hyperstOasis

Righteous rantige from two from the Chart Music pod squad.  One still with us, the other speaking from the hereafter. 

In The Guardian, Simon Price argues that "Oasis are the most damaging pop-cultural force in recent British history"

Good point about the reductive idea of working classness wielded by those fans who accuse naysayers of being snobs: 

"Oasis have been presented as the true voice of the council estates from the very start of their career. But what of their less stereotypical, but equally working class, 1990s contemporaries? Don’t they count? No band was more aware of class politics than Sheffield’s Pulp, for example, but Pulp were arty and sang about outsiderdom and dressed like Oxfam dandies instead of Arndale Centre townies, so they’re considered somehow less “real” than their Mancunian peers. Meanwhile, the Manic Street Preachers are as working class as they come, but refused to conform to lads-lads-lads cliches, played with androgyny and homoeroticism, and wore their (state) education on their leopard print sleeves."

Sharp too on how the failings of the music might ultimately be decisive, more so than the retrograde attitudes of Noel and especially Liam....

"We’re all familiar with the concept of separating the art from the artist, though everyone’s mileage varies on where to set the line in the sand. But the art needs to at least be good. Oasis, memorably described by the late great Neil Kulkarni as the “English Rock Defence League”, offer nothing but a sludgy, trudgy, brontosaurus-bottomed waddle, perfect for that adult nappy gait so beloved of their singer and fans. Lyrically, too, they’re dismal... dull platitudes that might as well have been written by AI. But the problem is the music. Oasis don’t do fast songs. Noel plays his guitar as if he’s scared it will break, and Oasis’s funkless, sexless plod is always carefully pitched below the velocity at which fluid dynamics dictate that you might spill your lager. Is there anything more useless than a rock band that doesn’t rock?"

Liam, seven years ago, on what they'd be doing if they'd never split up.

"I guess we'd still be making good albums. And just doing the fuckin' same thing on loop. I hate all these cunts that try to reinvent the wheel, 'oh we need to go jazz fusion', with rap and all that. Fuck off - get Faces down your neck, Pistols - just do that on loop. It's great. Why you want to fucking change it?  Bit of fucking lager thrown in, and a couple of spliffs and that, and a  couple of cheeky ones and that. Fuckin' great!"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I have softened slightly towards Oasis, at least compared with back in the day when I wrote real-time diatribes as caustic as Price and Kulkarni. 

Liam is an empty-headed arse, but whenever I read an interview with Noel, or see him in a doc (like the Hipgnosis one recently) I can't help warming to him: he's funny, acerbic, sharp within his delimited range. 

The thing that gets me about Noel G - about Oasis as a whole - is that they are so uninterested.

Not uninteresting. Uninterested. They appear to have zero interest in anything outside of an extremely circumscribed area.  Musically, obviously. But in all ways and all things.

A long time ago, I read a piece where Noel was talking about his favorite book - the book that was always by his bedside. Revolution In the Head: the Ian Macdonald book that goes song by song through the Beatles career, using a variety of prisms layered on top of each other...  musicological, key changes and scales and chords; what happened in the studio with the production and engineering and experimenting with technology;  lyrical inspirations; individual biographic arcs; internal band politics and emotional conflicts; the nitty gritty of collaboration and who contributed what; social and cultural and political contexts; external artistic influences and inputs. Not every song can support that level of exegesis, there are trifles and throwaways. But the entries on "A Day In the Life" or "Strawberry Fields Forever" or "Revolution" or "I Am the Walrus" are probing panoramas, gyrating around the song and its creators from every conceivable angle.

I was quite impressed that Noel loved the book. Ian Macdonald was a serious intellectual, a polymath, and Revolution is a rich, dense read. The opening essay on the 1960s and what they meant is a definitive take. 

But then I thought: Noel's reading this book, picking it up again and again, rereading the entries on his favorite songs.... it's like a Bible to him. 

Reading it, doesn't he ever feel.... ashamed? 

