Britpop week continues with a hard, nasty vengeance!

Lollipop and I’ve talked a little bit about Britpop and British pop with you in our previous two installments, but tonight, let’s chat a little about the inspirations of Britpop…

And who better to start with than the original Oasis vs. Blur battle?

“Real Love” by The Beatles.

The John Lennon demo that was jumped upon by the three (then) surviving Beatles as part of the Beatles Anthology back in 1995. This is probably a horrible example of the essence of the videos, but at the same time, I think you could make an argument about it getting to the very core of what the Beatles were, a certain kind of gentleness, a simple sense of love, and a fun atmosphere, all of which were easily swept up into Britpop. That, and it’s just a really nice tune when you sit down and enjoy it.

Here’s the boys from Liverpool with the radiant Dusty Springfield, whom I’ll talk about in Friday’s post and here’s Dusty performing on her own.

And on the flip side of that, we have:

“Sympathy For The Devil (Neptunes remix)” by The Rolling Stones.

Honestly, what can you say about this song that hasn’t been said before? It originally appeared on the Stones’ classic 1968 Beggars Banquet album, while it’s primarily a Mick Jagger composition (and not a wholly original one in places, drawing ideas from Baudelaire and The Master and Margarita) but you can’t dispute it’s place in history. Of course there’s Altamont, and of course, “American Pie.” And then there’s the covers of it (GNR!).

Here’s the trailer to Godard’s 1968 film Sympathy For The Devil (originally entitled One Plus One by the director). Oh, and here’s the Stones playing the song at Altamont. Oh, and if you’re wondering why I used the Neptunes remix of the song here, it’s because, well, I just happen to like it. Suck it.

A brief interlude: Yesterday Lollipop posted my favorite Blur video, “Coffee and TV,” and since I just talked about the original Oasis and Blur’s, two bands that were inspired by old American Bluesmen, I thought I’d share this excellent clip about the Oasis vs. Blur war:

I swear to God that Noel Gallagher should be a spokesperson for political candidates. When asked about whether the Blur vs. Oasis conflict was really about middle class vs. working class, he said, “Not to say that the dirt under your fingernails is some sort of badge of honor, you know, it’s not. It’s just a fact. They never had a paper route, you know. I had a milk route and stuff like that. I worked on building sites. That fundamentally makes my soul a lot purer than theirs.” Brilliant.

I should say one more quick thing about Blur here, in particular one of their influences being a 60′s mod group called Small Faces, witnessed in the song “Lazy Sunday.” Continuing on…

“For Your Love” by The Yardbirds.

It amazes me how much when we don’t talk about The Yardbirds when we talk about influential British groups from the 60′s. Especially when we talk about it’s place in history as the launching pad for three of England and rock in general’s most prominent guitar players: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. Also, when The Yardbirds broke up, there was still some touring commitments in other parts of Europe and since Jimmy Page was the only member left, his manager and he put together a new band, originally called The New Yardbirds, but who then evolved into a little known band called Led Zeppelin.

Here’s The Yardbirds doing a cameo in one of my favorite movies, Antonioni’s masterpiece, Blow-Up.

Moving onto my final song and band for today, I’ll go back again to Blur. In 1993, Damon Albarn was asked if Blur was an “anti-grunge” band and he replied, “If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I’m getting rid of grunge.” But from grunge, Britpop then started going after grunge’s cousin on methaqualone: shoegaze.

It wasn’t long before shoegaze bands like Ride and Slowdive and Spitfire were being attacked by Britpop artists in the press along with the American grunge groups, with the exception of Oasis. Not only did Noel Gallagher eventually bring Andy Bell from Ride into Oasis, Noel said in 1996 that Kurt Cobain was the only songwriter from the last ten years that he had any respect for and that their music was similar enough that Cobain probably could’ve written “Wonderwall.” Lush and The Stone Roses also got somewhat of a free pass as well, as did our last artist for the night…

“Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine.

I could probably go on forever about MBV, so I’ll have to restrain myself a bit, only to say that thankfully they’re back together now (in some form) and just as loud. This is easily their best known song and using the clip from Lost In Translation has to buy me intense hipster cred, yeah? Regardless, if you don’t have their classic album Loveless, then go get it now. It’s essential. Here’s a link to MBV doing one of my favorite songs, Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All The Time In The World.”

Lollipop will be back tomorrow with even more sweet tunes for you, so I’ll leave you with this quite frankly hideous photo of Dusty Springfield that she’s demanded I use: