For the police method of 1980s Northern Ireland, see Supergrass (informer)
Supergrass are an indie rock Britpop band from Oxford, England. The band consists of brothers Gaz Coombes (guitar and lead vocals) and Rob Coombes (keyboards), Danny Goffey (drums and vocals), and Mick Quinn (bass and vocals).
Emerging from Oxford (and to a certain extent Wheatley Park School) in the early 1990s, Supergrass were formed out of the ashes of the band The Jennifers. Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey began building a reputation in the Oxford indie music scene in their teens, influenced by the Buzzcocks, the Jam, The Kinks, the Who, and including traits from the common pop-punk era, characterized with fast, three-chord, guitar-based, catchy tunes, as found in then-contemporaries blink-182 and Green Day.
In summer 1994, Supergrass issued their debut single "Caught by the Fuzz" on the independent label Backbeat. The single recounted a friend's experience of being caught with cocaine. The Parlophone label signed the band and re-released the single in the fall of the same year. The band also succeed in getting praise from the more experienced peers Blur and Elastica. Supergrass followed this in the spring of 1995 with "Mansize Rooster" and the third "Lenny" - released right before their debut album, I Should Coco - shot at the top 20 in the UK Singles Chart.
I Should Coco was released in May 1995 and was warmly greeted in U.K. The album shot into the Top Ten. With canny timing the band released their Number 2, double A-sided single, "Alright"/"Time", which stayed in British Top Three for a month and pushed the album to number one. The sprightly anthem "Alright" recounted the bandmembers love of marijuana and their youth lives. After three months, staying at the top of the charts in U.K, I Should Coco was released in the U.S.. There "Caught by the Fuzz" started receiving heavy MTV and radio play, which gave significant amount of popularity for the "teen-band" in the American market.
