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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Oasis The Masterplan

Everybody's wondering why songs like "Underneath The Sky" and (especially) "Acquiesce" weren't on an actual Oasis album. Everybody's thinking it's a coincidence of some sort that so many great songs can be disregarded and doomed to merely be: b-sides. Stop and think about the title of this collection though... it's called 'The Masterplan', which could mean a predetermined 'plan' that is meant to be 'masterful'. Is it not conceivable to think that Noel and the gang had this deviant scheme to hide away a bunch of choice tracks on singles (nobody buys singles in the USA) in order to later release the greatest b-side collection ever? Even now, over six years since The Masterplan came out, it still has to be one of, if not thee most talked-about b-side compilation on the planet. So, yeah, I think The Masterplan was a set-up. But that's enough of that; take what you will from my speculations and opinions. What's really important here is the music.

Yes, "Acquiesce" is an astonishing song--my personal favorite Oasis track, as I'm sure it is many other's. The other track here I was equally taken aback by was "Headshrinker", which boasts smidgens of a punk-rock feeling and an almost irritated sound in Noel's voice that can't be ignored when he's shouting 'I hope you don't regret today/for the rest of your lives'. But the sleeper track here has to be "Half The World Away", which is as relaxed as I recall Oasis ever being in a song. It's beautiful, it's smart ('my body feels young but my mind is very old') and possesses the single greatest handclapping performance in the history of music. I clap along every time I hear it; and I get the chills every time I hear it. "Underneath The Sky" seems to be another favorite. That makes sense considering it's short, sweet and has that infamous part about the suitcase. That makes me chuckle every time. "Rockin' Chair" takes a lot of the same ideas and tones as "Half The World Away", which is why it's not as impressive (though still great).

It's said in the booklet that The Beatles never performed "Walrus" live; so it makes perfect sense that Oasis would cover it--and they do a superb job. Goo goo g'joob, indeed. "Talk Tonight" draws more comparisons to "Half The World Away". It's very, very good but again falls just short of the top slow track. "Stay Young" and "Listen Up" sound most like they came from actual albums, and the fact they didn't make the cut seems unapparent. "(It's Good) To Be Free", sadly, is one I tend to skip. We all know it's good to be free, anyway. I'm never a huge fan of instrumental tracks unless they blow me away. And "The Swamp Song" didn't blow me anywhere. "Going Nowhere" is genius, pure genius. The way Noel rolls the word 'Jaguar' off his tongue is most notable. "Fade Away" is my least favorite track on The Masterplan. It comes off as a second-rate "Headshrinker" with comparable lyrics but poor sound quality. Finally, "The Masterplan"... seems to be in a league of its own. Either you love it or you don't. It's dazzling--the perfect closer for such an album. Oh, I mean... for such a 'compilation'. Whatever. If this were an album, it would easily be Oasis' best album. But I guess we instead have to call it, simply, their best CD.

Oasis Be Here Now

First, I'm not quite sure what the last reviewer was talking about when he said a generation of fans hailed this as a masterpiece of some sort. Fans it may have, yet ne'er but a few have sung uncritical rhapsodies to it.
Now, second, I can't say anything to anyone who's pondering purchasing BHN except you'll most likely either love it (with time) or hate it (some beans aren't magic after all). Nevertheless, I was frightened away from this album by the intensity of the negative reviews, and by the time I bought it I was already so critical of it that it never had a prayer. One day, at any rate, (always one day...), I put it on because I wanted to hear some Oasis I didn't know by heart, and it hit. I got it. This album became, we'll say, my cup of tea. Why?
Benefits: Liam truly sings his a** off on this album. I mean song after song after song(and they are songs with a capital L)
he lays his voice on the dicing board. The production is very solid--if you like Oasis that is--and don't let anyone dissuade you of that, though again it will take time to get a feel for the body of these tracks--like Magic Pie for instance, which I personally hated forever, but just all the sudden realized I loved it. This album is like that. In short, don't be misled by the brutality of some of these lacerations heaped upon the album; it's classic Oasis here, but with that sort of vibrating in place that keeps each album different than the last and exciting for us die hards.
Costs: Of course, the songs are immense, mammoth, titanic jeremiads (in hindsight at least) to the waning of the Oasis empire--both long in running time and tall on brio. Then again, thats only a drawback if you loathe that sort of thing. I, personally, find it a truly singular aspect of this CD. It's like the odd-cousin of the other albums, and sticks out of the five either like a gold nuggett or a nasty splinter, depending on where you're coming from.
Well, thats all. Love it or hate it, this album is a product of insanity, and for that it is worth your every penny.