Ashamed of his own incuriosity, compared to his idols. Who, as the book amply demonstrates, checked out and explored and experimented with just about everything that was happening and that was in vogue in the Sixties - musique concrete, Indian classical music,  Eastern spirituality, the latest trends in visual art, cinema (I just picked up Revolution In The Head and there's a bit where McCartney has the gall to play his little art  movies  to Antonioni, in town to film Blow Up!).     

Not that I've read every, or even many, interviews with Oasis but I've never seen an indication they are interested in anything at all apart from music - and even then only an extremely narrow furrow of canonical rock-as-it's-supposed-to-be. The loop-the-loop stuff that Liam refers to in the video above. 

In that sense, they are a steep decline even from The Stone Roses, who did have interests in art and politics (and in music beyond the straight-white-line of the Brit canon), who were widely read and liked to argue about serious things.  

Oasis are the Beatles - if the Beatles were just about the tunes and nothing else at all.

Except the tunes aren't as good or as differently, variedly good - there's nothing as odd and unsettled as "She Said She Said" .. nothing that approaches the vertical (an Ian McDonald term - Lennon's tunes are horizontal) melodic grace of Paul McCartney.

Oasis are the Beatles - if they were all Ringo, then. 

Except none of them are as open-minded as Ringo, who gamely contributed to the most experimental things the Beatles did, and usually rose to the occasion and then some - like the drum track to "Tomorrow Never Knows" or his playing on "Rain", or "Strawberry Fields Forever"...  or the steal-your-breath beat on "Come Together"…

And that analogy falls down even further when you realise Oasis have never had a drummer as good as Ringo either. They've never shown any interest in rhythmic invention;  the drums are always buried deep in the soundmush, subordinated, menial… seemingly with no function beyond marking time. There are drums on these records only because rock bands have drummers in them.  

Oasis are the Beatles if none them were Ringo even.  

For all their limitations, they have about four or five great songs that nail one feeling exactly, the invincibility of  youth. "Live Forever"... 

"Champagne Supernova" is the One for me. I couldn't help falling for that one even as I wrote a disapproving piece on  Oasis and Blur for The New York Times, around the time of Morning Glory and The Great Escape).

On some visit to England many years later, when I'd been sent to do a story so I was staying in some fairly central hotel, I was woken by the sound of a drunken bloke hollering the chorus to himself as he staggered along the street below  Yes, I thought: it's a song purpose-built for those times you are so so wrecked and you feel like no one else in the entire world is having this much fun.  A song for people who say things like "we are such fuckin' legends" .... as they engage in the standard excesses... the stuff that people do each and every weekend...  that are being replicated all over the country at that very moment.  

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Rock counterfactuals:

#1. After "Setting Sun" - freakbeat reinvented for the '90s, the most exciting thing Noel G ever participated in, contributing some decent lyrics too - he decides that Oasis are tame, lame stuff and joins up with the Chemical  Brothers permanently and they form a rave'n'roll supergroop, scoring #1 after #1 and changing the whole direction of post-Britpop rock. 

(What would the supergroop be called?)

 

#2. In our reality, luvdup Hacienda-regular  Noel is enthused enough to make a few stabs at acid house. But the tracks come to naught and he gives up and goes back to the Rock Trinity of Verities: Tunes, Attitude and Guitars. (While keeping some sort of remnant of the mass uplift and druggy togetherness - Oasis concerts as raves for the technophobic, Knebworth as Tribal Gathering without the diversity, conservative rather than future-facing).

But what if the acieeed attempt went well? If he'd found some suitable accomplices and went down the 808 State path? 

( Another counterfactual is the one in which Shane MacGowan, similarly Shoomed-up,  manages to persuade the rest of the Pogues to do a 20 minute acid house track called "Get Yourself Connected". In this reality, Shane badgered them to do it - “it sounds great when you’re on E” - but they weren't having it.)

The Audacity of Hype

Lot of chatter, pro and anti and pro, about Savages

(and some more anti)

Including this review "Against Music's Reductive Obsession With the New"

Of course, what Tom Hawking really means is, "Against (Some) Music Critics's Reductive Obsession With the New"

Because, for those critics (whoever they are!), the problem is precisely that Music isn't Obsessed with the New... that in fact Music, most of it anyway, is overly comfortable with being not-new....  

(that could have been the Retromania subtitle, actually - Against Music's Unproductive Obsession With the Not-New)

Savages, eh?

Good name

Like the band's manifesto, as daubed on the cover, and incanted at the start of this video

(Although, ironically, far from instilling "silence" they have managed to add greatly to the din of discourse. They are the proverbial hot new band making a lot of noise)

and the wo-manifesto falters with the bit about "an angry young tune" -- it's like, after the build-up,  THAT's what you're brandishing? A tune?

 
Now, part of me thinks:

look - Malaria

sound -  Red Lorry Yellow Lorry

it's WAY too early for a  Post Punk Revival Revival


Another part of me thinks:

well maybe it's like Elastica or PJ Harvey, the form fairly familiar, the content new and fresh, the energy and urgency undeniable

(and the parallel there would be the trans-gender shift: Justine F's Hugh Cornwell impersonation, or Polly Jean insisting all her role model were male - Nick Cave, Beefheart, etc)


The pro and the anti reminds me of the  debate-flurry earlier this year re. Peace and that NME rave review by Eve Barlow:

The narrow-minded reckon their experience of history can’t be surpassed; that there’s no point in drawing inspiration from the past because it was better IN THEIR DAY. They murder people’s vibes because they’re buzzkillers. They criticise young people for being unoriginal and lazy because 58 years after Bill Haley And His Comets’ ‘Rock Around The Clock’ charted, idealistic, rebellious teens haven’t evolved beyond simple pleasures like first crushes, guitar strums, pop hooks and leopard print. This disappoints buzzkillers immensely.

Buzzkillers will use songs such as Brummie quartet Peace’s ‘Lovesick’ – about reckless abandon and skipping school – to lambast uncomplicated singers like Harry Koisser for cooing “I don’t wanna make no sense” over an updated version of the refrain from The Cure’s ‘Friday I’m In Love’. They’ll demand something more sophisticated – a unique way of saying “I love you”, perhaps. You can safely assume buzzkillers are no longer in love, detest romantic gestures and are cautious of hype bands with hippy names....

Those with one foot in the past may view Peace with scepticism, finding them over-familiar. Alright, the psych opener ‘Higher Than The Sun’ reminds us of The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ as guitars swirl through a Technicolor wash of dirge. Admittedly, the grunge ‘Follow Baby’ blasts off like My Vitriol or Mansun before hammering a Gallagher lyric of “We gon’ live for-evaaah”. Yes, ‘Wraith’ is laced with Herculean drumming and could’ve been by The Charlatans. Indeed, ‘Toxic’ is one-dimensional, employing riffs that fizz like sherbert Flying Saucers. Totally, you can sing Blur’s ‘There’s No Other Way’ over ‘Waste Of Paint’’s feral chorus. BUT ENOUGH WITH THE BUZZKILLING.

So long as teenagers exist, there’ll be eternal value in rock’n’roll this spectacular. It has no sell-by date...  Peace are intoxicated by their own youth, and all that matters is that they’re happening NOW.... Point is: music can reflect the past and still be valid. Some may see it as history repeating itself, for others it’ll be brand spanking new... As Britain suffers from youth unemployment and economic crisis, our greatest currency is the chime of a golden tune. Peace have delivered 10 of them. So what if they’re a bunch of pirates and not pioneers? This is their time.

Quite a few people of my generation found risible both the band and Barlow's review (a sort of defensive-aggressive paean). (It's interesting that so many of these 'let the young have their music' articles are couched as defences - Hawking's piece above is subtitled: A Defense of Savage. Whereas actually self-evidently new music never needs an apologia or a justification -- it is proclaimed, exalted, the trigger for a manifesto or a sermon).

