Category Archives: Songs from 1995

Album: Nuisance, 1995

Justification: Cocaine, eh? There’s a reason people like it so much: every time you take it, you realise that you’re a goddamn genius. You’re going to turn the world on its ear, you are; no-one’s ever written the book/composed the song/directed the film that you’re destined to do, and society is going to be rocked to its very core. And yes, if you’re offering, another bump would be lovely.

Menswear were formed, discovered and signed (not, as it turns out, necessarily in that order) in the first flush of Britpop, during a time when coke was particularly cheap and plentiful in the UK. Coincidence?

The band was a lie born from another lie: in 1994 UK pop magazine had completely invented the story that there was a new Mod underground based around near-worship of Blur‘s guitarist Graham Coxon. For this they interviewed some Mod-ish looking young people hanging around Camden, two of whom – Chris Gentry and Johnny Dean – merrily acquiesced and talked up their awesome new band which, at that point, existed only in their imagination.

When excited publicists came a-knocking, determined to get the drop on the next big thing, the pair hurriedly got some musician mates together, called themselves Menswear, and proceeded to entertain a massive bidding war despite having played no gigs and having written no songs. Thankfully, that changed by the time they signed with London for almost a million pounds and negotiated their half-a-million pound publishing deal: when the ink was drying on those contracts, they were rock’n'roll veterans with five shows and seven songs under their belts.

In their defence, though, they did look very, very handsome in photos.

And for a moment there it looked like this perversion of the natural order of things might actually pay off. They wrote some genuinely catchy songs – first single ‘I’ll Manage Somehow’ and this one (keeping within Elastica‘s model of “when in doubt, rip off Wire“) suggested that maybe throwing money and drugs at young chancers might produce some awesome music. And as I said, they were very, very handsome.

Nuisance came out not long after and no critic on the planet accused it of being a masterpiece, although most people conceded that they weren’t expecting it to be and it was pretty solid for what it was: a rush job to capitalise on the brief window during which Britpop’s already-guttering flame was still alight. It wasn’t until the band started work on album #2 – or, more accurately, started taking a shitload more drugs on top of the already-hefty amount of drugs they were taking and expecting music to appear – they they realised that eh, they got nothing. The album Hay Tiempo!, a country album released only in Japan, staggered into the light in 1998, blinking and trembling and wondering why no-one wanted to discuss Paul Weller’s jacket choices in early Jam promo shots.

Unsurpsingly, none of the members have done anything musically worthwhile since, but two of them – Gentry and fellow guitarist Simon White – formed the management company Chris & Simon, where they look after the likes of Phoenix, Bloc Party and Cassius. And given the clearly incredible skills demonstrated during their own negotiations in 1995, that sounds like a career that plays to their considerable strengths.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: How very style-over-substance-totally-working-for-a-bit appropriate! It’s ‘Antmusic’ by Adam & the Ants!

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

433. Ben Lee: Cigarettes Will Kill You (24 Feb)

434. Babylon Zoo: Spaceman (27 Feb)

435. Trio: Da Da Da (28 Feb)

436. Five-Eight: Karaoke (29 Feb)

437. Lucious Jackson: Naked Eye (1 Mar)

Album: single 1995, The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes 1996

Justification: Oh, Jas Mann. You were so certain of your genius. The music press was filled with praise for your boundless creativity and testaments to your peerless vision, which would have been very impressive had said praise and testaments not all come from your own mouth during interviews promoting the only hit you were ever going to have. The music press could have been forgiven for wishing you some sort of karmic comeuppance, but fortunately people heard the album from which your one undeniably great moment came, went “oh, he’s only got the one song, then” and assumed that – unless Levi’s came in with another international synch deal – that was the last we were going to hear of you. And indeed, that was how things played out.

It must have been a tad embarrassing for EMI, of course, who’d signed Mann’s “band” Babylon Zoo to a seven album deal. Yes, seven. By my reckoning, he still owes them five. And given EMI’s parlous financial state at the moment, now might be the time to call them in.

"Why, he has seemingly created a font out of elemental mercury! Seven albums seems barely enough!"

‘Spaceman’ was the fastest-selling single by a debut artist at the time, and Mann and EMI were both certain that it was because it was the creation of a musical genius of the highest order who had discovered the pop music of the future, when in actual fact Mann had written one pretty catchy song that was on the TV a hell of a lot because of a jeans commercial – and even then it was still highly reliant on the fact that Arthur Baker took the solid but stodgy piece of Garbage-lite from the original recording and made it universally palatable via his far more attractive remix (adding that gimmicky sped up bit, for one thing). The success of ‘Spaceman’ and the comprehensive failure of Babylon Zoo to follow it up is a sobering reminder that, sometimes, luck is genuinely just luck.

That said, it’s weird that the silver tie/skirt combo Mann’s rockin’ in the video never took off. It’s an eye-catching look.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: There are 11 other songs in the 1995 archive. See if you can spot them all!

