Will Oasis live forever?

One of my favorite living rock personalities is Noel Gallagher. There are plenty of assholes in show business, but no one is as good or as unashamed of acting like one than Noel.

The infamously quarrelsome Gallagher brothers were, in the mid '90s, the biggest rock band in the UK And they were pretty big here, too. They were rock stars. Still, they were really a couple of working class louts from Manchester. And Noel never pretended to be otherwise. He was always brash and egomaniacal, but never dishonest or pretentious. We would claim Oasis was the greatest band in the world, but never pretended he was doing anything more than he really was.

“All I ever wanted to do was make a record," he told one interviewer at the time. "Here's what you do: you pick up your guitar, you rip a few people's tunes off, you swap them round a bit, get your brother in the band, punch his head in every now and again, and it sells. I'm a lucky bastard. I'm probably the single most lucky man in the world -- apart from our Liam.”

As much as I love Noel for attitude and honesty, I've never liked Oasis very much. When the band's first single "Supersonic" became a modern rock hit here, it sounded like little more than a trippy Brit take on grunge -- a three chord rocker with a singalong chorus. I wasn't only underwhelmed by the song, though. Liam's nasal whine was one of the toughest voices to stomach in rock.

But nothing of the band's mediocrity seemed to stop it. That debut album, Definitely Maybe, became a huge hit in the UK (7x Platinum) and the U.S. (Platinum). Four years ago, the British mega music magazine NME called that album the third best british rock record ever, behind the Stone Roses' self-titled debut and The Smiths' The Queen is Dead.(1)

But that was just a warmup for the band's followup, (What's the Story) Morning Glory would go 14x platinum in the UK (top selling UK album, ever) and a healthy 4x platinum in the States on the strength of the singles "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova," songs that were inescapable in '95 and '96. The band was the biggest rock band in the world. They had managed, even if for a brief period of time, to be as big as the Beatles.

SInce that time, it's been a slow and painful ride from fame to irrelevance and from mediocrity (more on that in a minute) to downright nauseating. The band's  brand new 2 CD retrospective Time Flies... 1994 - 2009  is a good document of that decline. The brothers Gallagher were never able to duplicate their prior success or tunefulness on five subsequent LPs (though they continued to top charts in the U.K. the entire time). The final tracks of Time Flies, "I'm Outta Time" and "Falling Down" off the band's 2008 album Dig Out Your Soul, could well describe the state of Oasis at the end of the aughts --- finally out of charms, washed up and split by family feuding for good.(2)

Perhaps if Oasis had followed those records with material that was more ambitious, more adventurous, those early albums might mean more today. Unlike Radiohead, which went on from the same Britpop sound of Oasis to practically reinvent rock at least two times and become arguably the greatest rock band of a generation, Oasis didn't have any other tricks up its leather sleeves. In 1997, Radiohead released OK Computer, the best album of the decade, and Oasis' eternal Britpop rivals, Blur, reinvented themselves on a brilliant self titled album(3) that left the Gallaghers in the dust with Be Here Now, which sounded completely obsolete in comparison. They had won the sales war but lost out on the art contest.

It would be easy to dismiss Oasis as little more than a flash in the pan. A bunch of derivative rockers who lucked into success with a sly blend of Beatles and Stones with some Stone Roses on top. Repackaged classic rock for kids who couldn't remember the originals. But I think it's tough to dismiss a band that managed to connect with so many people so successfully. While Time Flies succeeds in documenting the band's decline, it is also is a reminder of how simple and tuneful the first two records were. "Live Forever," "Roll With It," "Cigarettes and Alcohol" are good rock songs. "Live Forever," might be the band's best. And it's a hell of a song that sounds today like a classic.

Oasis didn't set out to be great artists. They did what they wanted: make good rock songs that would be loved by nearly everyone who heard them. They were able to -- like the working-class craftsmen they were -- connect with people on a populist level. In some ways they, like Nirvana, capitalized on a growing indie rock sound that they were able to make palatable to millions. Just as Nirvana worked the sounds of The Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. into a giant success, Oasis took the Stone Roses sound global. Perhaps it's not high art, but it's hard to argue with so many millions of records sold. They did the right thing at the right time.