Oasis Stop the Clocks

Oasis has come at the end of its contract with their label, and when told that a "best of" was going to be issued whether the Gallagher brothers liked it or not, Noel Gallagher took it upon himself to come up with the band first career-spanning compilation. At first it was going to include several new songs (including "Stop the Clocks"), but when all was said and done, we are left with this beautiful mess.

"Stop the Clocks" (2 CDs, 18 tracks, 86 min.) brings a selective sampling of some of Oasis greatest hits and best known tracks, including its US breakthrough hit "Wonderwall", which still sounds as fresh today as when it came out more than a decade ago, but also "Champaign Supernova", "Don't Look Back in Anger" and "Acquiesce", originally a B-side but it has become one of Oasis' best known and beloved songs. Nothing wrong with the music as such on this compilation. It's what is NOT on here that is the problem: Noel tries to rewrite history and conveniently ignores the "Be Here Now" album ENTIRELY, hence no "D'You Know What I Mean", "Stand By Me" or "All Around the World", all huge hits; other early-era classics MIA include "Shakermaker", "Whatever" and "Roll With It", and even latter day hits such as "The Hindu Times", "Little By Little" and "She Is Love" are conspicuously absent.

I guess I could have understood Noe's approach if this was a single CD compilation, but it is not. Can someone explain to me why, at a mere 86 min. over 2 CDs, all those hits and classics are not on here? This compilation, however great the music on here, is nothing but a beautiful and incomprehesible mess. Lacking any new songs or any other twist, it is doubtful that this set will attract many fervent Oasis fan.

Oasis have been at the helm of the world's music scene for over ten years. To mark that achievement, this first-ever Oasis retrospective draws together the years of multiplatinum albums, No. 1 singles, and--unique to Oasis--instantly familiar B-sides into one 18-track double album, entitled Stop the Clocks. Furthermore, this collection has been chosen by the band themselves--selecting the songs they believe encapsulate their remarkable career to date.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Oasis Definitely Maybe

I first heard Oasis's debut album when my brother played me a tape of "Definitely Maybe" one day in the fall of 1994. I quite liked some of the songs on it and remember finding "Live Forever" vaguely familiar, probably because I must have heard it playing on the radio or something when it was released as a single, or maybe, retrospectively speaking, because it was so good I thought I must have already heard it somewhere before. However, I didn't really pay the album much mind until almost a year later when I was in the record section in the basement of a retail store and they played "Definitely Maybe". I stayed in the record section to listen to the album and decided I would buy it.

It was loud, it was exciting, it was the plug to fill the void in music that had been prevalent for too long, particularly in the early 90's when music didn't really seem to know which way to go, except "back" perhaps. Hence, people like Sting, Annie Lennox, Brian May, Rod Stewart, Paul Weller, Freddie Mercury and Elton John all scored their first hits in years in the early 90's. The fact these people were deservedly being taken note of again was no bad thing by any means, but I think it showed that people back then wanted some quality talent, some established popular heroes who were consistently reliable for making good songs. Suddenly though, here was music from a band that was new and really worth listening to, and they opened the floodgates for other guitar bands such as Blur, Pulp, Radiohead, Suede and Supergrass. There was a new, exciting feel to the music (which the British media in all their naivety tediously stuck under the same umbrella and called "Britpop"). It was intelligent music with a social message but delivered by everyday working class people who weren't talking down to you or trying to be pretentious pop stars.

The album gets off to a great start with the full-tilt rock of "Rock `n' Roll Star". Powerful guitars drive the song with Liam's unmistakable vocal delivery, singing like he really means it. And that's the difference between Oasis and most bands of the last 20 years. They sing it and they play it because they really mean it, not just because they want you to think they mean it.

"Shaker Maker" is a good, clever song with Beatles-esque imagery in its lyrics, and the song has been around for long enough now for me to forget any close association its melody might have with the New Seekers' Coke song, "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing". It's not one of my favorite Oasis songs, but it showed this group weren't just an out-and-out rock band but instead could come up with clever melodies and lyrics for songs that had an air of wit and whimsicality to them as well, as they further demonstrated with "Digsy's Diner", "Married With Children", "She's Electric" and "The Importance of Being Idle". This in more ways seemed to show their influence of the Beatles.

