Good thing don't last forever... and that is especially true of music scenes in the UK. Brit Pop dominated the attention of young listeners and the British music press for a few solid years, but as one scene is ON in the UK, there's always another one just off stage ready to take the spotlight. So as Brit Pop popularity was just starting to wane a bit in the UK, there was a trend of new bands pushing for a return to the well crafted down-to-Earth songwriting of British bands from the 1960s. This trend as made up of bands such as Cast, Ocean Colour Scene, Kula Shaker, Embrace, Oasis and my favourite out of this assemblage, Travis. The band formed in Glasgow around 1990 as something of a mere past time during their early days in art school for its members, singer/songwriter Francis Healy, guitarist Andy Dunlop, drummer Neil Primrose, and bassist Dougie Payne. In time though after finishing their studies, the group became quite serious about Travis' potential and set out to record in London. Their self-released debut EP, All I Wanna Do Is Rock, came out in the fall of 1996. Its earnest vocals and soaring guitars captured the spirit of British rock at the time, which was retreating from some of Britpop's artiness and poppiness to a more back-to-basics sound.
Out of their contemporaries, Travis hasn't become as big as Oasis, never quite capturing that all too elusive American audience, but their development as a band and their creative output has been more consistent then any of the other bands that may have composed that traditional Lad Rock scene in the UK. Through five studio albums and a singles collection, they have produced a number of memorable material as a band. I'm probably most fond of their second album, The Man Who, and their third album, The Invisible Band, but I'm going back to the beginning here for that title track of that original EP.
This is the first thing I ever saw of them. The video for "All I Want to Do Is Rock":
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