britpop – Plain Or Pan

One of the side effects, if you like, of the current Oasis revival has been the reshining of the spotlight on the music of 30 or so years ago. Even at the time, it was clear that there were only two or three decent bands on the go. The rest of the (gads) scene was made up of skinny-jeaned, Adidas-clad chancers who’d alighted at Camden Town and grabbed hold of the corduroy coattails of the movement and ran with it. Bands with one word, two syllable names littered the gig listings, the narrower columns of the music press and, with a depressing regularity, the shelves of your local Our Price.

Sleeper. Bluetones. Dodgy. Menswear. Embrace. Oh man! That guy couldnae sing! A couple of bowlcut brothers dressed in everyman denim while continually rewriting Let It Be? Call y’rself Embra-sis and be done with it, boys. It’s all the fault of the record companies. See what people like and replicate, dilute, repeat to ever-diminishing returns, until the whole thing swallows itself up.

Those groups above are maybe even considered the ‘best’ of the lot too. Lest we forget S*M*A*S*H. These Animal Men. The Subways. My Life Story. Rialto. Gay Dad. Heavy Stereo. Marion. Longpigs. Northern Uproar. It’s an endless list, and I haven’t had to Google any of it. Those groups have all had more front covers than I’ll ever have, so really, who am I to comment? Dare I suggest each of them has a decent tune (or two?) hiding amongst whatever passed for a song in the setlists and demos that saw them signed in the first place? Full confession: I have a soft spot for Dodgy. Great players, great songwriters, great way with a harmony and a melody. See Lovebirds for full effect.

In John Niven’s Kill Your Friends, he writes an entire page or more filled only and entirely with the names of Gallagher slipstream-riding bands, most of whom never got beyond third on the bill at the Camden Falcon and demo stage, yet; ‘bands that, for a brief, tiny window, were surely going to be bigger than The Beatles. Now, when I handle these neglected, dusty objects, I sometimes feel that I am handling nothing less than the atrophied, fossilised remains of someone’s dreams’.

Ouch.

So, yeah, Oasis have gate-crashed the contemporary and millions of folk are either reliving their teens or, like my own teenage son, blagging their way into the stage-front standing area, Pep to the left, Kamara to the right, and fulfilling their dreams by seeing them live for the first time. Good luck to ’em all. I can’t wait for the next generation of Noel-inspired songwriters to start seeping their way onto Spotify.

Sleeper but.

There was a music press-coined term used to describe the anonymous males who played behind their more photogenic – and female – lead singers. Sleeperbloke. Skinny-jeaned, Adidas clad, some Fred Perry on display, maybe a Fila track suit too. The drummer was usually pretty watchable, in a Clem Burke sort of way. One of them would have a really great haircut, the sort that you’d look at in the street and think, ‘he’s in a band’. One of them presented an image so beige they should’ve been dumped by the rest of the group at the first opportunity (but his dad owned the van though, so, y’know…). He was quite possibly the lead singer’s boyfriend and there he was on TFI Friday, barre chording grimly while the cameras shot his short-skirted girlfriend from the ankles up, watching on helplessly as she entered a whole new orbit of hipper boyfriends and short-lived fame.

Sleeper – What Do I Do Now?

Sleeper came and went and passed me by. Nnnahh. Blondie-lite and inoffensive, I had no need for them. But a good song is a good song is a good song, and What Do I Do Now? might well be their greatest (only great) moment. Sure, it has terribly breathy vocals – you can see Louise Wener and her big, brown, doe eyes giving you the come-on as you listen – and it’s got a burbling guitar break that sounds as if it’s playing at the bottom of the North Sea, but it’s a proper story song, of a relationship breaking down and how the two protagonists deal with it.

None other than Elvis Costello thought highly enough of it that he recorded his own, pared-down version. He turns it from a fizzing and clattering indie-rock track into a waltz-time acoustic ballad, his voice close-miked and enunciating perfectly the vocals that the song’s original singer wasn’t quite able to do. His vocals, reedy and high, gulping and low, perfectly toned and pitched, are brilliant on this.

Elvis Costello – What Do I Do Now?