Listless Age

No Ripcord has recently published their writers poll of the top 100 albums of the 1990s.I took part and was surprised that a fair number of my picks got in. I won't bore you all with the top 40 I was asked to send away, but the ten highest choices here:

10. The House of Love - Babe Rainbow
9. XTC - Nonsuch
8. Sugar - Copper Blue
7. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
6. Ride - Nowhere
5. Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque
4. World Party - Goodbye Jumbo
3. Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
2. Mansun - Six
1. Slowdive - Soulvaki

A totally unsurprising list, I'm sure the people who know me will agree. The truth is, I found it tough to think of 40 albums. There was no Radiohead, because they ceased to be relevant to me when I hit my 19th birthday, I found.

Oasis appear, naturally, though they didn't crop up in my list, because I blame them for my complete ambivalence at the time to Britpop. A lot of people here will respond here "Ah, but Definitely Maybe..." to which I can say that I listened back to the whole album recently and bar Live Forever and Slide Away remained fairly unmoved throughout.

The issue, now if probably not back then, is the total lack of groove in the band. Frankly, the rhythm section must be amongst the worst to ever grace the top of the charts. A rhythm guitarist who studied well at Johnny Ramone school of technique, a bassist who rarely strayed beyond the safety of root notes and a drummer... well, this says it best.

Yet all the same, I guess Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee deserve a wedge of credit for taking a bunch of pub players from Burnage and getting the music press to piss themselves bigging them up as the future of rock and roll. Image is everything, of course, and it is amusing in hindsight to think that they were bigged up as a bunch of lads from the hard streets of Manchester. Presumably, any journalist who bought that line had never took a walk around the pleasant (no sarcasm) streets of Burnage. Still, to a lot of London types, the second you head North of Watford, you may as well be in Bandit Country.

Manchester, I fear, has yet to recover from the shadow of Oasis. It's become a city too keen to attach labels of the past to new bands. Everyone has to be the "next Smiths" or next New Order, Joy Division, Stone Roses or Oasis. Like Liverpool, the shackles of history seem to grip tighter as we go along.

In conclusion: musically, I found the 1990s a crappy time to grow up. Thank fuck for Eric Cantona, who has more rock and roll in his small finger than Liam Gallagher every could.