The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium
List Price:
Our Price: $58.49
You Save: $6.49 (10%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $30.00 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more new music releases
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Music CD Cover
Edition: Music CDFormat: Special Edition
CD Release Date: 2007-11-20
Music Label: Rhino / Wea
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- How Soon Is Now? - Morrissey
- Lorelei - Cocteau Twins
- Primitive Painters - Hayward, Lawrence
- Somewhere in China - Shop Assistants
- My Biggest Thrill - Linehan, Tony
- Just Like Heaven - Smith, Robert [1]
- Lips Like Sugar - Sergeant, Will
- April Skies - Reid, Jim
- Walkin' with Jesus (Sound of Confusion) - Kember, Pete
- Crash - Court, P.J.
- Unbearable - Wonder Stuff
- She Bangs the Drums - Brown, Ian
- The Only One I Know - Baker, Jonathan
- Step On - Demetriou, Christos
- Loaded - Gillespie, Bobby
- This Is How It Feels - Inspiral Carpets
- Obscurity Knocks - Trash Can Sinatras
- There She Goes - Mavers, Lee
- Here's Where the Story Ends - Gavurin, David
- Vapour Trail - Ride
- Sight of You - Pale Saints
- Only Shallow - Butcher, Bilinda
- For Love - Berenyi, Miki
- Flying - Lawrie, Stephen
- Pearl - Sherriff, Andrew
- I Want to Touch You - Dickinson, Rob
- Trip & Slide - Carson, Salli
- Coast Is Clear - Garcia, Dean
- You - Bassett, Paul
- This River Will Never Run Dry - McKillop, Kevin
- (Thought I'd Died) And Gone to Heaven - Family Cat
- (Don't Cut Me Down) Mary Quant in Blue - Curtis, Andrew
- 0-0 A.E.T. (No Score After Extra Time) - Thousand Yard Stare
- Grey Cell Green - Ned's Atomic Dustbi
- Shoot You Down - Vincent, Robert
- Stay Beautiful - Bradfield, James De
- Star Sign - Love, Gerard
- Metal Mickey - Anderson, Brett
- Duel - Swervedriver
- Breakfast - Kelly, Eugene
- Barfly - McAlinden, Joseph
- Regret - Gilbert, Gillian
- Laid - James
- Kite - Heyward, Nick
- Lazarus - Carr, Martin
- You're in a Bad Way - Stanley, Bob
- Wow & Flutter - Gane, Tim
- Tracy Jacks - Albarn, Damon
- Live Forever - Gallagher, Noel
- Common People - Banks, Nicholas
- Speeed King - Hewings, Julian
- Wallflower - Wiz
- Insomniac - Johannson, Glenn
- Sleep Well Tonight - James, Matt
- Sleeping In - Dean, Johnny
- Alright - Supergrass
- Alright - Power, John
- Stutter - Frischmann, Justine
- In a Room - Clark, Nigel
- Girl from Mars - Wheeler, Tim
- Sale of the Century - Wener, Louise
- Sleep - Harding, Jaimie
- Tattva - Mills, Crispian
- The Riverboat Song - Ocean Colour Scene
- You're Gorgeous - Jones, Stephen
- Slight Return - Morriss, Mark
- Something 4 the Weekend - Super Furry Animals
- Something for the Weekend - Hannon, Neil
- Brimful of Asha - Singh, Tjinder
- Service - Broad, James
- Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space - Spaceman, J.
- Wide Open Space - Draper, Paul
- Step into My World - Bell, Andy
- Lucky Man - Ashcroft, Richard
- Untouchable - Eliot, Louis
- Mulder and Scully - Matthews, Cerys
- You Don't Care About Us - Molko, Brian
- Oh Jim - Crowe, Nicholas
Free Music Notes for The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium
Free Music Review: Shows why some succeed and some don't!
Hit: 4 Stars
Following on from their various Nuggets releases covering the 60's and 70's, their 70's punk box, No Thanks and their alternative 80's box, Left Of The Dial, Rhino release a 4 disc box covering the British alternative/indie music scene which succeeded the scene explored on their Left Of The Dial Box.
As the Brit Box begins with the Smiths 1984 release How Soon Is Now (one of their very best songs!), several artists are represented on both this and Left Of The Dial: the Smiths, Cocteau Twins, The Cure (who seem to be on every compilation ever released that covers their lifetime!), Echo and the Bunnymen, Jesus and Mary Chain, Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses - in the latter's case with even the same song, She Bangs the Drums - feature on both sets. What makes this different however from both the 80's and 70's alternative boxes, which featured half American and half UK acts, is that as you'd expect from the title, it is 100% British.
