Cheers from London where I am still emotionally processing the Oasis gig I attended at Wembley Stadium this past Sunday. I touched down at Heathrow from LAX around 11am BST day of and was showered and in an Oasis shirt with a pint of Guinness in hand by 3pm. Back in my day, it was considered very corny to wear the band’s merch to the show, but a lot has changed since then (to under state it) and also this was no ordinary show babe — it was a cultural event built on decades of absence and anticipation, (perhaps?) a culmination of a familial tragedy, and a massive, glorious reminder of the past power of the monoculture. It was an experience rocket fueled by nostalgia.
I think and talk a lot about nostalgia (literally as a job, as well as in my free time, I really need to get a hobby). In his book Ignorance, Milan Kundera wrote (here she go) “The Greek word for ‘return’ is nostos. Algos means ‘suffering.’ So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.” He was cooking tbh. At Wembley, I was on the floor, surrounded by people of all ages. Much like the listenership of Bandsplain, it was a largely male crowd with Gen X heavily represented. But there were lots of millennials (who would have largely been children at the height of Oasis’ fame) and quite a few Gen Zers (who would not have been born when What’s The Story came out). Can you have nostalgia for a time you never experienced? I would argue yes. I know what I, a person who came of age in the 90s, am nostalgic for. I’m nostalgic for the feeling of the first-time, the magic of discovering something (music, art, film, tv) that I felt so thoroughly seen by, and the sense that the world was so much bigger than I could possibly imagine which meant there were infinite more opportunities for that feeling to occur (spoiler alert for any twelve year olds reading, that last bit is true in theory but not really in practice).
And more fundamentally, I am nostalgic for the vignette that was my life, the blurred borders of not having a technological nightmare in my hand that removes that much needed cocoon of unknownness in the falsest way possible, that robs my attention and time and is dulling my mind and my heart (went Kundera mode here for a minute). But this is where I think nostalgia differs somewhat from Kundera’s description. The suffering is the present, and thinking about the past not only soothes me, but reminds me of the way I would actually like to live my life. It’s like some tweet I saw ages ago that said something to the effect of “If you put your phone in your pocket it’s 2008 again.” Which again, isn’t totally true but true enough to be something worth considering, and attempting.
You’re like what has this got to do with Oasis babe let’s fucking get on with it. I’m getting there!! (Little by little). The spirit of that tweet was at this show is what I am saying. 90,000,000 people showed up and to be fair they did not put their phones in their pockets per se, but spiritually they came together to hear these anthemic tunes that are both timeless and also totally embody the 90s, nostalgia town USA, the last era before the internet both froze and in a way broke time. This was a way of living in the beloved past, even if just for a few hours. Even if you never lived that past to begin with.
Enough has been written about these Oasis reunion shows (including by me, in a previous post with crowdsourced journalism) that I won’t get too into the weeds of describing the event itself. They sounded great, they looked fab, the triple guitar wall was really awesome, setlist pretty impeccable (yes, yes, I’d like to hear “Columbia” too), Bonehead a king, tambourine atop bucket hat very cool indeed. But what was really the most special for me was just being in that crowd, surrounded by Oasis shirts and hats and jackets and pants, by lads linking arms, their faces beaming with joy, pints sloshing all over, floor shaking from the jumping, temporary best friends, all our voices hoarse by the end from the belting, and from the cigarettes and alcohol. (But fuck that bitch standing next to us who brought her quilted Chanel bag into the pit at Wembley and who told me my cig smoke was bothering her. We’re at a fucking OASIS show babe - get on board or get to fuck).
Also would be remiss if I didn’t mention how perfect of an opener Richard Ashcroft was. He had me revisiting The Verve’s catalog all week. A generational songwriting talent, and he still looks hot as hell. Absolutely need him to drop his haircare routine because that shit is so thick it almost looked like a wig (almost, not like Iggy Pop’s…). His voice is still as heartbreakingly beautiful as ever. When he started playing “The Drugs Don’t Work” (god tier song) I turned around a saw a 210 lb man silently weeping behind me. A big part of the reason I knew I needed to see this in the UK, besides the obvious (I do not think the American crowds will hold a candle) , was that they get Richard Ashcroft and we get Cage the fucking Elephant. (Respectfully).
I cried too (definitely during “Talk Tonight” but also at various other points). I was overwhelmed by the experience; I still am. I did not think I’d get to see those songs live ever again (and the one time I did see them, back at Coachella in 2002, it was slightly underwhelming), let alone in such a satisfying and spectacular fashion. But also the come down has been harsh. Sure it might have been all the pints and Capris, but the truth is sometimes living briefly in a beautiful nostalgia fever dream can backfire when you have to return to reality, and realize you still cannot medically put your iPhone down for longer than ten minutes, that it’s twenty times easier to casually watch genocide from your sofa than it is to go outside and forge any sort of real connection, that we will one day run out of these titans of the monoculture and have nothing left to experience on this scale besides the occasional pop star. (No time for guitar rock is dead discourse here). And further, you realize that even in the 90s, people felt it was easier to watch a war on TV than it was to be themselves in the world, and they longed for the qualities of the 60s or 70s. It’s easy to bathe in nostalgia when you don’t got some bitch in your ear reminding you that suffering is sort of the default human condition. To quote Proust (there she fucking go), remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were. To quote Richard Ashcroft, now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse. But you know what? I still need all that nostalgia gear, if only to remind me to put my fucking phone in my pocket for a while.
Here are some more photos:
I’m seeing them in Dublin next weekend so I’ve been revisiting the Oasis Bandsplain episodes to get hype and just wanted to say thank you 🫶 This piece made me quite emotional!! Also thanks for validating my ill advised financial decision to travel to see them and not wait for the US shows lol
Would love a The Verve Bandsplain episode!