"EVERY HUGE ARTIST HAS A BE HERE NOW" AKA the UK version

this thread really is a repository for some of the worst and most senile opinions to marinate in misremembered nostalgia

yeah I'm a bit appalled by what I've read in excerpts

uk-hours ilx is p much just 90s reminiscences at this point, i barely come on til the americans have woken up

All nu-metal and plastic-pop, until The Strokes came and saved the day. Even though I don't really like The Strokes anymore, hard to get beyond that thinking.

wait so you still buy this PR?

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), 14. januar 2015 15:52 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2001 is the year I turned 15. We're talking the difference between buying PR and not knowing PR existed. I KNOW that it isn't true, but everything before Strokes - or Kid A, or stuff like that - still feel alien and old.

Alfred, I do agree here - you make what you will of what there is - but in most cases, I've found myself generally repulsed or disappointed by the overall arena - not just what I'm listening to privately, but what I hear when I get out and about or look at critical / fan favourites of the time.
In the case of '98-00 I was young enough to figure I just wasn't the kind of person who liked what other people liked, and retreated into older and more leftfield music, but by 2001 I found my interest in the mainstream revived by stuff like electroclash and certain other strains of music which weren't really big features on the landscape a couple of years beforehand.
Same with 2014 - my mission to find great new music hasn't subsided - if anything it's only increased - but I'm not as inspired by critical or popular consensus as I was just 12 months ago. And yeah, that could just be me, or it could also be down to trends, opinion, where the money is going in the industry, who and what is being touted, technological factors, socio-political factors, what came before, what is to come...

Like, you're discussing Fat of the Land, and that's archaic, that's soooo old. I used to laugh at kids who listened to Prodigy, when all that electroclash and dancepunk happened. And there's a five year difference. I still love music from five years ago now, but back then, it was the difference between mattering and being worthless. And having felt that for a long time, even though I know it's not true, I still know comparatively little about that period, and I still have invested less in it.

uk-hours ilx is p much just 90s reminiscences at this point, i barely come on til the americans have woken up

― lex pretend, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 3:01 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a big part of this thread is discussing exactly why this is.

also, i mean, why do you bother posting on a thread called 'EVERY HUGE ARTIST HAS A BE HERE NOW' if you know you're gonna hate it before clicking?

Anyway, Alfred, I am ready to accept that human lifecycles most probably swing from enthusiasm to cynicism quite naturally and that all my VERY PERSONAL examples are testament to where my headspace is at at whatever time. Still think that save for a few examples (I agree wholeheartedly with the number one single and album) that the P&J list is comparatively lacklustre.

For what it's worth, I was listening to plenty '80s music in the '90s (courtesy of my dad's record collection), but there was no way at the time that I'd admit to it.

Placebo's 'Without You I'm Nothing'?

― PaulTMA, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 2:51 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Black Market Music probably fits the bill more than Without You I'm Nothing, I reckon.

Is Between The Gutter and The Stars another one was was a UK New Jersey and a US Fairweather Johnson?

i never knew before today that stereophonics had FIVE number one albums on the trot. i'm not sure i could even name five stereophonics songs tbh

― Ottbot jr (NickB), Wednesday, January 14, 2015 12:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow 5? I didnt know that either. How did they get so big?

― Cosmic Slop, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 1:16 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

At first I think people were taken by the more "storytelling" aspects of Word Gets Around, but by the time Performance and Cocktails had come out a lot of Britpop's first wave had either moved on, split up, or released their worst album to date, so people were (I guess) looking for another band to latch onto. I think Stereophonics actually nicked a lot of the casual Oasis fans.

As for their post-Performance and Cocktails "success", christ knows. I'm sure 'Dakota' brought in one or two fans and added a few more years to the life of the band, but...

this was their fifth number one album - i'm sure i'd remember such an atrocious cover but i have no recollection of it at all:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41HpaP6sfrL.jpg

goes without saying but the stereophonics were the epitome of late 90s shit UK music.

