Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine blames the British government for 90s Britpop

<shindigzp>When I was in college, back in the late 90s/early 00s, if I had a break between classes on a nice day, one of my favorite things to do was grab a falafel sandwich from a food truck, park myself on a patch of grass in the campus courtyard and listen to the Lyndon LaRouche supporters shout a bunch of crazy through megaphones while handing out literature.

For the uninitiated, Larouche is a convicted felon who fancies himself a political philosopher. he also served time in prison for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax code violations. He also tends to get laughed right out of the DNC every time he tries to run for president.

The man's political beliefs are a mixed bag of batshit, but the ones I found the most entertaining were the ones regarding Great Britain's supposed conspiracy to cripple the world economy. One aspect of the theory involved the British Invasion of the 60s where the export of bands like The Beatles, The Troggs and The Dave Clark Five were part of an insidious covert operation to dilute the American cultural landscape with these British exports and make the American audience servile to their new British overlords with the culture of drugs and sex these bands brought with them.

So, you can imagine my delight when The Guardian published this bit of Britpop conspiracy theory and angry sniping from My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields today:

"Britpop was massively pushed by the government," he said. "Someday it would be interesting to read all the MI5 files on Britpop. The wool was pulled right over everyone's eyes there."

In the early years of Tony Blair's premiership, Britpop luminaries such as Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn were vocal supporters of the Labour government, and visited 10 Downing Street. Shields said he would only have attended "on condition we could play a song."

It would have been interesting to see My Bloody Valentine play a song at government headquarters, mainly because the sheer decibel level of the band's live performance probably counts as some sort of assault.

Unfortunately, Shields doesn't elaborate on why a secret cabal of shadowy decision makers was allegedly choreographing the brothers' many public feuds, but I hope he does he gets the chance to flesh this out a little more. As Darrell Hammond said when he parodied Hardball host Chris Matthews on Saturday Night Live, "let's keep this crazy train rolling!"

Source: Deathandtaxesmag