THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: BRESCIA CALCIO, 1992-94 [UHLSPORT]

 

Brescia Calcio came about in 1911 after the coming together of the Società Ginnastica La Victoria Brescia and Unione Sportiva Bresciana e Gimnasium. They wore then orange and blue vertical stripes with black shorts, a fairly unusual combination in itself but not as distinctive as the white V set against a blue background that has typified the shirt since. Società Ginnastica La Victoria Brescia – who were themselves the result of a merger between Forti e Liberi and Club Sportivo Brixia – had played in blue jerseys with a white vertical line down the middle, which would suggest that Unione Sportiva Bresciana e Gimnasium may well have worn orange. At any rate, by 1915 Football Club Brescia, as they were now known, were playing in blue and white stripes in Group E of the Prima Categoria.

Despite the FIGC’s efforts to reinstall the single league format trialled in 1909-10, the sheer weight of numbers wanting to compete after the end of the First World War meant a return to the bloated format they’d been lumbered with before the conflict started. In the event, Brescia finished their preliminary round – Group A: Lombardy Section – in second place behind Inter, thus qualifying for the national semi-finals, finishing fifth in a pool of six. They did this wearing plain (savoy) blue.

It was in 1927 that Brescia came up with the distinguishing white V, or chevron, and did so in homage to the ‘Fathers of Peace’ (Voluntas Pace) who granted the team use their stadium (Stadio di Viale Piave) for a nominal fee. The intervening period had proved to be reasonably successful, so when the FIGC finally established Serie A as a singular league in 1929-30, the Biancazzurri were part of it. Moreover, they finished its inaugural season in ninth place, seven points clear of relegation.
 
In 1936 the club changed its name to Associazione Calcio Brescia and were subsequently relegated. After a brief stint in Serie C, Brescia made it into Serie A in 1943. The Second World War necessitated a temporary retreat to the multigroup set-up, lasting until 1946-47, whereupon the club was again demoted to Serie B. In between – 1940 to be precise – they’d reverted to wearing all blue. In 1948, Brescia inverted their colours – white shirt, blue shorts – but by the 1950s had effected an about-face.

In 1961 the chevron was reintroduced, and in 1965 Brescia were promoted into Serie A as champions. They managed three consecutive seasons in Italy’s top flight before being relegated, but bounced back the following year. For their return to Serie A, the jersey was altered once more, except this time the V was replaced with a diagonal white stripe, or sash. This configuration lasted as long as Brescia’s tenure in Serie A – just one term. Perhaps sensing that this radical departure had brought them bad luck, the chevron was hastily reinstated and remained in place until 1974. Thereafter, the club experimented with a more diminutive V before reverting to plain blue in summer of ’76, the year they officially became Brescia Calcio.
 

And that’s how things pretty much stayed until Uhlsport took over from Bontempi Sport in 1991-92, the season Brescia won Serie B under the guidance of Romanian coach Mircea Lucescu. In truth, Uhlsport’s first crack at the shirt wasn’t all that, the revived chevron obscured by the emblem of the club’s new sponsor, CAB (Credito Agrario Bresciano).

In 1992, no doubt under the direction of Lucescu, Brescia signed Florin Răducioiu from Verona, Ioan Sabău from Feyenoord, and the mercurial Gheorghe Hagi from real Madrid, although they also sold their top scorer, Maurizio Ganz, to Atalanta. At the same time, Uhlsport got their act together. The dark blue lozenge behind the sponsor’s initials was got rid of, revealing the chevron underneath. Where the ends of the white V had previously faded into blue towards the shoulder, they now remained constant. The club’s badge was no longer printed but sewn on, as was the manufacturer’s own insignia. Finally, Uhlsport adopted a geometrically micropatterned fabric (also used for Verona and Cremonese) that gave the shirt a vivid sheen. The away version, in red, was equally lustrous.

Brescia lost their relegation playoff against Udinese and went straight back down, kept the same strip and went straight back up. This time around, ABM would provide the gear – not their best – but the result was the same, just more comprehensive: Brescia finished bottom of the table.
 

The club’s best years were ahead of them, courtesy of Roberto Baggio, wearing kits supplied by Garman, Umbro and Kappa, all of them hideous. Aside from the occasional foray into Serie A, Brescia have once again made Serie B their home, which isn’t a bad place to be, all things considered. Indeed, they have spent more seasons in Italian football’s second tier than any other team: 63 and counting.

THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: GENOA C.F.C. 1990-94 [ERREA]

 

Genoa Cricket and Football Club is the oldest surviving football club in Italy. Founded in 1893 by a consortium of British businessmen, it was originally known as Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club. Football was a mere sideline initially, played at the Piazza d'Armi del Campasso on Saturdays against whichever group of British merchant sailors happened to be in town. Shirts were white to reflect the organisation’s English heritage.

