20. McAlmont and Butler - Yes
Had George Orwell written a follow-up to 1984, it might have been a post-dystopian vision of a future in which Big Brother had been banished and was still 5 years away from inauspiciously returning to the public eye with his own game show, the Thought Police had became impotent in the face of a laddish culture that was legitimising perving over the naked female form and British popular music was enjoying (briefly) its last era of true greatness. Orwell's book would be called 1995.
I compiled a list at the time of all the albums I bought (or copied) that had been released that year, because (a) I was astounded by how many I had, (b) I was astounded at how good they all were, and (c) I like lists. In a futile effort to reconstruct that list now, I've reflected that 1995 had in fact provided the vintage crop in the middle of a 5 year fertile period. Between 1993 and 1997 these albums found their way from shop - usually HMV in Brent Cross or Edgware or a small independent music retailer in Mill Hill Broadway - to my CD rack:
I compiled a list at the time of all the albums I bought (or copied) that had been released that year, because (a) I was astounded by how many I had, (b) I was astounded at how good they all were, and (c) I like lists. In a futile effort to reconstruct that list now, I've reflected that 1995 had in fact provided the vintage crop in the middle of a 5 year fertile period. Between 1993 and 1997 these albums found their way from shop - usually HMV in Brent Cross or Edgware or a small independent music retailer in Mill Hill Broadway - to my CD rack:
- The Bends - Radiohead
- OK Computer - The Bends
- His n Hers - Pulp
- Different Class - Pulp
- This is Hardcore - Pulp
- Suede - Suede
- Dog Man Star - Suede
- The Sound of McAlmont and Butler
- Star - Belly
- King - Belly
- Casanova - The Divine Comedy
- A Short Album about Love - The Divine Comedy
- Definitely Maybe - Oasis
- What's the Story (Morning Glory)? - Oasis
- Static and Silence - The Sundays
- Tigerlily - Natalie Merchant
- Worry Bomb - Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
- Second Coming - The Stone Roses
- God Shuffled His Feet - Crash Test Dummies
- Monster - REM
- Dummy - Portishead
- August and Everything After - Counting Crows
- No Need to Argue - The Cranberries
- Are You Gonna Go My Way? - Lenny Kravitz
- Wild Wood - Paul Weller
- Stanley Road - Paul Weller
- Miaow - The Beautiful South
- Blue is the Colour - The Beautiful South
- Supergrass - Supergrass
- In it for the Money - Supergrass
- Tuesday Night Club Music - Sheryl Crow
- I'm with Stupid - Aimee Mann
- Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette
- Smart - Sleeper
- The It Girl - Sleeper
- Lovelife - Lush
- All Change - Cast
A humungous amount. Throw in some stuff from that time which I didn't discover until just after, such as a couple of James albums, PJ Harvey and Beth Orton and you have a half-decade that is unparalleled since. Ironically, the artists who dominated two previous and superior fertile periods - 1966-70 and 1979-83 - all seemed to have disappeared into either obscurity or mediocrity in the mid-90s, to return in many cases afterwards with something of a much-needed renaissance (Bowie, Dylan, Neil Young, Madness, Blondie, Springsteen)
This period also fits neatly alongside a pocket-sized period in my own comings and goings. Jen and I married in 1993 and moved into our first home - a newly built, housing association, shared ownership, one bedroom flat with much loved balcony in Colindale, North London - and lived here until 1997, having become parents to Jack and needing somewhere with more space to store his toys and other baby paraphernalia. Also, I had qualified as a teacher the year before all this, so it coincided with my first years of teaching at D&K in Hornsey. So the music listed above still resonates as a unique soundtrack to all of these new and exciting events.
It was also a time of being skint, as is the way with newly-weds and/or mid-20s couples. 1995 saw my attendance at Arsenal dip to a mere 6 games that season, having been pretty much ever-present each season since 1987-88, because despite SKY's injection of cash into the recently formed Premier League, clubs felt the need to whack prices up to extortionate levels - from £4 in 1988 to £14 by 1995 - pricing me out of the market. The tight budgeting around this time also meant that going to gigs was a rare treat. Out of the bands listed above, at this time I only got to see a few gigs. Admittedly, one of them, in Milton Keynes, killed 4 birds with one stone, as the line up (the best I've seen) was REM, Radiohead, Cranberries and Sleeper, but outside of that I only got to see McAlmont and Butler (for free, for obvious reasons). Other bands I've seen before (early Suede gigs, The Stone Roses and The Sundays) or later (Beautiful South in '99, Belly this year and Oasis in one of their final gigs, alongside the biggest concentration of wankers you'd find anywhere.)
