Author of "The Birth And Impact Of Britpop: Mis-Shapes, Scenesters And Insatiable Ones"
March 1994.
My girlfriend, the first love of my life since the last first love of my life, is studying art in the city of jam and jute.
I am studying something utterly meaningless on the other side of the country…a decision I made in order to be closer to her, before she accepted a place at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee. With hindsight she may have been trying to tell me something.
I know Dundee well, it is a major hub for Mormon activity on the East coast of Scotland, I had my first kiss behind the Church on Bingham Terrace with a girl called Rhonda, I saw Morrissey play the Caird Hall in May of 1991, and I was at Dens Park when Hearts lost the league on the last day of the 1986 season.
Such fun.
On this occasion I am sitting inside a tiny venue called Lucifer’s Mill with my friend, and the only true love of my life, Chris. We are here to see two bands who are part of what the music press have dubbed the New Wave of New Wave.
Compulsion are the headliners, but Chris and I are here for the other band. I already have a copy of their debut single.
The music press have mentioned The Smiths in their coverage of the band.
For reasons I don’t really understand we have arrived so early that the bands themselves are only just setting up.
Chris orders a real drink because he is a real person.
I order a coke because I am in a cult.
I’m joking.
Maybe.
As we sit chatting, the singer from the band we have come to see approaches the bar to order a drink.
I ask him if I could have his autograph.
I’ve never asked anyone for an autograph before.
I don’t have a pen.
Or a piece of paper.
Or a record for him to sign.
He grabs a pack of guitar strings, asks the barman for a pen, and writes “ROLL OUT THE BARREL, LOVE RICK WITTER.”
A love affair begins.
Much has been written about the Britpop era - a lot of it by me - and while it is true that it was a glorious moment, it wasn’t a cultural “movement”, indeed many of the bands were less interesting, and enjoyable, than most bowel movements.
A few years after the demise of Britpop there was a lot of chatter about “landfill indie” - that is a great description of many of the bands who rode along on the coattails of the handful of British bands who dominated the charts and filled live venues between 1991-1994.
I’m not going to name any names.
I’ve already upset enough people.
Shed Seven were given a rough ride by certain sections of the music press, but that suggests that the journalists in question simply weren’t listening, or were joyless, arrogant, pricks. I can recognise my own.
They had 14 consecutive top forty singles between 1994 and 2003, they have had 5 top twenty albums, with their most recent giving them their first number one, and they have sold out venues up and down the country from the intimate confines of Lucifer’s Mill, to the much less intimate likes of Castlefield Bowl.
Shed Seven have more tunes than Spotify.
They are melody makers.
Body shakers.
I bought the debut album, “Change Giver”, from Stereo One in Paisley.
It was September 1994, almost six months since I had seen them play live for the first time, although I had seen them more than once since, and I was as giddy as a kipper about hearing the songs I had heard live in the comfort of my own student bedroom.
An intimate experience for a band I had grown ever so slightly obsessed with.
I was now living in the home of the parents of the girl in Dundee, my bedroom was her older brother's old room. The walls were covered in those free posters you used to get with Select magazine, set lists from gigs, pictures of Morrissey, the floor had huge piles of N.M.E and Melody Maker, my record player sat underneath the bay window at the end of the room, my record collection taking up whatever space was available.
On this occasion nobody else was at home.
That meant I could play it loud.
That’s what I did.
A bit of feedback, the crunch of a guitar, drums, and then it was off and running. “Try to please me with your lies in my face”
That’s a great opening line.
But when Rick sings “Take your dress off, I’ll make you burn your soul on fire”, I got that guilty feeling I got whenever anyone said anything about sex…so I turned the volume down, just in case God could hear it.
You think I’m joking.
I wish I was.
The most striking thing about the album, not just “Dirty Soul”, was the fact that it wasn’t by the numbers indie, it wasn’t an attempt at making a “cor blimey”, “knees up mother Brown”, “jellied eels”, Chas ’n’ Dave style “Britpop” album - it was something entirely independent from the “scene”.
It was possible to dance to the songs.
It was impossible not to dance to the songs.
There was something funky and groovy about it all.
I don’t mean in some “shagadelic baby” Austin Powers way.
I mean genuinely funky and groovy.
Lots of the bands who were around at the same time rocked…but you couldn’t roll with it. With Rick you rocked and you rolled.
The singles are all here, “Mark/Casino Girl”, “Dolphin”, “Speakeasy”, and “Ocean Pie”. Anthems for one, rallying calls for kids who needed somewhere to rally, a flag in the ground showing that this was their place, and that you were welcome to come and stay.
A few years after this Oasis would release “Be Here Now”, an album that is the sound of cocaine committed to vinyl - overblown, boorish, occasionally brilliant despite itself. Songs that drag on for what seems like hours - “All Around the World” goes on for almost ten minutes.
Ten minutes of “All Around the World”.
By the half-way point you just want it all to end…the song, the band, your life.
Curiously, “Change Giver” ends with an eight minute long “On an Island With You” - almost as long as “All Around the World” - and by the time it ends you want it to start all over again…the song, the album, your life.
Just shows you, it isn’t length that matters, it’s what you do with it.
Or something.
Here we all are thirty years later and the gang have decided to take the show on the road again. Playing in venues not that much bigger than Lucifer’s Mill.
A chance to do what Kylie told us to do and step back in time.
Hear the songs that started it all again…
Forget the extra inches around your waist, leave the kids at home, pop a hat on to help you, and everyone else, forget the male pattern baldness, party like it’s 1994…just before it all went a bit pear shaped in the aftermath of the moment when it was all star shaped.
You’ll be a long time dead.
SHED SEVEN WILL PLAY CHANGE GIVER IN FULL THROUGHOUT OCTOBER - CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
11th October/ PRZYM, KINGSTON
12th October/ HMV EMPIRE, COVENTRY
17th October/ SWG3, GLASGOW
18th October/ ACADEMY 2, MANCHESTER
19th October/ BECKETT STUDENT UNION, LEEDS
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