely the soundtrack to that time and generation.
At their best they rock and at their worst they just sound like a noise. They could have done with a better lyricist. I like Noel and Liam though...but that might be the council estate coming out in me. When it comes to a sound that makes me angry it has to be Blur then and now (and even Damon Albarn's whistly speaking voice still does.) I think the Oasis boys knew they were navvies on the booze and drug fuelled rock and rollercoaster and Blur were middle class boys who thought they were artists. Or I bought the 1994 hype...one or the other.
For whatever reason, I was never particularly into Oasis or Blur. I think the whole battle of the bands element to it turned me off. Radiohead were my first true love, I was an obsessive listener to The Bends and then OK Computer. I'll never forget sitting down to a Physics GCSE exam on the morning OK Computer was released, counting down the minutes before I could escape into the sunshine and peg it to the record shop in Amersham (which I believe was on Sycamore Road back then) and grab myself a copy. A record that turned 25 years old last year and still sounds fresh and brilliant today.
Right then, a quiet work afternoon, so I'm gonna give my top 3 a go. The songs themselves are nigh on impossible to choose, but as for the bands themselves, I've gone for perhaps my first musical love (New Order) and a more recent musical love (The Spyrals). For my other choice, I feel I could've gone in any direction, but decided to go homegrown and go for a band who were huge in Wycombe in the early 90's and I'm sure more than a few Gasroomers have enjoyed their chaotic gigs!
Probably the first band that really got me into music and certainly a gateway back to Joy Division and the indie music that dominated my younger self's musical world back in the 90's. I'm just too young to remember New Order at their early 80's peak. It would probably have been around the time of 'World in Motion' that I started to get into them in my mid teens. I had an older mate who'd gone to uni and come back with 'Substance'. It was a complete revelation for me as someone who'd listened pretty much exclusively to rock music until that point.
This band were huge around Wycombe back in the day! The gigs were wild and the band became pretty notorious. They certainly lived the 90's lifestyle to the full! Always seemed strange they were never bigger, as live they were a big draw. I got the impression they liked being the kings of the local scene though and I guess singing songs about ones hometown was never really going to widen their appeal. What memories though. I still remember watching them playing outdoors at the Antelope one summers evening. 'Limbs'! As I think the saying would now be! Not the greatest quality recording, but hopefully it jogs a few memories...
Little know Californian band, but to my mind one of the best bands around. 4 great albums so far, I really could've gone for any song from their catalogue, but plumped for this one from their first album. I've found in recent years I've been going back to my love of classic rock and psychedelic rock and this bands ticks all the right boxes for me! Anyone into Stooges, Creedence, Neil Young and Crazy Horse will find plenty to enjoy with this band. Have recently started venturing out on tour to UK and Europe and are well worth catching if you have the chance.
Getting back to post-rock for a second, here are three perhaps lesser-known examples of the genre, arguably only one of which strictly meets the definition. I only really have any sort of story as such behind that one, but all of them continue to tingle my spine on every listen.
I lived in Stockholm for 6 months with an ex-girlfriend and attended Way Out West festival in Gothenburg in 2010. While the festival site has everything going on during the day, in the evening it moves into venues across the city. As we stumbled into Jazzhuset on one of those evenings, a very youthful looking local band stepped up and delivered what can only be described as a post-rock masterclass. This particular tune stood out.
I've never found Blur anything other than alright. I quite like Pulp - really like selected songs - and Suede. Elastica's debut album is a bit of a classic too, but I guess I've never really 'got' Britpop . Then again, Parklife came out three months before I was born and Definitely Maybe the month after...
I actually didn't mind Oasis, some decent songs, though Noel is a much better singer than Liam, so having Liam sing most of the songs didn't help. Must admit found Blur a bit meh
My first wife was antipodean, which meant that we used to go and see all these Aussie/Kiwi bands who were relatively big over there play in some really small venues in London in the mid-late 1980s. Bands like Midnight Oil, Icehouse, Crowded House, etc. I have mentioned previously seeing the latter at the Borderline in front of a few dozen people before they released Woodface and went huge but I can remember seeing The Saints* who were then really popular back in Australia at a small upstairs venue somewhere obscure like Acton. They were the headliners and when we got there the venue was packed with maybe 200 people. Then the support band came on and when they finished (cant remember who they were but very Mod-like) 95% of the audience disappeared with them. I think there were about 10 of us left to watch them. Talking to them after (or possibly during - it was a slightly bizarre gig), they had played the previous week (so they said) in front of 4 or 5000 back home.