Oasis may not live forever, but they'll always have 1995. And for Noel, that seems to be just fine. Immortality was not the goal. As he told an interviewer once during one of too many comparisons of his band with the Beatles, "I'm not like John Lennon who thought he was the great Almighty. I just think I'm John Lennon."

Footnote

1. In a poll run by NME a few years ago, readers voted it the album ever, ahead of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Revolver.

2. The Gallaghers split up last year vowing never to reform the band. Each expects to release solo albums in the next year.

3. Blur's Blur produced that band's best known U.S. song, "Song 2" with it's well-known chorus "woo hoo," a send up of silly rock that no one seemed to get because the song was just too cool (or, perhaps, too successful).

Rock and Roll romanticism: The Boss and Gaslight Anthem

I guess it all really started with Bruce Springsteen.

The May 22, 19741 issue of Boston's The Real Paper carried an article by Jon Landau (soon to be Springsteen's manager) who famously wrote: "I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time."

Now don't get me wrong, Bruce Springsteen is cool. He seems like a great guy and his songs are neat. But I don't understand what it is about the E-Street band's sound that ever could have made anyone write those sentences. Perhaps in 1974 as mainstream rock ballooned into an arena-sized monstrosity, Springsteen's intimate and simple classicism and his romantic throwback style really meant something (And to be fair, I've seen footage of the guy from his Born to Run days. The Boss has nearly unrivaled stage presence and the dude could, can, rock). He was a breath of fresh, North Jersey air. But Landau's words are those of a man in love.

Outside of the The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, Springsteen's music does not sound like the future, and it's hard to believe it ever did. Springsteen's thing has always been amped-up traditional roots rock teamed with sprawling, blue collar poetry, the delivery of which always seemed to me to be cribbed from Bob Dylan (who cribbed it from Woody Guthrie). He told neat stories, but he wasn't writing literature. The man didn't do anything to (to borrow a basketball cliche) change the game of rock. Instead he was a perfect blend of all that had come before him. He was the end result of conventional American rock (soon to be made obsolete by the birth of the New York punk rock scene in 1976).

Since that time Springsteen's music career was kick started by a rock critic, other bands have come along that have dabbled in Boss-isms -- Big guitar rock with wordy, rambling lyrical paeans to blue collar life -- often to wide critical acclaim. The Replacements brought the style to punk rock in the '80s (though Paul Westerberg never seemed as literal or cliched as Springsteen). In the last few years bands like Brooklyn's The Hold Steady and The Gaslight Anthem of New Jersey.

Like Landau's original words of hosanna for Springsteen, the heaps of critical praise for The Gaslight Anthem puzzles me. There's nothing terrible about the young, tattooed band, led by singer/songwriter Brian Fallon. But there's nothing memorable. Like Springsteen, the band is a pastiche of conventional rock tropes. Fallon's blue collar lyrics owe much to Springsteen, but his performance and sound are a lot more like the Replacements. The Gaslight Anthem don't have a particularly "big" sound. The Hold Steady's guitars punch you in the ear. TGA sound fine, but they have the kind of sound you might find on a Cars album. All in all, TGA is a decent band, but unremarkable in almost every way.




So why the universal love? The thing TGA and the Boss have in common is something I think they share with a lot of average rock critics: a belief that the road to salvation for a young man is often a good rock record, or maybe a Fender Telecaster. Both the Boss and TGA enjoy drama. There's a lot at stake for the protagonists of these songs. It's not enough for Springsteen or Fallon to be in love, bored, angry or just emotionally conflicted -- these guys sing cinematic scenes. Their songs have plots, character development, etc. While cool as lyrics, they don't hold their own. Like I said, they don't compare to literature. Rock really shouldn't be about lyrics. It's an emotional art to begin with. Good rock is all about the whole performance.

But these are the kind of stories that rock critics fall in love with and for which they often overlook the actual music. So enraptured are critics with the prose, and the supposed smarts of the guy delivering it, they don't realize that the words are papering over pretty standard, throw-back guitar rock. These guys aren't artists, they're romantics. And most critics are romantics as well. They love their own kind.  When they, the critics that is, imagine themselves in another life, they see leather jackets and guitars. They want to be Springsteen, Hold Steady's Craig Finn or Fallon.

