They've put the War Child 'Help' album, recorded (by and large) on one day 25 years ago, on streaming services.
It was a big deal at the time and a somewhat excellent thing, albeit it's been jarring seeing the NME's cover stars from its edition of the time being brothers in harm Ian Brown and Noel Gallagher.
I listened to it all the way through last week, for the first time in years. It is, as I remembered, ok. It now seems rather nice that it was all recorded in a day - it does seem like a moment in time, a scrappy moment in time - that's the up side. The down side is that there are very few great recordings of great songs on it.
Oasis begin it with the decent b-side 'Fade Away' - I hate Noel Gallagher's voice, but this song quite suits it. Johnny Depp and Kate Moss appear on it, in a way which just feels very naff.
There are ok throwaway songs by the likes of the Boo Radleys, Terrorvision and The Charlatans. Blur's song is one of their thanks-for-coming pieces of muzak.
The supergroup that did 'Come Together' was Pauls McCartney & Weller, Noel Gallagher, Carleen Anderson, members of Ocean Colour Scene - I don't know if that sounds grim or great but anyway, it's meh.
What else? Nice bits from Portishead and Massive Attack, a few boring bits - the highlights are as I remembered them. Very nice covers of standards from Suede (Shipbuilding), Sinead O'Connor (Ode to Billie Joe) and the Manics', whose 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' is a significant moment in their history, being their first recording as a three-piece. I found it wonderful at the time, and still do.
But the most notable track on the album by far, by a flickin' mile, is by Radiohead. It feels a little like they were the only ones to take it truly seriously. I wonder if when they recorded 'Lucky', one of their best ever songs, two years before it would be heard anywhere else, they looked at what everyone else had submitted and felt a bit like the school swots who'd spent the whole weekend on their homework project only for everyone else to have tossed it off in a few minutes.
It made a lot of money, which is the main thing. But ...I'm a big advocate for the Britpop years being a lot richer and more varied than people remember, but this isn't really great evidence for that.
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