In this life, it is important to never lose sight of one concrete, indisputable fact: shoegaze music is insubstantial shit for sheltered brats. In this moment, let us fondly reminisce on the deathknell of shoegaze in the mid-1990s. It will never happen again(face it: nobody cares about revivalist shit).
>At the moment, the Manic Street Preachers define themselves against the 'dream-pop' groups (Ride, Chapterhouse, Slowdive, Lush) of the indie scene. The Manics dismiss them as apolitical and effete. "Those bands are educated and middleclass, but they don't have anything to say," sneers rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards. "It's an aesthetic of blanking out reality," adds bassist Nicky Wire. "Their music is nullifying, there's nowhere you can go with it but into your bedroom."
>"Where we come from in Wales there's this non-conformist tradition where Methodists always hate Baptists more than they hate the devil," grins Edwards. "In the same way, we will always hate minor indie groups like Slowdrive more than we hate Adolf Hitler. We loathed Slowdrive because they said punk was never important to them, and that ‘there's nothing to be angry about’."
In summary: reject cutesy, self-involved rich-kid shit that is shoegaze, support real street-level rock 'n' roll. Amen.
FPBP. I'm an elitist and I love it. Cry more, poor plebs.
Samuel Hughes
Also anyone else remember when shoegaze was as off of the radar of internet music circles as Carter USM, Sultans of FC and whatever other literally who grebo shit only old people cared about? With the obvious exception of MBV the only people who knew groups like Slowdive online in the early to mid 00s were 30 year old boomers (at that time) who were around at the time. Then suddenly americans start creaming themselves over Slowdive and sticking anime all over it
Tyler Kelly
Richey Edwards went and threw himself off a bridge
correct decision
Zachary James
you're an anonymous sperg on a taiwanese mandala-making forum. your elitism is a meme
Anthony Lee
>two decades later >britpop is a dead genre (with the exception of Suede) >meanwhile,Slowdive comes back with a new album >AOTY 2017
Those who wrote the article are probably cringing at themselves.
Austin Ward
I prefer the Manics musically, shoegaze reminds me of all the boring indie crap from the 80s like Tallulah Gosh or whatever
Luis White
real rock n roll huh? just like the stones? the guys who had their rich daddies pay them to go to art school for their profitable careers. what you described as music for sheltered brats, and rich-kid shit is found in every genre. there is some shoegaze that rocks hard and there is some shoegaze that doesnt, deal with it faggot
Andrew Green
>I think the British media is pretty unique, in that it constantly needs new bands to justify it's existence, and consequently every single of the week is greeted with universal adoration. 'This is the record that is gonna save your life', when in actual fact it’s not. When a band starts off they get massive adoration or disgust. And I think unless you can actually write a lyric, or music that people relate to, you fade out very quickly. Certainly bands like Chapterhouse, when it comes down to it they didn't say anything, and the music was just really trite. >We're not just aiming to fill Brighton Zap Club, like Lush or something, that's useless. We want to be the biggest rock 'n' roll band in the world. >doing an interview with Chapterhouse or Ride or somebody, where it was literally just talking about your fucking new effects pedal or something. It was just such a dull time. >Like people have a go at us, we're a rock 'n' roll band, they're passed off, they want to look down on us, and that's all evil things to do 'cos their idea of music is not like that, their idea of music is a background noise and like, middle class indulgence to while away the time. Listening to Dire Straits, listening to Chapter House is just the same - background music. I mean like, they have the kind of like, bland, give up on life kind of attitude. All this, like, shoot evil bands, they find a kind of worth in that, or they find a worth in a kind of really macho laddish illegal Happy Mondays lifestyle. That's the two musics they champion and both of those I think don't say anything. >Even Creation - why have they signed The Telescopes? I suppose they've got Ride, they seem to have the right idea, but all they want to be is pop stars. It's just like saying, 'I want to be a dentist.' Last time we saw them they had all their girlfriends displayed at the front of the stage and they all looked so smug.
>Bands like Slowdive were so apathetic, we decided that whenever we got on stage, we wouldn't stop moving. >"Bands like Northside," sneered Richey of those Stone Roses contemporaries long since consigned to oblivion, "they say they reflect their own culture and where they come from, but that's boring. Where we come from, people come home from work in their dirty, filthy overalls and they just wanna dress up. Also, Northside and the rest are so traditionally male." >Chapterhouse or Ride or somebody, where it was literally just talking about your fucking new effects pedal or something. It was just such a dull time. >We were never a cul-de-sac band, like Curve, capitalising on an audience that was already there. Whereas the Neds, Carter and The Senseless Things, those tee-shirt bands, feed off each other's following, we're creating our own audience. >A lot of people are attached to the darkness of 'The Holy Bible' or the bigness of 'Everything Must Go' and '...Tolerate...', but for some, that initial colourful burst of the glamorous punk band meant more than any other version. People wanted a rock album. They were drenched in fucking shoegaze and US bands and a lot of people really wanted something like that >WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE SHOEGAZING BANDS "You both can die because that's what you did to me. You left me to die. You both are so f---ing hopeless. You can both rot in f---ing shitting asshole hell. Burn you f----ing bumshits." - Bret Easton Ellis
I mean fuck, this song is beyond almost everything.
Nathaniel Howard
>We were so sick of the shoegazing... and then you had Swans, Young Gods... it was so fucking ghettoized, that music. It was never, ever going to be that great moment where Morrissey appears on Top Of The Pops, or Ian McCulloch rips his shirt, or Rod Stewart and the Faces kicking a football... that was just not happening, there was no alternative flipping over, and it just felt wrong.
>The '80s for us, was the biggest non-event ever, like C86. All we had was Big Flame. Big Flame was the most perfect band. But we couldn't play their records 'cos they were too avant garde. >We wrote to Big Flame, a Manchester band: we wrote to them a lot. I think the whole of 1986 we spent writing to Big Flame! We wrote, when the band first started, to any band we could think of just trying to get gig. Nobody ever wrote back. Big Flame replied. They replied all the time. >You avoid shoe gazing. >Yeah, it's mundane and boring. When we were back home we spent the whole Summer holidays stuck indoors doing nothing. When we got a new video through - like Guns 'N' Roses at The Ritz - for that half hour we just felt brilliant. It really liberated us. >I don't think so, no. We never get letters from students - maybe one in every hundred. Students are just too brain-dead really. They deserve Carter and Kingmaker. >The Manics want to be a teen phenomenon, a trash icon like Kylie, Babycham and Marilyn. Yet they want to be as important as Public Enemy, as outrageous as Guns N'Roses. It's essential that they're both. They've no interest in appealing to "worthy music fans". They like Kylie, Guns N'Roses, Public Enemy and The Black Crowes, and want to be "as big as Kylie, as radical as Big Flame". They want to be pin-ups and they want to change peo-ple's lives. >7. BIG FLAME: "Why Pop Stars Can't Dance" (Ron Johnson Records single) "We didn't really enjoy their music -it's such a disgusting noise, trying to fuse jazz with punk - but they were a brilliant band, easily the best of the whole circa 1986 bunch. I love that line - 'Substitute invention for that unit-shifting pout'- cos that's how the contemporary pop scene seemed to us in the mid-Eighties. Bands like the Cocteau Twins, or Cranes today, just wind us up so much - you can never understand a word they're singing, which, I' s'pose, is the point. But always thought it was important to say something'.
Angel Davis
>We got into music when the miner's strike was happening, and that had a massive bearing on us: you couldn't write about going out with a girl because you'd only gone out with a girl for about a week. You had to write about what affected you, directly or otherwise. After Red Wedge, the political edge of white rock bands became completely lost, and bands like these tried to make it not sound earnest: records with some sort of commentary, but trying to not sound like they cared So much academia had gone into the lyrics. That's when the Guns N'Roses Vs McCarthy argument came up: was it more important to be like Guns N'Roses and use it as a vehicle, or be like McCarthy? That crystallised us. We realised it was the saddest thing in the world to glorify the indie ethic when you're saying important things.
>dismiss them as apolitical How is this "dismissing" this sounds like a huge compliment to me. >We loathed Slowdrive because they said punk was never important to them, and that ‘there's nothing to be angry about’." Based slowdive, fuck off Manic Street Preachers, your music hasn't actually made anyone think about actual political issues, I doubt much of punk music had, anyone who goes "damn this is deep, i wanna rise up!!" is full of shit. Your rebellion you showcase on your music is full of shit and doesn't result in anything, you just write up bunch of angry lyrics, cut yoursellf but that's all you ever did about the situation. And then you threw yourself down a bridge.
Jordan Perry
So basically if your music isn't political, it's worthless...
That seems exhausting to never take a break from listening or writing that type of music.
Liam Martinez
Britpop fans picking on shoegaze fans always struck me as pretty pointless considering what a non-issue shoegaze was at its time, it's like a bully picking on the single weakest kid in his class. Oasis and Suede and MSP were breaking sales records and putting out hit singles and touring Japan and shit at the same time Slowdive, Ride etc. were still just fucking about in the indie charts and playing daytime slots at Reading.
The grunge vs. Britpop thing I can understand since grunge was actually a pretty big deal and it being so big in the UK naturally provoked a local reaction, but shoegaze was fucking nothing. It wasn't even a critical darling, Ride were treated like a fucking joke by the press for most of their original run.
Dominic Taylor
Britpop took a lot from shoegaze. Listen to Oasis' debut album and tell me that shoegaze influence isn't all over that fucking album.
Luke Clark
The sonic headspaces that shoegaze creates is something very dreamy.
Eli Roberts
>reject... shoegaze, support real street-level rock 'n' roll. Amen. >implying I can't have both
>be Swervedriver and the Catherine Wheel, AKA two of the most spectacular guitar bands of the early-to-mid 90s >merge the drifting melodic sense and texture of shoegaze with the heavy guitar crunch and aggression of American alternative rock >end up being too heavy and "macho" for the shoegaze kids >end up being too ethereal and "European" for the grunge kids >end up with no particular audience from either camp, fucked over by a variety of flaky record labels until you finally disband despite releasing little to no inferior work during your years of activity >fast forward to 2019 and fucking vapid-ass Slowdive has more of a legacy than either of these bands
I said it before and I said it again: Catherine Wheel, Swervedriver and the Afghan Whigs should have been the biggest bands of the 90s.
