Operation Appreciation: Day 4: Britain: 1994-1997

I mentioned yesterday that Radiohead's first three albums are being re-released today as 2CD+DVD versions with B-sides and blah blah blahs all added up and packaged sexy and all. That got me in the mood to listen to The Bends and Ok Computer. Great albums, each, and for different reasons. The Bends is much stronger on a song-by-song basis, but Ok Computer was revolutionary and works fantastically as its own singular work; the former would not have been as successful in the current musical climate.

Somewhere halfway, Blur's Parklife hits me as a little bit of both. It's an album wrapped around a conceptual theme (modern British life), but individual songs ("Girls & Boys," "Jubilee," "Tracy Jacks") stand out. It's definitely one of those things I would miss from listening to individual tracks. Albums will die soon, that is a pretty set trend. It's listening to Ok Computer that makes me hope that putting out albums in some form (or even a song a month, like serialization! Why hasn't anyone done that yet [that I know of]?) can possibly still have a cultural impact in music's song-based future.
Because of the quality of its best albums (and a ton of individual songs), the "Britpop" era, from about 1993-1997 or so is my favorite of any musical time period. A number of my favorite albums came out in this time period, from the aforementioned three to Pulp's His 'n' Hers, Different Class and This Is Hardcore, plus Happy Mondays's Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches. And that's not even counting Oasis' trio of albums from this time period! (And yes, I do love Be Here Now). I also have to shout out Menswe@r, Elastica and The Auteurs, and Blur's output from Modern Life is Rubbish through Blur.
I would absolutely go to far to say that this time period was significantly more fruitful than America's more-touted "Grunge" movement. Perhaps I got into that scene late in the game - years after Cobain's life was finished, where the fruits of the rise of the underground gave birth to Nickelback, Saliva and bands of their ilk. Living with that legacy in no ways diminishes what Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc. accomplished, but it definitely makes me think twice about how amazing they were in their prime (Pearl Jam is almost certainly going to be covered in this blog eventually, though).

Meanwhile, maybe because of geographic distance, I find that I don't have the same problem with any Britpop band except for possibly Oasis, whose "Wonderwall" seems to have infested the fingertips of every open-mic college acoustic guitarist (and I was not excluded in this!) since its release.

Anyway, this all reflected on my most recent musical-purchasing concentration: The Kinks. Their albums have been remastered with bonus tracks tacked on overseas, and I had been collecting them before I decided to take up this feature. Ray Davies is the grandfather of the whole movement, celebrating  traditionalism while calling it out for being stodgy and conservative. I always make a point to work backwards in my exploration of music, but sometimes it helps to remember that even if The Bends isn't The Kink Kontroversy and Parklife isn't The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, there are many joys to be found in them before I move on.