Limmy gets irritated by 90s Britpop band 'Menswear'
Vložit
- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- Stream air date 20/12/23
Watch Limmy with me on Twitch! www.twitch.tv/... Mon-Fri from 9:30am GMT
Tip me at ko-fi.com/goof...
Follow on all the socials linktr.ee/limm...
Buy Limmy merchandise here my-store-b769b... courtesy of il...
Follow Benny Harvey / @bennyharvey for Full Limmy vods and Loads More Improv
![Woo-hoo!: How Blur Mocked Grunge & Destroyed Britpop ["Song 2"] | New British Canon](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q29G7YDCq9Y/mqdefault.jpg)
Sounds like a song from Horrible Histories.
😂
Sounds like Mighty Boosh
Future Sailors
@@Doctor_Smithyeah, i used to go to a lot of standup shows in the late 90s and Noel was of period.
Hahahahahaha
It's like a satire of a Britpop band. But it's not satire, it's earnest. It's real. Kin ell.
Kin'em ell
Sounds like a Chris Morris Parody you'd hear on The Day Today or Brass Eye or something
Playground bang-a-round! 🎶
Cake!
@@djw8133 Panty Smile
Precisely. Offspring of the Albarn Frischman Brett ascendancy, in a Jarvis/Byrne aesthetic.
If the public buys it, does it cease to be spoof
Manufactured consent,
the TOTP audience isn't gillick competent maybe, but NME and Melody Maker are, the pimps.
Chris is a much better singer though.
the lyrics of karma police were actually about Justine 'elastica' Frischmann (arrest this girl, her Hitler hairdo etc,), who, along with Brett Andersen from Suede and Damon Albarn shunned Thom Yorke at the NME awards aftershow party.
I always thought it ironic he slagged off Justine for her lame hairstyle, when Jonny Greenwood had the exact same hairdo!?
BTW - "arrest this man he talks in maths", was actually about a Maths teacher of the band; Mr. Pritchard. He was at the school when radiohead members were, and a distinctive feature about him was the way he spoke. He had a stutter/ lisp i.e.. 'buzzes like a fridge'.
I'll take stuff no one cares about for 200
Thank you for the Radioheid trivia.
Interesting 🍺
I appreciate these tidbits
Being Brave is better than anything Jarvis ever wrote
I found this interesting, good man!
They were NME darlings for about 3 weeks in the time when any band with a mouldable britpop image could get a contract.
And were probably signed to a formerly independent label that got bought out or sold out and became a subsidiary label of a major label.
@@chrisperyagh The same 5 minutes of fame all those punk bands had in 1977-1978. I'd still gladly take it over the current manufacturated pop/uk drill digrace.
Only if they were prepared to drop their whole lives and go live in a certain group of postcodes.
@@heppoloshame there isnt a weekly newspaper style magazine for dill music, basicly the sane sort of gossip/drama as what the NME created but unlike the NME it would lead to gangland murders and the front cover top star would be in the obiturlary a week later.
Heheheh
@@olivere5497 or it would be a panto level clown show a-la "men's not hot" with those post-ironic gen z level of insane/insanely stupid memes, basically the printed version of twitter/X
I would love to see James Corden do a version of this.
😂😂😂
Sadly he’s vaccine damaged
@@Mac-ku3xu ... sadly? 🤣
@@Mac-ku3xu He’s chips and pies damaged.
You’ve placed the most annoying and horrible image in my mind. I absolutely hate you.
Limmy mumbling "I fucking hate everything man" is the most pure distillation of what he's about
also "have ye ever been so annoyed in your life as you are right now?"
Limey is my spirit animal.
Superhans could have fronted these lot
😂
More like Jez.
"jesus fuckin christ i hate it" *hits play again*
The masochist we need.
His "I fucking hated them en all" was so raw you just know its been stewing for 30 years. Magic
Still?
Britpop made a few great bands very famous and wealthy, but it also ruined an interesting and diverse early 90s alt music scene by flooding the market with lightweight poser shit like this
britpop killed shoegaze and dream pop. can't believe music got ruined by a fucking cultural movement that died as quickly as it started
@@chubbus_ Those weekly music rags helped in killing off Shoegaze (the supposed "scene that celebrates itself," Hmmmm...yet these guys got promoted?) in favour of Grunge and Britpop. Boo Radleys, Lush and Ride (kind of) even converted to the genre.
