You feel old? Britpop was two fads after “my” music.

Actually, that’s not really fair. I liked a spot of Britpop myself, although I wasn’t mad about it. It certainly, as you say, beat all that miserable grunge rubbish. I was into all the early ’90s electronica; what’s now been retconned as EDM: Orbital, 808 State, Warp Records, all that stuff. Not the raves – hated that with a passion – but for some reason I liked the music. Which, for about ten minutes in 1991, was actually mainstream. (Remember The Orb on Top of the Pops? Playing chess? Did that actually happen?)

Maybe it was all those Speccy games in the ’80s. And hey, it sounded like The Future. Which is always good. (I also have a big high-falutin’ kind of truth-to-materials Theory about the-studio-as-instrument, how “recording artists” make records, not “songs”, the-recording-is-the-product, and a whole bunch of other stuff you don’t want to hear. It boils down to, “’Authentic’ popular music is bunk”. You really don’t want to hear it.)

Then along came those rough boys from Seattle and kicked over all our synthesized sandcastles. So yeah, at least Britpop was fun.

“I was on the Blur side of the Great Britpop Battle of 1995.”

Oddly enough, if I had a side, it was probably Oasis. I say “oddly” because I bought Modern Life is Rubbish when it came out, before it really kickstarted the whole Britpop thing, and loved it. It was fresh and different (and, as I said, the “What’s so great about American music anyway?” schtick appealed to me at the time). But I think I missed the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, and let’s be honest: before they decided they wanted to be the Beatles (and lost the plot), Oasis were basically the Stone Mondays. Which was – at the time, anyway – A Good Thing. I’ve still got all those early singles and the first album. Haven’t listened to them in years.

“RIP Melody Maker”

Yep.