Brilliant 'tribute' to the end of Oasis here in The Quietus. I'm not exactly sure what they mean in labelling Liam "genetically curious"; in any case, considering that I've not listened to an Oasis record in about twelve years, much less took any interest in them, I've found myself strangely fascinated by the announcement that Noel Gallagher has left the band. The idea that the rest of Oasis might carry on without him (at least according to this article) is hilarious enough in itself - who exactly in their right mind would pay to go and see a Noel-less Oasis, never mind buy a whole new album?

I never did understand why (What's The Story) Morning Glory? was always in the top rankings of those 'Top 50 Best British Albums Ever Polls' that Q magazine seems to do. For what it's worth, Definitely Maybe and the Some Might Say EP at least had a punk spirit and energy that made them kind of look vital for a while. Yet Morning Glory must rate as one of the most overrated albums ever (as some people are now finally recognising). It's as if the fact that it sold huge amounts of copies somehow automatically transcends it from it's blatant mediocrity and bestows it in people's minds as a piece of great art, when the likes of "Don't Look Back In Anger", "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova" are just bland from start to finish, with smug, half-arsed lyrics and equally half-arsed chord arrangements, not even bothering to hide their plagiarism. Not that Oasis ever sounded like The Beatles, in my view: they could never have done albums as sonically inventive as Revolver or Sgt. Pepper because, at heart, Noel Gallagher just wasn't remotely inventive, dynamic or imaginative as a songwriter beyond his normal frame of reference. Instead, they just sound like a kind of karaoke version of The Rutles, minus the things that made The Beatles interesting and unique in the first place.
I always found it incredibly irritating the way that they would constantly repeat the maxim "we're the best/biggest band in the world", which they always seemed to do in the mid 90s in interviews, as if being the biggest band in the world equates with releasing the 'best' albums in the world (whatever that means) too. By that logic, the last couple of releases by The Rolling Stones are the best albums ever released (given that they often seemed to be labelled with the sobriquet "Biggest Rock Band In The World"), which clearly isn't true. What always irritated me too at that time was the endless articles claiming that there was 'nothing interesting' in music before Oasis - and, by extension, most of Britpop - came along; or that they 'saved' British guitar music, as if the only guitar music of the 90s that was valid was that which directly referenced the 60s (not that Oasis even did it well anyway). Even as a teenager then, I already thought that the implied notion that that there was a huge gaping hole in the early 90s before Oasis' arrival was patently bullshit.

Anyway, now that Andy Bell is (hopefully) freed from his bass duties with the Gallaghers, perhaps the silver lining is that Ride now could reform, whose first two albums were miles better than Oasis in the first place. We'll see.