I Never Blog Anymore, But Of Course I Would About This. Have You Met Me?

Half my life, that’s what it boils down to. The longest relationship with anyone who’s not a member of my family that I’ve ever had. Sad, eh? To call Oasis’ music the soundtrack of my life seems a bit glib, although there are lots of songs that I associate with certain, sometimes incongruous, places. The Familiar To Millions version of ‘Go Let It Out,’ for example, recalls getting off the bus to go to class at UC Davis on a spring morning, rather than the actual performance of the song, which I witnessed. I can recall the first time I heard the “new Oasis single” for every album from Be Here Now. It usually involves me in my dressing gown, fingers poised over the Rec button on the cassette deck and doing yogic breathing techniques to combat my own anticipation and the irritating patter of whoever occupied the Radio 1 Breakfast hotseat. But actual moments are a bit thin on the ground.

It’s more to do with feelings. The fact they appeared to have found a path which they could repeatedly tread is always seen as a weakness, even by critics who liked them. Not moving on, but refining their technique so they sound more and more like themselves, to paraphrase an observation from last autumn. There was also that article in the Guardian a few weeks ago about the most successful bands having one song that they repeat ad infinitum, so their success is not really based on trends but on how long their fans are prepared to listen to those variations on the same theme. I’m not denying that either of those observations are true in this case, although I would prefer to think of the ‘one-song’ bands as creating a body of work which isn’t limited to discrete elements, like the two sides of a record or the year of release. They transcend the conditions of the music’s creation, putting the focus on the music itself. The problem with this is that, if you don’t like the sound, you’re never going to like it. If you do, if you really dig the fundamental musical elements, the chord progressions and choice of intervals, the bass lines and drum fills, the construction of the melodic phrases and the singer’s delivery, then you always will.

That’s the level I’m working at; the elemental. Once those songs had made their impression on me, after a few false starts I admit, I found it was the details which held my attention. I liked the fact Morning Glory (and Definitely, Maybe to a lesser extent) came out of my stereo speakers slightly louder than any of my other CDs, and I found out many years later that they had been deliberately mastered that way. The production always has depth; it reminds me of hitting a large bowl-shaped object, like a cauldron or something, and hearing the reverberations. That’s why I was so horrified with the inept ‘remastering’ of a lot of early tunes on Stop The Clocks, which gave the impression the cauldron had been half-filled with cement. There was also a sense of envelopment, of being surrounded by sound.

The overall effect, to me, was of a lightening. I have always thought of music in terms of light and shade, and in my mind’s eye, the clouds lifted. But it was tiny things that precipitated the change in the weather (cf. ‘Cloudburst’). The upbeat at the beginning of the guitar solo of ‘Live Forever.’ The way Liam ever-so-slightly roughs up “your head” in the first chorus of ‘A Bell Will Ring.” The moment in the outro of ‘Roll It Over’ when you realise there are voices humming a single note in the background because they take a breath. And more generally, the harmonic building blocks of the sound were always there. On the later albums, the most Oasis-y sounding songs were written by the other members of the band, although it would be impossible to mistake a Noel song for an Andy song. They can (and do) all write in different styles, but, like every other band in the history of rock and pop, what doesn’t fit is discarded. So it’s not hard to make an Oasis song, especially if you spend your whole time in the milieu, but it doesn’t follow that they’re simple, and therefore juvenile or regressive. It’s a visceral response, and doesn’t attempt to have an intellectual purpose, so for those who think music should have an intellectual purpose, it fails.

