Oasis as life-changers

Ah the Mighty Oasis!
In 1995 I was 20 years old and absolutely loved them.
I'm 39 now and still love their music. The last trully Rock Stars!
Loved their attitude, those great Songs, Noel is a gifted songwriter, bless him.
I really miss them as a Band!

 

Just were always way too Beatles for me. There is tipping your hat to your influences, then there is....Oasis!

 

I get that everyone associates them with the Beatles influence, but honestly, how many songs actually sound like The Beatles?

 

Many! Then you actually go and use the intro to Imagine mindlessly tacked on as a intro to some song...yeah...not good. They even try to look like them. Its all a bit sad and try hard in my opinion. Id look the other way if the music was great, but to me its always been startling very average.

 

"Some song" being arguably their biggest song -- which doesn't sound all that much like The Beatles.

And I love that it's "mindlessly" tacked on -- do people really think they didn't know it would be an obvious reference point? Especially in a song that references them Lennon and a book about the Beatles in the lyrics? It's so weird to me.

 

Eh? Why would you do it? Im the opposite. I thought it did ZERO to serve the song in the first place. It dosent come off to me as anything but being cheap,cheeky and lazy.

 

never sounded like Imagine to me, totally different feel. Although I think Noel conciously used it like that.

 

Anyway just my opinion. Im not trying to upset a legion of O

lol. Eh well, guess my ears dont work right then! Granted its not a carbon copy, but its way off the mark to say its a totally different feel! Anyway, I dont want to start a **** storm, just curious that anyone thinks otherwise as its so obvious to me.

 

I know, almost everyone hears it as imagine. But at that time my whole universe was the Beatles and Imagine was one of my favourite songs and it never came to me until someone mentioned it later, that this intro on Don't Look Back In Anger used a similar intro.

To me the soft feeling and the little chromatic figure are the characteristics of the intro of Imagine, whereas at the beginning of DLBIA I only hear the two chords played in a pretty brutal way combined with a guitar riff which has nothing to do with Imagine.

What I find more interesting is that I heard Noel say in an interview that he used the guitar solo of My Sweet Lord for Supersonic. And if you listen to it it's true, but it sounds totally different in that context.

 

Indeed, and Shields has talked up the influence of the Chain and Twins, as well as Husker Du and Delta blues of all things. But as you say I don't think you can call their sound "derivative", as while some of the influences are apparent, their sound as a whole was almost sui generis.

 

Absolutely. I think it's fair to say that he's a very traditional, even derivative songwriter. That's what makes his best work even more impressive.

I find myself digging more into the B-sides, but I've found so many songs that I get obsessed with for a while because they're so good. Like what Westerberg was talking about back when. "Getting Older," "The Fame/Flashbax," "Swollen Hand Blues," then I recently heard a live version of "You've Got The Heart Of A Star." How did I miss that one? I love how all these great songs are buried in their catalog.

 

Beatles? Forget that... the Ron Nasty rip and subsequent royalty-payout (and songwriting credit) tickles me quite a bit.

 

derivative...who cares?!
Get me Steve miller on the blower

LOVE 'EM

 

Well, I'll be...

 

Listening to (What's the Story) Morning Glory? all the way through for the first time yesterday made me realize this. It's not a bad album since the songs are catchy but when listening closer to some of the lyrics, it's somewhat cringeworthy what they were able to get away with. I still have to listen to their three other albums that I have to see if this was always the case for them. The Verve on the other hand had much better lyrics on their album Urban Hymns than Oasis with (What's the Story) Morning Glory? For some reason the bands remind me of one another. Probably because they're both British, came around the same time and the singers for both bands are somewhat odd-looking.

 

Always had a low opinion of Lars Ulrich and now it's even lower!!

 

I am afraid I never gave Oasis a chance because I could not separate music and musicians. I just could not stand those two brothers, Liam particularly. It is probably my loss as I know that the Smiths could have suffered the same fate if the internet existed in 1984 and Morrissey had a blog to make a fool of himself.
Oh well, I still managed to survive the 90s with Blur so it's all good.

 

Yeah it's kind of telling that the biggest fan they could find was a drummer in a metal band.

Oasis were ok, but very limited and not very original. I guess if you were 15 at the time and they were 'your' band you will think of them as being a lot more life changing than they actually were. They did have an attitude and I guess caught the mood of the moment, kinda like the musical equivilant of Loaded magazine. I think Pulp, Suede and Blur were far more important.

 

Derivative means to me taking someone else's genius and watering it down. Quite different to being inspired by other groups and then using that to create something new, like what MBV did.

 

Oasis probably outsold all of those band's albums combined that you mentioned with just (What's the Story) Morning Glory? so I'd say Oasis was much more important or at least influential on popular culture.

 

Sales are not everything. You kinda lose the argument when you introduce sales figures. How many records did the Velvet Underground sell?

Oasis did have an impact though - but not in a good way. Their legacy is a whole load of boring guitar rock music with a slight alternative edge, the likes of Kaiser Chiefs, Script etc.

 

Sales have a big impact on how far a band influences popular culture. An underground band isn't going to influence as many people as someone like Madonna. Let's look at reality here.

 

I think you are mistaken and don't understand how influence works in music.

Some of the most influential artists hardly sold any records, it doesn't matter as long as future musicians got to hear them. You could sell a million records and not be influential at all from a music perspective. It's about what you are doing in the music - you can open people's eyes with new ideas and give people inspiration to form bands but only sell a few thousand records, or sell a million and play it safe and not influence anyone.

Another good example is one of Noel's faves ironically - the Sex Pistols were hugely influential in their early days before they had even sold a single record.

 

This brings up several questions then. Influential on the masses, or just musicians? Of course underground musicians can be influential on people that later become musicians but as a whole mainstream bands are a lot more influential on a wider scale for more people.

 

Agree completely. They seemed very important to me when I was that age, but now I don't rate them that high. I went to see them few times at the later stage of their career and there were always tons of knobheads around chucking piss on other fans, which I thought was out of order. Seems to me, they could mostly appeal to lads on the piss on a Friday night. Most of the songs had very simple message:" Don't worry, you're a star it's going to be ok tomorrow. Or anytime soon." When you're a kid, that speaks volume