The New Cue #437 November 8: Our Girl, Market, West Side Cowboy, Juanita Stein, Honesty, Clarissa Connelly, Miranda Sawyer, Ethel Cain, BADBADNOTGOOD
"Britpop is a terrible name for an unexpected musical movement."
Music’s still great, isn’t it? Let’s stick to that. This morning in our WhatApp catch-up, Niall and I both agreed that one of the best things about doing The New Cue - other than the competitive salary, first class air travel, company pension scheme, etc - is that it forces us both to put our natural snobbery, prejudices and inherent laziness in the bin with all the other stuff that stinks and instead play loads of new music that normally we might just skip by.
If we didn’t, there’d be no Recommender edition on a Friday. And we wouldn’t both be telling each other this morning that we’re obsessed by a new band that we’ve just discovered. Who are those new groups? Ah, well, all is revealed below the paywall. See if you can guess who from these playlists:
And here it is for the Apple Music crew.
We’re back on Monday with a very funny and psychedelic Life & Times interview with Evan Dando. Niall did the interview so it’s not immodest for me to say that it’s a classic. There are three editions of The New Cue each week: Monday is for all, Wednesdays and Fridays for our very highly prized (and sexed) paying subscribers. If you’d like to help support our labour, please do sign up just below.
Enjoy the edition, and the weekend. We’ll see you on Monday.
Ted and Niall.
TNC Book Club: Uncommon People - Britpop and Beyond in 20 Songs by Miranda Sawyer
Most music writers in the early and mid-1990s wondered if they’d ever be as good or as successful at interviewing pop stars as Miranda Sawyer, whose words for Smash Hits, Select and The Face were enviably and reliably brilliant. She’s just published a book about Britpop and the 1990s, so we asked her to fill in our questionnaire about it.
Book Title: Uncommon People: Britpop and Beyond in 20 Songs
Author: Miranda Sawyer @msmirandasawyer
Publisher: John Murray Press
Listen to the 20 songs here:
Pitch us the book: Over time, Britpop has been reduced to a single moment - August 1995, Oasis vs Blur - and a very few bands: Oasis, Blur, Pulp, maybe Suede. But the mid 90s UK music scene was much wider and wilder than that, and I wanted to
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