In 1886 an English doctor named James Richardson Spensley arrived in Genoa to provide medical care for those same sailors passing through the Mediterranean, by way of the Suez Canal, to and from India. Prior to his emigration, he’d been employed as a medical advisor for a maritime insurance company in Sunderland, and in between offshore assignments had put together a football team with players drawn from his father’s congregation. Spensley played in goal and would later qualify as a referee, all the time fostering more obscure interests, such as studying oriental religion or learning Sanskrit.

This background was of great benefit when Spensley joined the Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club and set about persuading its conservative membership into taking football more seriously. He successfully petitioned the board to allow ‘foreigners’ in on the act – local Italians, as well as Swiss and Austrian expatriates – and within a couple of years Spensley’s cosmopolitan outfit was competing against teams from Turin in the first ever Campionato Italiano di Football. What’s more, they were victorious. Buoyed by their success, the club renamed itself the Genoa Cricket and Football Club and changed its colours to blue and white vertical stripes. Genoa won the Campionato again in 1899 and 1900 before losing the final to Milan in 1901. At this point, Genoa CFC took on the red and dark blue halved shirts they wear to this day.

It’s worth going over all of this because there appears to be no reason why Genoa decided upon the colours that they did. The intermediate blue and white stripes may have been a nod to Genovese’s coastal prominence but could also have been symbolic of Spensley’s effort to de-Anglicise the institution. The red and dark blue configuration adopted in 1901 might equally have been an attempt to reconcile the two. After all, Genoa’s badge made no secret of its Anglo-Saxon origins.
 

Notwithstanding the club’s resurgence during the 1920s, Genoa have never met with the level of success they experienced in those halcyon days prior to the First World War. Their last trophy of note was 1937’s Coppa Italia, although it would be another twenty years before the rot really set in. The 1960s and ‘70s were generally spent playing in Serie B, with a brief incursion into Serie C in 1970-71. Promotion in 1981 preceded a three year spell in Serie A, followed by five consecutive seasons occupying Italian football’s second tier.

In 1988-89, Genoa won Serie B and thus promotion back into Serie A. They did this wearing gear manufactured by Errea, breaking a six year association with Adidas. Adidas had good form producing shirts for Italian teams (Torino, Hellas Verona, Bari) but the strip they provided for Genoa came up short. In truth, the shirts that the newly signed captain Gianluca Signorini and his squad wore in 1988-89 weren’t much better. Errea replaced the iconic Adidas stripes running down the arms with their own interpretation, incorporating their logo repeated in red set against a white background, but it looked dated and clashed with the overly stylised typeface of the sponsor (hosiery manufacturer Levante).

Ahead of Genoa’s return to the top flight, they brought in three Uruguayans: midfielders Rubén Paz and José Perdomo, and the accomplished forward Carlos Aguilera. Meanwhile, Mita took over as sponsor, dispensing a more modest, albeit italicised font more suited to the shirt. Genoa finished the season in 11th place, just two points clear of the relegation zone.

In 1990, Errea ditched the white trim, incorporated micro-patterned pinstripes, and suddenly Genoa looked the business. Osvaldo Bagnoli replaced Francesco Scoglio as coach and brought in Brazilian defender Branco, Czech striker Tomáš Skuhravý, and Italian midfielder Mario Bortolazzi who would stay with the club for next eight years. Genoa finished fourth in the league, qualifying for the UEFA Cup, with Aguilera and Skuhravý scoring 15 goals apiece.

1991-92’s shirt remained much the same, save for alterations to the collar and badge. Genoa’s existent crest consisted of a (modern French) shield depicting a golden griffin against a red and blue background surmounted by the cross of St. George – no text. The redesigned badge featured a more intricately drawn griffin against a blue background, flanked by two draping flags breaking the sides of the (heater-shaped) shield with ‘GENOA’ printed along the curved, upper edge and ‘1893’ towards the shield’s apex. The club ended their campaign in a disappointing 14th place, although they did make it to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup, bowing out honourably to Ajax who then went on to beat Torino in the final.

For the next season, SAIWA (Società Accomandita Industria Wafer Affini) replaced Mita as sponsor. This probably wouldn’t have made too much difference to the jersey if Errea hadn’t decided to tamper with the micropattern. The new motif could be described as kaleidoscopic, and the sturdier, upper-case font used by SAIWA was more conducive. Meanwhile, Bagnoli moved to Inter, Aguilera was sold to Torino, John van't Schip joined from Ajax, and Genoa finished in 13th place.

For 1993-94, Genoa wore the same shirt save for a small emblem attached to the left arm celebrating the club’s centenary. They improved upon the previous season’s performance, finishing eleventh. Thereafter, Kenwood replaced SAIWA as club patron, Errea added superfluous white trim to the sleeves and collar, and Genoa were relegated.
 

