Viva 1998: An Introduction

A few months back, David McNamee, perhaps still best known to this weblog for his scathing criticism of my particular brand of punk rock dancing, wrote a great feature for Plan B, reminiscing about a certain underappreciated strain of British pop culture that briefly exploded during the otherwise ignoble year that was 1997. The movement that McNamee seeks to retrospectively define took Kenickie and Bis as its figureheads, and could broadly be said to consist of frustrated middle-England teenagers fighting a valiant rearguard action against the ugly death-throes of post-Oasis brit-pop and the associated culture of the era (and rightly so, because GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE), taking inspiration instead from DIY fanzine culture, the lingering influence of Riot Grrl, and Huggy Bear in particular, and (for better or worse) the inescapable suburban angst vortex that was/is the early Manic Street Preachers.

If you were in any way engaged with the British music world or music press around this time, you’ll probably know the score, but if not, the aesthetic we’re talking is: general prevalence of girls, or boys who wanted to be girls, fanzines, glitter, manga imagery, impossible to find multi-colour 7”s full of casios, fuzz and shouting, an unironic reclamation of bubblegum pop simplicity and chart pop glamour, righteous schoolyard level politics, postal communication and formation of scattered pre-internet communities, dyed hair, plastic jewellery, sparkly everything, too much lipgloss and eyeliner and a generally more punky and homemade take on all that stuff that’s now commonly recognised ‘indie-girl’ apparel ... and so on. You get the idea. Great stuff, obviously. The very best stuff perhaps, if the momentum and musical quality had stayed more consistent.

I was 15 in 1997, stuck in rural West Wales, and too distant and clueless to really claim any awareness of these rather inspiring goings-on, probably not even picking up on the tantalising hints that did creep into what little media I could get my hands on.

McNamee portrays this whole business as flaring like a mad firework in ’97 and swiftly dying a death, and from his “I was there” perspective, maybe that makes sense. But sorry David, it was during ’98 and ’99 that I experienced my indie coming of age, and there was some amazing music in this general vein still to be found in the corners of those otherwise culturally deadening few years. I suppose things were turning away somewhat from the militant lo-fi pop stuff (as exemplified by the first Bis album), and taking a more Kenickie-inspired approach to the simple pleasures of teenage pop-punk… which, speaking as a lifelong fan of The Donnas, certainly poses no problem for me.

Quite the contrary in fact; I spent these years crouched by the cassette player listening to good ol’ Steve Lamacq shambling his way through The Evening Session, sitting through hours of god-awful ladrock dross, poised and ready to hit ‘record’ every time I heard something with a fuzz guitar or a girl singer. And there were indeed a handful of truly joyous bands who gave me a kick in the right direction and a new lease of life at that crucial point when my tastes were finally moving beyond Nirvana to embrace The Ramones, The Pixies and, subsequently, all good music.

I remember the Melody Maker jumping on the ’97 bandwagon a tad late and trying to drum up some hype for a few months for what it deemed ‘Brat-Pop’, citing the likes of Gel, Vyvyan and Cheetera as prime examples, and I guess that’s the kinda scene I’m talking about here. Ash probably copped a bit of this too, as ‘scene leaders’ or some such, although they were already big and famous and heading toward their 20th birthdays and boring second album by this point.

It’s been nearly a decade since I heard Gel on the other hand, but I remember them sounding like the best band ever: mega-loud guitar distortion and hyper-energetic 90 second songs that consisted entirely of chorus. If I ever actually track anything by them down, I hope my memories haven’t lied (anybody got anything in digital, you got my address). Gel were boys (I think), but it was the girl bands from this era that I really dug (funny that..) and I’ve got various holy artefacts to prove that they still sound great to this day.

So, what all this is leading up to, is that I’m planning to do an irregular series of weblog posts introducing you to the joys of circa-1998 UK girl bands.

And it’ll serve a historical function too: coming just before the internet became an established fact of life, but not yet old enough to have become ‘historical’, this whole period in indie/punk culture is shockingly poorly documented. Barely any of the bands I’ve mentioned above, nor the ones I intend to write about, have a wikipedia page or an allmusic.com entry, and I can scarcely find any visual evidence online of the frequently awesome fanzines or record covers from the late ‘90s DIY boom. So, like a true lapsed history graduate, I’ll do by best to share as much information and speculation, and as many no-longer-available musical and pictorial goodies, as I can get hold of.

First post will be up this weekend, featuring the long-awaited appreciation of one of my favouritest bands of all-time ever – no foolin’.