The thing that intrigues me is that, on every online article I read that allows you to leave comments, people are queuing up to register their “good riddance to bad rubbish” attitude. If, as they so insistently profess, they don’t give a flying one about the band’s demise, why are so many taking the time to broadcast their assertion of its irrelevance? I can understand those who were swept up by the early stuff, but who moved on, either because they felt somehow betrayed or bemused by what followed. It’s fair enough if they express relief at what they see as a long-overdue invocation of the last rites. But for those who were never on side, for whatever reason, what’s the point of dancing on the grave? Just because Oasis broke up, it doesn’t mean that you retrospectively win every pub argument you’ve ever had about them. It’s a pyrrhic victory, at best. And if you never liked them, surely you just cut them out of your musical life? When the Red Hot Chilli Peppers finally decide to stop inflicting their own grindingly repetitive brand of 'funk-rock' on the world, I might secretly breathe a sigh of relief, but I’m not going to thumb my nose at people who genuinely thought they were great. I’m not going to suddenly start reading articles about them for the sole purpose of aggravating myself to the point of registering an online protest. They’re truly irrelevant to me; I don’t listen to any of their records or care about them as people, but others do, so good luck to them. Maybe my experience of the social leprosy that accompanies certain musical allegiances gives me a more liberal attitude.

It’s partly a weariness of entering into this argument, where both sides are long-rehearsed, that prevents me from rending my garments more publicly. But it’s mostly the fact that I’m mourning the death of a personal relationship, corny as that sounds. My memories are mine alone, even the ones that involved 125,000 other people standing in a field. I remember things I’ve said during the gigs (12 in total – better than some, criminally shy of others). Two stand out at the moment. Shouting “It’s John Squire!” to my Stone Roses-crazy mate as the guitar wizard strode out on stage at Knebworth to add a layer of noodle to ‘Champagne Supernova.’ Remarking to my cousin “and this is for a B-side” as the Wembley pit bawled out ‘Half The World Away’ last month. It’s sad to think that I, and others, will never get to experience that atmosphere again. Even being at football isn’t quite the same, because you’ll never be in a situation where you’re winning 5-0 in injury time in the Champions League final in a stadium with no opposing fans. I won’t miss the beer-throwing and the anxious seconds in the moshpit where your feet can’t find the floor. I will miss spontaneously bursting into tears during ‘Live Forever,’ watching the sun go down while listening to songs I love, and going home tired but elated, with my ears ringing and the sense that I could come back and do it all tomorrow.

Of course, I’ve been here before, more than once. There was a time when they wouldn’t sell tickets more than six weeks in advance because of the risk the band might not make it that far. Even when you got there, there was a risk that they might just pack it in and walk off after one barbed comment directed across the stage too many. As with many situations, that sense of standing on the precipice merely added to the excitement. The most extreme case I saw was the second night at Wembley in 2000, when the show only went on in the knowledge that up to 1 million people were watching online (one of the pioneering webcasts, I might add). It created a fabulous atmosphere in the crowd, however poisonous it might have been to be standing on the stage, because of the sense that we were witnessing the full Oasis Experience. At the end of that summer, they played Reading and Leeds and the general consensus was that was it. Nobody really believed it, though. It wasn’t as bad as 1996, and they came through that, so why would they give up now? And so it proved.

This time, though, there is an air of finality. Noel’s first statement might have been issued in the heat of the moment, but the second one shows a hardening of attitude. If he’d thought better of it, he would have said so. If he wasn’t sure, he would have kept his not-inconsiderable trap shut. The advent of mass internet communication which made the statements possible in the first place has shown, quite baldly really, that they weren’t talking to each other at all. Master stonemason that he is (chip chip chipping away), Liam hasn’t been the only one making snide comments online. And for those comments to appear in the first place, from two people who have spent the past 18 months theoretically living in each others’ pockets, would indicate that those who had hitherto been happy to be intermediaries (also standing accused in the second statement) have handed in their notice. The fact this has failed to instigate communication must be quite depressing for everyone. You can wish the pair of them would grow up, suck it up and man up, but, for whatever reason, it’s not happening.

I have to say, I sensed the change at Wembley last month, although I didn’t really register it at the time. Oasis have never been the most loquacious of between-song raconteurs, but this time they probably spoke less than 100 words into the microphone between them, and those were all directed at the audience. Even at their previous worst, there’s been a swift riposte to a cheesy comment lobbed over the monitors. The new silence was deafening in its own way, but you thought at least it reduced the risk of a walk-off. Now, however, I suspect that must be the worst bit for both of them. Not the lack of an argument when things are going wrong; they’re not quite mental enough to miss such a wearying grind. Rather, the fact that, when they’re in the middle of one of those gigs they occasionally played, where they were absolutely nailing it to the floor for two hours, they can’t share it. Neither can so much as glance over and raise a luxuriant eyebrow to indicate, “That’s right, we are fucking owning this lot, because we are brilliant,” just before they launch into the riff before the second verse of ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’. If they can’t enjoy it together, they can’t enjoy it at all, but, thinking about it, I don’t think I’d want them to.