Rhino are an American company and their releases are primarily aimed at the US market, sometimes only being available as expensive imports; therefore the liner notes, extensive and excellent as Rhino's always are, sometimes read oddly from a UK listener's viewpoint. More significantly perhaps is the fact that sometimes songs are featured because they were better known in the US to the exclusion of the more obvious choices.
I was a big music fan in the early 70's when I was in my early teens, but although I was about 18 at the height of punk, I was never into that music at the time, and again at the time, the early 80's New Romantic scene did little for me, so I actually lost interest in listening to new music almost totally and for years shut my ears to everything but the 60's and 70's greats. Probably the only band I really gave much of a chance to at the time were the Bunnymen themselves, and that was only probably because they sounded like The Doors! I therefore missed out entirely on the Madchester and Shoegazing movements during their lifetimes. It was only probably midway through the Brit Pop scene when hearing bands like Oasis and Supergrass' catchy Alright (which seemed to be everywhere at the time) on pub jukeboxes, that my interest in contemporary music was revived. I remember both Oasis's first two classic albums had been released before I actually caught up with them and the rest of the current scene. I then retrospectively began to get into music once again with a vengeance, buying dozens of cd's per month for years. (I'd originally held out against buying a cd player for years!) The Stone Roses, who I missed out on at their height, have since become one of my all time favourite bands.
Although I am now into middle age I now still keep in touch with what's happening and my interest in music is as great as it was when I was 14. I can't understand why I spent most of my 20's and 30's ignorant of modern music - maybe the 80's has a lot to answer for!
So it is from this perspective I come to this box set.
Some of the artists on discs 3 and 4 are responsible for reviving my interest in music, whilst the ones on disc 1 I discovered retrospectively. Most of the bands on disc 2 were still unknown to me, or only vaguely known as names and no more. So bands such as The Pale Saints, Mighty Lemon Drops, Trash Can Sinatras, Curve and Chapterhouse I was hearing for the first time, having vaguely heard OF them but little more. A good many of the artists on these discs I hadn't even heard of at all even now. Amongst the obscurities and one hit wonders there are of course many of the 80's and 90's best known indie/alternative names from the Bunnymen and Smiths of the 80's to the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Charlatans from a few years later, to Suede, Oasis, Blur, Pulp of the Britpop years. Most of these bands are represented by well known songs which have already turned up on countless compilations: Live Forever, Common People, The Only One I Know, etc. The major exception to this is Blur, who instead of Parklife or Girls and Boys get Tracy Jacks, an album track, which seems odd. Maybe it's something to do with the American focus of the set? I'm quite glad though that the Boo Radleys, New Order and James are represented by something other than Wake Up Boo, Blue Monday and Sit Down respectively as those three songs seem to turn up everywhere. I'm also glad the Inspiral Carpets brilliant This Is How It Feels is included.
Although this is a massively comprehensive compilation covering nearly every band you've heard of, and many you haven't who were recording during these 15 years, there are a few notable omissions owing to either licensing or space restrictions. Easily the most important band not featured are Radiohead, but there is also no sign of the Stereophonics (who I personally don't care much for anyway), or the House of Love, who were a decent and relatively unsuccessful band from that odd period which preceded Britpop at the turn of the 90's. Most of the bands from this period - Ride, Lush, My Bloody Valentine were commercially unsuccessful. Even the Stone Roses themselves, as important and influential as they were, didn't have that many big hits.
The other main movement from this period apart from the Roses/Happy Mondays Madchester scene was Shoegazing and many of the bands who embraced this movement take up disc 2. To be truthful Shoegazing wasn't commercially successful simply because it mostly wasn't very good. The endless dreaming droning which often obscured any melody becomes quite hard going after about five minutes; and Ride, a band who I thought had some potential if they hadn't have buried their vocals and melodies under layers of droning guitars, epitomise this. They are represented by Vapour Trail, one of their better songs however.
It could be argued that this box set tries to do too much, as the Shoegazers actually had very little in common with the much more catchy and commercially successful Britop bands who succeded them so soon afterwards. The only group who really straddled the two movements were Lush, who became much more pop orientated towards the end of their career and by then could be classed as Britpop, although they are represented here by For Love, one of their earlier Shoegazing type efforts.
Ultimately this is a worthwhile and interesting box set covering 15 years (half the 80's and all the 90's), which in pop music terms is more than a generation; it is therefore unsurprising that we have such a variety of styles.