Critical response
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source Rating
Metacritic 46/100[18]
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic 2.5/5 stars [19]
BBC (unfavourable}[11]
Drowned in Sound (4/10)[10]
The Guardian 2/5 stars[20]
Hot Press 1.5/5 stars[21]
The Independent 2/5 stars[22]
NME (7/10) [23]
The Observer (unfavourable)[24]
Pitchfork Media (3.4/10) [9]
The Skinny 2/5 stars[25]

Pull the Pin received generally mixed to negative reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 46, based on 12 reviews.[18] Contrasting with the negative reviews however, NME - who have been critical of the band's past albums - contributor Paul McNamee praised the album, stating it lives up as a successor album to Language. Sex. Violence. Other? and summarised it as "an unapologetic rock’n’roll record by a band who are hard to like but impossible to ignore."[23]

In the negative, Sonja D'Cruze from the BBC summarised the album as having "no real depth, imagination or anything to connect with."[11] Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian criticised the album, saying "the only things worse than Kelly Jones's aggrieved bellow and flatpack songwriting are his lyrics" and compared them to someone "performing brain surgery in boxing gloves: the patient always dies."[20]

Yeah, the thing is, not everything the Stereophonics did was awful, they'd pull out a good one to give people hope every so often. I used to cry Help me! I like the new Stereophonics single! but in retrospect, I'm not that bothered about that paperback book song anymore.

The point of this thread is really not 'reminisce about shit landfill bands pt. 245' or 'bang on about when you were feeling alienated from music'... like the 'Be Here Now'/'New Jersey' thing really should not be this difficult to grasp.

Still not sure why the original New Jersey thread needed a British spin-off though.

ah, remember when "Wake up boo" got played as much as "Bang bang into the room" does now?

― Mark G, Wednesday, 14 January 2015 14:13 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was true, but I was not reallly being nostalgic, yeah?

This thread is dreadful.

Still not sure why the original New Jersey thread needed a British spin-off though.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 4:11 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For derails?

this was their fifth number one album - i'm sure i'd remember such an atrocious cover but i have no recollection of it at all

I remember the sleeve, but I couldn't tell you what's on it!

that album cover screams 'terrible flop'

Not familiar with Bon Jovi's back catalogue, but I'd understood 'New Jersey' to mean 'The big hyped album that sold really well but which you could tell just by listening to it that it was the beginning of the end'. Still kind of unclear how this applies to Be Here Now and not Fat Of The Land, but I don't want to harp on about it any more.

because da croupier made a suggestion that he would like to see one and i ran with it matt dc

Fatboy Slim with Palookaville? Or was it the album before?

thread is dead but: I only ever lived in the UK for a couple of years, but got the impression that the album as thing was just always significantly less important to Brit musical culture in general--like, in the US, you have AOR; in the UK, whenever I looked at the album charts some complication "Now That's Wot I Call Meat & Two Veg!" was always at #1......it just seemed like it was more of a pop culture, and therefore more about singles than LPs. Am I completely off base?

for "complication", read "compilation"

Radio has always bee singles chart orientated.
In the 80s, because of compilation albums topping the album charts , they gave them their own compilations chart and were, quite rightly, ineligible for the album chart.

Wonder if there's a Queen album that fits? Turrican?

Hot Space.

obv.

Yeah, I'd say Hot Space too.

was it an event album that sold shitloads at the time?

The opposite of that.

Then it doesn't fit.

Queen recovered just fine after Hot Space anyway. Except for in the US, where the damage was done during The Works campaign

What about James' 'Millionaires'? I have no idea how well it sold, but it came out on the back of their hugely successful greatest hits and was supposed to be the album that propelled them to superstardom, or something. I actually don't think I've heard a note of it, though it seems like it was ultimately the beginning of the end for them.

'albums that came after a greatest hits' is a whole weird make/break kettle of fish though, right?

yeah , tho the huge selling beautiful south greatest hits surprised everybody

I've been wondering what Simple Minds album would fit this. I'd say Street Fighting Years - seemed to be them at their height in the UK, but the exact point where they became despicable in the eyes of everyone who didn't buy it. The album is so overblown and borderline worthless as well.

that's probably the correct choice but 'once upon a time' was definitely a major dry heave before they coughed their guts up

Street Fighting Years is a good one.

yeah on the back of their only UK #1 Belfast Child wasn't it? Definitely a big anticipated album by everyone my age bar me at my school.

It's like a really sanctimonious proto-Be Here Now - the three times I forced myself to listen to it, I was reminded of This Is My Truth as well. No fun.

You never see pro-Street Fighting Years pieces, eh?

http://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2015/07/simple-minds-street-fighting-years.html

heh it seems i ask that question a lot about bon jovi