The Battleship Oasis Makes Another Successful Voyage

The Battleship Oasis Makes Another Successful Voyage
by Ian Wigley

Gone are the days of old, when Oasis ruled the world. Nevertheless, last Sunday was the annual (or in this case bi-annual) pilgrimage to Gallagher-World, where myself and many thousands of other shady characters made our way down south to see whether age had taken its toll on the battleship named Oasis.

After a gargantuan 120 mile journey (that’s a lot of miles in England!) my friend Dan and I reached our destination, Milton Keynes Bowl, armed with only two Oasis tickets (priced £36.50 each!!!) and nine cans of Carling lager. We were late, purposefully, and as a result missed all the support acts of the day except The Coral, Liverpool’s finest. We didn’t care—we’d come to worship the band who typifies Britpop better than anyone else ever has.

The Coral played their brand of jangly guitar-based pop whilst I stood in the queue for the beer tent (it took me half an hour to get served), then not long after they had finished, the masses convened around a stage that would easily have filled most football stadiums. Excitement levels were quite definitely on the rise.

We waited patiently for our heroes to take the stage. It wasn’t long before we were graced by the presence of Zak Starkey, son of a Beatle. (Thank God they never put Sean Lennon on the stool!) After Zak took to the drums we were joined by Andy Bell, Gem Archer, and of course those wonderful brothers Noel and Liam.

Liam was in shorts, shirt, and a canvas bucket-hat—boy did he look daft—but it didn’t matter one iota. Bigger brother Noel was much more sensible in his choice of clothing, turning out in a sharp shirt, jeans and sunglasses (despite it being dark…shades of The Blues Brother methinks). He was the driver of the fair ship Oasis, always has been, always will be…and by God did he do us proud. Carefully chartering every wave, keeping well adrift of the shore, well within the arms of Ocean Milton Keynes and never once giving us any indication we’d have to signal for a life-raft. It was poetry in motion.

It’s fair to say that Oasis’ new stuff (current opus Don’t Believe The Truth, Heathen Chemistry and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants) isn’t a patch on the halcyon days of Morning Glory or Definitely Maybe, but today it didn’t matter. All the new stuff came across really well, the crowd jumped up and down in unison to numbers they had maybe only heard once or twice. "Little By Little" from Heathen Chemistry was welcomed with open arms, "Lyla" was fabulous, and "The Importance of Being Idle" was comical, but equally as good as anything else played from the new album.

The old songs took the biscuit though, as it was the old stuff we all really came for, and it didn’t disappoint. I’ll reel off in no particular order what we were treated to, then go buy the first two albums yourself and see what you missed: "Morning Glory," "Rock n’ Roll Star," "Live Forever," "Don’t Look Back in Anger," "Champagne Supernova," "Cigarettes and Alcohol," "Acquiesce," and of course, "Wonderwall." If Noel would have came on at 8.45pm, played only one of the above and then left, I’d have considered myself to have got value for money. It was wonderful.

We left Milton Keynes at 10.35pm, happy as Larry. Granted, it took us an hour and a half by car to get two miles away from our parking place, but it didn’t matter, we were happy. We’d witnessed once again a modern colossus of music, mighty Oasis, the only thing we have left in our country to be proud of musically. Yeah, we have Razorlight and Coldplay and Kaiser Chiefs and another handful of average-white-bands, but they know, as we know, that they are nothing close to a patch on Oasis.

Tony, you’re out. 10 Downing Street will shortly be inhabited by one Mr N. Gallagher, Esq.

Ian can be reached at ian@babblog.com.