@@jackjude i'm actually a really big fan of lush and though they dipped their toes in elements of britpop, miki berenyi absolutely detests the whole scene
@@chubbus_i just wrote a long comment elsewhere about being herded by peers and the marketing towards Ash and Symposium instead of My Bloody Valentine, who i didnt discover till i was old.
@@olivere5497my first gig was Symposium supporting Hurricane #1 🥲
This is what happens when we stop throwing tomatoes
@@joefather6084 imagine if some school kid kept chucking rotten tomatos at bands on ToTPs?
I wonder how Limmy's going to feel when he finds out they also sometimes spelt it Menswe@r
Mensweater
I kinda still wish that I never knew this existed
🤢🤢
It's not just Wire, it's also the chorus of Just Keep Walking by INXS. Those two elements account for the entire song.
Of all the things Limmy is unreasonably outraged by, this is the most justifiable reaction.
The NME has a lot to answer for
They get a pass for being responsible for Tom Odell's dad ringing up to complain over a 0/10 review.
@@123afish I'm embarrassed to discover he's from Chichester, although I was born around 18 years before him. Turns out he went to Seaford College (just outside Duncton, near Petworth) which is a school for toffs.
Especially the kaiser chiefs
@@Exnavyjaywhat was that howling in the middle of every song about
If I recall correctly, they were a Melody Maker band and the NME thought they were shite.
I once had a house mate who felt physically sick whenever he saw or heard David Byrne from Talking Heads. He couldn't really explain why, apart from saying Byrne was being "weird on purpose". We now know Byrne is probably on the spectrum and it probably wasn't on purpose. I was always the first person to leave the house to go to work, so I'd sometimes put 'Once in a Lifetime' on the stereo, make it repeat and turn it up full blast just as I was leaving.
Johnny Dean is diagnosed as autistic too.
What a delightfully cuntish thing to do! I salute you, good sir! 😂
As a person on the spectrum I can confirm that autistic people indeed sometimes do it on purpose.
This was conceived, agreed on, rehearsed, recorded, mixed and mastered AND released as a single AAAAAND performed on TV. 😢
So many evolutionary bottlenecks it managed to get through, and in a most internet/mobile phone free era too!
Haha, top of the pops had 100% mimed instrumentals
@@samprice1302 I was just referring to how inconceivably, embarrassingly shite the song is
@@K33f11 yeah I just thought it was funny they didn't even go through the effort of actually performing it
@samprice1302 they could never get the live sound right at top of the pops so they did the backing track thing. Should have moved it to a proper venue and made it 100% LIVE. Then we would have really seen/heard how shite the boy bands were 🤣
Damn this band sounds like a Wire cover band
Oh shit
Bingo
I would go as far as saying they owe Wire royalties for this
The Wire played at my mates wedding.
It’s worse - a cover of a wire tribute band. Elastica stole from wire and these critters stole from them.
They passed me by in the 90s thank god. Shite.
Suede are still amazing btw - saw them at Kelvingrove summer nights 2019. Fab.
The problem is: these bands were so obnoxiously arrogant in every way, yet they were so utterly cringeworthy in every way.
No substance whatsoever, and they got found out in about a month
c%*ts the lot of them
@@davidlittle7182 From what I glean, they made 1 album that sold in the UK and Japan, then vanished.
Amusingly, in 2013, the singer went solo and made his first sold-out live appearance ever performing the songs of David Bowie to raise funds for "The National Autistic Society" in London.
Which says a lot.
(I'm not joking there)
@@Respected_Gentlemanlike Justin Hawkins throwing a huff because he didn’t get on the Eurovision Song Contest. I remember these, the auteurs, these animal men and gay dad. All shite!
@@Respected_Gentleman this sounds like hell, but also wonderful. Thanks for the update!
An absolute outrage that anything this terrible is being compared to Pulp.