The result is a perpetual over inflation by rock critics of "artists" who are literally a couple years of guitar lessons ahead of them -- they're guitar-worshiping geeks promoting themselves. They're not great musicians and they're not great poets.The Boss and TGA are not bad at all. In fact they are just fine. But they are not geniuses or voices of our, or any other, generation. They're above average bands who deserved to get out of the bar to a bigger audience, but they are not the Beatles, or R.E.M., Radiohead or even Modest Mouse, though critics will continue to swoon over their wordy words and blue-collar rock guy posturing. They're just romantic rock acts that have managed to make rock critics fall in love like teenage girls.

Not, I guess, that there's anything wrong with that... 

Footnote
1. By coincidence, this is the exact date of my birth, meaning I am exactly the same age as the rise of The Boss. 

The Cure: not just for girls anymore

If you had asked me any time between '88 and '92 if I liked The Cure, I probably would have considered it an insult.

The Cure were an identity band.The most popular gothic act ever, they were a lifestyle for suburban kids who thought life was unbearable. You could pick a Cure fan from his or her wardrobe -- black clothes, black nail polish... some were even brave enough to do the white makeup. These were not kids on a fast-track to popularity. For blue collar kids like me, it was not an easy act to identify with.

In those days (I was in high school at the time), I wasn't into mainstream music. I was discovering hip hop and metal. I loved Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions and Run DMC, Metallica, Slayer and Prong.  When Disintegration came out in '89, and the singles climbed the charts in '90, I was learning to love Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction, Fishbone and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I liked it all, but by all, I mean all music with an edge. The Cure were mopey, sentimental and throughly a rock band for girls, as far as my high school sensibilities were concerned.

But like other music obsessed kids of that era, I watched a lot of MTV (yes, kids, MTV used to have nothing but music videos). In fact MTV introduced me to a lot of music for the first time, music that you would never hear on the radio. The Cure were an MTV staple that fit that definition. Unlike a lot of their Brit alt rock peers -- Public Image Limitied, Siousxie and the Banshees, The Smiths, etc. -- The Cure seemed to translate better to American audiences and their songs were played more regularly outside of the 120 Minutes ghetto. "Why Can't I Be You" and "Just Like Heaven" from Kiss Me, Miss Me, Kiss Me got regular play. The singles from Disintegration, while not as poppy, were inescapable. And they were irresistible. At home, if no one was watching me, I wouldn't switch channels when videos for "Fascination Street," "Love Song," or "Pieces of You" came on.

Listening to Disintegration again, which was just reissued in a 3-disc deluxe edition, is like a virtual time warp. After the keyboard-heavy opener, "Plainsong," Robert Smith (I'm guessing here) runs his hand through some small chimes and the swirling guitars of "Pieces of You" bring me right back to high school. The album's sound -- the bubbly keys, the glassy guitars and those flat, dull drums -- sound just like the late '80s. The sound is not dated in the sense that it sounds antique, though. It is evocative of a time and place in music in which bands like The Cure were paving the road to alt and indie rock by making big inroads into the mainstream.



But also interesting is to hear the album in a fresh context, 20 years later. The Cure were never a band I'd call a "juggernaut,"  but they were big. These songs did a great deal to influence a lot of music that came after it. Smith's mopey shoe-gazing performance would become an early grunge staple of bands from Dinosaur Jr. to Nirvana. And while a lot of later so-called post-punk revivalist bands, from Interpol to The Editors, have a lot more in common aesthetically with The Cure than Joy Division. And a whole lot of emo comes from an unholy alliance of The Cure and Nine Inch Nails influences. (For this, we shouldn't really blame the Cure or Trent Reznor).

Most interesting of all, though, is the familiarity of those singles. They are genuine classics. For a mopey, goth-y band, The Cure enjoyed success in the states that a lot of other bands would have killed for. "Lovesong" actually reached #2 on the Hot 100. It would be the only top 10 hit the band would score in the U.S., but it was enough to cement the band as a rock staple here. Why? The songs are just great songs. Like other alt or modern rock acts in the '80s, R.E.M., U2, the cure prepared us for exciting rock to come with songs that were challenging but still melodic enough, familiar enough, to make it on the radio. The Cure, like U2 and R.E.M., would contribute to modern rock in the '90s with Wish, another popular record that charted several modern rock singles, particularly "Friday I'm in Love."