Here's a great tirade from only the other day by Neil Kulkarni that picks up from a taking-the-Peace  Facebook discussion some of us were involved in April. He points out this this advance-apologetics tone of so many Peace reviews, preemptive defensive maneuvers against an imagined (and largely non-existent) army of curmudgeons.

The rhetorical stance taken by Barlow I actually thought was fine (in fact it reminded me of stuff David Stubbs wrote in his Melody Maker end-of-year 1988-Best-Year-For-Rock-Ever essay, the below-the-belt but brutally effective tactic of basically dismissing naysayers with "don't listen to them, these people are old")

What I thought was interesting was that Barlow seemed to be writing on behalf of an imaginary new-to-music teenage fan of  Peace et al (while her own, better-informed, twentysomething viewpoint is clearly cogniscant of the abject derivativeness of Peace)

Indeed in this parallel post from her tumblr (a fierce defence of the "guitar music" resurgence) she repeatedly references an imaginary 14 year old

Now as it happened, as all this "blew up", I was in the UK, spending time with  a non-imaginary 13 year old and her mother, a very dear and old friend, who I often stay with when I'm in London

Her daughter, who I've known since she was a baby and is almost exactly the same age as my son, is crazy about indie music


She is learning guitar and wants to be in band. 

(And, what is hard to get one's head around, but I suspect is both quite common and indicative of something -- she and her mum share similar music tastes -- both adore the Smiths -- and often go to shows and festivals together)


Of course this girl looooves Peace and a bunch of others from NME's current batch of young hypefuls

Confronted by such enthusiasm up-close, all of one's heard-it-before cynicism melts away

So when she played Parma Violets, Foxygen, Temple, I couldn't help trying to hear it from her viewpoint, trying to see what could be loveable about them...

Okay, Parma Violets do a good Echo & the Bunnymen (better than Mighty Lemon Drops anyway, who I made allowances for in '86, until I interviewed them) while other songs echo The Clash, J&MC, Britpop. (Many of these comparisons were actually made by the 13 year old herself, so it's not like she's unaware of the debts and derivations).  Foxygen are, what, Zombies-like or something? Temple: can't be arsed to identify the precise template but they are the most classicist and period-formalist of the bunch. I was struck by their incredibly fastidious recreation of Sixties psych, especially the drumming and the cymbal sound. .

When all is said and all is done, though, it is undeniable (contra Barlow's "this is their time") that these bands fail the test of their time.


One just wishes the ardour of young people (like the daughter of my friend), this excitement and joy of discovery -  always beautiful to witness and, up to a point, unarguable -- one just wishes that there were objects far more worthy of their passion.

Neil Kulkarni's R.I.P. HMV  -- nostalgia, analogue vs digital, record shop as shrine and sanctuary for the vinyl pilgim

and

The British Record Shop Archive (via History Is Made At Night)

"The record shop was once the centre of every music lover's universe, from the beginnings of the vinyl 12 inch in the
1940's through to the digital music developments of the 1990's, millions of us browsed, socialised and bought music
in our local record shop or high street department stores.  Record shops were an integral part of the social fabric in local areas.  They launched pop stars, record labels, and were focal points for emerging music genres.  The aim of this site is to record the history of the record shop in an accessible archive, to hold intrinsic details that could get lost in the mix, and to celebrate the role that the record shop played. We are looking for memories through stories,anecdotes, comments, photographs, videos, record shop bags, posters and more.    For example, what  was your first record and where did you buy it?"  

Looked in the Hertfordshire subsection of the East England section, but no mention of the little shop on Lower King's Road where I got my Scritti EPs and Ian Dury albums. Or indeed the place on the High Street owned by Mr Peake (later the Mayor) that actually had headphones for platter-listening in the groovy early Seventies style and where the Goodies did a PA.   But perhaps both of these are too everyday to provoke the archival impulse. Just non-specialist record shops of the kind that the UK, in those days, was crawling with. You could also buy your records at W.H. Smith of course, or Woolworths, or from electrical goods stores like the one on the High Street where I used to be fascinated, as a 7 year old, by an album by Bread - just the fact that a group would call itself Bread.