Live Forever
28 April 2006, the wee hours
I am really big Britpop fan. When I was in grade 9 Portishead’s album was getting some press here in Toronto, as was Elastica’s. Now, this was back when I was broke all the time, so I couldn’t get myself both albums. I ended up buying one album for myself, and one album for Dave, for his birthday. In hindsight, I should have kept the Elastica album, and given Dave the Portishead one. (Dave ended up selling me the Elastica album a few years later.) I think both albums are great. I spent the next few years listening to lots of Britpop, basically till the whole movement imploded. I waited patiently for Elastica’s follow-up album, and when it became clear it wasn’t coming, I started listening to electronic music: trip hop and jungle mostly. Most of that music also came out of the UK.
The film Live Forever tracks the rise and fall of Britpop. There are a fair number of big name rock stars interviewed, but I thought the breadth of interviews seemed a bit lacking; Oasis, Blur and Pulp were not the be all end all of Britpop. I would have preferred more people were interviewed. I’d be interested to hear what Elastica and Menswe@r would have to say of the phenomenon, since I like them both a lot, and they both sort of came and went with movement. There are a ton of bands that really didn’t last after ‘97 passed; it would have been good to hear from them. Robert Del Naja from Massive Attack makes a few appearances in the film, which are entertaining if only for being so out of place. There is an interview with the editor of Loaded talking about all the cocaine he did to get the issues out. There are a slew of really great lines in the film. The movie ends with Pop taking over Britain. It’s a bit sad really.