*My memory was pretty sure on this but googling it I cant find any record of it, so it is possible it was someone else similar in style whose name I've completely forgotten
For the time being, I’d like to limit my reactions to the long posts from @glasshalfempty (March 22) and @MindlessDrugHoover (March 23). Gasroom character parameters prevented me from quoting them as part of this post. Apologies.
The last two of the six chosen tracks (especially the Heidi Berry) represented for me a return to musical sanity. But, not surprisingly, my musical world (old fashioned but perfectly catholic in its day) has never embraced screeching/grating, (scary indeed !) mechanically generated sounds. Music should be beautiful, surely, whether joyous, maudlin or, in the case, for example, of the wondrous Leonard Cohen or the “end of life” Johnny Cash album, quasi-depressing (but still beautiful in its own way.
I was particularly struck by @glasshalfempty’ s comment - “Damn ! I love music” - which, to my simple mind, seemed completely incongruous. I thought for a moment he meant “damn, I love music, what possessed me to pick those tracks”. But they clearly had the genuine meaning and emotional connection with life events which is, after all, what it’s all about.
I’ll beg indulgence in turn to download links to one or two of the (mainly) vocal performances which have moved me down the years.
Comments
When they did PennFest some years back they were the best artist all weekend, got everyone going, even the youngsters. Everyone I spoke to who went said they were the highlight
Before the Libertines helped reserect Chas and Dave's career they were really trundling very small venues.
They even played the old Trades&Social club in Queens Rd.
An honorary mention for the Rezillos 'I love my baby 'cause she does good sculptures.'
I know it’s a bit late but I wonder what C and D thought of Arthur Daley ‘E’ alright by the firm .
Think they just loved performing tbh, weren't cool past the 80s probably but made numerous comebacks and played everywhere from the Albert Hall to beer festivals, got to see them twice, brilliant.
Love that song but prefer the Pogues version with McGowan spitting out the bitterness inherent in the words. Second favourite Pogues song after the obvious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGLiuwdvF2A
In the late 90s, maybe 1997, I ended up in London at a mates halls on Baker Street. It was a Tuesday night and we ventured out to The End in Holburn. £5 entry fee and one of the best DJ nights I've ever been to. Having been to the likes of Gatecrasher, Creamfields, Bagleys on a reasonably regular basis, The End is probably still my favourite place to dance and lose yourself in the music!
That Tuesday we got lucky - Carl Cox, LTJ Bukem and Laurent Garnier all on show. What an evening! Whilst he didn't release this until 2000, this song always reminds me of that night, not sure if he played it or not. Laurent Garnier - The Sound of the Big Baboo
Laurent Garnier - The Sound Of The Big Babou - YouTube
My brother, who is five years older than me, got me into some great Indie bands. One band though we both love and still watch to this day. Pop Will Eat Itself or PWEI. I've seen them live a fair few times now. Favourite show recently was Love from Stourbridge, which featured Poppies, Neds Atomic Dustbin and an acoustic set by Miles Hunt from The Wonder Stuff.
I hope all three bands or on Dan Scarr's playlist! Anyway my favourite Poppies song, which is football related is Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina - she is a famous Italian Pornstar and the first to go into politics apparently!
Pop Will Eat Itself - Touched By the Hand of Cicciolina (Video) - YouTube
Finally, so difficult to choose but love Radiohead and Creep. Played as loud as possible and belting the lyrcis out, always relieved my days anxieties....
Radiohead - Creep - YouTube
Isn't music wonderful! Could have chosen so many more on a different day. Love Johnny Come Home by the FIne Young Cannibals which came very close to getting in today...
A rainy night in Soho, is my favourite after the obvious.
Absolutely love The Pogues, probably the only band whose lead singers public exploits, rather than propel them to supergroup status,has undermined the fact that they are a tremendous band with a wonderful back catalogue.
A great song from a great band. I saw them as support for the Ramones (Cambridge Corn Exchange) and was one of the very few times that the support band were actually better than the main act (and the Ramones were pretty good!).
I was trying to think of any bands I've seen in a tiny venue that, years from now, people will be jealous I got to experience it, and I don't think there are any; bands just don't emerge as explosively or have the same seminality anymore.
