Apropos of nothing in the news, honest!
The Yob versus Romo War
For the June 29 1996 issue, Melody Maker investigated the phenomenon of "Yob Rock", convening a round table that has a number of people representing ladpop and ladette-pop but also a rather large contingent of Romo musicians and Romo-writers, who deplore the Loaded-ladded culture.
There's also a sort of historicising thinkpiece about the yob tradition in British rock by Taylor Parkes
The Yob Rock debate - Orlando members and Romo-in-spirit Placebo singer plus Simon Price critique the ladpop, while Ben Stud + some lad and laddette performers retort that this is elitism and snobbery and stereotyping
I think is actually the UK music press at its best - purely ideas-oriented and ideals-oriented argumentation - flashbacking to similar debates about e.g. Synths in Pop, or the New Mod, that Sounds might convene.
It gets pretty fiery.
Ben Stud: "Romo.... was a comprehensive failure" from the most acrimonious bit of the exchange
You might draw some discomfiting conclusions from the fact that in this Lads versus Dandies furore, the women present barely get a word in edgeways.... suggesting that Cavaliers versus Roundheads is just a fratricidal battle within the Patriarchy - Sons versus Sons.
In following weeks the surviving Romos out there bite back at the Yob Champions
- but futilely.
And then Oasis have the front cover for two issues in a row - Loch Lomond and Knebworth
Followed, with a week's interval (Ash) by The Stone Roses
(At Knebworth, John Squire joined Oasis on stage)
And then this!
A brief flicker of Romo-adjacent ambiguity
And then Oasis again!
Ladrock's grim hegemony maintains
(1996 was really a dead-arsed year when I think back to it - outside of dance music and R&B)
Back in my late 80's/early 90's MM reading days, the law was:
ReplyDeleteReynolds/Stubbs/Oldfield rave about a band = band worth checking out.
Stud Brothers/Sutherland/Gittins rave about a band = 50% chance they are good.
Wilde/Roberts/Price rave about a band = band is guaranteed to be absolute dogshit.
That's sweet of you to say. I have a feeling I have pointed you and others to a few duds in my time.
DeleteIt's partly down to the insane turnover, we had 51 issues a year to fill, and they were fat issues, many pages. Plus a youthful preference for empurpled praise, rather than measured and tempered.
Sometimes you gave a new band the benefit of the doubt, celebrated them for what they might become but weren't actually as of yet.
Or you kind of sold yourself on the story - group had a great line of chat, the interview would be fun to do, stimulating, not like drawing blood from a stone. Quote machines.
There aren't many I look back and think 'why oh why did I' but there's a few. I shan't name any names though.
Oh yeah, when you used to big up something like Happy Flowers I'd chalk it down to over-enthusiasm.
DeleteCompletely forgot about Happy Flowers! I think they were fine so long as you took into account it wasn't really music. The lyrics were really what they were about and the whole concept of infantile regression and the terrors of childhood.
DeleteI'm wondering now if they could secretly play - because I remember seeing them live in New York and they did a cover of UFO's "Rock Bottom".
They are not really one of the groups where I think, "ooer". They were like, "yes, this is a fun thing for a one-page feature".