1993-94

It took more than ten years for Genoa to claw their way back into Serie A. When they finally made it, Errea were still supplying the kit and had reverted to using the club's traditional insignia. At the time of writing, Genoa wear Kappa, bringing to an end a seven-year affiliation with Lotto.
 

THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: HELLAS VERONA, 1992-95 [UHLSPORT]

Associazione Calcio Hellas was named in honour of the Hellenic Republic at the suggestion of Professor Decio Corubolo, who taught Greek at the Liceo ginnasio statale Scipione Maffei. Rather than wearing the colours that this association implied, the club opted for black and white halved shirts. The year this happened – 1903 – football was only played professionally within the regions of Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria, and so A.C. Hellas had to content itself with friendly games against local sides. By the time they found themselves competing in the Prima Categoria (Emilia-Veneto division) in 1910, they were sporting the colours of the city of Verona, derived from the municipality’s coat of arms – a yellow cross against a blue background.

In 1919 A.C. Hellas merged with F.C. Verona to become Football Club Hellas Verona. Ten years later, at the behest of the fascist regime, two more teams were assimilated: Bentegodi and Scaligera. The resulting enterprise was retitled Associazione Calcio Verona, which may or may not have been intended as an anti-Greco gesture (by 1940 Italy and Greece would be at war with each other). Unfortunately, Hellas Verona had just finished Group B of the Divisione Nazionale in 13th place, thus failing to qualify for Serie A’s inaugural season.

World War II saw A.C. Verona relegated to Serie C, although they were back in Serie B by the end of it. In the meantime they experimented with a number of configurations – such as grey shirts with a horizontal blue and yellow band around the middle in 1946-47 – before settling for yellow shirts and blue shorts.

After coming close in 1948, Verona were promoted to Serie A in 1956. To celebrate they adopted to a kit resembling that of Boca Juniors, but were subsequently relegated. The following year Verona absorbed yet another local team, by the name of A.S. Hellas. Sensing an opportunity to connect with its past, the club rechristened itself Associazione Calcio Hellas Verona. Another change or colours: blue shorts, white jerseys with blue sleeves, and hint of yellow adorning the neckline. It’s uncertain how long they persisted with this arrangement but it appears that by the end of the decade their shirts were once again yellow.

Hellas Verona returned to Serie A in 1968 wearing blue and yellow vertically striped jerseys paired with black shorts – had been since 1964. The team’s second spell in Italy’s top flight was relatively successful, lasting six consecutive seasons. In 1970 they reverted to yellow shirts with blue trim, before switching to blue shirts with yellow trim the following year. Shorts were by now generally white.

1984-85

The strip Verona wore during their title winning campaign of 1984-85 is considered to be one of their best. Manufactured by Adidas and sponsored by Canon, it differed slightly from previous kits in that the shorts were also blue while the shirts incorporated yellow pinstripes. Ricoh replaced Canon in 1986, then Hummel took over from Adidas in 1987. The partnership with Hummel lasted three years, culminating in relegation. Adidas stepped back into the fold, the club were immediately promoted, whereafter Verona hooked up with German firm Uhlsport.

Verona’s kit for 1991-92 was mediocre. All blue with a yellow collar and yellow rectangles running down the outside edge of the arms, the sponsor, Rana, printed in a white, rounded uppercase font, it looked cheap. Predictably, the away kit was a mere inversion of the home. However, there existed a superfluous third shirt comprising the same yellow and blue stripes that had been worn during the second half of the 1960s. Relegation ensued, but the jersey was reappropriated for home use the following season.

The shirt itself adhered to the same template Uhlsport were using for U.S. Cremonese. The stripes were of roughly the same gauge, the fabric was micropatterned in the same manner, both had collars, and the manufacturer’s logo and club’s badge were sewn on, except the sponsor’s name was black. The badge is of particular interest. In 1984, club president Ferdinando Chiampan had commissioned the advertising agency Orti Manara to come up with a new insignia. The chosen design included two mastiffs facing away from each other, joined in the middle by a staircase/ladder – symbols relating to the local heraldry – to form a stylised V, encapsulated within a sort of rhombus. The first iteration had the mastiffs and the edging rendered in yellow. Uhlsport inverted the colour scheme and added the colours of the Italian flag within the top-left border and ‘Verona F.C.’ in the one diametrically opposite.

The Uhlsport years were ineffectual. The reason the word ‘Hellas’ had been omitted from the revamped badge was because in February 1991 the club had to re-register under a different name to avoid bankruptcy. In 1995 they got their old name back, swapped Uhlsport for Errea, were promoted and then relegated again. It would get worse before it got better. Hellas Verona are currently enjoying a second consecutive season in Serie A, their kit supplied by Macron. 

THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: U.S. CREMONESE, 1992-95 [UHLSPORT]

 

As is often the case, Cremonese haven’t always worn their current colours. In 1903, the year the club came together, they wore white shirts adorned with a lilac collar, paired with black shorts and socks. Cremonese was a mere sporting association back then, and it’s not even certain they played any football. This changed in 1910, around the time they changed their name to Unione Sportiva Cremonese. Football was catching on, and the following year the team appointed a coach by the name of Nino Gandelli, with aim of playing the sport competitively. It seems he took the role seriously enough, recruiting the best local talent he could find, and by 1912 they'd signed up with the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FICG).

Ahead of the 1913-14 Promozione, U.S. Cremonese merged with the recently formed Associazione Calcio Cremona. A new strip was in order, and it was towards the city’s heraldry that they looked for inspiration. Cremona’s coat of arms consists of a shield split down the middle, with silver and red horizontal stripes on one side and on the other a depiction of an arm holding aloft a golden ball. For now, the colours would do: grey shirts with red trim, to be worn with white shorts.

Cremonese’s first season was a success, winning promotion into the Prima Categoria at the first attempt. The following year’s campaign was mediocre, and when Italy joined The Great War in 1915 so did many of their players (most notably goalkeeper Giovanni Zini, who served as a stretcher-bearer but died in Cividale del Friuli in 1915 after contracting typhus).

In 1919, Cremonese assimilated another local team by the name of Football Club Aurora. Despite bolstering their ranks the club finished bottom of their six-team group, which ordinarily would have resulted in relegation back to the Promozione. The Prima Categoria was in effect a qualifying round whereby teams competed in regional divisions to gain entry into the national semi-finals. The regional committees operated with complete autonomy, determining how many teams over however many leagues were allowed to take part. Ahead of the 1920-21 season, rather than reduce the number of entrants, as the FICG and a few of the bigger clubs were keen to do, Lombardia elected to move from three groups of six to six groups of four, making room for Cremonese.

The next five years were spent playing in a restructured Prima Divisione. Then in 1926 tensions between the FICG and Confederazione Calcistica Italiana (CCI) finally gave way to the establishment of a national league, under the auspices of the (Fascist) Direttorio Divisioni Superiori (DDS). At the same time Cremonese embellished their grey shirts with a red cross, only to finish their group in ninth place. Once more, this should have been low enough to see them relegated, but an enforced merger between Sampierdarenese and Andrea Doria (albeit a temporary one) freed up and extra space.

In 1928 Cremonese tinkered with their strip for a third time, exchanging the cross for a horizontal stripe wrapped around the chest. Seventh place was enough to qualify for the preceding season’s inaugural single-group format – in other words, Serie A – from which they were immediately relegated. They continued to play in Serie B up until 1938, whereupon they dropped down into Serie C. In 1942 Cremonese returned to Serie B but were again relegated in 1951. For their 50th anniversary, they wore grey and red quartered shirts before finally settling for the stripes worn to this day.

 

The 1960s were spent playing in Serie C with the occasional foray into Serie D. The 1970s saw some improvement, culminating in promotion to Serie B in 1977 – the same season that saw Cremonese decked out in red shirts with a single grey stripe descending vertically from left shoulder. Relegation swiftly followed, but by 1981 they were back playing in Serie B.

In 1984 Cremonese finally made a return to Serie A after a 54 year absence. Unfortunately, the man who scored most of the goals that got them there – a certain Gianluca Vialli – was subsequently sold to Sampdoria. His replacement, the Brazilian forward Juary, made little impact and the club finished bottom of the table. But Cremonese appeared to have turned a corner and over the course of the next decade were promoted to Serie A on four separate occasions, oscillating between the top two tiers of Italian football. In the first instance their gear had been supplied by Puma. The second time around it was ABM (1988-89) and then Patrick (1990-91). For 1992-93’s successful push for promotion the kit was supplied by German sports manufacturer Uhlsport.

Uhlsport made shirts for a number of Italian football teams in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, most notably Inter and Bologna, as well as Verona and Brescia. They all came with collars, as did most shirts tailored towards the Italian market at that time. In truth, the jersey Uhlsport came up with was not so different to the ones that ABM and Patrick had provided before them. There were, however, a few compelling disparities.

First off, ABM and Patrick never bothered with appending the club’s crest. In ABM’s case, this may have come down to financial expediency, given that ABM were attaching crests to the shirts of Fiorentina, Torino, Pescara, Palermo. In any case, the absence of a badge cheapened the jersey. Moreover, Cremonese had redesigned their crest in 1985, and it was worthy of attachment: a simplified rendering of a golden ball held aloft, as depicted in the city’s coat of arms, with a diagonal red and grey bend (sinister) behind it. (When Uhlsport handed over to Puma in 1997, the club reverted to its traditional emblem.)