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

429. Depeche Mode: Wrong (16 Feb)

430. Shonen Knife: Riding on the Rocket (20 Feb)

431. The Chills: I Love My Leather Jacket (21 Feb)

432. The Bluetones: Slight Return (22 Feb)

433. Ben Lee: Cigarettes Will Kill You (24 Feb)

Album: Garbage, 1995

Justification: OK, I may have suggested in an earlier post that Garbage totally bit all of Curve‘s moves, turning their slinky, sexy, electro-rock into something that the world could buy. And I still think that’s broadly true, but I don’t think there were any mercenary aspirations at work, for a couple of pretty obvious reasons: one, Curve were hardly an obvious commercial model to begin with; and two, who’d have thought that three aging producers and some Scot who’d been the backing vocalist in indie also-rans Goodbye Mr Mackenzie would actually be an internationally charting success?

My understanding is that the songs on the first Garbage album were essentially done before Shirley Manson was roped in, but she gives the all-important layer of sultry, confident, would-bounce-you-off-walls sexuality that the songs required – particularly this one. They never bettered their debut single, in my opinion, and given that the future would contain things like ‘Cherry Lips’ it would appear they were in no particular hurry to try.

They were pretty damn good live when I saw them on a double-header with Ash, though. Mind you, the fact they were following Ash and hadn’t obviously been drinking for the previous day or so meant that they possibly benefitted by comparison.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: The Church were making Starfish’s best single – ‘Reptile’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

408. Black Kids: I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You (12 Jan)

409. The Folk Implosion: Natural One (13 Jan)

410. The Kinks: Apeman (16 Jan)

411. New Order: Bizarre Love Triangle (17 Jan)

412. Faith No More: Midlife Crisis (18 Jan)

Album: Kids soundtrack, 1995

Justification: Lou Barlow, you turn up a lot on this list. We’ve had Dinosaur Jr, we’ve had Sebadoh, so we may as well continue the theme with his other, other band – and its best known song, which was something of an alternahit in the mid-90s, thanks to the controversial Larry Clark film Kids for which the band provided much of the soundtrack. And this is a genuinely superb song, underpinning some typically slacker songwriting with a slinky bassline and charmingly inept funk-like guitar. This is what the cool kids were shagging to in the 90s, Today’s Youth.

I’d long thought that the band existed only for the purposes of this soundtrack, thereby missing their three “proper” albums and the fact they existed for well over a decade, spluttering out in 2004 (although the other co-founder John Davis quit in 2000). Then again, given Barlow’s recent history, that probably means a Folk Implosion tour will be announced before the year is out. And seeing as though DJr and Sebadoh’s last tours were fucking brilliant, that’ll work for me.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: Supergrass were showing off their considerable potential as Muppets with ‘Pumping on your Stereo’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

404. Not From There: Frisco Disco (23 Dec)

405. The Flamin’ Groovies: Shake Some Action (4 Jan)

406. Blur: Popscene (6 Jan) 

407. Murray Head: One Night In Bangkok (9 Jan)

408. Black Kids: I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You (12 Jan)

Album: The Presidents of the United States of America, 1995

Justification: I loathed PUSA at the height of their popularity. Loathed them. Their asinine singalongs like ‘Peaches’ and ‘Lump’ infuriated me, seeming mere baby steps away from the Spin Doctors.

What turned me around? Morphine.

See, it turns out that the instruments that Chris Ballew and Dave Dededrer used – the two string bassitar and the three string guitbass – were developed when Ballew was in a Seattle band called Supergroup with Morphine’s Mark Sandman. That’s where Sandman got his trademark two string slide bass and that revelation was enough to make me see the Presidents in a new light. Suddenly they were artists using popular music tropes to explore peculiar expressions of their art rather than jerks singing songs about cars and fruit. And for that I will be eternally grateful, because otherwise the times when I get ‘Lump’ stuck in my head for days at a time would be intolerable.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010: More Seattle, as it happens, via Mudhoney and ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’.

Album: Pacer, 1995

Justification: This little side project was short-lived and unduly maligned. In the mid-90s the Breeders were in disarray: while Last Splash had been a huge success, Kelley Deal was forced into rehab after being busted for heroin possession, forcing the band into a hiatus (from which bassist Josephine Wiggs never returned – although she’s played the odd show with them since, bless). Kim Deal decided to make a solo album upon which she’d play everything, though it soon involved Breeders drummer Jim MacPherson.

Unfortunately this demure little time-filler suffered from inflated expectations. Elektra thought they’d have another enormoalternasmash on their hands and thus pressed approximately 18 billion copies of the album, which sold modestly and was thus in every secondhand and remainder bin on the planet before long (often alongside Frank Black’s Teenager of the Year, actually). Within 18 months the band was over, MacPherson had joined Guided by Voices and the Deal sisters were pulling the strands of the Breeders back together, but in the meantime this was a hugely underrated album.

THIS TIME IN 2010: Eh, weekend. Come join me in the 1995 archives!

