Well, don’t believe the hype. That said, if he were a cult leader, I’d join in a heartbeat as I haven’t felt quite this evangelical about a musician in a while.  Accordionists should lead cults more often.

When I told my friends I was going to emigrate if Boris Johnson won the election, they didn’t believe me.

This blog will probably be inactive for a while. Pic related.

Can you say ‘blaxploitation’?

One of the many reasons why this is such a great performance is the way Shirley Manson obliterates the invisible barrier between audience and performer. She doesn’t do this in a punk, egalitarian way; rather she leaves her allocate space like a commando launching raids into enemy territory. Fantastic, and rather unsettling.

During the 1980s, popular culture became increasingly commercialised. Music became dominated by pop superstars, synthpop groups and glam metal bands, slickly produced for the MTV generation, valuing style over substance and image over actualité. In this manner popular culture drove a parallel path to the prevailing political culture, which valued commercial success and majority appeal over social welfare and minority concerns.

At the same time, cultural and political resistance began to develop. College/alternative rock, indie, hardcore punk, thrash metal and hardcore hip hop all catered to audiences who valued ‘authenticity’ over mainstream blandness. At the beginning of the 1990s, these underground movements exploded into the mainstream. Grunge and Britpop were, for me, two sides of the same coin, each expressions of alternative or indie music gaining a foothold in mainstream culture. Both had their faults, as I’ve discussed previously, and both were eventually recuperated into the mainstream, but both were welcome shocks to a mainstream culture which was becoming increasingly stagnant.

In American culture, the 1990s began on 10th September 1991, with the release of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. It’s subsequent popularity and meteoric rise up the charts opened the door to mainstream acceptance of grunge and other ‘alternative’ forms of pop music. The explosion of pent up creativity which came in the aftermath of Nirvana’s success is comparable in quantity and quality to that which came in the wake of the Sex Pistols in the late seventies, or the Beatles in the sixties. This surely stakes out Nirvana’s claim as one of the greatest bands ever to exist; like the Pistols and the Beatles, not only did they bring their design for life to the world, they cemented it firmly into popular conciousness, with reverberations which were felt for the rest of the decade and beyond. The simple assertion that alternative was good opened door for many different alternative lifestyles to be accepted, from third wave feminism to teenage nihilism to uninhibited sexuality (and ambiguous sexuality) to drug-fuelled debauchery. And, of course, goth.

Culturally, this bubble was burst on 20th April 1999, when two students into alternative culture opened fire on those they considered representative of mainstream ‘jock’ culture in Columbine High School. Suddenly, being goth was no longer cute, but was instead something to be feared- a new enemy within. Politically, it would be another two and a half years before an enemy within emerged that made goths seem sweet by comparison, and the social liberalism of the nineties gave way to rabid neo-conservatism.

But for a brief period, being uncool was cool, and being dark and gothic was a big plus. During this period emerged Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a programme whose original air dates mirrored my own time at high school but which I never felt compelled to watch, seeing it as just another stereotypical sickly high school teen drama with added vampires. How wrong I was. Madam Miaow’s scathing review of the Torchwood season two finale prompted me to check out James Marsters before he was John Barrowman’s fuck buddy, and having worked my way through season one and half of season two, I have to say that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is some of the best TV I have ever seen. The script is immensely well written, the acting flawless (particularly from the instantly likeable Alyson Hannigan as Willow) and the shamelessly cheesy monsters and special effects rival anything from Russell T Grant’s tribute show.

Much has already been written about the way Buffy deals with the problems facing teenagers at high school, and there is little I can add. For example, in the introduction to Fighting the Forces, Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery illustrate how real life concerns are represented occult and supernatural forces.

“In the world of Buffy the problems that teenagers face become literal monsters. A mother can take over her daughter’s life (”Witch”); a strict stepfather-to-be really is a heartless machine (”Ted”); a young lesbian fears that her nature is demonic (”Goodbye Iowa” and “Family”); a girl who has sex with even the nicest-seeming guy may discover that he afterwards becomes a monster (”Innocence”)”

This brings to mind Roobin’s take on the X-Files (part 1, part 2) where it is argued that the fictional monsters and conspiracies in the programme are projections of a critique of neo-liberalism and an attempt to escape from alienation. Buffy the Vampire Slayer borrows heavily from the X-Files, using the ‘monster of the week theme’ and even has the FBI using an invisible girl as a military asset during the episode “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”.