Second, the team’s sponsors during Patrick and ABM’s tenures did not present as nicely as the one that adorned the Uhlsport shirts – local retailer Moncart. It’s not that the company name was written in a particularly distinctive font, just that the simplicity of Moncart’s sans-serif, uppercase lettering worked well in this instance.

Finally, Uhlsport had recently discovered the art of micro-patterning. To be fair, this was a relatively recent phenomenon, and it’s debatable whether Inter’s shirt would have benefitted from it, but in the case of Cremonese it combined well with the colours, muting them slightly.
 

In 1995-96 cured-meat specialist Negroni took over sponsorship from Moncart, Enrico Chiesa returned to his parent-club, Sampdoria, and U.S. Cremonese were relegated. But I Grigiorossi had survived three consecutive seasons in Serie A, a feat not bettered by them before or since, and they did it wearing a shirt of some distinction.
 

LINER NOTES: THE SOUNDS OF BADEN PEARCE [1993-94]

1.    Ana Ng – They Might Be Giants

2.    Lenny Valentino [Album Version] – The Auteurs

3.    No. 13 Baby – Pixies

4.    Cannonball – The Breeders

5.    Rebound – Sebadoh

6.    Trigger Cut / Wounded Kite at :17 – Pavement

7.    Arms Control Poseur [Album Version] – The Fall

8.    Ghost Highway – Mazzy Star

9.    Capital Letters – Moonshake

10.  Marbles – Tindersticks

11.  Transona Five – Stereolab

12.  Tearing Apart My World – Beatnik Filmstars

13.  Water – Automatic Dlamini

14.  White Shirt – The Charlatans

15.  For Tomorrow – Blur

16.  Line Up – Elastica

17.  Columbia – Oasis

18.  His ‘n’ Hers – Pulp

19.  Red Right Hand – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

20.  Hand in Glove – The Smiths

21.  Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) – Buzzcocks

22.  Naked Cousin [Peel Session] – PJ Harvey

23.  Bike – Pink Floyd

24.  The Gift – The Velvet Underground

25.  Ballad of a Thin Man – Bob Dylan

26.  The Chain – Fleetwood Mac

27.  House of the King – Focus

28.  Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five – Wings

29.  Rapture – Blondie
30.  Reflections in a Flat – Half Man Half Biscuit

The Sounds of Baden Pearce: ‘Baden Pearce’ being the name of my hall of residence at the West London Institute of Higher Education, 'The Sounds' being a collection of tunes encountered over the academic year I resided there. Baden Pearce tended to be the domicile for people who came through clearing – ‘clearing’ being the system whereby you applied anew for a place at a particular college or university after receiving your A-level results, maybe because you did better than expected and wanted to explore other opportunities, or worse and were obliged to. (I had done better.)

Our rooms were meagre cuboids. A tiled floor, a rug, a single bed, a wardrobe, a desk come chest-of-drawers, a shelf, and a large cork notice board with room enough for a couple of posters. Boys slept on the ground floor, girls on the first in what was a two-storey building. There were no en-suite bathrooms; sinks, showers and toilets were shared. My lodging overlooked portacabin-style classrooms. Ducks used to congregate outside my window some mornings. There was a television, piano and table tennis table in the common room. It was a lot of fun but there were only two washing machines and no tumble dryer to speak of. One’s radiator took on a more vital dimension.

Eager to expand my knowledge of all things ‘indie’, I made an association with a guy who was well acquainted with the genre. He had tapes of the stuff and seemed to make a new purchase almost every week, which we would listen to in his room.

Sartorially, indie music could be hard to pin down but appeared to have little to do with fashion. Footwear and jeans might be bought new but T-shirts, jumpers and coats were typically found in charity shops and weekend markets – Camden and Portobello in our case. Brands and labels were meaningless conceits. Having much money did not make you a better dressed person. Clothes were not worn to reflect status or hierarchy; indie was supposed to be beyond all that. The attitude was that anything was permissible, both with regards to music and a band’s image: alternative, lo-fi, shoegaze, grunge, baggy, dream pop, chamber pop, jangle pop, art pop, drone pop, noise pop, slowcore, sadcore, hardcore, post-hardcode, post-punk, straight edge, industrial rock, garage rock, gothic rock, experimental rock, art rock, noise rock...  The indie scene was a very broad church.

