Break Up The Makedown

Five Bands Went out at Their Peak



1) The Velvet Underground



'Squeeze' was not a VU album. Doug Yule was a tosser.



2) Life Without Buildings



Wonderous twee-indie from Glasgow (where else) with a kraut twist, lasting three excellent years before parting company. Their only studio album, 'Any Other City', is a classy muddled ranting masterpiece, perched somewhere between Camera Obscura and The Vaselines.
Complete with marvellously un-rockstar names such as Sue Tomkins and Chris Evans they were the antithesis of everything loathesome in the depressing Travis led early 2000s British indie scene. They were helped on their path to cult status by the fact that in 'The Leanover' they may well have had the best song ever at their disposal.
Tomkins has since taken her tender stream-of-consciousness style to the Tate with a series of spoken word pieces. Chris Evans floundered after the dissolution of TFI Friday, divorced Billie and blew a wad of money on Richard E Grant's coat from Withnail & I.



3) Neutral Milk Hotel



Could any break-up list ever really be complete without them?
Two albums of innduendo swathed, string laden beauties were enough for Jeff Mangum before he presumably collapsed under the weight of his own genius/insanity and went to live in the woods somewhere, crooning at insects about semen. Tremendous.



4) Death From Above 1979



Exploded out of Canada and onto the pages of every British music rag as a perfect antidote to the identikit floppy brown post-punk revival with 2004's most vital and violent album, 'You're a Woman & I'm A Machine'. Went on to bait the press at every opportunity by calling the British music scene shit and writing songs about menstruation and the joys of rejecting contraception. Hated themselves and everyone else and split up a year later.



5) The Replacements



The epitome of both rock n' roll excess and authenticity. Crafted both fantastic balls-out punk rock and desperate isolated tearjerkers, serving albums as emotional rollercoasters. A band of demented alcoholics who would much rather write songs about erections (Gary's Got A Boner) than sell out arenas.
Rejected the mainstream in the early 80s at a time 99% of American rock was begging for MTV commodification and a slice of R.E.M's major label college-rock cash, baiting the juggernaut with the bile spitting 'Seen Your Video' (from their magnus opus 'Let It Be) and making a beautiful anti-video for biggest hit 'Bastards of Young' by filiming a speaker for 3 and half minutes. Collapsed into a fitting heap in 1991 plagued by death and drug-abuse.



'Seen Your Video, It's only rock n' roll, We don't wanna know, It's only rock n' roll.'