The new 3-disc reissue is probably more than anyone but the most devoted Cure fan should own. Disc 2 is a bunch of instrumental and vocal tracks from the recording. Disc 3 is a live performance of the album in its entirety. These are neat things to have, sure, but not necessities.  Disintegration is a great album. It's a single, coherent statement. It's Smith at his absolute best -- focused and really quite brilliant.  It's an album every real rock fan should own. Even if you thought the band was just for girls in high school.

Postscript
Not long after I wrote this, I realized a few things.

1) Take away the walls of distortion, and Billy Corgn and Smashing Pumpkins are direct descendants of the Cure. Corgan even tried to look like Smith during the Adore tour. Of course, hair would have helped.

2) It's now slightly more apparent to me why I barely dated in high school.

Lostwars: Big sound from a one-man band

It’s been a while since I talked to Roxborough resident Dereck Blackburn -- the songwriter and sole band member of Lostwars. At the time, Blackburn had just finished the Lostwars project, an album called End Of. We had a great conversation about recording, ‘90s bands and the nature of being a recording artist in these times of the digital download.

I haven’t been able to get the interview “written up” and in the meantime, Blackburn’s music has gone unmentioned here. It’s way past time to remedy that omission.

Blackburn, who helped master Fool on the Hill, the live Beatles songbook recording by local pianist, Chris Marsceill, has put out a pretty terrific album in which he has played all the instruments --guitars, drums, bass, keys and synth -- performed all the recording duties, mixing and mastering. All at his home studio. Talk about DIY, Blackburn is the real deal.

Blackburn grew up in Illinois and has spent time in different corners of the country -- Boston and Denver working in IT -- before moving to Roxborough two years ago with his girlfriend. No longer in the IT biz (it's a rough job market out there) he’s working in music exclusively. His business is called Quiethouse Mastering. So, thanks in part to a slow economy, Blackburn has had time to work on End Of. See? There is some upside to the recession after all.

But just because it’s homemade, don’t mistake End Of as some sort of sleepy, bedroom, 4-track collection a la Lou Barlow. Blackburn’s music could be called dreamy, maybe. But it is a music driven by dynamite layers of guitar (acoustic and electric) and big rhythms over which Blackburn sings (often harmonizing with himself). The most remarkable thing about the album is that Blackburn did it all by himself. It’s hard to imagine this music not being made by a full band. 

Sonically, Blackburn pays some homage to his influences -- As a kid who grew up in the Chicago suburbs, he idolize the guitar playing of Billy Corgan. As a songwriter, he looks up to Richard Buckner, a rootsy “alt-country” singer and songwriter. He also told me he likes everything from New Order to Radiohead. On first and second listen, End Of recalls Corgan, The Bends and the Cure for me (but not in a way I’d call derivative at all, there isn’t a musician alive that doesn’t recall his or her influences). Whether it’s in loud guitar rockers like “A Wish” or the spacey “The End Of,” Blackburn covers a lot of rock ground. It’s moody, atmospheric stuff yet still very melodic. All of it enjoyable.

Blackburn’s been playing in bands since high school (he’s 30 now), and that experience shows here. In Illinois, he was in a band called Zimmerman’s Note a “noise rock,” experimental band known, he said, for its live shows. He’s been playing on his own since 2003. He’s had a lot of time to work on the songs (15 on the album +6 bonus tracks) on End Of, and the time shows in accomplished arrangements. These are well crafted, nuanced songs that develop and resolve. They're compositions.

When recording the songs, what Blackburn did, he told me, is start  with what were essentially acoustic guitar compositions (in fact he’s been out playing these tunes unaccompanied) and build around them. Sometimes, all that is added is a shaker, as on the song “Mistrust.” Other times it’s a full rock band sound, like on the opener “1000 Luna Moths.” “I added sonically what each song called for,” he said.

What’s ahead for Blackburn is promoting the album and looking for other musicians to work with, ultimately to put a band together that he can collaborate with. “This is all about me, but I’d really like to work with other people and get a group,” he said. And Philly, he feels like, is a good place to do it. “It’s easy to work in music here. It’s much more organic and easy to work with people,” he said. “Once you meet musicians, they’re interested.”

Hopefully, he puts a band together soon, because I’d love to hear these songs performed live by a full band. In the meantime, listeners will have to “settle for" the recorded version. Oh well. It’s the kind of settlement that’s easy on the ears.

To get a copy of Lostwars, visit Blackburn’s Bandcamp site here.
For Lostwars online, visit here.