Agreed. I remember Pulp, but I don't remember this shite.
Pulp is this bad to people who don’t listen to anything
Oh come on. It’s pretty common, people
Pulp are pish
Cocker is a pretentious ball bag.
It was a more obscure band, Wire that Elastica heavily leaned on for Connection and a lot of the Elastica album. If you bring up I Am The Fly on youtube, that is essentially Elastica's sound.
However, at least Elastica put their own twist on it and made a few really decent songs and they were a likable band. The problem with Britpop was it was a "scene". As long as you were in Camden circa 1994 and knew a couple of chords and snorted lines with the right people, you found yourself on Top of the Pops.
It meant talented bands who had been plugging away for years (Pulp, Stone Roses, even Radiohead) got lumped in with abominations like this
The first Elastica album while great was a mix up of rip offs of a few post punk bands from the late 1970s like Magazine and Wire. You could take any song off Wire first Album "Pink Flag" and it sounds like a lot of the stuff Blur or Elastica were doing in the mid 90s
@@matthewcoombs3282wasn’t the intro to connection stolen from Wire
Connection was literally Wire's Three Girl Rhumba with minor trimmings. But at least Justine Frischmann had some presence. This is a true abomination.
britpop was “started” or the movement was basically given a name because of suede. suede gained traction in 1992 cause they stood out and then the movement was created in a magazine. suede hated it, hence their second album
Your 6 minute 19 second video was probably more entertaining than Menswear's entire career.
Probably will have more views than all their videos combined.
It was certainly longer...
I love this hahaha. Limmy you secretly love this. It’s the upturns in the voice and the hair you hate/love
I must thank you for defining the vocal affectation (upturn) that makes my teeth itch.
Sounds like a literal copy of the band Wire 'Three Girl Rhumba' The cadence, riff, everything!
That’s what the Elastica song that Limmy is thinking of ripped off.
It's literally 'Lowdown' by Wire, who were also copied by Elastica
They definitely listened to Wire's first album and decided to rearrange bits of it to create this effort. I can hear bits of Lowdown as you say, they also knicked the one chord idea from Pink Flag.
There's a whole strain of British music that took Wire as a starting point. Can't criticise their taste but blimey, they didn't hide it very well. I remember Menswear (I seem to recall it being written as Menswe@r sometimes or was that just a bad dream?) being on the front cover of Select very early on but even amidst all the press hype it felt like everyone knew they were awful really, including the press, almost like some situationist stunt. Except it wasn't, it was just hype to sell copies.
I think the Elastica song is called Connection. They "borrowed" the riff from Three Girl Rhumba by Wire and settled out of court.
It's an interesting connection because this menswear song is heavily aping Wire, especially in the vocals.
The Stranglers endorsed their plagiarism maybe because they did it so well for that album.
Whereas this lot are undiluted parody.
If they were a scottish band, it'd work. "Floondar drooning" has a nice ring.
Although I knew of this band at the time I managed to get through this whole period without hearing any of their music, which looking back was a blessing.
“Being Brave” was a nice ballad. They were shite otherwise.
It's like a sketch show parody of Blur, except it got on Top Of The Pops.
I think the singer thinks he's Brian Ferry 😂
He’s not even Bryan Ferry’s piles!
Bryan Fanny more like
A South Korean or Zanzibar ferry
He's also studied Albarn mannerisms and Frischman's hair riffs to come up with this composite ahem performance.
It'd do well on a brasseye segment. Oh me oh Myra
@@JonnyInfinite 🤣👏
I used to play in a shitty band with my friends in sixth form I reckon we were better than Menswear
At school I was in band who had a political song called "Smells Like Rotten Teabags", based loosely on the Nirvana song "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
For the bit that goes:
'With the lights out, it's less dangerous,
Here we are now, entertain us'
We sang:
'Tony Blair, Paddy Ashdown,
John Major, you're all clowns'
Fucking beat that.