This being said, there were a number of identifiable looks. Fans of American indie generally favoured plaid shirts, Converse trainers, suede jackets, well-worn denim and long hair. Skateboarding gear would also feature – apparel for the 'slacker generation'. The British scene was more eclectic and slightly smarter. With their mop-top hairdos and roll-neck jumpers, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs of St. Etienne and Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream appropriated the 1960s long before Britpop laid claim to it. In the wake of their album Modern Life is Rubbish, Blur came up with a sort of Mod/Skinhead hybrid involving Fred Perry polo shirts, blazers, Harrington jackets, desert boots and Dr. Martens. Pulp had also developed their own style, a retro, charity shop get-up comprised of nylon and corduroy. Tindersticks wore suits. V-neck jumpers were doing the rounds. I rummaged through my dad’s old clothes and found a few, as well as a brown leather ‘car coat’ that Luke Haines (of The Auteurs) might have worn.

In my room

The Sounds of Baden Pearce was the name I whimsically came up with when I began collating the music I had on cassette and transferring it onto MiniDisc in and around the year 2000. In actual fact, there was no cassette carried over from this period. I would certainly have thrown something together during that time – possibly a number of tapes pertaining to various genres – and I’m confident that many of these tunes would have appeared on one compilation or another, if only because of the strong association they still hold.

I already possessed a copy of Flood by They Might Be Giants (taped from a friend during my A-levels) but 'Ana Ng' comes from an earlier album entitled Lincoln that I borrowed from the guy who owned all the indie tapes. They Might Be Giants were by now old hat, but I was playing catch-up and did not know this.

I’d read about The Auteurs and was persuaded to buy Now I'm a Cowboy on the strength of the single 'Lenny Valentino' – the album version is even better. Unfortunately, Now I’m a Cowboy didn’t live up to the expectation that The Auteurs’ debut album, New Wave, foisted upon it, but I liked their vibe.

Every aspiring indie-kid listened to Pixies and the Breeders, most to Sebadoh and some to Pavement (as well as Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Nirvana, etc.). If any specific sound defined indie music back in the early ‘90s it was expressed via groups like these. The guy with the tapes provided Pixies, The Breeders and Pavement, while I bought Sebadoh’s 4 Song CD – on vinyl – on his advice. All the songs worth hearing on this EP later appeared on the album Bakesale, rendering it obsolete.

The Fall were at the height of their popularity after 1993’s The Infotainment Scan had entered the album charts at no. 9. I borrowed Extricate from the guy with tapes, which was the only Fall album he had, and played it to death. Come the end of the academic year, I’d own This Nation’s Saving Grace, The Wonderful and Frightening World Of..., The Frenz Experiment, Bend Sinister, Shift-Work, Code: Selfish, The Infotainment Scan and Middle Class Revolt. 'Arms Control Poseur' is my favourite track off of Extricate, although frustratingly it isn’t included on the abridged vinyl copy I picked up years later.

Tapes guy purchased the Mazzy Star LP So Tonight That I Might See as soon as it came out (October 1993). It made such an impression that I quickly bought their earlier record, She Hangs Brightly (May 1990). We journeyed to the Mean Fiddler intent on seeing them play live only to find the gig had been cancelled. If we had tried to buy tickets in advance we would have found found this out, but as it was we had no way of knowing – no internet, no mobile phone, no anything.

Moonshake utilised samples and had odd drum patterns. Tapes guy had a copy of their first album Eva Luna, and on a visit to Bristol to see family I purchased the mini-album Big Good Angel, from which 'Capital Letters' is derived. This was last release featuring the old line-up, before band member Margaret Fiedler left (or was kicked out) to form Laika. Tapes guy and I went to see them play at the Highbury Garage, I suppose to promote their third album, The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow. All I remember of it was a loud brass section, tapes guy chatting to a member of The Family Cat, and Lætitia Sadier from Stereolab asking me if I had a spare cigarette.

Tindersticks were from Nottingham and seemed older and more sophisticated than many of their peers, which they were. Their music could be described as dark chamber pop, incorporating string arrangements, woodwind instruments, horns, Spanish guitar. Tindersticks’ eponymously titled debut was nominated album of the year by the magazine Melody Maker, and deserved to be. [When it was suggested by Melody Maker (March 18 1995) that their look was contrived, Stuart Staples retorted, 'It's not that we wouldn't be able to make the music we do in jeans and T-shirts, it's that if we were the sort of people who did wear jeans and T-shirts, we wouldn't make the music that we do.']

The passage of time has tricked me into associating Stereolab with a period of my life it can’t have had much to do with. I purchased the Ping Pong EP in July 1994, which was almost as soon as I returned to Plymouth for the summer holidays, and the LP Mars Audiac Quintet in August. Regardless, this music has a strong association with that which surrounds it, lending weight to the theory that I did indeed compile something representative during this period, perhaps in Plymouth.

The Beatnik Filmstars had a hard, lo-fi sound more akin to American indie-rock, but with the softer vocal inclinations of British jangle pop/shoegaze. Automatic Dlamini was John Parish's gig, but their second album, 1992's From a Diva to a Diver, included contributions from Polly Harvey. Both groups where part of a Somerset and Bristol based indie scene that the guy with the tapes was also part of, by way of his involvement with a band called The Tony Head Experience.