"Live Forever" was the song that made people sit up and take notice a bit more, but who was to know back then whether or not this band were capable of achieving anything else as good, or even better. Remember, Oasis didn't come to the attention of the masses until "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?" the following year. Noel even said if he thought anyone was going to take notice of the band in the way that they did he might have thought twice about ripping off T. Rex for "Cigarettes and Alcohol". Actually, the song's riff borrowed from the T. Rex song "Get It On" was in fact ripped off by Marc Bolan and co. from an earlier Chuck Berry song anyway.

"Columbia" is another standout track on this album with its infectious, relentless groove reminiscent of The Happy Mondays but played from a wall of sound that sounds like nobody but Oasis. "Supersonic" was the band's first single and a good song but again not one of my favorites, although a band could do a lot worse than launch their music career with a song like that, and many have. It has great attitude, with the first line being "I want to be myself. I can't be no-one else". Probably my least favorite song on the album is "Bring It On Down", a snarling, boisterous song that leans towards punk and somehow just fails to hit the mark.

"Slide Away" is still my favorite song from the album and one of my all-time favorite tracks. When Oasis released a DVD to mark the tenth anniversary of "Definitely Maybe" in 2004, somebody on the DVD commented that the sign of a great album is when people talk highly of a track that wasn't even released as a single, to which they were referring to "Slide Away". I'd have to agree with that. The song moves at just the right pace with a blend of wonderful melody, lyrics and chords and I particularly love the ad-lib section of the song from the end of the last chorus to the fade, complimented perfectly by Noel's lead guitar work.

So, overall a classic album that is held in very high esteem by me and the British music-buying public over a decade later, but is it the best debut album ever? Definitely maybe.

With the swaggering chords of the opening "Rock'N'Roll Star," Oasis announced that big, brash Brit rock was here to stay--at least for a few years. They wore their rock & roll with an angry young sneer, a Mancunian petulance wedded to a vision of cathartic release. Their supersonic two-guitar attack took them "Up in the Sky," where they would "Live Forever" or burn out in a blaze of alcoholic glory. Noel Gallagher's songs weren't subtle--or shy of overt plagiarism--but, spat out in the Lennonesque snarl of little brother Liam, they took on a venomous power that had millions of young Brits taking them at their own arrogant word. In the U.S., meanwhile, the response was more Maybe than Definitely

Oasis Whats the Story Morning Glory?

Despite Oasis' big claim to be a much better band than The Beatles (lead singer Liam Gallagher even went as far to verbally attack George Harrison in an interview), as well as proclaiming to be the best band in the world, they have made some excellent, tasty music that's hard not to love. If you can ignore most of the embarrassing (and often laugh-out-loud hilarious) behavior attached to the band's mystique, you may just enjoy their music, too.

_(What's The Story) Morning Glory?_ is a non-stop train of tasty, ear-pleasing rock candy, with that, add in a little bit of swaggering attitude, and you have Oasis' niche. Songwriter (and sometimes, singer) Noel Gallagher has an excellent ear for melody.. even if most of his musings seem to be, more or less, stolen from The Beatles and their British Invasion contemporaries. If you're a music lover who is lamenting the lack of Britpop/British Invasion spin-offs in the popular music pantheon these days, or if you just want some loud, good-old fashioned rock n' roll, look into this album, and some of Oasis' other offerings. That's basically it for this review.

This big rock candy mountain of an album justifies some if by no means all of the poses and pretentious statements made by Manchester's natural-born rock & roll deities. A dramatic attempt to rekindle the flames of the original British Invasion, Morning Glory rolls 30 years of Britpop tradition into one irresistible (if achingly self-conscious) whole. "Wonderwall" can be read as a Beatles tribute, "Don't Look Back in Anger" feels like a Mott The Hoople anthem and "She's Electric" and "Morning Glory" are chewy pop confections.

Oasis set to earn £15 million on London shows

Oasis are set to earn a staggering £15 million for a series of UK shows.

The British rockers are in talks with AEG - owners of London's O2 arena - about playing 10 dates this year in support of their hotly-anticipated new studio album.

A source said: "The dates will be a really special event - and the first major rock residency at The O2. There have been lots of acts there, like the Spice Girls and Prince. Led Zeppelin played one date. But no band has yet set up camp there for a whole run.

"They are lining up 10 dates some time in the autumn before taking on the rest of the world. Each London show will net them a cool £1.5 million."

The band - singer Liam Gallagher, guitarist Noel Gallagher, bassist Andy Bell and guitarist Gem Archer - are already confirmed to play the Virgin Festival Toronto, in Canada, this September.

They also have a series of US dates planned.

David Campbell, the European chief executive of AEG, recently revealed Oasis, Coldplay and U2 would be his "dream bookings" for 2008.