Bis
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Jan 10
BIS WEEK: How Bis Are Responsible For Twilight
The short answer would be the Secret Vampire Soundtrack, but it would only be a superficial answer. Sure Secret Vampires makes explicit the link between vampirism and pop music, but you would be hard pushed to think that it is any particular clarion call for more vampires in the media. Except at this point of 1995, vampires were at a pretty low ebb. A couple of years after Francis Ford Coppola’s disappointing Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the poor Interview With The Vampire adaptation and the ropey Buffy film, vampires couldn’t be caught dead in the media. Which since they are undead is possibly the point but I digress.
The Secret Vampire Soundtrack contained Kandy Pop which was the track that broke Bis and was responsible for making them the first unsigned band on Top Of The Pops*. As such Bis not only made Vampires fashionable again, they toyed with the idea of vampires not being scary. If Manda Rin, chirpy chanteuse, was a vampire then suddenly the idea of the gothic immortal vampire was turned on its head.
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29
Jan 10
BIS WEEK: Which Is The Best Bis?
It has been the question on everyones lips this week, which exactly is the Best Bis? We bring you the final of this hard fought battle below:
(Note: The department of Business & Information and Skills had a hard fought battle to third place, mainly by virtue of also having a Mandy in charge, but David Lammy is no Sci-Fi Steve. The British Interplanetary Society were also in with a shout but keep arguing about whether Pluto is a planet or not.) So over to our adjudicator Magnus Anderson:
BIS (BAND)
vs
BIS (Bank for International Settlements)
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That plan of action in full
In the late 90s, in Action and Drama, Bis cast themselves as meta-pop activists:
Pop music’s not gonna die / It just has no direction / We need a plan of action
But what was their plan of action? The accompanying track Eurodisco (a worry about pop stagnating into inward-looking genres) had its best mix by Stuart Price — an Erasure-ish version that omits Manda’s vocals. Where has Manda gone? Price went on to be the main producer of Madonna’s 2005 Confessions album and the non-more Eurodisco Abba-sampling “Hung Up”.
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27
Jan 10
BIS Week: What Is Bis’s Favourite BIScuit
Often in scholarly discussions of the revolutionary impact of Bis on the cultural scene in the late nineties, little notice is taken of the trivial. Nevertheless to understand exactly how the Teen-C revolution came about, sometimes the trivial becomes a solid motivational factor. And a key question stands there in plain sight, staring us down with its obviousness. But as pointed out by no less that Garibaldi, many revolutions are predicated on trivial tipping points, and perhaps the blue touch paper of the Teen-C revolution stares at us from their name.
Ie, what did they like to eat with a cup of tea?
BIS WEEK: What is Bis's favourite Biscuit?
- Iced Gems 39%