As well as hanging out with the guy with all the tapes, I was friendly with a Welsh lad who looked a bit like Keanu Reeves. I possessed the Charlatans 12" 'Weirdo' but nothing other than that. Welsh lad had The Charlatans’ first album, Some Friendly, on vinyl, and we both bought Up to Our Hips on tape when it was made available in March for the paltry sum of £3.99 (tapes normally retailed at around £8, give or take, while CDs would set you back about £12). 'White Shirt' is my favourite tune from Some Friendly and better than anything off of Up to Our Hips, which isn’t The Charlatans’ best work.

The Charlatans would later find themselves co-opted into the Britpop movement, but the zeitgeist that was to beget the scene had yet to be given its name. You sensed something was happening but didn’t know what it was. The term new wave of new wave (NWONW) was being bandied about, with regards to groups like Elastica, S*M*A*S*H and These Animal Men, but it never really caught on. In any case, Pulp and Oasis couldn’t have sounded more unlike each other. The scene as it was, there was plenty of room for both and no obligation to align yourself this way or that. If you stopped the clock here – 1993 running into 1994 – you might think British indie music was a wonderfully diverse and multi-faceted thing.

'For Tomorrow' by Blur correlated with my impression of London: Portobello Road on a Saturday, the Notting Hill Record and Tape Exchange, Kensington Market, all-you-can-eat buffets at Deep Pan Pizza on Leicester Square, Hammersmith flyover, HMV Megastore on Oxford Street, the District Line, Camden Town. It wasn't just their music but Blur's image, which felt more urbane than many of their contemporaries, Suede included. This impression was probably enhanced by repeated viewings of the tour documentary Starshaped, which tapes guy acquired on video. This was a very different Blur on display to the one that would trade punches with Oasis, and all the better for it: less calculated, more immediate, whimsically humorous, if somewhat jaded. For a while they were my favourite band and Modern Life is Rubbish one of my most listened to albums.

I perceived Elastica to be a more local concern. Lead singer Justine Frischmann grew up down the road, and tapes guy and I once ran into her shopping with her mother in Richmond. Tapes guy wasn't shy, so he introduced himself and informed her we were both fans, to which she responded with good grace. We then proceeded to creepily follow her back, at a distance, to her parents' house in Twickenham (not my idea).

A couple of weeks before Blur released Parklife, Oasis unleashed their debut single, 'Supersonic'. Whereas Blur’s game changer shot straight to number one in the UK album charts, Oasis’s single only made it as high as number 31 in the concomitant ranking. 'Supersonic' was a good song, but 'Columbia', which was only included on the CD iteration, was even better. The next two singles leading up to the album ('Shakermaker' and 'Live Forever') fared much better, and by the time Definitely Maybe hit the shops in August Oasis were easily as popular as Blur.

Meanwhile, Pulp’s His ‘n’ Hers had almost slipped under the radar, although it still peaked at number 9 in the charts, which was more than respectable. The title track wasn’t actually included on the album but surfaced on The Sisters EP released in late May, just in time for my 19th birthday (a present from the guy with tapes). I could have just as easily have included 'Staks' on this compilation, the B-side to the single 'Razzmatazz'. I found it on Intro – The Gift Recordings, which was as good an introduction to Pulp as anyone could've asked for.

I didn’t take to the front cover of Let Love In by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds but trusted that the guy with the tapes knew what he was buying. I don’t actually recall much of the album other than the track 'Red Right Hand', but it’s quite some track and one that Cave plays live to this day.

I picked up a copy of The Smiths’ debut in an indoor flea market in Richmond that no longer exists for about £3 (along with the 12” of 'Hey! Luciani' by The Fall). The tapes guy had Hatful of Hollow on tape so this purchase was by no means out of the blue, but having a vinyl copy of that album felt significant somehow.

Another one of my university chums owned a compilation entitled The Sound of the Suburbs, all about punk and new wave. This is where the Buzzcocks tune came from, and it also put me in touch with The Jam, The Undertones, The Stranglers and Blondie. Actually, I was already getting into Blondie on account of a girl who was a massive fan, with whom I had a bit if a thing. (She would go on to provide me with a copy of Definitely Maybe on the day of its release.)

As well as lending me his cassettes, the guy with the indie tapes introduced me to a number of other things, such as the NME and Melody Maker, suede as a viable material, the films of Woody Allen and John Peel’s Festive 50. I must concede to having never listened to John Peel up until this point in my life, and although I didn’t suddenly start tuning in religiously I did make a point of recording that year’s Festive 50. This allowed me to obtain a copy of 'Naked Cousin' by PJ Harvey, which hadn’t featured on any of her records and was only made commercially available in 2006 when she collated her Peel Sessions onto an album.