However I think what it really illustrates, and I think this is true of any era, is that most artists are commercially successful because they are good and record memorable tunes, and the ones who aren't successful mostly quite simply aren't very good. This is as true in the 80's and 90's and today as it was in the 60's and 70's. Other than the Velvet Underground, who truly were 'ahead of their time' I can't think of many bands and artists who were really good and totally unsuccessful.
There are of course a number of artists who were successful despite not being very good! One only has to think of the Spice Girls for an obvious example!
The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium Poster
Consider this super-cool, long-overdue 4-CD set the less-commercial but no-less telling riposte to the early 1960s British Invasion, when bands crossed the Atlantic to serve up what they'd learned, largely from under-heralded American artists (as in the Stones and Muddy Waters). During the period that The Brit Box puts under the microscope, England went from Margaret Thatcher and John Major to Tony Blair, from youth culture (and the press) zeroing in on football hooliganism to the rise of Acid House and Brit pop. So it is that the addled guitar haze of Spaceman 3's "Walkin' with Jesus" melds with the bouncy, synth-softened euphoria of "She Bangs the Drums," and the chirpy, jangly float of The Primitives' "Crash." These are moments in pop transition, as the peppy new wave of the 1980s meets up with the psychedelic, dope-colored moodiness of the '90s, and then, quickly, with the ascent of "Cool Brittania." As the Thatcher/Major era heads into the 1990s, Birdland--long forgotten--rips at the jugular with the quick, garage rock-infused "Shoot You Down," which, like so much here, keeps a finger keenly on a groove you could either embrace while hallucinating or pogo-ing on the dance floor (or both). New Order, Pulp, Oasis, Blur, Elastica, and My Bloody Valentine are all here, of course. They embrace the whole continuum, from the trippy to the happy to the. self-reflective, and they offer enough landmarks that Dodgy, and The Bluetones, and Silver Sun and These Animal Men all have space to drop in, adding layers to this spectacular omnibus collection. --Andrew BartlettAlternative Rock Music CDs
Music Genres
Top music charts in Alternative Rock Music CDs
Sarah McLachlan - Closer-The Best of Sarah McLachlanRelease date: 2008-10-07; Music CD
Best price: $7.75
Price in other shops:
Jason Mraz - We Sing, We Dance, We Steal ThingsRelease date: 2008-05-13; Music CD
Best price: $8.38
Price in other shops:
Kings of Leon - Only By The NightRelease date: 2008-09-23; Music CD
Best price: $7.64
Price in other shops:
The Clash - Live at Shea StadiumRelease date: 2008-10-07; Music CD
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
The Pretenders - Break Up the ConcreteRelease date: 2008-10-07; Music CD
Best price: $9.95
Price in other shops:
Raising SandRelease date: 2007-10-23; Music CD
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
The Imus Ranch RecordRelease date: 2008-09-16; Music CD
Best price: $10.72
Price in other shops:
Coldplay - Viva La VidaRelease date: 2008-06-17; Music CD
Best price: $6.67
Price in other shops:
Ray LaMontagne - Gossip In The GrainRelease date: 2008-10-14; Music CD
Best price: $9.95
Price in other shops:
Lucinda Williams - Little HoneyRelease date: 2008-10-14; Music CD
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops:
Top Rated Albums
The B-52's - FunplexRelease date: 2008-03-25; Music CD
Best price: $4.69
Price in other shops:
Elvis Costello & the Imposters - MomofukuRelease date: 2008-05-06; Music CD
Best price: $7.56
Price in other shops:
Vampire Weekend - Vampire WeekendRelease date: 2008-01-29; Music CD
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops:
Heavy MetalRelease date: 2007-10-02; Music CD
Best price: $46.99
Price in other shops:
No Thanks! The '70s Punk RebellionRelease date: 2003-10-28; Music CD
Best price: $46.99
Price in other shops:
R.E.M. - AccelerateRelease date: 2008-04-01; Music CD
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Nick Lowe - Jesus of CoolRelease date: 2008-02-19; Music CD
Best price: $10.31
Price in other shops:
Life Less Lived: The Gothic BoxRelease date: 2006-09-19; Music CD
Best price: $38.98
Price in other shops:
Left of the Dial: Dispatches from the '80s UndergroundRelease date: 2004-10-12; Music CD
Best price: $42.91
Price in other shops:
Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970Release date: 2007-09-18; Music CD
Best price: $33.99
Price in other shops: