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So what are they doing, right here, right now?

The early 1990s had an amazing explosion of all kinds of music. Think about it:

  • Industrial and industrial-ish dance bands such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails at the height of their popularity
  • Hip-hop was its most varied with acts like Public Enemy mixing it up with Anthrax to Me Phi Me and PM Dawn experimenting with a mellow tripped-out sound
  • The rise of techno, which would later give birth to electronica (and c’mon, tell me that in your most drunken state, didn’t you like dancing to 2 Unlimited’s Get Ready For This?
  • Bands like Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Soundgarden/Faith No More showing us what you could do if you stopped writing metal like crap
  • Sonic Youth/Loop/Mudhoney/Dinosaur Jr. exploring the possibilities of noise
  • …and Britpop

It was a great time to be a DJ, which I was, at the engineering pub at Crazy Go Nuts University. You went to the main campus pub for pitchers of watery beer, girlypop and jock rock; you went to my pub for Crown Royal and cool music.

Britpop in the early 90s, in this humble DJ’s opinion, could be split into two major categories:

  • Shoegazer bands — with guitarists and very earnest singers who sounded and look very sad. I blame British cuisine.
  • Manchester bands, who built danceable rock on top of a patter from the drum solo in james Brown’s Funky Drummer.

The Manchester bands could further be subdivided into synthy and non-synthy, each with their holy trinity. On the non-synthy side, you had the holy trinity of the Inspiral Carpets, the Charlatans and Blur while on the synthy side, you had the Soup Dragons, EMF, …

…and Jesus Jones.

So, after this long preamble, which was meant to take you down memory lane (or history lane, if you’re on the young side), I now get to the actual main point of this entry:

What are Jesus Jones up to now?

Thanks to Jen at Circadian Shift for the link!

Recommended Listening

A taste of Jesus Jones’ big hit, Right Here, Right Now, in either Windows Media or RealOne format.

A slice of the drum solo from James Brown’s Funky Drummer. The funky drummer who came up with the riff is one Clyde Stubblefield, to whom hip-hop, funk, rock and even industrial music owe a great debt.

9 replies on “So what are they doing, right here, right now?”

Ah — pretty much exactly what that House of Hotsauce trackback says, but as there’s no direct link (why?) you’ll have to google for it…

I stand corrected.

Hmmmm…maybe it’s all that aspartame in the Diet Coke I’ve been drinking that’s been affecting my memory. Luckily for me, the blogosphere is particularly good at fact-checking one’s ass, and Sean “House of Hotsauce” Monkman did that for me.

The true holy trinity of Manchester is made up of the Inspiral Carpets, Charlatans and the Stone Roses, not Blur. The Stones Roses’ eponymous debut album almost single-handedly defined the “Manchester” sound.

As far as referring to Blur as a “Manchester” band, I was referring to Manchester the sound, not Manchester the city. Of course, some people refer to the sound as “Madchester”. I punned on Manchester myself back then: whenever I got hired to DJ events like semi-formal or formal dances, I went as the Spamchester Sound System.

I heard that the new NIN album is currently being recorded. So, just one more year, the next album will be “on time”, according to Trent’s “only one full-length of new material every 5 years” scheme.

Whacky Americans, you know nothing about the other side of the Atlantic.

There’s shoegazing — My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Ride, and even Cranes. And there’s the madchester E-induced sound of the Happy Mondays (which wrote theme songs for E), Inspiral Carpets, and even James.

Britpop is Blur, Suede, and the like, and the term is also used, sometimes, to describe Robbie Williams, and other Union Jack shirted poppers.

—

But come to thing about that, genres and scenes are usually the job for rag-writing wankers, like http://www.chthonicionic.net/bile/default.asp

Actually, I’m Canadian. We’re a little more in sync with British sensibilities since the Queen is still on our money.

As for “Britpop”, the term is used a little differently on this side of the Atlantic. I am only “wrong” in the same way that I use the “pants” when you would probably use the word “trousers”.

As for genres, scenes and so on, they’re okay when you need to classify something so that people know what you’re talking about. It *is* terribly annoying when they get elevated to the status of lifestyle or religion.

Whats this about british quisine?

You have probably never had mutton with caper sauce or roasted shallots or braised fennel or lancashire hotpot or shepards pie, or… oh the list goes on, and I have to go eat now!

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