Let Me Count The Ways...

..in which a third runway at Heathrow is a totally stupid thing.

Now, I'm not usually given to ranting about environmental issues, mainly because most of the things I could rant about, like recycling, are generally considered a no-brainer these days. I'm very much looking forward to getting my shiny new food, plastics and garden waste bins off the council next month. I'm also looking forward to getting my free double glazing off the Heathrow people in 2011. I qualify because they drew two blobs on the map where the forthcoming increase in night flights would have most noise impact, and I happen to live in one of the blobs. Not that it will make a huge amount of difference, I would have thought. It's fairly difficult to mask the noise of a landing jumbo jet flying directly overhead, far enough advanced in its landing sequence that its landing gear's down, even with Craig Doyle-endorsed Everest triple Pilkington A* rated enormo-plastic fitted. (Has anyone else noticed that he appears to be listing to one side in the new advert with the lighthouse?)

I don't complain about living under the flight path, per se. I chose to live here; I knew what I was getting into when I signed up. I accept being woken up just before 6am most mornings by the first jumbo of the day swooshing over. It's actually quite fun being able to identify different airlines while waiting for the bus home from the supermarket. And I've always quite admired the sheer logistics of getting more than one plane a minute landing and taking off. In The Guardian this morning there was an aerial shot of the site, including the area where the extension will go. There were nine planes in the process of taking off at the moment the shot was taken, which is fairly amazing.

So what I'm saying is, I'm not a Nimby. I disagree with airport expansion on a purely environmental level. I disagreed with the third runway on a cost basis as well, because of all the infrastructure costs required to extend on the opposite side of the road to the existing airport. I'm even more opposed now I've realised it's designed to be a short-haul runway, servicing the very type of flights we should be cutting down on. Who needs to fly domestically, I mean really? It's not like America, where a 'domestic' trip between New York and LA is the equivalent of a trans-Atlantic jaunt to the East Coast. You can fit the whole of Great Britain into the gap between San Francisco and LA. It's really not that far from one end to the other. And if you're going from London to Manchester by air, try and calculate how much time it actually takes to get to the airport, check in, wait for the flight, fly get out the other end, get your bags and get to the city centre, rather than justifying it by saying it only takes an hour to do the flying bit. It's only a four-hour drive. It's two and a half hours on the fast train now. Yes, trains get delayed. But so do planes! Yes, it might take you a bit longer by road or rail, but the difference of a matter of hours should be compared to the length of time it took when everybody went by horse and carriage. Don't scoff, we'll be doing it again soon if we're not careful.

There's quite a long list of people whose heads I want to knock together over this, as you may have gathered. Every single person who bleats on about aviation emissions constituting only 2% of the global total is asking for it. What percentage of the world's population is ever going to go near air travel, hmmm? Those government-sponsored boffins who tell us we have to do it for the sake of the economy deserve to lose their jobs. Even by the government's own figures (again according to The Guardian), the annual benefit to the economy equates to a week's worth of sales at John Lewis. And of course, that will all be wiped out by the rising sea levels submerging Central London. Some people are opposed to expansion at Heathrow because it shows 'the regions' are being overlooked in favour of London again. Sigh. So let me get this straight; you actually want more pollution and hasten the onset of a global meltdown because it will utilise the North of England's economic potential? And it's nothing to do with the fact you want the convenience of being able to hop on a 747 at Manchester? When I was little, the Heathrow to Orlando service went via Manchester. Doesn't that happen any more? It should. We should go back to the days when you had to confirm your flights the day before, and if there weren't enough customers for one flight, you got put on a different one. When I went to Milan a couple of years ago, my return flight was so empty they made us all sit in the back of the plane so it could take off properly. The obvious thing to do was to put us on the next flight, but oh no, a couple of hours' delay would be inconvenient. And there's nothing worse than inconvenience. Sigh.

