Ok I have to say it.
My Facebook timeline (I am old) is full of people saying they always hated Oasis, they were shit, overrated and so on. Sure, personal preferences matter, and they were certainly a very bombastic band that the music press and TV loved to boost as part of the supposed rivalry between them and Blur. I think this was also largely because the Gallagher’s embodied a kind of swaggering coke fueled laddish rock and roll that wasn’t in step with the skinny jean kids of Indie and they did stand out in that regard.
I liked Oasis. I also liked Pulp, Blur, Manic Street Preachers ,Radiohead (probably my favourite band in the 90s), Garbage, Sleeper, Elastica, Eels, The Levellers and millions of other bands I have probably forgotten about.
I was 14 in 1995 when What’s The Story Morning Glory came out. I guess I was the perfect age for it. They did pretty good rock songs, yeah the lyrics were meaningless but so are lots of bands. It was more a mood. And Noel Gallagher could write songs, at one point even the B-sides of their CD singles were pretty good. And it wasn’t just me that thought it.
The first CD single I bought was Whatever (this is what me and Ruth have in common!). I am a sucker for guitars and orchestras. For songs with uplifting lyrics and a crescendo. I am simple like that. I actually didn’t have a CD player at the time, I was from one of those middle class families that didn’t have a lot of money, but I bought Whatever for £2 from Our Price in Dorchester (or was it Yeovil?) as a kind of promissory note to my future self to save up any money I got to buy myself something to finally play it on.
I played it for the first when I went to visit my mum at work in the crystal healing centre she worked at in Glastonbury I played it on the CD player in the back room that they usually reserved for meditation. I sat there next to this CD player and was overwhelmed by the rock anthem of Slide Away (“Give it all you got!”), Half a World Away which would be used on the Royal Family TV show and then there was (It’s Good) To Be Free which was ok. the title track Whatever I played on repeat, my first ever CD at 13 years old, a mini EP almost! “I am free to be whatever I, whatever I chose and I’ll sing the blues if I want” Liam crooned. One of my best friends at school Jonathan said he didn’t like it because he thought Liam’s voice ruined it and he was probably right.
I would come home from school and listen to Street Spirit (Fade Out) by Radiohead and feel sad. Then I would listen to Disco 2000 by Pulp and feel a nostalgic melancholia for a future life looking back – I felt sad about the year 2000 and all the missed opportunities of life even five years earlier in 1995. I would listen to Champagne Supernova and sing along, strumming air guitar. I felt suicidal in my teens and would listen to Live Forever by Oasis, finding a kind of emotional detachment in the juxtaposition in the lyrics which suddenly felt very profound to me. Obviously looking back as an adult the lyrics can seem trite now, but I am not one of those people who forgets the emotional impact of things at different points in my life just because I have grown up or aged. March to the drum beat of your youth right?
Am I going to buy a ticket to see them again? Probably not, they look very expensive. Will their reunion be used by a particular kind of political hack to celebrate the return of ‘proper working class men’ to music, almost definitely. Did they do anthemic rock songs that were catchy as hell? Yes, I also think they did that too.
Talking about the New Jerusalem 