1997. It came, it was, it went. Crap bands sold a lot of records, better bands sold less. The Verve and Spiritualized came back and Curve and The Sundays didn’t. Oasis and The Prodigy turned into parodies of themselves and The Seahorses and Hurricane #1 proved that you can’t teach old guitarists new tricks.
The hype became the hype as new albums became classics before they were sold but forgotten two weeks later. Oasis and The Prodigy sold ‘product’ but forgot about the music. However, when the music did live up to the hype, Radiohead and the Wu-Tang Clan, it was well worth it.
Bond was revived by David Arnold but killed off by Moby. The Propellerheads got in Shirley Bassey to add Shirley Basseyness to their big beats. The Chemical Brothers gave us the biggest beats of all but Death in Vegas got pretty close whereas Bentley Rythym Ace played the jokers in the pack. The Low-Fidelity Allstars sneered their way into the music press and Fatboy Slim suddenly became the name to drop.
Drum and bass disappeared up the bottom of credibility to emerge on the coffee table of the Mercury Music Prize shorn of its original spark. However, Photek and Source Direct gave hints of what the genre is capable of.
The world of pop was graced by the presence of Natalie Imbruglia and All Saints and we saw the start of the Spice Girls’ long and messy decline. Pop stars decided to go indie but, unfortunately, indie stars stayed indie.
Glastonbury was muddy but Radiohead were incandescent. Wellies were the order of the day and John Power got pelted with mud.
Wales provided some of the most inspiring music of the year with the Super Furry Animals and Catatonia before Scotland took over and gave us the likes of Mogwai, Arab Strap and Belle and Sebastian. London gave us fuck all apart from attitude.
However, it was the French who really excelled, with Daft Punk providing the most foot stomping French techno album ever, before SuperDiscount and La Yellow serving up some sublime party choons.
The third year of the Baggage saw it change its logo, again, before talking to such pop luminaries as Brian Molko, Gruff from the Super Furries, Neil Hannon, Tanya Donelly, Ben Folds, Darren Emerson, Catatonia and Urusei Yatsura. We tried our best to cover what was going on in music and occasionally got it right and sometimes we looked a bit stupid.
However, as ‘98 gets into its stride we’re already getting all in a lather about Air and the Propellerheads and we’ll no doubt get in a tizzy about the load of crap music that’s bound to emerge from the undergrowth of bad taste as the year progresses. We’ll spew forth another collection of missives from the gutters of Leamington Spa and hope people enjoy them. We remain far too obsessive about music to give this thing up so we’ll be doing our best to get people to listen to what we think is good and to hurl rotten tomatoes at what is quite obviously bad.