But hang on, don't we have mind-bogglingly efficient global communications now? You can work anywhere, as long as you've got a laptop and wireless access, which is pretty much everywhere except in the air (that's irony there, in case you were wondering). Do you really need to fly to Newcastle for that business meeting when you could just as easily conference call on Skype or - horror of horrors - the phone? What benefit will that handshake have, compared to the company and global resources you've used to deliver it? When we develop holograms enough, you'll even be able to shake hands without leaving your office.

The thing that really got me was a woman on the radio yesterday who said, "But we live on an island! How are we supposed to get off it otherwise?" Oh. My. God. Well, missus, you know those things called ships? You may have seen them - big, metal, floating on the water, surrounded by a plague of seagulls, you know the sort. Well, they did the business for several millennia when small landmass dwellers like ourselves wanted to travel. We had these places called 'docks' here, there and everywhere, for the movement of goods and people. We were quite good at the old sailing thing, because we didn't have any alternatives. We even managed to populate an entire continent, right on the other side of the world, through a combination of convicts, financial incentives and His Majesty's shipping fleets. So why don't we go back to it? Reviving sea travel would create all those jobs that the government's blethering on about, and they'd actually last because they'd cover construction and maintenance, not to mention the fact it would give thousands of people skills. If I remember rightly, cross-channel ferries already have wireless networks, so nobody needs to worry about being incommunicado. There must be some Oxbridge boffins out there who can develop hydroelectric power generators for shipping, so that's the emissions sorted. It's not rocket science, is it?

Shiny Shiny Haircut

I have spent money on myself, and it feels gooooood. Probably shouldn't have said "I don't mind" when the girl at the desk asked if I had a price range in mind for a cut and blow dry, but then I hadn't had my hair done in six months and had spent the previous 20 minutes dithering over the mugs in Robert Dyas while I decided whether to just, finally, go in and get the bloody thing sorted, once and for all. I am glad I did, even if I must have blanched slightly when, just as I was getting excited about the return of my fringe and the groovy little feathery bits at the front, I got told how much it cost.

I could have run, I suppose. But I didn't dare, particularly as my stylist (clearly the senior stylist, considering the price), was big, hairy and Australian. Quite camp as well, but I wasn't fooled. He'd probably have turned into a werewolf on me. Still, it made up for all the time I went without. I have resolved to go more often. But not there; there are limits. It would be like shopping in Whistles for something you're only going to wear once when you could quite happily find something in H&M.

Three Posts In A Calendar Year (Including This One): Bad

New Year's Resolution (which I may not keep): write about stuff that is happening. I just read a couple of old posts and was impressed by my own verbosity. How very egotistical, but if I get going again I'll eventually hit Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours of practice mark, then produce a critically acclaimed and bestselling novel and never have to work again. Maybe.

Besides, my Facebook updates are getting overly long, and I don't think Twitter's for me, particularly as my phone is wheezy and slightly senile and certainly wouldn't let me tweet. It would probably think it was something rude.

So, no promises. But watch this space all the same.

George A Romero Can Stick It...I Won't Be A Zombie Any More

Over the last few months, I've let a lot of things slip, including this 'ere blog. It's not that I've been so busy leading a whirlwind existence that I haven't had time to write about it, it's just that I haven't been doing anything. Apart from buying a flat, which, curiously, causes a huge amount of paralysis and leaves one stranded at home most of the time, just in case there's an important phone call that has to be dealt with immediately, so if you're down the shops at that particular moment there's a high probabilty the whole thing will fall through instantly. I am, of course, aware that this is largely estate agent bluster, but it doesn't stop you worrying about it while it's happening.