Talking of which, this was also the era of the my most favourite hated band of all time, the Manic Street Preachers. The bloke in the flat above us continually played 'A Design for Life' very bloody loud. Nothing else. Just that particular song. I fucking hate the Manic Street Preachers. They'd be nothing worse than merely bland if it wasn't for the irritatingly sanctimonious and pontificating lyrics. After weeks of enduring our overhead neighbour's obsession for this particularly malignant song, I went upstairs to complain, hoping he wasn't a big bastard. He was quite the opposite, a sad and depressive lonely-looking fucker, who made me feel like a bully just for complaining.
I did love that house, and was quite sad to leave, despite the moderate vandalism we inflicted on it. I say 'we': Jen kicked a hole in a cavity wall in anger (most out of character and soon surpassed by me in our next house in regard to damage done to all but one interior door) and Jack pissed all over another wall and left a stain (he was a baby, so we don't hold it against him that he created a fountain much like the one at Brent Cross in those days, as we changed his nappy.) Jen liked to phone emergency services at that time, once when she spotted a potential 'bomb' (it was a car battery) under a car and once when the grill pan caught light. And my final memory of 2, Lindholme Court, Pageant Avenue, was the fact that Jack was born while we were there. Just a few weeks before Arsene Wenger became Arsenal manager. So, a lot of early sleepless night rocking him to sleep and considering leaving him out on the balcony (What? He would've been safe!).
So many songs to choose from for this post, but for some obvious reasons and for the fact that this was a particularly happy period, it had to be YES. Possibly the best song in this golden era of the mid-90s.
It was also a time of being skint, as is the way with newly-weds and/or mid-20s couples. 1995 saw my attendance at Arsenal dip to a mere 6 games that season, having been pretty much ever-present each season since 1987-88, because despite SKY's injection of cash into the recently formed Premier League, clubs felt the need to whack prices up to extortionate levels - from £4 in 1988 to £14 by 1995 - pricing me out of the market. The tight budgeting around this time also meant that going to gigs was a rare treat. Out of the bands listed above, at this time I only got to see a few gigs. Admittedly, one of them, in Milton Keynes, killed 4 birds with one stone, as the line up (the best I've seen) was REM, Radiohead, Cranberries and Sleeper, but outside of that I only got to see McAlmont and Butler (for free, for obvious reasons). Other bands I've seen before (early Suede gigs, The Stone Roses and The Sundays) or later (Beautiful South in '99, Belly this year and Oasis in one of their final gigs, alongside the biggest concentration of wankers you'd find anywhere.)
Talking of which, this was also the era of the my most favourite hated band of all time, the Manic Street Preachers. The bloke in the flat above us continually played 'A Design for Life' very bloody loud. Nothing else. Just that particular song. I fucking hate the Manic Street Preachers. They'd be nothing worse than merely bland if it wasn't for the irritatingly sanctimonious and pontificating lyrics. After weeks of enduring our overhead neighbour's obsession for this particularly malignant song, I went upstairs to complain, hoping he wasn't a big bastard. He was quite the opposite, a sad and depressive lonely-looking fucker, who made me feel like a bully just for complaining.
I did love that house, and was quite sad to leave, despite the moderate vandalism we inflicted on it. I say 'we': Jen kicked a hole in a cavity wall in anger (most out of character and soon surpassed by me in our next house in regard to damage done to all but one interior door) and Jack pissed all over another wall and left a stain (he was a baby, so we don't hold it against him that he created a fountain much like the one at Brent Cross in those days, as we changed his nappy.) Jen liked to phone emergency services at that time, once when she spotted a potential 'bomb' (it was a car battery) under a car and once when the grill pan caught light. And my final memory of 2, Lindholme Court, Pageant Avenue, was the fact that Jack was born while we were there. Just a few weeks before Arsene Wenger became Arsenal manager. So, a lot of early sleepless night rocking him to sleep and considering leaving him out on the balcony (What? He would've been safe!).
So many songs to choose from for this post, but for some obvious reasons and for the fact that this was a particularly happy period, it had to be YES. Possibly the best song in this golden era of the mid-90s.
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