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Oasis at Knebworth - 20 years ago today!

Kaka Tim said:
the point is that the great rock stars who Oasis emulated fired the imaginations and expanded the possibilities of young working class people - explicitly highlighting how you didn't have the accept the same drudgery and conformity of your parents, of what society and schooling expected of you - that other possibilities and ideas are out there. This was the great achievement of the popular culture explosion of the post war era (particularly in pop music) - and it was was led by ordinary working class people/lower middle class youth.
Oasis did the opposite - they offered up a conformist, meat and two veg, narrow definition of working class culture - and articulated a world view that was explicitly suspicious of artfulness, imagination, intellectualism, originality, sensuality, sensitivity and femininity - and this was reflected in their musical conservatism. Compare and contrast with the beatles, the stones, the who, david bowie, the sex pistols, the clash, the jam, the smiths, the stone roses, suede, pulp and indeed - blur.
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except oasis are part of that lineage, not seperate and apart. A clumsy and unavoidable fullstop. You seem to want to cleave them away from the cheese farmer and the trout farmer and the posh art school drop-out and posh architecture student and the posh diplomats son because.. just because.

(if you wanted to really make sure you should have added the specials and joy division to your list just to make simon reynolds happy).

If 'Working class culture' is a lifestyle choice, then you're right oasis got it wrong on all counts - except on the great rock star front. Even with their meat and two vegism they made great rock stars.

The trouble is every single oasis fan also loves all the bands you mentioned. How can that be? How can we, their public, progress and regress simply by changing the record on our turntables. If 'working class culture' was a lifestyle choice then 'artfulness, imagination, intellectualism, originality, sensuality, sensitivity and femininity' would be methods of escape from your chosen background.

We don't get to chose our background though do we, and oasis mean as much to their public as suede means to yours.

Just noticed liam gallagher is supporting the rolling stones at the london stadium. Look how far we've come.
 
Nice one said:
except oasis are part of that lineage, not seperate and apart. A clumsy and unavoidable fullstop. You seem to want to cleave them away from the cheese farmer and the trout farmer and the posh art school drop-out and posh architecture student and the posh diplomats son because.. just because.

(if you wanted to really make sure you should have added the specials and joy division to your list just to make simon reynolds happy).
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because all of those bands achieved something in terms of forging new possibilities, not accepting your allotted place, breaking new ground etc. What they became later is irrelevant. And they were predominately (but not exclusively) made up of working class/lower middle class kids. I left off the likes of joy division and the specials cos they are too far from the "classic rock band" tradition that Oasis were emulating (and "emulating a tradition" essentially guarantees artistic conservatism from the get go)

Oasis served up a parody of working class ladism that was entirely non-threatening and essentially reactionary. Bowie inspired kids on council estates to put on weird arse make up and read William Burroughs, the pistols inspired them to fuck off authority and do their own thing, bowie (again) the smiths and the buzzcocks created a space where other sexualities and masculinities could exist - Oasis inspired kids on council estates to carry on doing exactly what they had always done. They killed the male rock band.
 
Those days were unique. Now its all social media and mobile phones. Think the kids have missed on all that 90s living.
 
Kaka Tim said:
because all of those bands achieved something in terms of forging new possibilities, not accepting your allotted place, breaking new ground etc. What they became later is irrelevant. And they were predominately (but not exclusively) made up of working class/lower middle class kids. I left off the likes of joy division and the specials cos they are too far from the "classic rock band" tradition that Oasis were emulating (and "emulating a tradition" essentially guarantees artistic conservatism from the get go)

Oasis served up a parody of working class ladism that was entirely non-threatening and essentially reactionary. Bowie inspired kids on council estates to put on weird arse make up and read William Burroughs, the pistols inspired them to fuck off authority and do their own thing, bowie (again) the smiths and the buzzcocks created a space where other sexualities and masculinities could exist - Oasis inspired kids on council estates to carry on doing exactly what they had always done. They killed the male rock band.
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1. okay so you're not only talking being cultural specific you're now being time/place specific. If you were around in bowie's golden period (eg 1971-77) and were one of those kids on council estates running around wearing eyeliner, fair enough, but i came to music in the early 80s so my David Bowie was a cross between our man in havana and a bleached blonde businessman holidaying in the south of france. My David Bowie was dancing in the street with another multi-millionaire rock star at Live aid (no irony intended) my david bowie was Tin Machine inventing dadrock 10 years before it happened. As unskilled uneducated northern working class male he opened up no spaces for me.

2. Oasis were northern working class lads. You can't be a parody of something you actually are. Surely the parody of working class ladism was Damonfromblur jumping up and down in his fila track top shouting parklife at phil daniels. Kathy burke did a brilliant parody of all those middle class kids pretending to be working class because of oasis.

But if oasis were a parody of working class ladism, give me an example of the (presumbly authentic) working class ladism they parodied? Just so i can compare and contrast.

Oasis inspired kids on council estates to carry on doing exactly what they had always done. That's a big fucking statement right there. What i will say is another little Burnage boy has just won a bafta for writing and directing a film (about manc musician killed in Burnage as it happens). Was he inspired by oasis growing up - absolutely fucking right he was.
 
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Nice one said:
1. okay so you're not only talking being cultural specific you're now being time/place specific. If you were around in bowie's golden period (eg 1971-77) and were one of those kids on council estates running around wearing eyeliner, fair enough, but i came to music in the early 80s so my David Bowie was a cross between our man in havana and a bleached blonde businessman holidaying in the south of france. My David Bowie was dancing in the street with another multi-millionaire rock star at Live aid (no irony intended) my david bowie was Tin Machine inventing dadrock 10 years before it happened. As unskilled uneducated northern working class male he opened up no spaces for me.

2. Oasis were northern working class lads. You can't be a parody of something you actually are. Surely the parody of working class ladism was Damonfromblur jumping up and down in his fila track top shouting parklife at daniel peacock. Kathy burke did a brilliant parody of all those middle class kids pretending to be working class because of oasis.

But if oasis were a parody of working class ladism, give me an example of the (presumbly authentic) working class ladism they parodied? Just so i can compare and contrast.

Oasis inspired kids on council estates to carry on doing exactly what they had always done. That's a big fucking statment right there. What i will say is another little Burnage boy has just won a bafta for writing and directing a film (about manc musician killed in Burnage as it happens). Was he inspired by oasis growing up - absolutely fucking right he was.
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of course its time specific. kids in the 80s were not getting their consciousness raised by mick jagger - they had the smiths, or the fall or acid house. And Blur didn't just do "parklife" - they consistently tried - with varying degrees of success - to try new things, experiment, explore ideas. Oasis stayed very much in their comfort zone. And yes they were a self-parody working class ladism - their (dull) clothes to liam's wanner-be hard man antics and their general faux yob posturing. None it was remotely transgressive - it was all a conscious apeing of pre-existing cliches.
How do the middle classes see the working class? - as ignorant, unimaginative, narrow minded, aggressive, macho, incapable of sophistication and "culturally backward" . Rather then challenge that (as their heroes did) - Oasis consciously and deliberately conformed to it.
 
Oasis struck me as a parody of Teenage Fanclub who also weren't shy, shall we say, about wearing their infuences on their stripey top and lumpy jumper sleeves. I blame that Alan McGee.
 
Kaka Tim said:
of course its time specific. kids in the 80s were not getting their consciousness raised by mick jagger - they had the smiths, or the fall or acid house. And Blur didn't just do "parklife" - they consistently tried - with varying degrees of success - to try new things, experiment, explore ideas. Oasis stayed very much in their comfort zone. And yes they were a self-parody working class ladism - their (dull) clothes to liam's wanner-be hard man antics and their general faux yob posturing. None it was remotely transgressive - it was all a conscious apeing of pre-existing cliches.
How do the middle classes see the working class? - as ignorant, unimaginative, narrow minded, aggressive, macho, incapable of sophistication and "culturally backward" . Rather then challenge that (as their heroes did) - Oasis consciously and deliberately conformed to it.
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you know i was born and brought up in Burnage. My sister used to go drinking with liam and his mates in a pub in heaton chapel. His best mate was the kid who lived across the road from us. He was actually like that. Cocky, insecure, bullish. That was actually him, those were the clothes he actually wore. It wasn't a performance, it wasn't parody (still want to have an example of working class ladism he supposedly parodies).

Who gives a fuck what the middle class thinks of us. Seriously. If that's your criteria in how you think we should act and behave - middle class approval - then we're all fucked.
 
Nice one said:
Who gives a fuck what the middle class thinks of us. Seriously. If that's your criteria in how you think we should act and behave - middle class approval - then we're all fucked.
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no - the stereotype is the box that middle class people put working class people into. Working class people - via post war pop culture - aggressively challenged that - not for middle class approval (if anything the establishment looked on with fear and confusion) - but for self-empowerment. They had ideas "above their station". Oasis blatantly did not.
 
Kaka Tim said:
no - the stereotype is the box that middle class people put working class people into. Working class people - via post war pop culture - aggressively challenged that - not for middle class approval (if anything the establishment looked on with fear and confusion) - but for self-empowerment. They had ideas "above their station". Oasis blatantly did not.
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They kinda did, though, in that they got out of Burnage, made millions of quid and became very famous. It's a very post-Thatcherite rebellion but just because the music was dirgey and basic (to some ears) and there didn't seem to be much brains involved in its creation (to some onlookers) it doesn't automatically follow that it's not something to believe in.

This idea you only listen to one thing at a time, too - who does that? Nobody. My mates and I were a mix of working and middle class, I guess, though none of that means too much when you belong to the alternative bunch of a shit, poor town like Grimsby. Those first few Oasis singles were electric - and Live Forever definitely felt like something to sing as both a celebration and a fuck-you. Didn't stop me and my mates listening to Bowie, Blur, Wu Tang, Candlemass or Autechre or reading Burroughs and Carson McCullers. Thing is, Oasis also appealed to the far larger groups of people in my town who wore the fancy "dresser" clobber on a night out and went to much shinier boozers. And even wider swathes of the population. You don't sell that many records without having wide appeal. They weren't a parody of working class culture or pretending to be anything (apart from hard, but it doesn't strike me as being difficult to be a hard man in the world of pop music, lol).

Bottom line - they looked great, especially Liam, wrote or nicked some great tunes you could sing along to, and sounded loud and exciting.
 
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