@ChasHarps Saw the Pogues once at the Town and Country Club (with poor old Kirsty McColl guesting) and once at Brixton Academy...both times were excellent but the years in between had taken their toll on Shane as the second time he could barely stand or 'sing'. Have to be some band to still entertain for an hour and a half when your lead singer is out of his box. You forget what a great lyricist he is...considering how much he puts away.
@bookertease I envy you...never caught them live but 'I Can't Stand The Rezillos' is a favourite album of mine...music with a sense of humour.
Streaming has taken a lot of that away hasn’t it? I saw The Editors and Snow Patrol in a student bar at Reading maybe a couple of years before they were big. It wasn’t even the biggest venue in the Union.
Kings of Leon played at The White Horse a couple of times didn’t they?
For sure - it's given people complete control. I can remember pre-streaming, but I've never really known a time where I didn't have the option of at least looking an artist up on YouTube. I think we're well past the point of huge musical 'movements' - but it's become so much easier to have a more diverse taste.
@floyd I saw the Kings of Leon gig at the White Horse. Their first gig outside of the US I believe. It was rammed, mainly because they'd just started getting airplay on Radio 1 and had been featured in the NME. I've still got the t-shirt I bought that night! I read an interview with them a few years ago where they stated that it was the gig they'd most want to play again. Just the excitement of being in the UK on tour for the first time and mostly I suspect because they were sharing the dressing room with the strippers!
My oldest brother had an interesting relationship with Oasis. He saw them live when they had not made it yet (actually met Richey from Manic Street Preachers at the bar too). He promptly made a bet with someone at his work that Oasis would be a household name within a year, a bet he promptly won.
When Oasis were in their pomp, an acquaintance of mine claimed to have Noel's address in the Camden area. My brother stole my thunder and went down himself to have a snoop. The address was incorrect, but someone in the area directed him to the right house, he knocked on the door, and Noel invited him in for a cuppa.
I find Oasis massively overrated now (though they made the most of their limited talents), but being a teenager in the mid-90s, they were absolutely the soundtrack to that time and generation.
Oasis are one of a select few bands the sound of whom actually makes me angry. I just don't get the love at all.
At their best they rock and at their worst they just sound like a noise. They could have done with a better lyricist. I like Noel and Liam though...but that might be the council estate coming out in me. When it comes to a sound that makes me angry it has to be Blur then and now (and even Damon Albarn's whistly speaking voice still does.) I think the Oasis boys knew they were navvies on the booze and drug fuelled rock and rollercoaster and Blur were middle class boys who thought they were artists. Or I bought the 1994 hype...one or the other.
For whatever reason, I was never particularly into Oasis or Blur. I think the whole battle of the bands element to it turned me off. Radiohead were my first true love, I was an obsessive listener to The Bends and then OK Computer. I'll never forget sitting down to a Physics GCSE exam on the morning OK Computer was released, counting down the minutes before I could escape into the sunshine and peg it to the record shop in Amersham (which I believe was on Sycamore Road back then) and grab myself a copy. A record that turned 25 years old last year and still sounds fresh and brilliant today.
Right then, a quiet work afternoon, so I'm gonna give my top 3 a go. The songs themselves are nigh on impossible to choose, but as for the bands themselves, I've gone for perhaps my first musical love (New Order) and a more recent musical love (The Spyrals). For my other choice, I feel I could've gone in any direction, but decided to go homegrown and go for a band who were huge in Wycombe in the early 90's and I'm sure more than a few Gasroomers have enjoyed their chaotic gigs!
1) New Order - Ceremony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi33-cITS0s
Probably the first band that really got me into music and certainly a gateway back to Joy Division and the indie music that dominated my younger self's musical world back in the 90's. I'm just too young to remember New Order at their early 80's peak. It would probably have been around the time of 'World in Motion' that I started to get into them in my mid teens. I had an older mate who'd gone to uni and come back with 'Substance'. It was a complete revelation for me as someone who'd listened pretty much exclusively to rock music until that point.
2) Harold Juana - Wycombe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdQaNYPVnlE&list=PLVK2VzDX7S351Fn4Ml34za_qlaj1bAC4E
This band were huge around Wycombe back in the day! The gigs were wild and the band became pretty notorious. They certainly lived the 90's lifestyle to the full! Always seemed strange they were never bigger, as live they were a big draw. I got the impression they liked being the kings of the local scene though and I guess singing songs about ones hometown was never really going to widen their appeal. What memories though. I still remember watching them playing outdoors at the Antelope one summers evening. 'Limbs'! As I think the saying would now be! Not the greatest quality recording, but hopefully it jogs a few memories...
