While millions of others do, I will not be chasing my tail in pursuit of a ticket to watch Oasis reunite when they go on sale today.
There are literally a million other ways I would rather spend £300 – the ticket price for two standing tickets at their Wembley shows – than watching the charmless Gallagher brothers churn out their unoriginal hits in pursuit of a jumbo payday.
To be clear, I will freely admit they have produced some top tunes during their career, but rarely has there been a band so horrifically over-rated.
And in case you think this is just the disgruntled ramblings of an old bloke who “wasn’t there” back in the day, I should point out I was in my youthful early-20s when the band first emerged.
I was at Glastonbury just after their second single was released and they were playing a mid-afternoon slot on the second tier stage back in 1994. I’d planned to watch them but had found myself too engrossed watching the Lemonheads on the Pyramid Stage. By the time I’d made it to their field, the youthful Gallagher brothers had just come off. I’d still make that choice today.
And, indeed, I shelled out a fat £20 to watch them play Earls Court a few years later. The show was OK but the fact I can barely remember anything about it, says all you need to know. Unremarkable in a word.
There was none of the truly original creation of aural soundscapes that the likes of contemporaries such as Radiohead or the wit and humour of Pulp created. For the most part, they just copied The Beatles and plenty of standard rock n roll bands.
Yet they were in the right place at the right time.
Back in the 1990s ‘lad culture’ was all the rage as Britpop showed the door to the throwaway pop which had become a mainstay of the mainstream.
And the Gallagher brothers ticked all the boxes; drugs, fags, booze, birds (as they’d put it), foul language, anoraks.
Somehow their sexist, homophobic comments were OK back then. People even thought it was cool doing Liam’s dreadful lolloping walking style. I saw it in action in the crowd at a Dreamland gig just this summer, remarkably.
They were the everyday blokes who happened to front a chart-topping band and were indulging in all the excess which came with it. They gave the green light for others to think their boorish behaviour was acceptable when out on a night on the town.
Add to that a well-designed logo and a couple of blistering albums and it’s little wonder they were initially popular. But lots of bands have a good couple of albums but don’t sell out stadiums 30 years later with the nation’s media fawning over the prospect. Yet, somehow, their legend grew over the years as the quality of their output declined and they eventually spluttered out.
Granted. they were perfect tabloid fodder – providing outrageous quotes on any given topic to ensure they were always in the headlines and maintaining a ‘fued’ which crumbled when a sufficiently large cheque was waved in their direction.
It’s hard to feel too sympathetic to a couple of millionaires. I’d gladly stand on a stage with my biggest enemy – and make out we were mates – if there was a £400m pay-day at the end of it.
We all swallowed the hype. And for this last week we’ve been force-fed it as a quiet news week has allowed rolling news channels to bang on about the reunion as if it’s the Second Coming.
So good luck to you if you’re trying to get tickets today, I’ll give it a miss. Perhaps I’ll cut the lawn… definitely, maybe.