I have been ill as well, pretty much ever since my last post but one. The monkey camping trip did for my back, and I've been battling with feet the size of alien balloons and being seized up after three days at work ever since. Unsurprisingly, it's made me rather tired and irritable, and I had a relapse a couple of weeks ago which didn't help. The other thing I've found is that I've more or less been reduced to existing, rather than living; not going out much, and certainly not to gigs, sleeping in late (and choosing to work late) because I've got a kind of mental block about getting up, considering the sort of shopping I can do very carefully, ferrying myself back and forth across London to chiropractor's appointments which means I generally don't have much food in the fridge and lose track of when I should be changing the sheets, wearing the same pair of shoes (which have now started to fall apart) because they're the only ones that fit, getting out of breath walking up very small inclines, that kind of thing. Not that I'm complaining.

Anyway, I'm trying to rejoin the land of the living, now the weather's a bit warmer (apart from the snow on Sunday), but I'm finding the habits a bit hard to break. I had my hair cut for the first time in six months last week, but it didn't even occur to me to check the West Ham result until about five minutes ago, not that it was worth it. I have invited people round to my new flat, but I'm still largely relying on Facebook stalking to 'keep in touch.' I can go to Ikea and decide what I'm going to order online when I've got a few days free to take the delivery, but I still can't bring myself to replace the shower rail and curtain, even though I've had the new ones since the day after I completed.

Actually, none of this is really the reason I've chosen to put finger to keypad. One of the things I've really let slide in the last few months is my interest in new music. There are lots of reasons for this. I can't really listen to my iPod on the way to work because I'm one of those people who subconsciously walks in time to the music, and that's not always the best idea these days. I mostly listen to FiveLive on the radio because it's just a calming noise in the background. Also, I just got really bored with all the stuff out there at the moment, generic yelpy indie rubbish most of it. Call me old-fashioned (and you will, believe me), but I don't want to see a band of approximately 12 people, all of whom are using one finger to play the same three notes for four minutes, while a thatch-barneted androgyne yelps indistinctly into a microphone. I want someone actually singing something that resembles a song, while a selection of musicians actually play their instruments. It's got to the stage where I'll forego the guitar solos, if only I can have something that gets me genuinely excited.

I have tried the MySpace thing, but I've sort of given up on my MySpace page, so that's pretty much out. So back I go into the world of music radio, to see what's out there. The first problem is that my DAB is being awkward. It won't let me listen to my previous best choice, V Extreme, nor the 'second best' (if you ignore the fact they play so much Linkin Park and RHCP) XFM. So for the past couple of hours I've had 6Music on while I potter. And it's rubbish! (Incidentally, it's just started playing that very 'song' I've linked to). I swear, 75% of the stuff they've played is old ('classic session tracks' my arse), and another 20% has just been, well, rubbish. The only song I've really liked was when they played one of the tracks off the new (i.e. six months old) Puressence album, and even then it was probably my eighth favourite out of the ten tracks on that album.

OK, I admit, this is probably partially to do with me. I want a radio station that's going to play stuff that's coming out in the next two months, or has been out in the last year, and less of the 'classic tracks' thing, which is always skewed heavily in favour of a particular few artists, usually ones I'm not that excited about. But this 6Music thing defeats me. I can't tell the difference between some of the tracks and a jingle. There are lots of things I've never heard before, which is what I want, but if it's new I wouldn't know, because they don't tell you anything about anything - not even on the infobar on the radio. I don't want to have album tracks played at me; I want to hear the singles and decide whether I'm going to go and buy (and yes, that's 'buy,' not download, unless it's something I can only get digitally) the album. Because, in my head, that's the job of daytime radio. Sessions and rarities are for the evening, when I don't listen to music radio because the football's on. What a radio station does not do is have an ambient-themed hour at 2pm. When this is my choice, is it really surprising my favourite new track has been off an advert, and I'm overly looking forward to the album being released because the rest of it sounds much more dirty-bluesy and my kind of thing?

Of course, all this has been thrown into the sharp relief by the fact the cogs have been oiled and the gears are starting to grind (if very clunkily and reluctantly) over in Oasis-land. They've announced tour dates, although admittedly in North America. Supposedly the album's coming out in September, when the tour dates are. I've already had stress dreams about not being able to get a ticket for the gigs. I don't think they're going to go for the late-summer/early-autumn Wembley Stadium thing, so I might have to wait for next year for that. Clearly, I'm hoping for a mammoth residency at the O2 sometime in early November. It still seems so far away...*sigh* but I've waited this long so I have to be strong. I wonder what my workmates will think of me when they see how mentalistically excited I get? Well, we all have our obsessions; they'll get used to the rictus grin and incessant clapping eventually...

Hooray!

I have broadband at home for the first time in two years. This means I am about 372% more likely to post on this blog than I was before, so watch this space (if anybody still does, of course). What a good job I never had to pay for this page.

TTFN...

Stuff Is Happening (Although I Am Suddenly Unsure Of The Correct Spelling of "Happening")

Inspired by the comments left on the previous post (it's so nice when strangers take an interest) and what with it being the new school year/Rosh Hashanah/nearly the beginning of Ramadan, therefore a time of new beginnings, I am, yet again, going to try and wring some pithy and interesting blogging out of the minutiae of my life. This week also seems like a perfect time to begin because I've actually got some plans, which I can explain, and then recap once they have come to fruition.

I am a little apprehensive, but also excited, because this weekend, for the first time in my life, I'm going camping. "What kind of childhood did you have that you've never been camping before?" I hear you cry. Well, in all honesty, my summer holidays were mainly of the Spanish self-catering variety. I have also been blessed in that most of my field-tramping in the service of rock music has been done within a sensible distance of my own bed, thus eradicating the need to sample festival sanitation systems. But all that is about to change.

In order to minimise the possibility of getting stressed about anything, I have tried to take matters into my own hands as much as possible. Not that I distrust any of my fellow monkeys, but I do worry. Oh yes, it's a monkey weekend, destined to enter the annals as one of the most legendary, I have no doubt, and given some of my shamefully weedy behaviour last time (only some of which was attributable to my bad back) I am determined to have fun. Not to mention there's really no excuse for wimping out on a trip to the South Coast when fellow monkeys are flying down from Scotland after a full week's teaching in a ratty comp.


Anyway, to fully prepare myself, I thought I'd go the whole hog and buy a tent. After three days of mild stress about whether it was going to arrive in time, which included a phone call to Milletts indicating its most likely arrival was today, the one day of the week I'm at work (typical), it actually arrived yesterday morning. I spent yesterday afternoon having a play, conscious of the fact the tent erection process is more than likely to occur in the dark. Obviously, I couldn't peg the thing out on my living room carpet, but I don't understand about pegs and guyropes anyway. There must be enough tent-sperts among our party to help me sort this out. Wonderfully, not only does my tent have matching sleeping bags and cute foam mat things (what's the betting these get used to hit Jik with?), the bag is big enough that I can pack everything in it if I leave one of the sleeping bags and foam thingies at home. I am pleased about this. I am even more pleased about the woolly hat I purchased on Tuesday, that has fleecy lining. Yes, I know it's only September and it's looking to be a nice weekend, but my reaactions to temperature have convinced me that I'm practically cold-blooded anyway (you should see the way my extremities go purple after an evening in the office, where the ambient temperature is always set at 'just a little bit too cold'), so I just don't want to be chilly.

So, expect a full report in due course. There is other stuff happening as well, I'm sure, but it mainly revolves around me not getting around to going to see The Bourne Ultimatum, and suddenly being overwhelmed by a desire to bake and generally make a mess when I've spent the morning ensuring my kitchen is immaculate. I am also planning to take in the usual cultural pursuits this autumn, the Terracotta Army and Tutankhamun being top of the list. My mum and I had a good game of museum-related one-upmanship about that the other week. Mum: "Well, I've already seen the Terracotta Army." Me: "Well, there's more of them this time." Mum: "And I've already seen Tutankhamun." Me: "Yeah, well I have as well. In Cairo, nyer nyer ne nyer nyer."

I think, though, much to my shame and chagrin, feelings compounded by the fact it's on my birthday, that I might have to forgo applying for tickets for the Ahmet Ertegun tribute, otherwise known as the Led Zep reunion. I haven't registered my interest yet, and apparently there's 20 million people in front of me already, so I'm not particularly hopeful *sob*. Maybe it will be on telly...