Twenty years is supposed to be the nostalgia sweet spot. I actually started writing this post in 2019, left it in the drafts and then forgot about it until recently. I have two speeds of doing things: right away, or I’ll remember to finish it in three years time. Take your pick.
I’ve focused here on semi-forgotten things that either people who were around and listening to this type of stuff had totally forgotten, or has completely passed them by if they weren’t. It’s definitely in no way some kind of quality overview of the best of what was around at the turn of the century, and is pretty much all focused on British indie bands that would get covered in these magazines.
I was born in 1985. Every Wednesday from the age of 13-16 or so I used to go to the small newsagents/post office near my school and buy Melody Maker and a packet of sweets and pour over the magazine. None of my friends read it, they all preferred Kerrang, but I rarely missed a week. As both magazines cost around a pound (and I got a princely £3.20 per hour from my Saturday job- the recently introduced legal minimum), I frequently used to buy the NME too, although I preferred Melody Maker because it didn’t take itself quite so seriously, which is ironic, as when the Strokes et al came out around 2002 the NME suddenly turned into Indie Smash Hits. Both magazines were printed on cheap newspaper, with ink that rubbed off on your hands (leading to their nickname of the music inkies). There was an extensive selection at the back of small ads from people looking for band members, where Suede had famously formed. Melody Maker briefly switched to glossy paper in 2000 before it eventually folded, but it never felt right as a glossy magazine.
I’ve written about this elsewhere, but in the days before streaming, buying a new album took careful consideration, because they were expensive, so reviews from journalists whose tastes you’d become familiar with were very useful. Singles, even on 7″ on the other hand were cheap and plentiful enough to be an impulse buy, and they sold in physical volumes unimaginable today.
The Post Office where I used to buy Melody Maker is still there, with the same owners and same layout inside, but a new glossy frontage . Here is a photo from Google Maps from 2008, which looks exactly the same as it did in the late 90s. I wonder if the card in the window from the amateur pornographer looking for “mature ladies with a sense of humour” was still there at that point.
The irony of having every single possible artist at your fingertips in the age of streaming and Youtube is that it’s easy to get stuck in your bubble or end up listening to just whatever major label thing the algorithm recommends. In 1999 I had dialup internet at home, but downloading any kind of song took forever, and might not even be the right one when you got it. Youtube didn’t even exist yet. The opinions of music writers became your guide to finding anything you might be interested in. Music I liked was limited on the radio to the few hours of John Peel or Steve Lamacq each evening. You could pick up XFM (a London alternative station) in my hometown, but it played a pretty generic middle of the road rock selection. You also got to learn about music in oblique ways- you’d find out about the Fall, for example, from jokes about Mark E Smith slipped in to other articles.
Although they didn’t achieve the kind of celebrity awarded to music journalists in the 70s, the Melody Maker and NME journalists still had a lot of power in 1999, for better or worse. Getting their attention from a London gig could launch a career in ways it can’t now.
This is the kind of extremely bland thing that was being presented as the top current music around 1998-99. The whole Britpop thing had run out of steam, but the garage rock revival/Libertines type stuff hadn’t really taken off yet. There was no big unified thing for the music press to get behind, so this is what you got served up. I didn’t have Sky at home, so therefore no MTV2 (see here for the mix videos I used to make off it when babysitting), and had to make do with UK Play, which played this video endlessly. I considered tormenting you with Beautiful Day by Three Colours Red along similar lines, but decided to show mercy.
For about 6 months, Campag Velocet were heavily pushed as the Future of Music by the music press, then swiftly forgotten about.
As were Terris. I absolutely loathe this song.
Continuing on the theme of “heavily hyped small bands from the era who then disappeared and were unknown outside the UK” (except I like this song). They were from Greenwich/Lewisham way up the road from me, and the video is a perfect picture of how streets and teenager’s bedrooms looked. A small detail I noticed that is long gone is the “photocopies 4p” sign on the newsagents. They used to be everywhere but are now hard to find.
I also had this song that used to get played on the radio stuck in my head for years and years and had no idea who it was by, and now found it when searching for the other Llama Farmers video. So thanks for that Youtube.
Cay were also promoted a lot at the same time, until they fell apart in a mess of substance abuse and arguments. Dutch singer Anet Mook was later hit by a bus and died.
Idlewild on the other hand were extremely popular. I was a big fan of their first two albums, but lost interest when they went in a sweeping ballad direction to try to break the US.
I also bought all the 7″ singles they released, which were both very cheap and Idlewild did some quality b-sides such as this song (which I think should have been an album track). I can’t remember the last time I bought a 7″ now, as they are almost the same price as an album.
I also still have a number of Bis 7″s
In a similar vein to Idlewild were Seafood, who also obligingly played regularly in Kent, including the park across the street from my house. Kev from the band now runs the excellent Tome Records in Hackney. I also got the 7″ of this.
Som Wardner from My Vitriol was a bona fide heartthrob in the late 90s. About ten years ago they tried to crowdfund a reunion tour and new album and made an absolute pig’s ear of it.
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci were also really popular, but never seem to be factored into nostalgia portrayals. When I was at university in Reading I went to see them do a double-header with Yo La Tengo in the shopping centre in Basingstoke in 2004. We could easily have gone to the London date, but I dragged my Greek friend along because she’d never been to Basingstoke and I felt it was time she experienced somewhere really shit in the UK. Most of the rest of the audience were older people who clearly had some kind of theatre membership and had no clue what was going on. I did like the fact though that the theatre rang a bell for the interval between bands and you could collect pre-booked drinks and the little theatre tubs of ice cream with wooden spoons.
Here’s a crossover video they did with Adam & Joe, who were basically doing YouTube before it even existed as a concept. Adam & Joe and Spaced are definitely an accurate portrayal of the style/vibe of the time.
Belle and Sebastian also had a cult following at the time. The Velvet Underground of Glasgow (but who go to bed early). I think it all went wrong when Stuart Murdoch started letting the other band members write songs.There was a huge drama at the 1999 Brit Awards, when their fans used the novelty of voting online to beat Steps to a prize. It didn’t seem weird at the time to be into both Belle and Sebastian and say Shellac and even play them back to back, it was all counted as alternative. I think it was later that things became more stratified.
(I originally was going to put Mansun in here too, who had a similarly cultish homebody following, but Paul Draper has proved himself to be such a dangerous creep in the years since I don’t want to give them anything)
It’s also interesting now how the few scraps left of mainstream music press responds fawningly to the big music prizes. The Mercury used to be taken seriously, but the others were scorned by the inkies. These were mainstream magazines sold in every newsagents in the country, and they felt powerful enough to turn their nose up at industry awards. The NME used to host their own awards show called the Brats as a parody of the Brit Awards, with the trophies giving the finger.
Often in this period the weeklies used to come with free compilation cds in cardboard sleeves, of varying quality. I particularly remember this extra high quality free cd from 1999 that was a tie-in to the awards as it introduced me to so many different artists who later became favourites- Godspeed, Elliott Smith and Boards of Canada in particular. (I am always grateful to Discogs for having every minor free cd ever listed on there).
- Mercury Rev– Endlessly
- Elliott Smith– Pictures Of Me
- Arab Strap– Piglet
- The Afghan Whigs– Somethin’ Hot
- Royal Trux– Stevie (For Steven S)
- Quasi (2)– I Never Want To See You Again
- Leila– Won’t You Be My Baby Baby
- Third Eye Foundation*– A Galaxy Of Scars
- Boards Of Canada– Roygbiv
- Jurassic 5- Concrete Schoolyard
- MDK– Acid Rave (All The Girls Love An)
- Godspeed You Black Emperor!– The Dead Flag Blues (Edit)
This is in fact the best Arab Strap song and the best version of it though
This free cd on the other hand was definitely not good, but it did introduce me to this song by ex-Cardiacs member Bic Hayes. (Also if you’re not familiar with Cardiacs, what are you doing with your life? Go and watch this) Dark Star did one good album, and this Jools Holland appearance and then seemingly disappeared.
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