Another aspect of Buffy oft subject to academic discussion is the music used in the show. An essay by Janet K. Halfyard discusses the significance of the opening theme music.

“Firstly, there is the instrument itself: we have the sound of an organ, accompanied by a wolf’s howl, with a visual image of a flickering night sky overlaid with unintelligible archaic script: the associations with both the silent era and films such as Nosferatu and with the conventions of the Hammer House of Horror and horror in general are unmistakable. [...] The theme of BtVS starts with this organ horror signifier but then instantly changes its message. It removes itself from the sphere of 1960s and 70s horror by replaying the same motif, the organ now supplanted by an aggressively strummed electric guitar, relocating itself in modern youth culture, relocating the series in an altogether different arena than that of both Hammer and its spoofs.”

The Hammer Horror movies of the sixties and seventies were a direct influence on early heavy metal- in fact, it can be argued that metal was born when the members of Black Sabbath noticed how people would go to the cinema and pay good money to be frightened, and decided to make their music as scary as possible. Early heavy metal (and Black Sabbath in particular) was a big influence on the grunge bands of the early nineties, who updated the sound with the influence of American alternative rock. Thus Buffy the Vampire Slayer represents an update of the horror genre for the late nineties, just as grunge represented an update of hard rock for the early nineties.

The grunge influence is made explicit in Buffy from the first episode, when Buffy goes to the Bronze (’the only club worth going to around here’) and sees grunge band Sprung Monkey playing onstage. Throughout the series alternative rock bands are regularly seen playing at the venue, and even feature in the storyline. Most are unsigned, but apparently Third Eye Blind, The Dandy Warhols and Blink 182 crop up in later episodes.

But what really interests me about the programme is the attempt it makes to subvert the usual societal norms of a dominant, mainstream culture which marginalises those who don’t conform to it. This, as I’m sure we all remember, is something particularly true of the social order at high school. The first episode of Buffy starts with the eponymous vampire slayer moving to a new school and trying to make new friends. We are introduced to Cordelia, whose primary activities are looking good and achieving upward social mobility. We are also introduced to Willow, a computer geek who Cordelia defines as one of the ‘losers’, a distinct social strata below herself and her hangers on.

Cordelia: Well, you’ll be okay here. If you hang with me and mine, you’ll be accepted in no time. Of course, we do have to test your coolness factor. You’re from L.A., so you can skip the written, but let’s see. Vamp nail polish.

Buffy: Um, over?

Cordelia: So over. James Spader.

Buffy: He needs to call me!

Cordelia: Frappaccinos.

Buffy: Trendy, but tasty.

Cordelia: John Tesh.

Buffy: The Devil.

Cordelia: That was pretty much a gimme, but… you passed!

Buffy: Oh, goody!

They turn toward a drinking fountain. Willow is there. She straightens up and sees them coming.

Cordelia: Willow! Nice dress! Good to know you’ve seen the softer side of Sears.

Willow: Uh, oh, well, my mom picked it out.

Cordelia: No wonder you’re such a guy magnet. Are you done?

Willow looks at the fountain, then back at Cordelia.

Willow: Oh!

She turns and leaves. Buffy watches her go for a moment, then looks back at Cordelia after she starts talking again.

Cordelia: You wanna fit in here, the first rule is: know your losers. Once you can identify them all by sight (glances after Willow) they’re a lot easier to avoid.

Buffy later seeks out Willow.

The quad at school. Willow is sitting on a bench in front of a wall taking out her lunch. Buffy approaches her.

Buffy: Uh, Hi! Willow, right?

Willow: (looks up) Why? I-I mean, hi! Uh, did you want me to move?

Buffy: Why don’t we start with, ‘Hi, I’m Buffy,’ and, uh, then let’s segue directly into me asking you for a favor. (sits next to her) It doesn’t involve moving, but it does involve hanging out with me for a while.

Willow: But aren’t you hanging out with Cordelia?

Buffy: I can’t do both?

Willow: Not legally.

We know from “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” that Buffy was a popular girl at her old school, and could easily fit into the highest social rank at Sunnydale. But she chooses not to. Willow and a similar character called Xander become her friends, learn of her vampire slaying powers and together form the ‘Scooby Gang’ to research demons and aid Buffy in battle. By contrast Cordelia quickly becomes little more than a figure of fun who features in the storyline only when the writers want to poke fun at the stereotypically shallow American high school girl.

