The Brit Box

The full title of this music collection is: The Brit Box: UK Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium. I guess it's a tad difficult to "box" a single short title for 78 songs that were released from 1984-1999. Music that preceded and led the pop music into and then back out of alt-rock Britannia over the same period. I ended up with this box-set in Iraq of all places after it was suggested several times by Amazon in one of those little side-boxes on my screen. This after making several music purchases, my cookies were tracked, and put through the marketing filters when I finally clicked and took a look. Being a fan of the genre, I knew several of the tracks already, but there were many more songs and musicians listed that I knew nothing or little of, or just lost track of over the years. This and the price, which was right as rain , made the decision pretty easy. Finding good ways to occupy myself in down time has been essential.

As for the product itself: There's a great book and the overall design is pretty unique. The four disks, made to look like ash trays have one thru four cigarettes depending on the disk number. This very Liverpoolish subtlety is a contrast to the Londonesque sticker-tacky feature on the front boasting, "...first box set of it's kind and the only one with an on/off switch!"

The switch through a cut out in the back turns on a flashing white light visible only inside when open, and I imagine, perhaps, a confused persnickety shoppe customer who may have poked a finger through the plastic to see what the switch does and found nothing.

The music is no surprise. The full description is in the box title alone, but for the sake of thoroughness, my mother's readership, and others, I'll explain a few things just from my own head, not from the book in the box:

"Indie" is shortened for independent. The phrase didn't get widespread use till the late '90s but is now used retroactively for groups whose music is/was released on independent/non-corporate labels, the result being more artistic less controlled production.

"Shoegazer" refers to music from a period '88-'92ish that had vocals taking a back seat to effects-laden droning guitars and was usually described as "dreamy" or "hypnotic" by those who liked it (myself included), but redundant and boring by those who didn't. Bands like Ride, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine fell into this category. These bands were stuck with the name when someone in print somewhere noted that guitarists tend to stand motionless and staring down at their shoes while playing, interviews were known to (un)develop in a similar fashion.

Still, most of this music stays in the center lane with popular names such as New Order, The Cure, The Smiths, Oasis, and Blur. These play next to more obscure groups like Felt, Bleach, Cash, and Rialto, which are new to me. So far, with all the music on my ipod and on random I've only skipped to the next track once. So I'm thinking that if my reader friends like this kind of music at all this collection will fit in well with their larger one as it does mine.