College Grounds

It became evident that to fully appreciate indie music you had to know a bit about the history of alternative music in general and some of the acts that comprise the cannon: The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, Syd  Barrett, Bowie, the Stones, and so on. The Welsh lad who looked a bit like Keanu Reeves was very into The Beatles, and many evenings were spent listening to Abbey Road and ‘The White Album’, as well as Paul McCartney and Wings. My parents used to play these records when I was younger, but it was revelatory listening to it now as a teenager, earnestly in a darkened room. I was also introduced to what might be called progressive psychedelic rock: bands like Gong, Caravan, Camel, Focus. I never really liked this music enough to bother recording any of it, although I did enjoy Angel’s Egg by Gong. The same cannot be said of Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which I obtained from the lad who lent me The Sound of the Suburbs. There are far better songs than 'Bike' on the album, but when I was putting this compilation together I felt I needed to convey some of the more humorous aspects of the music I was being introduced to (see also Half Man Half Biscuit).

Indie tapes guy obliged with the first VU album but I never gave it the attention it warranted; all I cared for was 'Venus in Furs' which had recently featured in an advert for Dunlop tyres. However, tapes guy also had a recording of 'The Gift' off of Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat. It tells the improbable tale of Waldo Jeffers who, lovesick, mails himself to his long distance lover, Marsha Bronson, only for her to inadvertently skewer him with a sheet-metal cutter as she struggles to open the box that transported him. The plot is not so much the thing, it’s all about the language, the phrasing and John Cale’s delightful Welsh lilt.

The Welsh lad who looked like Keanu Reeves – who didn’t have a very strong Welsh accent, come to think of it – also liked Bob Dylan and Fleetwood Mac. My old man liked Bob Dylan too, but his music had never left much of an impression. Repeated listens in Welsh lad’s room to Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde saw this right. Fleetwood Mac I was more familiar with, but again I’d never made any effort to properly engage with them. Welsh lad had Rumours, and I borrowed my father’s copy of Greatest Hits (the 1971 edition). Over the years I have included both 'The Chain' and 'Dragonfly' on this compilation, but never at the same time, so take your pick. Similarly, anything from Band on the Run by Wings will do (or Red Rose Speedway for that matter).

The calm before the storm. I’d seen The Breeders supported by Luscious Jackson at The Forum in Kentish Town, The Fall at the same venue (different night), The Fall again at The Fridge in Brixton, Moonshake at The Garage, the Moonflowers somewhere between Fulham and Hammersmith – all in the company of the guy with the indie tapes – and These Animal Men at Connections in Plymouth. The criteria for going to these gigs were just fancying it and the availability of tickets. There was never any question of being part of something, of it being a communal experience. When did it all change? When did indie music become embroiled in another scene?

Britpop’s ascendancy was gradual and by no means assured. The received wisdom is that it started with 'Popscene' by Blur in the spring of 1992. If that’s true then nobody really noticed. Besides, it was Suede who were making waves. Their debut single 'The Drowners' was voted single of the year in the NME, although it only reached number 49 in the charts, which isn’t the stuff movements are made of.

How about 1993? Did that April issue of Select Magazine – the one that’s wheeled out every time the origins of Britpop are being discussed, with the serpentine Brett Anderson on its cover – not signal the start of something? To a degree: both Suede’s eponymous debut album and Blur’s second made it into NME’s top 10 albums that year. But then so too did Black Sunday by Cypress Hill, Come on Feel the Lemonheads by the Lemonheads, Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins, Star by Belly, and Bjork’s debut, Debut. (Cannonball by The Breeders was voted best single.)

What about April 1994, the month that saw the release of two of Britpop’s defining albums: His ‘n’ Hers by Pulp and Parklife by Blur? Possibly, but the effect was not as immediate as one might assume. Britpop’s prime movers were still sharing a fair proportion of airtime, the front covers of magazines and placings in polls with acts as diverse as R.E.M., Manic Street Preachers, The Stone Roses, a recently deceased Kurt Cobain, Morrissey, Primal Scream, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The Auteurs, The Prodigy, Jeff Buckley, Beastie Boys, NAS, Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, Pavement, Sebadoh, Pearl Jam.

You have to hand it to Oasis. It was Definitely Maybe that promulgated Britpop’s arrival as a populist movement. The lads who had been grooving away to The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and Inspiral Carpets just a few years earlier were not the sort to be seduced by the likes of Suede, Pulp and Blur. But know this: it took until 1995, maybe even 1996, for the aggro vested upon fans of alternative music – or towards people with alternative lifestyles in general – to finally settle down, for the jibes and the dirty looks and the threats of violence to subside, the objections towards how you wore your hair or how thin you were, or something as innocuous as a leather jacket or a roll neck sweater.

[Listen to here.]