The programme sets its stall firmly on the side of the socially excluded in high school society, and in doing so reflects the prevalence ‘alternative’ culture had by the late nineties, so much so that it had become part of mainstream shows such as Buffy. Whatever politics Buffy the Vampire Slayer may have explored later, this is what defines it as a classic piece of nineties television.

I’ve been trying to track this film down for ages, previously I’ve only seen it available on NTSC format VHS tape. Thank fuck for the internet.

I think it’s time to develop this idea a bit further.

My thesis is this: for musical movements which have emerged during the last quarter of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first, it is possible to to identify two previous musical movements which have directly influenced the artists involved. Of these two previous movements, one will have taken place approximatly ten years previously, and will consist of bands which the musicians of the subject movement listened to when they were teenagers. The other will have taken place approximatly twenty five years previously, and will consist of bands whose music had already established itself in mainstream pop culture by the time the musicians of the subject movement were becoming concious of popular music in their pre-teen years.

I’m going to attempt a semi-scientific study to test out this theory. I acknowledge the subjectivity of this study, but I don’t know enough about sociology to be know how my approach would be classified. Any sociologists who want to contribute their input would be most welcome; any historical materialists who want to do their own take on the subject will have me thoroughly impressed.

My approach is as follows:

1) Define a genre of music, it’s associated traits, the time frame during which it existed, and the time it reached the peak of it’s success.
2) Use Last.fm to get a list of bands tagged as that genre. Discard any bands which don’t fit my definition of the genre.
3) Use Wikipedia to compile a list of influences for each of the bands at the top of the list, listing the time frame during which they existed, their peak years of success and (roughly) their genre.
4) Split these influences into ‘primary’ and ’secondary’ categories and average the years of their existence and peak success.

I’m sure you can see that there’s plenty of subjectivity in that method. I’ll go through this process in detail for one genre (Britpop), more briefly for another (grunge), and just state results for a few others.

Britpop

My conception of Britpop is as a musical movement which emerged during the early years of the nineties and died a few years before the decade was over. If we want to pin it down to specific dates, then we could argue, as music critic John Harris does, that Britpop emerged in the spring of 1992 with the release of Popscene by Blur and The Drowners by Suede. The decline of Britpop came around 1997 as Britpop’s most prominent acts either released albums which failed to match their earlier success or which represented a change in musical direction. Oasis, for example, fell in the former category, releasing an album so unlistenable that they’ve spent the last ten years running away from it. Blur’s success continued with their self-titled album, but the change of musical style towards the American alternative rock they had previously derided was something a retreat from the ideas they had previously espoused. And Pulp released the fantastic but challenging This Is Hardcore, a dark record which explored themes of personal crisis and the seedy underbelly of Soho’s sex industry, and got a cool reception from those looking for feel-good tunes to drink larger and jump up and down to.

I think most people would agree with the 1992-1997 time frame for Britpop; it’s also worth noting that the genre was at the peak of it’s success between 1994 and 1996. However if we look at the artists tagged as ‘Britpop’ on Last.fm, we get a different picture. Oasis unsurprisingly come out on top, but folk rock band Travis, piano band Keane and soft rock stadium group Coldplay are also in the top ten. Are these groups really Britpop? I would think not; musically, lyrically and chronologically they are outside the definition of Britpop that I have defined above. Likewise Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs all belong firmly to the post-punk revival in my mind. Clearly the list generated by the opinions of Last.fm users differs from the definition of Britpop I intend to use for analytic purposes, and represents the fact that any British guitar pop band since Britpop emerged is liable to be given the label, just as Alternative Rock is now a catch-all term for many American groups who fall well outside the definitions of the original movement.

So this is the first problem- the question ‘Which bands are Britpop?’ elicits different answers from each person. So in defining Britpop, and subsequent genres I look at, I need to be selective in the bands I choose to represent the genre and apply a degree of personal discretion. Out of the top Britpop groups on Last.fm, the four groups which do clearly fall into my definition of Britpop are Oasis, Blur, Suede and Pulp. You could also throw in other bands like Radiohead, The Verve and Manic Street Preachers, but I’ll stick with these four for the time being.

We now need to find a way to prove that they sound like groups from a specific genre which was current x number of years before them. Generally, groups sound like the bands they are influenced by. This is not a universal truth, else music would be very boring; but the good thing about statistics is we can deal in generalities, and such discrepancies should not prevent us from establishing a general pattern.

