I've just been listening to one of those radio "ambient music" shows, and the show finished with a really nice piece, sort of dreamy but rhythmic as well, called "Man Called Sun". Afterwards the DJ announced it as The Verve.
Ah well, I thought, obviously not that Britpop band, I imagine "Verve" being a popular choice for a band name, and there is also a record label called Verve. However on investigation I discovered it WAS the Britpop band.
You need to know that The Verve were never really "big" in this country. There is "Bittersweet Symphony", which gets played to death and which I would be happy never to hear again; there is "The Drugs Don't Work", which I do like a little bit more, because at least it's an original tune; I may have heard one or two other songs but nothing to suggest that they were anything more than another of those whiney British 90's bands with too much to say about how fucked up they, their lovers/acquaintances, and society in general are. This piece of music however, which I find was on their first EP, is stunning and could stake a claim to being "progressive".
My question is: what happened?
This reminds me of my experience with Radiohead, except that Radiohead seemed to do the opposite: they started off whiney and boring, and became interesting.
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