鈥�It was twenty years ago today鈥� - the rasp of Paul McCartney鈥檚 opening line of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band has become my earworm this week, as not one but two, twentieth anniversaries are being celebrated here at 主播大秀 towers.
Tomorrow sees twenty years since the 主播大秀 embarked on publicly facing internet usage. We received two really interesting blogs by Professor Hooberman from Warwick University this week charting the history of the 主播大秀鈥檚 relationship with the worldwide web. The first blog 鈥� includes a great clip of Toby Anstis grappling with an internet address in the broom cupboard.
Also this week Radio 2, 6Music and 主播大秀 Four have joined hands to mark two decades of . 鈥�Some Might Say鈥� (sorry) a better week to have celebrated the glory of Britpop would have been in August next year, to mark twenty years since Blur and Oasis made the national headlines as they . I remember this bitter battle playing out, it was a huge discussion point on my Popular Music Studies degree course (yes, it is a real degree). In my latter years I have been lucky enough to work with Blur guitarist , and I have a lovely image of him and Oasis鈥� Noel Gallagher having a natter backstage when we (Graham鈥檚 band) supported Gallagher and his High Flying Birds on their 2012 UK tour. It was nice to see that they could bury the hatchet鈥� after a mere 17 years.
However, as Steve Lamacq put it when he , this week was chosen because it was two decades since Kurt Cobain鈥檚 suicide, often seen as the death of grunge, which then gave way to the rise of what became Britpop, and the same week of the incendiary first performance from Oasis on Radio 1. I鈥檝e really enjoyed listening to the Evening Session revisited and hearing 鈥楽teve and Jo鈥� reminisce about the genre鈥檚 heyday, sounding almost like proud parents.
The Britpop era played a huge part in my post-college years too. There were some dodgy outfit choices and Britpop inspired production values employed as we tried, and failed, to get our band signed to a label in the mid 鈥�90s. Record labels were different then, they seemed to have money for one thing, plus it was a time before most people had internet access, the worldwide web wasn鈥檛 quite as 鈥榳orldwide鈥� as it is now. Bands were promoted via magazines like Melody Maker and the NME, and Royal Mail played a huge part in marketing. I still have postcards advertising Blur, The Wannadies and Radiohead singles sent out by their record companies. I also remember actually posting flyers (hand-drawn and photocopied at the library) for our gigs to our mailing list, rather than a mass email, or a social media update.
Ah, but this simpler time, (when it was all fields) also meant access to hearing new music that was just south of the mainstream was rare. We relied on DJs like Lamacq and Whiley and obviously John Peel, at their allotted time (no iPlayer catch up back then) to keep us informed, educated and entertained. Luckily thanks to 20 years of progress with the internet at the 主播大秀, one can dip in to what鈥檚 new and off the radar in a whole host of ways, from to . New bands/artists also have the opportunity to get their material on the radio, by uploading it to 鈥� so I guess I no longer need to carry that demo tape with me at all times just in case I bump into Steve Lamacq at a gig.