Wikipedia generally has a section on influences on each of it’s entries for bands, so let’s check out the influences for Blur, Oasis Pulp and Suede and see where it leads us. For each band and their influences I’ve listed when they were active; when they peaked in popularity; and what genre I would assign to them. Much of this is again based on personal opinion.

Oasis (active 1991-present; peaked 1994-96; genre ‘Britpop’)
Influences:
The Beatles (1957-70; 1960-70; British Invasion)
The Who (1964-present; 1965-71; British Invasion)
The Rolling Stones (1962-present; 1964-71; British Invasion)
The Stone Roses (1984-1996; 1989-92; Indie)
Sex Pistols (1975-present; 1977; Punk)
The Kinks (1963-1996; 1964-70; British Invasion)
The Stooges (1967-present; 1970-73; hard rock)
Neil Young (1960-present; 1970-74; hard rock)
The Smiths (1982-87; 1984-87; Indie)

Blur (active 1989-2003; peaked 1993-1997; genre ‘Britpop’)
Influences:
The Kinks (1963-1996; 1964-70; British Invasion)
The Beatles (1957-70; 1960-70; British Invasion)
XTC (1976-2005; 1978-82; New Wave/post-punk)

Pulp (active 1978-2002; peaked 1994-94; genre ‘Britpop’)
Influences:
David Bowie (1964-present; 1969-73; Glam Rock)
The Cure (1976-present; 1983-89; Indie)
The Kinks (1963-1996; 1964-70; British Invasion)
The Beatles (1957-70; 1960-70; British Invasion)

Suede (active 1989-2003; peaked 1993-97; genre ‘Britpop’)
Influences:
David Bowie (1964-present; 1969-73; Glam Rock)
The Smiths (1982-87; 1984-87; Indie)

Lots of repeated names there. Roughly we can group the influences into two broad genres, like so, and average the peak dates of the relevant bands to find the years the genre covers.

Late sixties/early seventies rock (peaked 1965-71; 66% of total)
The Beatles (3 mentions)
The Kinks (3)
David Bowie (2)
The Who (1)
The Rolling Stones (1)
The Stooges (1)
Neil Young (1)

British Eighties indie (peaked 1982-86; 33% of total)
The Smiths (2)
The Stone Roses (1)
Sex Pistols (1- bit of an anomaly this one…)
XTC (1)
The Cure (1)

Now we’ve got something interesting. There seems to be a group of ‘primary’ influences, who peaked approximately 27 years before Britpop, and a group of ’secondary influences, who peaked 11 years before Britpop. If analysis of other genres produces similar results, then we have statistically proved our theory, although determining exactly why this occurs is another matter.

Grunge

Let’s look at another recent genre- grunge. I’ll use a similar process to above to work out the influences, so won’t bore you with the details. I’m going to define grunge as starting the release of Mudhoney’s Touch Me I’m Sick in 1988, and ending with the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994; peak years were between the release of Smells Like Teen Spirit in 1991 and Nirvana’s Unplugged performance in 1993.

Nirvana (active 1987-1994; peaked 1991-94; genre ‘grunge’)
Influences*:
Black Sabbath (1968-present; 1970-73; heavy metal)
Led Zepplin (1968-80; 1971-75; hard rock)
The Melvins (1982-present; 1991-94(ish); grunge/metal)
Mudhoney (1988-present; 1988-91; grunge)
Black Flag (1977-86; 1981-85; hardcore punk)
The Beatles (1957-70; 1960-70; British Invasion)
R.E.M. (1980-present; 1987-92; alternative rock/college rock)

Pearl Jam (active 1990-present; peaked 1991-94; genre ‘grunge’)
Influences:
The Who (1964-present; 1965-71; British Invasion)
Neil Young (1960-present; 1970-74; hard rock)
Ramones (1974-96; 1976-77; punk)

Alice In Chains (active 1987-present; peaked 1990-92; genre ‘grunge’)
Influences:
Black Sabbath (1968-present; 1970-73; heavy metal)
Led Zepplin (1968-80; 1971-75; hard rock)
Metallica (1981-present; 1986-91; heavy metal)

Soundgarden (active 1984-1997; peaked 1991-94; genre ‘grunge’)
Influences:
Led Zepplin (1968-80; 1971-75; hard rock)
Butthole Surfers (1981-present; 1992-96; alternative rock)

*Wikipedia is not very helpful here, so I’ve added a few more based on the BBC’s Left Of The Dial documentary on grunge.

The first of the two genres is easy to identify:

Early seventies hard rock/heavy metal (peaked 1969-73; 60% of total)
Black Sabbath (3 mentions)
Led Zepplin (2)
The Beatles (1- again an anomaly, and one which no doubt accounts for the more melodic sound of Nirvana compared to their peers)
The Who (1)
Neil Young (1)
Ramones (1)

The second presents us with a problem. Averaging the peak dates as previously gives us 1988-92, which is almost exactly the same time period as the one I used to define grunge itself. Hence, we have a paradox- grunge was influenced by grunge, or rather the broader alternative rock movement in which it existed.

American Alternative Rock (peaked 1988-92; 40% of total)
The Melvins (1)
Mudhoney (1)
Black Flag (1)
R.E.M. (1)
Metallica (1)
Butthole Surfers (1)

How do we square this circle? First of all, let’s ditch Mudhoney, who quite clearly were a grunge band, and influenced Nirvana as contemporaries rather than past heroes. Of the remaining five, their average forming date is 1980. Most of them did not obtain mainstream success until they were illuminated by the spotlight shone on Nirvana and the other superstars of grunge. I’ve been making the assumption that bands are at their most influential when they are at their peak, but in the world of eighties alternative rock this seems not to have been the case. Bands who emerged in the early eighties with a post-punk do-it-yourself attitude and an amateurish musical style were highly regarded by those who later went on to create grunge, and the success of Nirvana et al boosted R.E.M. et al into the mainstream.

So we can conclude that grunge was influenced by music which existed about ten years previously, just not music which was mainstream. In other words, Nirvana got into R.E.M. by listening to Murmur rather than Automatic for the People.

This leads us to an interesting conclusion. For both grunge and Britpop the set of influences from 20+ years previously contains bands who all achieved major commercial success. The set of influences from approximately ten years previously contains less commercially successful, more ‘alternative’ bands, who were still influential despite not being as mainstream.

I believe this is a consequence of the manner in which we absorb influences. As stated in the introduction, I suspect that the first set of influences is absorbed from popular culture during our pre-teen years, and therefore must be mainstream, commercially successful music. As become teenagers, we become more discerning in our musical taste and are more likely to hunt down music from less accessible bands, thus accounting for the second set of influences.

Summary

We can summarise our findings for Britpop and grunge like so:

Genre: Britpop (1992-1997)
Main bands: Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Suede
Primary influence: Late sixties/early seventies rock (1965-71)
Secondary influence: British Eighties Indie (1982-86)

Genre: Grunge (1988-1994)
Main bands: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden
Primary influence: Early seventies hard rock/heavy metal (1969-73)
Secondary influence: American Alternative Rock (1980-)

Without going into details, I’ll assert a couple of others:

Genre: Post-punk revival (2002-2007(ish))
Main bands: The Rapture, The Killers, Interpol, Bloc Party
Primary influence: Post-punk (1978-82)
Secondary influence: Britpop (1992-97)

Genre: New Rave/indiedisco (2006-)
Main bands: Klaxons, Hot Chip, CSS, The Whip
Primary influence: Electropop/New Romantic (1979-83)
Secondary influence: Experimental indie* (1997-2000)

*Yes, I just made that up. I’m thinking post-Ok Computer Radiohead, Super Furry Animals, Mogwai, Spirtualised…

Finally, we have interesting question of trying to predict what the Next Big Thing will be. I’m hoping that Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip might represent the beginning of a ‘real hop-hop’ revival, i.e. one based on the creativity and experimentation which originally characterised the genre, combined with the insane electronica popularised by Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Kid606 around the turn of the millennium. In the mainstream, we might see the re-emergence of eighties stadium rock combined with the soft-rock sensibilities of Coldplay, Travis and Robbie Williams. In reaction to this we might see a new generation of angry, guitar heavy rock bands along the line of Biffy Clyro, or the Subways. I certainly hope so.

Whadda you think? Flame away…

It’s like the Foo Fighters never died. Oh wait…

Better late than never.

The demo assembles:

Some bloke:

The police photographer:

And yet the police get so annoyed if you dare to take photos of them.

The confrontation on Whitehall: