Wednesday, September 16, 2015

In which Liam Gallagher actually touches the microphone.



The FOSSILS homebrewing club celebrated its 25th birthday last weekend, and among the acts of good-natured debauchery occurring during the camp-out/picnic weekend was the untimely resurrection of a photograph from the 1995 Christmas party displaying full frontal nudity -- of men, not women.

Yes, homebrew was involved. Taste and decency preclude my publishing this photo, but it got me thinking about the time, place and space.

It is common now to dismiss the band Oasis (defunct since 2009) as some sort of British flash in the pan, absent artsy-fartsy pretensions and prone to the sort of simplistic lager loutishness associated with football violence.

Precisely. After all, that's rock and roll.

It's also true that if inadvertently, the band captured more than a few realities about a period when Thatcherism yielded to "new" Labour. By the time the Gallaghers entered their mature, decadent phase, so had the country.

Speaking only for myself, Oasis was the tonic I needed during those years -- Radiohead, Blur and Suede, too, and yet they didn't scratch the inner rambunctious in quite the same way.

The excuse is justified: You just had to be there ... you have to be yourself.

You can't be no one else.

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