3) The Spyrals - Calling out your name https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZaoa78q0qQ&list=RDdoItkrirdTU&index=9
Little know Californian band, but to my mind one of the best bands around. 4 great albums so far, I really could've gone for any song from their catalogue, but plumped for this one from their first album. I've found in recent years I've been going back to my love of classic rock and psychedelic rock and this bands ticks all the right boxes for me! Anyone into Stooges, Creedence, Neil Young and Crazy Horse will find plenty to enjoy with this band. Have recently started venturing out on tour to UK and Europe and are well worth catching if you have the chance.
Getting back to post-rock for a second, here are three perhaps lesser-known examples of the genre, arguably only one of which strictly meets the definition. I only really have any sort of story as such behind that one, but all of them continue to tingle my spine on every listen.
Hello Scotland by ef
I lived in Stockholm for 6 months with an ex-girlfriend and attended Way Out West festival in Gothenburg in 2010. While the festival site has everything going on during the day, in the evening it moves into venues across the city. As we stumbled into Jazzhuset on one of those evenings, a very youthful looking local band stepped up and delivered what can only be described as a post-rock masterclass. This particular tune stood out.
A Warm Room by envy
Japanese post-hardcore/screamo meets post-rock. Raw.
Printemps émeraude by Alcest
French post-black metal meets post-rock. Triumphant.
I've never found Blur anything other than alright. I quite like Pulp - really like selected songs - and Suede. Elastica's debut album is a bit of a classic too, but I guess I've never really 'got' Britpop . Then again, Parklife came out three months before I was born and Definitely Maybe the month after...
'Then again, Parklife came out three months before I was born and Definitely Maybe the month after...'
Gawd @ReturnToSenda that hurts. I can remember my parents having to calm my hysterical sister down when the Beatles broke up...
Sorry 😁
For fellow vinyl-heads on here, Record Store Day is coming up on Saturday 22nd April
‘Then again, Parklife came out three months before I was born and Definitely Maybe the month after...’
You have to stop saying things like this.
Ok, you don't like them but "angry"?
Do you not find that odd?
Don't worry, I have a small breakdown any time I see someone born in 2004 make their Premier League debut.
I actually didn't mind Oasis, some decent songs, though Noel is a much better singer than Liam, so having Liam sing most of the songs didn't help. Must admit found Blur a bit meh
My first wife was antipodean, which meant that we used to go and see all these Aussie/Kiwi bands who were relatively big over there play in some really small venues in London in the mid-late 1980s. Bands like Midnight Oil, Icehouse, Crowded House, etc. I have mentioned previously seeing the latter at the Borderline in front of a few dozen people before they released Woodface and went huge but I can remember seeing The Saints* who were then really popular back in Australia at a small upstairs venue somewhere obscure like Acton. They were the headliners and when we got there the venue was packed with maybe 200 people. Then the support band came on and when they finished (cant remember who they were but very Mod-like) 95% of the audience disappeared with them. I think there were about 10 of us left to watch them. Talking to them after (or possibly during - it was a slightly bizarre gig), they had played the previous week (so they said) in front of 4 or 5000 back home.
*My memory was pretty sure on this but googling it I cant find any record of it, so it is possible it was someone else similar in style whose name I've completely forgotten
For the time being, I’d like to limit my reactions to the long posts from @glasshalfempty (March 22) and @MindlessDrugHoover (March 23). Gasroom character parameters prevented me from quoting them as part of this post. Apologies.
The last two of the six chosen tracks (especially the Heidi Berry) represented for me a return to musical sanity. But, not surprisingly, my musical world (old fashioned but perfectly catholic in its day) has never embraced screeching/grating, (scary indeed !) mechanically generated sounds. Music should be beautiful, surely, whether joyous, maudlin or, in the case, for example, of the wondrous Leonard Cohen or the “end of life” Johnny Cash album, quasi-depressing (but still beautiful in its own way.
I was particularly struck by @glasshalfempty’ s comment - “Damn ! I love music” - which, to my simple mind, seemed completely incongruous. I thought for a moment he meant “damn, I love music, what possessed me to pick those tracks”. But they clearly had the genuine meaning and emotional connection with life events which is, after all, what it’s all about.
I’ll beg indulgence in turn to download links to one or two of the (mainly) vocal performances which have moved me down the years.