Last night’s “Britpop Night” on BBC4 was entertaining, but a little repetitive. I suppose that’s rather appropriate, actually, but even I was getting bored on hearing Inbetweener for the fourth time in the space of a couple of hours. I think the problem was that much of what John Harris’s new documentary had to say was repeated in the film that followed it, Live Forever. Both interviewed a member of Blur in the Good Mixer, for example, and both featured exactly the same clips off the six o’clock news where John Humphreys announces the release of Country House and Roll With It. Despite having three times as long to tell the story of mid 90s guitar music, Live Forever somehow failed to say as much (although it did thankfully feature no more horrific close-ups of John Harris’s face–something used to particularly bad effect when he was shown nodding thoughtfully while interviewing a heavily pregnant Louise Wener in what for reasons not adequately explained appeared to be a pub toilet). It wasn’t so much a history of Britpop, as the story of the handful of people the film makers could actually persuade to talk to them. Unfortunately, Jarvis excepted, none of those people had much to say that was actually that interesting.
Highlight of the night, however, was a 1995 documentary following Pulp around the country on the first post-Common People, post-Glasto headline tour, as they stayed in shabby provincial hotels, wondered why fame hadn’t brought them happiness, and appeared on Live n’ Kicking with Gary Glitter. Times certainly have changed. I can’t quite imagine him appearing on children’s TV these days…
I still can’t believe it was all 10 years ago. There are some mildly diverting articles and features on the BBC website, including a good Where Are They Now page. Turns out that Matt Everitt from Xfm used to be the drummer off Menswear.
I know. The thing that worried me (apart from the obvious indication that I must be getting old), was the fact that I still like most of the music they were playing.
Is that, like, wrong or something?
But how can something so wrong feel so right?