@@theflyintheointment I'm surprised you didn't go for the obvious "here we are now, in the anus"
@@theflyintheointmenttry S*M*A*S*H, from a Welwyn Garden City suburban new town of the same era: songs such as “Lady Love Your C*nt” (based on reaction to a Germaine Greer essay of the same name), and “I Want To K*ll Somebody”, which lists a litany of Tory politician names as targets of political hatred 😊👍
You probably were
I had the first album. I remember liking them at the time. In retrospect, it's like a Britpop band generated by AI
The Drummer Matt Everitt is a music journalist now. Loved him on Sean Keaveny's 6 music shows before he got the boot.
Why did he get booted?
@@olivere5497 His boss obviously heard about this song.
@@olivere5497 my bad, it was Shaun Keaveny who got booted. Matt still does the odd bits for 6.
Shaun was booted cos the new director at 6 wants to get a younger audience in. They've been reducing timeslots for a few of the older presenters. Radcliffe and Marconie got moved to weekend mornings a while ago and Gideon Coe and Marc Riley have had their times reduced most recently. Pretty sad tbh.
6 Music is slowly morphing into Radio 2 Extra @@loon20061984
@@loon20061984 She has ruined the station, wish she'd fuck off to Radio 1 extra
"Ah was a really angry person in ma 20's"
🤣
Too funny!
Actually, 'flounder drowning' works if you put a comma in there: "...flounder, drowning."
I just wish they'd sung the comma and not the song.
They used to drink in The Good Mixer in Camden often sitting next to Graham Coxon from Blur (who was a really nice unassuming guy) while Alex James was over playing either the puggy or pinball (I can’t remember which type of machine it was, he’d just be looking wasted and playing it for what seemed like hours) but Menswear on the whole would act like entitled pricks. They essentially acted as though they thought they were stars and I think that was before this single was even released.
True story 👍 from my teens growing up in the heady days of 90s London, I did emerse myself in a lot of the musical world of the Brit Pop live music scene and nightlife. I never did impose on the Good Mixer scene but always heard good things about Graham Coxon. I also remember the guitarist from Menswear (in the green and white “ASBO” T-shirt here) doing most of the industry networking schmoozing around the industry types. One moment stood out in my mind after a late night, probably after a gig after-party clubnite (or could’ve been in the streets of Camden Town nearby the Good Mixer), when wandering down the street homeward, seeing the chap in his cherubic curls running off and shouting triumphantly to the skies “We’re gonna be famoouuusss!!!”… strange chap
Imagine Camden being an affordable place to live to an up and coming band!
@@olivere5497 I’m not sure how affordable Camden itself was at the time but the likes of Chalk Farm, Kilburn and beds it’s in West Hampstead certainly were.
makes Oasis stand out so much more when you compare the performances on TOTP
I got loads of tapes and records nicked from house parties, but I've still got my absolutely shite Menswear tape. The absolute worst.
The problem with that cringe box of shite tapes/cds is that throwing it out requires looking at it.
Spotted the corden left leg lift at 5:00
Finally! Someone putting words to something I felt so strongly for many years but was unable to articulate.
Stuart from Menswear tried to teach my good friend Michael how to play the French horn.
Ooooh matron
@@pjl8119dirty old bollocks
They got a record deal because they drank in the right pub. As the story goes....
Limmys daily dose of positivity
It's just one chord but wow, what a chord!
Musically they are ripping off Wire, like Elastica did.
I vaguely remember this band. They came from nowhere and were pushed heavily by the NME or Melody Maker (which I used to read). I think they were frontpage news before they had released anything. A lot of Britpop was highly derivative -- of bands in the same era and ones which came before -- which is why they seem a lot like a mix of Elastica, Suede and others here. The most innovative were Radiohead but they'd reject the idea of even being part of the same musical movement because, despite their beginnings, they very quickly shifted off into something of their own.
The Elastica-sounding guitars often gets put back to the band Wire. That was the comparison people made at the time when Elastica broke through.
NME had their favourites, and they would get 'cool' photoshoots - eg here's the lead singer, in his bedroom, standing on the bed, holding a flower. You too can be like this.
