The Dead Flowers Best of Britpop Mix

Let's face it: any jerk can put some Pulp and Elastica on a CD and call it a Britpop mix. The recent Brit Box? Good intentions, but kind of boring. In the end, only one person could put you inside the head of a University of Michigan sophomore studying abroad in London in '96. Only one person could pick the music that would evoke day trips to Manchester on Smiths pilgrimages, or evenings spent sipping Newcastle and watching the band whose first release just got Melody Maker's "Single of the Week". That person is Dead Flowers' resident Britpop expert, Phil. For a year I've been pestering him to put together a mix like this, and he's finally delivered. Here's a track-by-track rundown:

1. Echobelly - Insomniac
Phil's Comment: Sept. 1994, Echobelly and Oasis both sell out the same venue, same capacity on different days in ny (wetlands). alas, quite different paths after that.


2. Gene - London, Can You Wait?
P: Never given their due/respect!
Mike (Dead Flowers)'s comment: I agree. Taken in small doses, Gene were quite good.

3. Blur - Chemical World
M: One of my favorite Blur tracks. Amazing guitar, and the lyrics would set the template for Britpop songs to come.


4. Oasis - Whatever
M: There's nothing better than a great non-album single. Sure, this apes The Beatles, but it does it in a classy way. Liam's voice would never sound better.


5. Suede - We are the Pigs
P: Best song intro in the britpop era.
M: While most latter-period Britpop bands would draw on mundane events like soccer championships and elections to find inspiration for their anthems, Suede had it right from the beginning: bad drugs and JG Ballard novels.

6. Tricky - brand new you're retro
P: I guess some trip-hop needs to be thrown in.
M: Sure, it sounds really dated. But it's interesting to hear what passed for 'cutting-edge' back then.

7. Salad - Granite Statue
P: Even the lesser players at the time were still quality
M: At first I thought this song was crap, but I've had it stuck in my head for the past few days and I can assure you it's top-notch. The girl can't sing, but only half of the Britpop singers could anyways.

8. The Auteurs - Lenny Valentino
P: Also criminally underrated, Luke Haines' post-auteurs stuff was never topped.
M: Haines really looks like Paul Banks in this video. Brilliant track.


9. Morrissey - Hated for Loving
P: Still the godfather of british pop

10. Marion - Time
P: Obligatory Manchester-based, smiths-heirs-to-the-throne-but-never-were band.

11. Sultans of Ping - Where's me Jumper?
P: The unofficial anthem of britpop.. bar-none
M: I think Art Brut heard these guys.


[Download The Dead Flowers Best of Britpop Mix]
[Use Winrar to unpack the file]

Listen to "We are the Pigs" by Suede:

[Download the MP3 Here]

From the Vaults:Thoughts on Oasis' Definitely Maybe

(Originally posted on Glamorama, 5.15.2003)

When Oasis arrived in a flurry of arrogance, punch-ups and general rock n’ roll debauchery, their musical merits often went unnoticed. Sure, people made lazy comparisons to The Beatles, but at least with "Definitely Maybe", that was only part of the story. Oasis’ debut album, recorded for the most part live,is bursting with noise, attitude, and most importantly, tunes.

"Columbia" achieves in 6 minutes what Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have yet to do with their whole career. "Cigarettes and Alcohol" is a ballsy ode to being on the dole: "Is it worth the aggravation? To find yourself a job when there’s nothing worth working for?"

Listen to "Columbia":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Definitely Maybe" opens with the classic wish-fulfillment anthem "Rock N’ Roll Star". With its pummeling drums, scorching guitars, and Liam’s youthful, sneering voice—it’s clear that with all that arrogance came genuine ability.

The album’s highlights are numerous, but in the end one has to single out "Slide Away" as Noel’s crowning achievement. It’s a noisy ballad that at the same time is sweeter than anything Noel’s written since. As Liam wails "Now that you're mine, I'll find a way, of chasing the sun," one can’t help but appreciate the tremendous balancing act Oasis was capable of back then: a truly unusual blend of sentimentality and tough-guy bravado.

Noel Gallagher summed it up when he admitted later on: ‘People don’t make albums like this anymore, least of all me.’ As far as debut rock albums go, it received very little serious competition until The Strokes released "Is This It" some 7 years later.

Despite a plethora of other discs, "Definitely Maybe" stands as the crowning achievement of the Britpop era. Noel wanted his band to sound like John Lennon fronting The Stooges…and on "Definitely Maybe" he pulled it off with flying colors. Listening to it now, more than a decade after its release, it’s clear that not only can it stand side-by-side with all the new guitar bands, but indeed, it quite literally blows them away. Oasis may have since lost the plot, but this album made them giants on whose shoulder (sic) future bands will stand.

Listen to "Slide Away":

[Download the MP3 Here]

[Band Website]
[Band Myspace]

Paul Weller, Graham Coxon, Zak Starkey & Mani: This Old Town (Live on Jonathan Ross)

Seven Ages of Rock: British Indie

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Part IV:

Part V:

Part VI:

Part VII:

Part VIII:

Part IX:

Mortgage Rock

Alexis Petridis writes in the Guardian:

What has been the predominant musical sound during Tony Blair's premiership? You might disagree, but I'd plump for what one critic recently dubbed mortgage rock: the portentous, wistful, stadium-filling, ballad-heavy, post-Britpop genre that gets played in the background when an English team gets knocked out of an international sporting tournament, or an unsuccessful X-Factor hopeful collapses weeping into the arms of Kate Thornton. In fairness, it wasn't really around when Blair took office, although the records that influenced it were: Wonderwall, OK Computer, The Drugs Don't Work. For the entirety of this decade it's been, for better or worse, the sine qua non of British rock: you would think the record-buying public would be sick of it by now, seven years after Coldplay's debut, but no. They keep buying it: it was Snow Patrol, not the Arctic Monkeys, who made the best-selling album of last year.

What does its predominance tell you about the Blair years? You could argue that it's rock music as light entertainment, with all the edges sanded off: it's not furiously angry or inconsolably upset or wildly nihilistic in its pursuit of fun. It's the sound of economic prosperity. There's something about it that suggests a vague sense of melancholy, or dissatisfaction, as if things haven't turned out quite the way people expected...