Faster Than A Cannonball: 1995 and All That

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The year 1995, you could argue, was more about consolidation than innovation, with hungry outsiders becoming the new status quo. Overall, it is something of a sprawling mess - but some funny quotes and the sheer volume of interviewees make it worthwhile.

He spent the next decade working in newspapers - principally the Observer and the Sunday Times - before embarking on a multi-award-winning tenure at GQ. A brightness of things happening’) but less so when it’s Piers Morgan, who makes this unimprovably Partridgesque claim: ‘Probably the best night of the nineties was the opening of Planet Hollywood in Soho in 1993.

The content overall had moments of being very interesting but I felt that the book could have been half as long and still contained the same amount of information, this was partly due to the writing style which I really didn't like. Faster Than a Cannonball is a cultural swipe of the decade from loungecore to the rise of New Labour, teasing all the relevant artistic strands through interviews with all the major protagonists and exhaustive re-evaluations of the important records of the year – The Bends by Radiohead, Grand Prix by Teenage Fanclub, Maxinquaye by Tricky, Different Class by Pulp, The Great Escape by Blur, It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah! While those who lived through it tend to celebrate its explosive confidence, younger critics on the Left damn it for the complacency it induced and argue that we are now living with the crises – political, economic, technological – that the Nineties seeded.

No retrospective critique of boosterism is more revealing than this 1997 prediction in Wired magazine: ‘We’re facing twenty-five years of prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world. This is a book that takes place before the feeding frenzies and corporatisation of seemingly every art form, where there existed freedom to cause a fuss and use that as a way to market yourself. by Black Grape, Exit Planet Dust by the Chemical Brothers, I Should Coco by Supergrass, Elastica by Elastica, Pure Phase by Spiritualized, … I Care Because You Do by Aphex Twin and of course (What’s the Story) Morning Glory by Oasis, the most iconic album of the decade.It wasn't for me but that's not to say it won't be enjoyed by others, give it a go if you enjoy this kind of book and have an interest in 1990's culture. Whole chapters are devoted to such you-had-to-be-there ephemera as men’s magazines and the easy-listening revival, and no fewer than four to facets of Britpop.