Twas looking for an Oasis Stop The Clocks thread and there weren't any. Consider this one resurrected.
Anyway, with the punk aniversary and the release of Stop The Clocks, I've been watching a lot of Oasis and punk documentaries lately. I've always been a fan of early Oasis, and I alway hated Morning Glory (and naturally everything after that, albeit with less venom), but watching the docs has made me feel robbed.
My view, that Definitely Maybe is genius and Morning Glory is feeble, pretentious shite, is now fashionable. This was not always so. Back in the day, Oasis were a destructive influence on British music. Morning Glory was a monstrous thing, taking music special to a select group of great people and giving it to the very worst sort of people. Up until the release of that MOR monsrosity, Oasis were "ours", another magnificent example of sharp, snotty pricks and another great two-fingered salute to the miserable hippies from America. In '94, Britpop was a coalition just like punk. Suede were our New York Dolls, our trailblazing, arrogant, gender-bending, drug-addled geniuses. Blur were The Clash, brilliant but dogmatic. Oasis were The Sex Pistols. They were the very personification of that brutally genuine refusal to accept the lot that the world had dealt you. They were funny, touching and capable of annoying everybody who so dearly needed to be annoyed. Like The Pistols following The Dolls, they were toned down in their appearance, somewhat more laddish. Unfortunately, they were dumbed down too.
By '95, Oasis were lost. All of those Beatles references went to their heads, and ever since Noel has tried in vain to be like Lennon and McCartney. This, for me, was their downfall. Noel can write great ballads, but it's usually by accident... throwaway B-sides like "Half The World Away". Contrast that with the self-concious balladry of Morning Glory. As bad as "Don't Look Back In Anger" is, let it be known that "Wonderwall" is one of the most atrocious songs ever written. It is truly, truly appalling. It is the 9/11 of songwriting.
Not that this matters of course. "Acquiesce", "Rock 'N' Roll Star", "Live Forever", "Cigarettes And Alcohol"... they make it all forgivable. The problem is that Oasis spawned lad-rock, and much worse, the lad-rock fan. I know it's ancient history, but I'm angry about what could have been. It completely destroyed the coalition. In '93 and '94, being like Liam was cool, but being like Brett or Jarvis was also cool. By late '95, being like Brett or Jarvis meant you were a poof, being some xerox of Liam was cool, and even being like Damon was suspicious. Britpop had become booze, birds and brawling. No wonder the discerning ones turned their backs on it all and became Romos.
So what could have been a new form of punk (and a more intelligent and expansive version too) degenerated into the soundtrack to reading The Sun. Music your dad liked, with Suede and Pulp drowned out by "Wake Up Boo!" and f***ing Ocean Colour Scene, with Weller prostituting himself and Surrey stockbrokers' sons pretending to be Northern car thieves.
And yet... if you listen to "Headshrinker", "Fade Away" or any of the loud songs from DM... not one of them would be out of place on Never Mind The Bollocks. And did the punks ever write a song as good as "Common People"? It strikes me that, if things had been different, Britpop would not have been a joke movement, but something that could have warranted the respect and the reverence that is absurdly afforded to absolute no-marks like Television.
...and everybody is a clever clone...