I feel that I am letting myself, and everyone else around me, down by not having more of a response to the news last week that Oasis is getting back together after… what, a decade or so…? Given the reaction that has been seen from the British media, and seemingly a fanbase that is shockingly devoted considering it’s been so long since the band were last together — and even longer since they were a meaningful force in pop culture in any real sense, let’s be honest — this is clearly A Pop Culture Moment, and yet, the most that I can honestly muster is, “Well, it was probably going to happen at some point, so sure.”
It really was an inevitability, after all; their Britpop contemporaries have all reunited at some point or another for varying degrees of lucrative nostalgia and/or creative impulses needing fulfilled. (Blur have done so twice, and had accompanying documentaries both times — as well as brand new albums, both of which were worthwhile endeavors and enjoyable, to boot.) Even the Stone Roses, that strange Mancunian north star that shone high above Oasis’s collective head for so much of their career, got back together for an ill-fated attempt a decade or so back. The idea that Oasis were really never going to do it always felt unrealistic. How could they not, when both Liam and Noel are so devoted to re-enacting rock history?
Maybe this is what the world needs to re-examine Oasis as a band, as opposed to… I don’t know: a cultural icon, or a bunch of sometimes funny, constantly mouthy dicks that occasionally put out some records. The common wisdom is that they were spectacular before burning out similarly spectacularly around their third album, and never recovering, but… that’s not really true on either end. There’s a story to be told where they were an okay band with some great songs, perpetually uneven, even when familiarity felt like a sign of quality… although whether or not that’ll be one told when a bunch of old men are on-stage failing to live up to everyone’s memory is anyone’s guess.
I was a fan, back in the day, and to some degree or another, I stayed one — or, at least, an interested bystander — all the way up until their split. They were never my band, but I was close enough to their epicenter to care all the way through the end. And now, maybe I’m the one missing out by not caring anymore. We’ll see what happens when (if?) the reunion gigs actually take place; perhaps I just need to spend some time in the soon-shee-iiiiiine again.