Word: scenes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Upperclassmen viewing the scene shake their heads in wonder, for they remember freshman intramurals quite differently. Empty courts, with teams just barely making the required number of players. Teams winning by forfeits rather than skill. No fans. No jerseys. No spirit...
...think it would be great to play a professional sport--to get paid for what you like to do," James says. "But I really liked working for Bear Stearns [a Wall Street firm] this past summer. The Wall Street scene could be for me. Or I may decide to become a doctor...
That kind of shared attitude is ripe material for satire, and, indeed, the current Britpop scene has its shrewdest, severest critics right at the center of its matte black heart. The Pet Shop Boys mock the scene from the ideal perspective: deep inside. Their inventive synthesizer work makes music so stylized it becomes otherworldly. In the words of one admiring London critic, "They know how to use their computers." The Pet Shop Boys' tunes are inventive and danceable; It Couldn't Happen Here, on their new album Actually, was co-written with the formidable film composer Ennio Morricone. Their lyrics...
...ripe for a revisionism that may already be happening. Upstart groups like the Godfathers, the Zodiac Mindwarp & the Love Reaction, and Gay Bikers on Acid are harking back to the brash activism and overheated playing of the late-'70s Clash era. In Hull, 150 miles north of the London scene, the Housemartins are purveying a pared-down rock with simple instrumentation and lots of political power heard to excellent effect on their most recent album, The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death. "In the north," reports Paul Heaton, Housemartins founder, co-songwriter and lead singer, "there aren't that many...
Weaton calls himself a radical socialist, but the Pet Shop Boys, who shy away from direct political writing and look like fashion objets themselves, end up saying the most about the Britpop scene and about the years of Thatcher's England. Shopping, from their current album Actually, sounds like a recessional hymn for a fashion show until Tennant's lyrics catch hold: "Our gain is your loss/ That's the price you pay/ I heard it in the House of Commons/ Everything's for sale." Britpop may be so smooth and cool that it has brought...