They were name checked by the character James Cordon plays in the film adaptation of John Niven's great book "Kill Your Friends'. It was obvious that Niven, who worked in the music business, f*cking hated 'Menswear' and everything they represented. Britpop made a lot of people a shed load of money. But most of the bands were shite even though NME and Melody Maker would try to push them by giving the dross they put out 5/5 or 'Album Of The Week'. I preferred bands like 'The Wedding Present' who avoided the whole scene. By the late 90's Sweden's Dennis Pop and Max Martin came in and swamped the charts with a different type of generic shite
@@timedwards5734 Many an art school band was like them back then. How they got the initial push, I'll never know. They must have known some music journalist. They disappeared very quickly (it seemed).
@@timedwards5734 John Niven signed Menswe@r when he was an A&R man!
I would pay good money to see Limmy do a 90's guitar playing hop.
This is how I feel when Billy Joel comes on the car radio. My mood changes into angry depression
Totally agree, Wire were incredible. Pink Flag especially is an incredible album
that menswear album is actually good. being brave is a great song
WE'VE GOT A PULP/BLUR/ROXY MUSIC ALBUM AT HOME
I think the specific album they definitely have at home is Chairs Missing by Wire.
@@Morphstock yeah the delivery is very Outdoor Miner isn't it
I managed 8 seconds of that Menswear song. Had to go for a lie down, but I will be back soon to see if I can stomach another 8 seconds.
One foot firmly in the ponce pit.
It also reminds me a bit of Stereotypes by Blur.
Big helping of Blur in there alright
I think Limmy hates the passage of time.
Bingo!
@@sratusThat too, probably.
We watched this episode of TOTP last night on BBC iPlayer and my husband did a mini rant about how shit Menswear were. Not in the same league as this Limmy rant though.
Bands like this always win battle of the bands. You play in the afternoon, wait around all day and then this band rocks up at ten to ten, plays, and wins it.
Maybe a battle of the bands in some shiity 90s Chiltern commuter town.
My band lost to a band that were playing to a backing track, they looked cool though
@@valley_robot My band once lost out to a two piece goth band with a drum machine.
@@alanredversangel if that was in the 90s that would have been so ahead of its time its possible they were time tourists.
@@olivere5497 That almost describes 'Suicide', and they were around in the _'70's..._ Tbf though, they were good.
Yes. I was twenty in 95. I liked much in the way of music; although I was mainly into techno, trance, house, ambient I loved indie and stuff like the Stone Roses.
I too found this irritated me.
Menswear were hype up as the next big thing…..then it was gene…..then it was guillimots
Then princess Diana died
Then Derek anchors
Manufactured bolloxs loved by NME hacks.
Guillemots? Didn't they start in the mid 2000s?
His anger from 4:50 made me piss myself 😂
Jus pish yersel
true successors to the beatles
They've got the most brilliant artful dodgery backstory. Music journo asks two teenage hipsters at the indie club Blow Out who the next big thing is. They tell him about this brilliant band Menswe@r who are going to be huge and then scramble to recruit a rhythm section and form the band they've just invented!
4:53 The moment we've all been waiting for.
Never heard of them before. Guy wishes he was Justine Frischmann. Thanks a lot. Now I can’t sleep due to the absolute rage this has evoked.
He’s right - why would anyone want to drown a flounder?
I’d never even realised flounder drowning was an activity.
My brother asked for a Metallica CD for christmas that year and our dad accidentally bought him the Menswear album.
We listened to it.
It ruined Christmas.
It's such a rip-off of Wire's "The Lowdown".
You're the only one here who said that!
Thank you! THAT'S what it reminds me of.
Had totally forgot about this menswear track and its ok besides the lyrics and the leader singer plus the guitars and maybe less drums.
I am livid its back in my conscious 😂but glad to discover Wire. Back then it was making a sound with limited capability. .Menswear were the complete opposite, probably had music lessons from a early age and were trying to come across as working class. Same as blur elastica and pulp. Oasis were and still are pricks 😂
There was a group called gay dad once and they put them on the front of a load of music magazines saying they were the next big thing. They were distinctly mediocre, sank without trace and it turns out one of them was a former music journalist. I remember these in name only as well as these animal men and the auteurs who all did nothing
These Animal Men were part of the NME/Melody-Maker tail-end rehash of Brit-Pop named as the New Wave Of New Wave, which did allow for some amazing energy out of suburban new town Welwyn Garden City in the form of the fantastic S*M*A*S*H 🎸
The Auteurs were a superb band and pre-dated the whole Britpop thing anyway. That New Wave of New Wave thing with TAM and SMASH was immediately prior to Britpop too, almost like a dry run.
formed 94, disbanded 98. 4 years too long
I would have been 5 when this came out, now i'm hearing it for the first time and it fills me with rage
Joyless trudging was characteristic of a lot of those britpop bands.