Album: Post, 1995

Justification: Well, it had to be something special for #250, right?

I was a huge fan of the Sugarcubes, so it was hardly a surprise that I’d follow Björk’s solo career with interest. And while these days she’s become an art-pioneer both live and on record, my favourite moments of hers are her pop songs. The entire Debut album sounded like a series of singles to me (this entry was just about going to be ‘Human Behavior’, incidentally) but this song broke my heart when I first heard it and has never lost its power in the interim. Like the Sugarcubes’ ‘Birthday’ the magic is in the lyrical minutia (“I imagine what my body would sound like / Slamming against those rocks / And when it lands / Will my eyes / Be closed or open?”), though that chord progression in the chorus touches something very deep – which is a lot of unsettling emotions to have brought up in a song that’s basically about being in a secure relationship.

The video is also superb, as are most things made by Michel Gondry.

THIS TIME IN 2010: We got our dose of Boston indie rock with Buffalo Tom’s ‘Taillights Fade’.

Album: single, 1995; 1977, 1996

Justification: Ash were a trio of Northern Ireland teenagers when they hit big with this, their second single. Buzzsaw guitars, cutesy lyrics, amphetamine dynamics: with this happening on one side of the world and Weezer on the other, it was a good time to be plugging your Gibson into a fuzzbox and forming a band.

To be honest, though, the reason I loved this so much was less because of the song itself and more because it had the band’s cover of the ‘Cantina Song’ from Star Wars as a b-side.

I was very fond of the band, despite their often idiotic lyrics, right up until they toured with Garbage, played the Entertainment Centre, and sucked more than just about any other band has ever sucked. Lots of technical problems, a guitar tech who didn’t actually tune Tim Wheeler’s guitars, and a fair dollop of alcohol in the band’s system probably didn’t help matters.

This video, incidentally, is from the US release rather than the original UK version, which is an objectively horrible piece of work. This one is yet another clip directed by Jesse “was once in the Lemonheads” Peretz.

THIS TIME IN 2010: Ride’s dreamy, magnificent ‘Vapour Trail‘.

Album: The It Girl, 1995

Justification: Everyone remembers the Britpop A-list – Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Supergrass, Suede, Elastica – but for all of the bandwagon jumping and shitty, shitty music there were many great b-listers out there who managed a great album or a run of decent singles but never quite broke through to the big leagues. Some, like Shed Seven, seem ridiculous now. Others, like Gene, hold up remarkably well. And some, like Sleeper, cut through with one killer song amid a fair-to-middling catalogue. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Louise Wener (now a successful author, as it happens, with four novels under her belt) was witty, sharp-tongued and – let’s not be coy – pretty damn hot, leading her band of Blokes You’d Never Recognise Even If They Squealed “I Played In Sleeper” Every Time You Looked At Them through three albums before splitting in 1998.

Oh, and that soundalike version of Blondie’s ‘Atomic’ on the Trainspotting soundtrack? That was them.

Album: single, 1995 (also secret track on Future Spa, 1996)

Justification: The tradition of writing about being in a band is a long and noble one, from the Byrd’s classic ‘So You Wanna Be A Rock’n’Roll Star’ to They Might Be Giants’ ‘Hey, Mr DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal’ to Reel Big Fish’s ‘Don’t Form A Band’. However, it took four smartarses from Melbourne to write a song about a trend among people in bands – the post-You Am I/Something for Kate/Even-era rise of the Australian power trio, and to do so in terms baffling to just about anyone not devoted to music. So, let’s dedicate this to a bit of a primer on what the bloody hell Andy Cox is talking about in the Fauves’ last single before their oh-so-brief time in the popular eye.

• “I remember the Police/Chorus, delay, quirky drumbeats”: chorus and delay are guitar effects
• “Three major chords on a Gibson gold top”: a classic make of Gibson Les Paul, beloved by Slash.
• “The A&R men all masturbate”: back when record companies signed bands rather than cut staff, the A&R department did the signing. A&R stands for “artists and repertoire” and reflects the fact that originally the job was to liase with publishers and songwriters to find material for the artists already under contract.
• “I’m getting 15, 16, 17 dudes, man/It’s gonna be wild/We’ve all got guitars, Glenn Branca style”: Glenn Branca is an experimental composer from NYC, who was a massive influence on Sonic Youth (Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo both studied under him). His pieces generally had huge ensembles of electric guitar players, usually playing guitars that were not only tuned in unusual ways, but were modified to hit non-conventional microtones – an effect that one might achieve by raising the string from the fretboard, say via…
• “Screwdrivers under the strings/A-double-C-G-G# tuning”: standard rock’n'roll guitar tuning (lowest to highest) is E-A-D-G-B-E.
  

For the record, the Fauves were big fans of odd tunings: their gigs have often been more guitar changeovers than songs, and bassist Jack Dyer was a big fan of the drop-C bottom note, which is odd outside of metal. Mind you, this was a band that claimed to be ‘Understanding Kyuss’…

God I love this song.