This is how the 90s sometimes look in retrospect: the narrowing of access and erasure of working-class lived experience across culture, media and politics; the parallel fetishization of working-class culture via an unholy alliance of Blair, late Britpop and London-centric art, fashion and football; and the degeneration of UK indie from something moderately interesting and markedly 'other' compared to the rest of the chart fare, into something increasingly homogenous, nostalgic and insular. A distinguishing mark of the decade was the gradual stifling of nuanced articulation of identities and their subsequent appearance in an ersatz, appropriated, or puppeteered form. This post attempts a further excavation of what was.
The fast-obsolescing Kaiser Chiefs' 'I Predict a Riot' tended to figure in responses to last August's unrest, most recently in a deservedly dismissive way in the lyrics of Plan B's 'Ill Manors'. Perhaps this referencing only proves the cultural poverty of the intervening years, but it does demonstrate the song’s longevity – far greater than that of its creators – and its impact as a checkpoint for class-inflected fear and loathing. The song sounds like a forerunner of James Delingpole's 2006 invocation of the 'great scourges of contemporary Britain'; his 'aggressive female gangs of embittered, hormonal, drunken teenagers; gym-slip mums who choose to get pregnant as a career option; pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers who’ll drop their knickers in the blink of an eye...' are a stone’s throw away from the song’s censorious yet prurient reportage ('girls scrabble round with no clothes on / to borrow some change for a condom / if it wasn’t for chip-fat they’d be frozen'). Both visions are part of a cultural shift which has combined the vanishing of working class female identity in public discourse with its accelerated use as an all-purpose whipping-post onto whose alleged precocity, promiscuity, agency and independence, various social ills and moral panics are projected.
Sneering by grammar-school boys at slatternly scrabbling for small change was perhaps the logical culmination of late Britpop's fellow-travelling New Laddism, a tendency waxing unapologetically blatant and boorish in the post-Libertines London scene in particular. 'I Predict a Riot' almost deserves acclaim for its unabashed depiction of something a step beyond class tourism – attitudes which, in a less triumphalist decade, might have been unpalatable without the distancing minstrelsy of 'Vindaloo' or the nudge-and-wink of 'Stereotypes', could by 2004 be sincerely held and expressed. Scattering presumptions, from the inherent irrational violence of men in leisurewear to the lack of sense and sensibility of underdressed women, the song seems to lack any hint of irony. And by 2012 the song could be received in the same way, as though, after 'Stereotypes' and 'Vindaloo' and 'we are all middle-class now', after Waynetta Slob and Vicky Pollard, we hold these truths to be self-evident.
In 2011, 'I Predict a Riot' soundtracked a trip into the tortured psyche of Delingpole, Starkey and Dalrymple - the streets of darkest Britain delineated as a volatile, flammable under-kingdom haunted by spectres to whom junk-food is both fuel and insulation, tracksuited thugs and girl-golems clad in chip-fat. It's jarring to recall the female potential of early 90s indie, whose space for oddity allowed through voices which occasionally managed to be those of the chip-fat girls – voices capable of narrating the Night Out from the perspective of celebrant rather than alarmed observer, presenting it non-hysterically as an unremarkable ritual of growing up. Even Shampoo, major-label novelty act though they quickly became, seemed, like Kenickie, more fully their own created cartoon, more at home in their delinquent drag, than, say, Jessie J or Lily Allen. Both Shampoo and Kenickie were, significantly, grounded in appreciation of the Manic Street Preachers' proletarian glam aesthetic, both were able to articulate the experiences of suburban/provincial girls in fearless, loving awe of what the present and future had to offer, and both managed to embody one music writer's identification of 'that terrifying stage where teenage girls are half-human, half-rat':
Kenickie in particular, a pop-aspirational indie band with wit, swagger and style to spare, were on one level unabashed 'pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers' too. I find Kenickie worthwhile because, regardless of the slavering hype they received, part of what their music offered was a presentation of working-class female life crafted with sympathy and solidarity, and an insistence upon their social and sexual agency. Throughout the 90s this voice was heard alongside those by whom it appears to have been retrospectively eclipsed – girl-power usurpers like the swiftly all-conquering Spice Girls, or unhelpful dullards like Sleeper - a curiously dry and prudish band for all Louise Wener’s hiccupy attempts at lyrical titillation, try-hard where Kenickie were effortless.
That 'indie' gained the ascendant in 90s Britain much as 'Labour' did, while becoming a travesty of itself, grew increasingly clear as the next decade wore on. Something notable but seemingly unremarked upon in the sudden acknowledgement of this, the emotional spasm over indie's having been found out as meaningless, mainstream, and posh, was how uniformly male the railed-against 'landfill' guitar bands were. What happened to the women, in particular the 90s phalanx of pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers? While Shampoo are probably the last band in the world to be concerned about artistic integrity or cultural appropriation, the appearance of a posh-girl cover of 'Trouble' on the soundtrack to the 2007 St Trinians remake still exasperated. Lauren Laverne, the only member of Kenickie still occasionally in the spotlight, is now safely ensconced at 6 Music and 10 o’ Clock Live, still fighting the good fight, I guess, but in compromised conditions.
Mainstream pop and indie have been subject to ongoing cultural appropriation and narrowing of access outside the hothouses of stage-school or talent-shows, with a resultant disparity between that which is represented and who represents it. The working-class female experience is offered as a kind of stage-school burlesque - even Allen, for all her occasionally intriguing interior monologues, can articulate the Night Out only as chav-pop pantomime. Outside the pop bubble, the past few years' chav-hysteria, the pathologising of the Night Out, has enabled incessant media and political policing of the social, economic and sexual lives of young women via the avatars of chavettes and single mothers. This, along with the remoteness of mainstream feminist discourse, has shaped a scenario where young working-class women appear mostly as externally-designated objects of exaggerated panic, ridicule, pity or contempt, with little ability to speak for themselves. Any cultural counterweight to this stereotype, any genuine alternative expression of lived experience, must struggle to breathe.
All of which means that I'm never sure, you know, how to take Girls Aloud's turbocharged 2006 cover of 'I Predict a Riot'. Bubblegum and pantomime, for sure (as compared to 'Ill Manors'?), but, in making a stab at reclaiming Wilson's narrative for its objects of fear and loathing, awkwardly impressive for all that:
*
The fast-obsolescing Kaiser Chiefs' 'I Predict a Riot' tended to figure in responses to last August's unrest, most recently in a deservedly dismissive way in the lyrics of Plan B's 'Ill Manors'. Perhaps this referencing only proves the cultural poverty of the intervening years, but it does demonstrate the song’s longevity – far greater than that of its creators – and its impact as a checkpoint for class-inflected fear and loathing. The song sounds like a forerunner of James Delingpole's 2006 invocation of the 'great scourges of contemporary Britain'; his 'aggressive female gangs of embittered, hormonal, drunken teenagers; gym-slip mums who choose to get pregnant as a career option; pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers who’ll drop their knickers in the blink of an eye...' are a stone’s throw away from the song’s censorious yet prurient reportage ('girls scrabble round with no clothes on / to borrow some change for a condom / if it wasn’t for chip-fat they’d be frozen'). Both visions are part of a cultural shift which has combined the vanishing of working class female identity in public discourse with its accelerated use as an all-purpose whipping-post onto whose alleged precocity, promiscuity, agency and independence, various social ills and moral panics are projected.
Sneering by grammar-school boys at slatternly scrabbling for small change was perhaps the logical culmination of late Britpop's fellow-travelling New Laddism, a tendency waxing unapologetically blatant and boorish in the post-Libertines London scene in particular. 'I Predict a Riot' almost deserves acclaim for its unabashed depiction of something a step beyond class tourism – attitudes which, in a less triumphalist decade, might have been unpalatable without the distancing minstrelsy of 'Vindaloo' or the nudge-and-wink of 'Stereotypes', could by 2004 be sincerely held and expressed. Scattering presumptions, from the inherent irrational violence of men in leisurewear to the lack of sense and sensibility of underdressed women, the song seems to lack any hint of irony. And by 2012 the song could be received in the same way, as though, after 'Stereotypes' and 'Vindaloo' and 'we are all middle-class now', after Waynetta Slob and Vicky Pollard, we hold these truths to be self-evident.
*
In 2011, 'I Predict a Riot' soundtracked a trip into the tortured psyche of Delingpole, Starkey and Dalrymple - the streets of darkest Britain delineated as a volatile, flammable under-kingdom haunted by spectres to whom junk-food is both fuel and insulation, tracksuited thugs and girl-golems clad in chip-fat. It's jarring to recall the female potential of early 90s indie, whose space for oddity allowed through voices which occasionally managed to be those of the chip-fat girls – voices capable of narrating the Night Out from the perspective of celebrant rather than alarmed observer, presenting it non-hysterically as an unremarkable ritual of growing up. Even Shampoo, major-label novelty act though they quickly became, seemed, like Kenickie, more fully their own created cartoon, more at home in their delinquent drag, than, say, Jessie J or Lily Allen. Both Shampoo and Kenickie were, significantly, grounded in appreciation of the Manic Street Preachers' proletarian glam aesthetic, both were able to articulate the experiences of suburban/provincial girls in fearless, loving awe of what the present and future had to offer, and both managed to embody one music writer's identification of 'that terrifying stage where teenage girls are half-human, half-rat':
Kenickie in particular, a pop-aspirational indie band with wit, swagger and style to spare, were on one level unabashed 'pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers' too. I find Kenickie worthwhile because, regardless of the slavering hype they received, part of what their music offered was a presentation of working-class female life crafted with sympathy and solidarity, and an insistence upon their social and sexual agency. Throughout the 90s this voice was heard alongside those by whom it appears to have been retrospectively eclipsed – girl-power usurpers like the swiftly all-conquering Spice Girls, or unhelpful dullards like Sleeper - a curiously dry and prudish band for all Louise Wener’s hiccupy attempts at lyrical titillation, try-hard where Kenickie were effortless.
That 'indie' gained the ascendant in 90s Britain much as 'Labour' did, while becoming a travesty of itself, grew increasingly clear as the next decade wore on. Something notable but seemingly unremarked upon in the sudden acknowledgement of this, the emotional spasm over indie's having been found out as meaningless, mainstream, and posh, was how uniformly male the railed-against 'landfill' guitar bands were. What happened to the women, in particular the 90s phalanx of pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers? While Shampoo are probably the last band in the world to be concerned about artistic integrity or cultural appropriation, the appearance of a posh-girl cover of 'Trouble' on the soundtrack to the 2007 St Trinians remake still exasperated. Lauren Laverne, the only member of Kenickie still occasionally in the spotlight, is now safely ensconced at 6 Music and 10 o’ Clock Live, still fighting the good fight, I guess, but in compromised conditions.
Mainstream pop and indie have been subject to ongoing cultural appropriation and narrowing of access outside the hothouses of stage-school or talent-shows, with a resultant disparity between that which is represented and who represents it. The working-class female experience is offered as a kind of stage-school burlesque - even Allen, for all her occasionally intriguing interior monologues, can articulate the Night Out only as chav-pop pantomime. Outside the pop bubble, the past few years' chav-hysteria, the pathologising of the Night Out, has enabled incessant media and political policing of the social, economic and sexual lives of young women via the avatars of chavettes and single mothers. This, along with the remoteness of mainstream feminist discourse, has shaped a scenario where young working-class women appear mostly as externally-designated objects of exaggerated panic, ridicule, pity or contempt, with little ability to speak for themselves. Any cultural counterweight to this stereotype, any genuine alternative expression of lived experience, must struggle to breathe.
*
All of which means that I'm never sure, you know, how to take Girls Aloud's turbocharged 2006 cover of 'I Predict a Riot'. Bubblegum and pantomime, for sure (as compared to 'Ill Manors'?), but, in making a stab at reclaiming Wilson's narrative for its objects of fear and loathing, awkwardly impressive for all that:
