Did anyone see Danny Baker’s Rockin’ Decades the other night (Feb 12) on BBC Four? The third and final part of Baker’s mini series dealt with the glorious 90’s, and one of his three guests was former Sleeper vocalist Louise Wener. It’s been a VERY long time since we’ve seen her on telly. You can watch the programme HERE for the next week on the BBC iPlayer. After Oasis became absolutely huge, TOO huge, I decided that people should have been paying attention to the many other Britpop bands who were out there at the time. ‘Inbetweener’ was featured on the brilliant ‘True Brit’ compilation that I purchased in summer ’96, but the wonderful ‘What Do I Do Now’ was the first thing of theirs that I heard, thanks to it being included on one of the tapes that Smash Hits used to give away free with the magazine. Yes, I was STILL buying Smash Hits in 1996, but immediately ceased reading it in 1997 after they gave Radiohead‘s incredible ‘Paranoid Android’ a bad review, while their Single Of The Week was Hanson‘s ‘MmmBop’. Sleeper had eight UK Top 40 hit singles and three UK Top 10 albums before splitting in 1998. Wener went on to have a career as a novelist…
