In our first episode, we discussed Richard Ashcroft and the Verve
Today, we have those wee lads from Scotland, who supported oasis on their big world tours in 1997 and 2000: Dougie, Fran, Neil and Andy: Travis.
As background, here's the intro paragraph again.
As I might have mentioned at some point in the past, I'm an oasis fan. A rather big oasis fan, no less. As such, I have a tendency to try and find interviews with the members of the band...and since Liam generally isn't capable of stringing together thoughts of more than 2 words at a time, and Gem and Andy (and in the past, Guigsy and Bonehead) both seem quite content to fade into the background, the interviews are normally done with the brains of the operation: Noel Gallagher. Now Noel, besides being one of the funniest men in rock'n roll, is also rather opinionated when it comes to discussing other musicians. Now, what's interesting about that, is that he's been asked his opinion about pretty much every band that's ever existed, since those chimps in suits (also known as the music press) know that whatever he says is generally good copy. Why this is interesting is that without fail, if he says he likes a band, I will too. Which is strange, because this corollary doesn't work with any of my other musical heroes...I can't stand listening to most of the crap Dylan talks about...Weller has rather....eclectic tastes, and I have no idea what McCartney likes, and that's probably a good thing these days.
So when I hear Noel say something like "the new Ed Harcourt single is ace...so much so I'll probably have to nick half of it"...I'll go in search of said song and 99% of the time...I like it.
So, there you go. Now we come to Travis. The first album I purchased of theirs was of course 'The Man Who', basically on the back of Noel pumping them up and having heard "why does it always rain on me?" and "driftwood" at Glastonbury. I walk out of the store and on the videoscreen in the athlete's world next door, they're showing the video for 'why does it always rain on me?"....good sign. So I put it on, and immediately fall in love with it. Just a beautiful album from beginning to end....and then there's a hidden track at the end...'blue flashing light', which they always play live.
Next on the agenda was the first album 'good feeling', which was a bit more rocky than the second one. Not quite up to the standards of 'the man who', but tracks like U16 Girls and All I wanna do is rock made it a classic.
The third album, which I bought on the day of release was 'the invisible band', which included one of my all-time favoutite songs 'sing'....just an absolute belter of a tune. Plus, a few other good 'uns, and it's a nice little album.
Then Fran (the main songwriter) got political and everything went to hell. "12 Memories", their last album, is dreadful. So much so, it's put me off them for a long time. Very, very disappointing.
Such is life. 2 or 3 good to great albums, then you lose the plot.
Cracker-ass crackers.
