#5: Nice Music, Shit Clothes
Choose your fighter: Blur vs. Oasis. Plus, a song by a literal 17-year-old that will rip your heart out
hi and welcome back to music & beans! it’s been a month since I launched this silly little newsletter of mine, and it’s been such a fun outlet to write about all my favorite musical musings and have such an overwhelmingly supportive audience. if you’re new here, welcome! i hope today’s letter can provide a brief bout of nostalgia during these crazy times. ultimately, I’m writing this for you guys. if you like a story, have a question about something or have anything you want to see published…reply to this email and let me know!
Oh man, I’m excited about this one.
Perhaps I’m just nostalgic that this time two years ago, I was settling into my flat in London’s Camden Town, desperately eager to explore the crazy history of counter-culture my new home had. I could go on and on about the grunge roots Camden has, its infamous music venues, and the Goth and Punk cultures it nurtured for so long. But today I want to talk about what made Camden’s music scene it’s best: the pubs. Specifically, the pub that made a name for itself as the battleground for Britpop’s ultimate showdown.
Yup, I’m talking about The Good Mixer.
The Good Mixer is an Irish pub a few blocks away from Camden Market. Inside the dive is its famous jukebox and pool tables, and at one time it was packed with Britpop stars and glam rockers such as Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Morrissey, and Amy Winehouse. In fact, it became such a safe haven for celebs that the original owners hid Amy Winehouse from paparazzi there, sheltering her behind the bar’s closed blinds.
To understand The Good Mixer in its heyday is to understand Camden in the 90s. The north London district was not the top of every tourists’ bucket list as it is now. In fact, I bet many people actually avoided Camden Town for its reputation of seediness and hard-edged metalheads frequenting its haunts. But it was here that some of music’s biggest names gathered in a tiny Irish pub on Inverness Street that they made their local.
The pub is most famous for its synchronicity with Britpop (which was kind of like the British’s equivalent to Nirvana-style grunge). The genre’s biggest bands (Oasis, Blur, Pulp) were all known to party there. And just like any good party, when you ramp up the booze (and probably also the cocaine) a fight is bound to break out. It was here at the Good Mixer where the Battle for Britpop is said to have begun. Glamorously, it’s inception started in the toilets.
The story goes that Oasis brother Noel Gallagher was doing his thang in the bathroom when Blur guitarist Graham Coxon came in. Gallagher is ~said~ to have made the comment “Nice music, shit clothes” to Coxon, and that ladies and gentleman, was all it took. He might as well have fired a gun. The Battle for Britpop was on.
After this drunken confrontation in the men’s room, an all-out rivalry began between the bands. The music press at the time caught wind of the tensions (after all it was more usual for the Gallagher brothers to be fighting each other rather than someone else) and ran with it.
Confrontations behind the scenes and in the press escalated into an all-out race to get the coveted number one spot for the bands’ next singles. In a series of events no one can quite agree on, both bands ended up releasing records on the same day: Blur with “Country House” and Oasis with “Roll With It.”
The world went into a frenzy.
Just to give you a taste of what it was like, here is an excerpt NME pulled from an interview with Oasis’s record label exec Alan McGee in 1995.
“The whole media decided to make it a class war and Oasis rose to that. That made Blur uncomfortable, especially Graham. He didn’t like being seen as a middle class group – he was an army child. The broadcast and print media was in silly season.
There was a story about a married couple in The Sun, he was Blur and she was Oasis and she smashed his records up. The record shop had become an exciting place because of all the Britpop records coming out at the same time. I went to HMV on Oxford Street and bought Oasis. To me it was a bit like voting.” - Creation manager Alan McGee
So who you backing?
Look if you don’t know who Blur is, I don’t blame you. One of these bands released “Wonderwall” and went quintuple platinum. And the other, well, it’s all a Blur. So who was ultimately crowned winner on August 14, 1995? Here’s the score (and we are talking strictly sales here)
Blur: 270,000
Oasis: 255,000
and that’s the tea.
Both bands undeniably left a huge imprint on modern rock music. Blur’s Parklife bottled up the sounds and inspirations behind Britpop into an album, and they went on to make five successive #1 albums in the UK. Oasis of course found huge international success as well and has made a name for itself as one of the last great rock bands of the 20th century. It’s fun to think about all the conversations that went on at The Good Mixer while this rock soap opera was going on. Who thought it was blown out of proportion, and who didn’t even know it was going on? The legacy of bar still lives on today. Although it has been commercialized a bit more now from its gritty roots, it’s still a favorite stop for locals and music fans all over the world. When I visited The Good Mixer on the Camden Pub Crawl in 2019, regulars were telling us about the musicians who still dropped in from time to time.
As to if there are any hard feelings over the epic singles war of the 90s? Well, taking advice from Blur frontman Damon Albarn, “I wouldn’t worry about it. They’re both shit.”
Rec Corner
bits and bops from my archive or any recent discoveries
its been five years since we lost david bowie, but we certainly didn’t lose his wisdom. this wild interview he gave to the BBC in 1999 about what the internet would do to us is extra chilling in a week like this one.
olivia rodrigo’s drivers license proves that the feelings we have at seventeen are just as raw and real as the feelings we have now.
one solid song - first class, rainbow kitten surprise
this song gets better every time I listen to it.
that’s it for this week! i will be back to my regular schedule on Wednesdays, so thanks for playing along. if you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe here! and if you know someone who might love this newsletter, let them know!