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When it was announced a few days ago that the headliners for this years Coachella Festival would be, among others, Stone Roses and Blue, a few tweets came flying in saying, to the effect “who the hell are Stone Roses and Blur?”
And with a rash of explanations coming back from incredulous fans of both bands, I thought I would at least try to give those of you who don’t know an opportunity to hear what you’ll be witnessing at Coachella later on this weekend and next.
Stone Roses were one of the premier bands evolving out of the Madchester genre of neo-psych in the late 80s/early 90s. Getting away from the heavily produced and electronic-influenced music so prevalent during that time, and coming in as a sort of companion genre to Grunge which was just kicking off, almost simultaneously in the States, The Stone Roses quickly grabbed the attention of everyone looking to get out of the doldrums of what Popular music had become at the time.
Stone Roses, along with The Charlatans, The Real People and later, Blur and Oasis, signalled a change in musical culture as well as an offshoot genre which came to be known as Brit-Pop. Between them and the scene in Seattle – it was, believe me, an embarrassment of riches
In short, what this managed to do was give the music world the much-needed kick in the ass it desperately needed.
Sadly, in the case of Stone Roses, there were problems – primarily with management and record labels, and it did much to slow down the momentum that was created. The band suffered to a degree, but the fact they established themselves as “the ones who got it started” has never been forgotten. And, if anything, their reputation has grown over time.
Now that they’ve reunited and are forging ahead, they are quickly picking up where they left off. And their appearance at Coachella (as well as Blur’s) is a way of bridging that gap between an audience who remembers them well the first time around, and the audience who never got to hear them early-on, but gets to hear them now.
So this weekend, I’m offering one of Stone Roses concerts recorded during the early period – recorded live at Leeds in 1995 by the venerable and always-amazing BBC6 Music. So now you have no excuse to ask “who the hell are Stone Roses?” anymore.
Enjoy -play loud and see them live when/where you can.
Related articles
- Coachella festival 2013 day one: Stone Roses, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Blur – review (guardian.co.uk)
- The Stone Roses & Blur Headline Coachella (celebnmusic247.com)
- Stone Roses and Azealia Banks row at Future (thesun.co.uk)
- Shane Meadows’ Stone Roses documentary concerns (contactmusic.com)
- Stone Roses’ documentary film Made Of Stone to receive ‘secret’ premiere (metro.co.uk)
- Two Weekends of Excellence in Store for Coachella 2013 (vividseats.com)
- Coachella Wins the Fight for Festival Headliners – and Profit (businessweek.com)
- Stone Roses Comeback Documentary Heading To Cinemas (contactmusic.com)
- The Stone Roses’ first photographer (bbc.co.uk)
- Second two-weekend Coachella Music Festival to kick off (swrnn.com)
