"Fighting Fit" by Gene

1. Gene, for most of their career, was dubbed as Smiths copyists, Smiths soundalikes, Smiths fanatics, and all things Smiths-related, the point being that they sound a lot like the Smiths (duh)
2.Their song titles read like stolen snatches from Morrissey's journal ("I Cant Help Myself", "London Can You Wait?", "Your Love It Lies")
3.Needless to say, they werent as good as the Smiths. Hell, even Morrissey and Johhny Marr themselves cannot attain the heights reached by their former band.
4.Beyond the surface resemblance, one can find certain subtle touches that made Gene a wee bit more distinctive : the guitars are glammy instead of jangly, the song structures are mostly conventional verse-chorus-verse, and Martin Rossiter's habit of yelling "No!" every third line or so.
5.Their first album, "Olympian", is really rather good.
6."Drawn to the Deep End", their second album, is a bit uneven, but it contains such pearls as "Long Sleeves For The Summer" and "Save Me I'm Yours".
7.The album was produced by Chris Hughes, whose previous credits include Tears for Fears and Adam Ant.
8.Though do not expect any tribal beats, war-paint or primal scream therapy anywhere on the LP.
9.Instead, it's a bold, risk-taking LP that is still severely under-rated.
10.It still sounded like the Smiths, but instead of a slavish imitation, Gene provided the sonic possibilities had the Smiths continue beyond their final LP.
11. I want to share with you the sumptuous "Save Me I'm Yours", but even the wonder that is Youtube doesnt have any clip on it. So, enjoy the Tamla-Motown-like grooves of "Fighting Fit"
12. The guys looked dapper in it, no?
13. I miss Gene.

"End of the Century" by Blur

Blur’s album “Parklife” was released in 1994, when I was in high school. I remember I used to listen to it all the time in the car in the morning on my way to school. I remember that since the journey only took about 20 minutes, the listening experience only lasted till the end of the title track or the middle bit of “The Debt Collector”. To my ears at least, “Parklife” is a great pop album, filled with hooks and catchy tunes. But to some other people (in this case, my erstwhile driver, Pak Akub) it’s just too annoyingly weird.
I listened to it for weeks (I still do, though less frequently nowadays), and by the second week, even Pak Akup’s resistance to anything weirder than Elvi Sukaesih and Bang Oma proved futile. He was tapping his fingers and nodding his head along to it, especially the third track, “End of The Century”.
Now this is undeniably a superb song, Damon said in interviews that it was his favorite Blur songs for a long while. Even his nemesis Noel Gallagher grudgingly admitted that it’s ace. The melodies are delicious, and Graham’s guitar playing is fantastic as always. But if you listen to it on headphones or a very high volume, you realize the subtler touches : the “ooooh-aaaaah” backing vocals (still spine-tingling after all these years), the choir-like bridge, and the horns at the end.
It’s quintessential Britpop Blur, a high watermark of what was called by Graham as the Blur Stomp, which in subsequent efforts can be taken to effortless highs (“Charmless Man”) or absurd lows (“Mr. Robinson’s Quango”. Ugh, awful awful song).
Weird fact : “End of A Century” only charted at a lowly number 19 on the UK singles chart, probably not helped by a live video filmed at Alexandra Palace that features an inferior live version of the track.