Yeah trudging really is the word for it. 10 years later it was all jangly.
Saw them at a promo event at The Venue in Edinburgh. It was free entry to a few of us. The band was so vacuous and vain it was like i was looking at an empty stage hosting a dissipating fart!
I saw Biffy Clyro there in early 2002, among other bands of that era 😁 place is still empty to this day 😢
@@muzzler24 I don't know how Biffy Clyro sounded then, but they sure did get better later on, at the end of that decade
0:58 Wire “Three Girl Rhumba”. in fact, this is way more of a Wire rip off the same tune than Pulp
Exactly.
This feels like it was made for me and me only thank you Limmy
Menswear… kind of reminds me of Vic & Bobs The Club where they managed a band called Mandate.
Jesus Christ this band is a blast from the past.
It was ripping off Roxy Music "Virginia Plain" as well, with those verse endings
Love the tune it’s just great pop
I knew the guitarist. He couldn't play guitar, but he still managed to buy a flat in North London for his flouncey fucking efforts
Seen em in 95 at Glastonbury and they were the only band not ashamed to be called Britpop
if you're this cheery all the time, i'm subscribing posthaste
I actually liked the song at the time but watching it now…it’s not the song that’s embarrassing- it’s more the arrogance and expression in the way it’s delivered. That said, many bands had this at the time as it was, well, the time and that branch of Brit Pop was already sailing after Blur/Elastica.
I liked Cliff Richard’s “We don’t talk anymore” when I was little, but wouldn’t/couldn’t put myself through it today.
Loving the anger and frustration in this Vid. 👍🏼
I remember these fuck-knuckles well.... I remember thinking at the time - people will buying anything if you tell them it's trendy or clever. Even today people comment they were an underrated band. They, along with a dozen other chair-filler bands, are the reason no one wanted to be called "Britpop."
I like it, they were a good fun band at the time.
Remember this well… at the time I was at university, attempting to learn guitar and get into bands… and these guys (on the evidence of this) could not play their instruments (why does it take TWO guitarists to play ONE chord for the entirety of the song)!
And just like that, Limmy felt young again
Anyone know the chords to this? Struggling to figure it out.
Even though it's terrible... it is miles better than the top. 40 2023
"got a new song for us lads. Ok so it goes, A minor, A minor and then A minor. Then the chorus is...A minor , A minor and finally A minor. No, no that's it. Yeh. Top ten? Yeh easy enough"
The old man's floundering
Fuck me I've never heard such a blatant Wire rip-off. Shameful.
Elastica ‘Connection’ was done by Wire in the 70s ‘Three Girl Rhumba.’ Or is it ‘Connected.’
Who cares. I liked Richard Oakes’ guitar for Suede but I heard them all speaking together about the album on more recent programme. Anderson was from a council house? His granda was Scottish?
Limmy just commented on it as I text!!!
I always loved this song because it was so hilariously bad. Still makes me laugh.
I bet you bought it anyway. It'll look equally drawlish next to your Kylie Minogue and Robbie albums.
@@alanbbrady8196 eh?
They were on the cover of Melody Maker even though they hadn’t actually released any material 🤷♂️ and Adele has three of her albums in Rolling Stones list of best soul albums! Does anyone take music journalists seriously anymore?
They certainly made men swear. Limmy and myself to name two. I also despised them at the time.
Have you picked up your window cleaning gear and bike from Roy's yet 😂
Listening to that makes me feel sick, but I actually quite enjoyed 'I don't believe in being brave' by Menswear. Like a totally different band.
I had completely forgotten about menswear. For obvious reasons.