THE MANCHESTER REVOLUTION, BRITPOP AND THE OASIS REUNION: WHY I’M STILL MAD FOR IT AND ALWAYS WILL BE. BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE MANCHESTER REVOLUTION, BRITPOP AND THE OASIS REUNION: WHY I’M STILL MAD FOR IT AND ALWAYS WILL BE.

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

First came the ‘Manchester Revolution,’ an explosion of bands from the home of iconic soap opera CORONATION STREET onto our radios and television music shows in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Remember the Stone Roses, with their baggy jeans, floaty tops, bucket hats and trippy riffs? Remember the Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets, the Charlatans, Candy Flip, who did a rather divine covers of the Beatles’ hit, Strawberry Fields Forever?

I was still a young one at this stage, still child-free, and I loved music. I’d spent the whole of the 1980s with my Coca-Cola-bottle-shaped radio clamped to my ear (mainly ‘cause the batteries were always running down, lol, so that was the only way I could hear it), and every Sunday afternoon I’d be found on the couch watching MTUSA. 

This was an American music programme presented by Irish chap Vincent Hanley that just played non-stop music videos for three hours, with the links showing VH, nicknamed Fab Vinnie, in different iconic places around New York, like Central Park and the like.

The show ran from about 1984 to 1987. Whenever I watch MTV’80s now, it reminds me of MTUSA, which played the most memorable videos of the ‘80s on a loop, and I couldn’t get enough of them. ZZ Top and their three similarly-themed sexy videos for their songs, Gimme All Your Loving, Sharp-Dressed Man and She’s got Legs, helped to glamorise the culture of having a bloody brilliant visual spectacle to accompany your aural one.

An Ike-less Tina Turner shimmied along to her smash hit, What’s Love got to do with it? Robert Palmer raised the temperatures of Irish Dads with the saucy video for his single, Addicted to Love, which featured the suave singer flanked by tall, dark-haired women musicians in Little Black Dresses, smouldering eye make-up and black high heels.

Music already had me in its grip by then, so when grunge came along, I listened to that too, though I never dug it as much as the rock and pop I worshipped. I was a new mum by then and I had MTV on around the clock, for both mine and the baby’s entertainment. What did the child grow up to be? A musician, natch…!

Some musos think the whole ‘Madchester Revolution’ and the subsequent Britpop thing was a musical reaction to the heaviness and even dreariness of the grunge phenomenon that came out of Seattle in the early ‘90s, with bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Sonic Youth, the Foo Fighters, the Pixies, Hole, Bush and the rest. That list was starting to sound a bit rude, lol. Hole and Bush indeed…

MTV was all over the grunge thing. If I’ve seen Kurt Cobain singing The Man who Sold the World on MTV UNPLUGGED once, with him wearing that scruffy pale green cardigan that looked like it had been dip-dyed in a vat of nettles, I’ve seen him a thousand times. Then, from about 1993 onwards, a new alternative music movement began to emerge in England that we called Britpop…

The Britpop bands drew inspiration from the pop stars of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Oasis famously worshipped the Beatles, and Blur loved the Kinks. Oasis and Blur were the two biggest bands of the whole Britpop cultural phenomenon, but you might recognise a few other names as well:

Suede, Pulp, James, Elastica, the Verve (remember Bittersweet Symphony?), the Manic Street Preachers, Supergrass, Kula Shaker, Cornershop, Travis, Radiohead, Keane, Stereophonics, the Lightning Seeds, Ash, Snow Patrol, Republica and a fair few more. I didn’t even realise how many names would be on this list until I started researching it. Goddammit, it’s a long ‘un, as the actress said to the Bishop.

My favourite Britpop bands were Oasis and Blur, and I totally threw myself into the whole Who’d you prefer, Oasis or Blur thing that was so big it even got immortalised in the Father Damo episode of Irish clerical sitcom, FATHER TED.

Sometimes I preferred Blur but mostly, I think, it was Oasis who floated my boat. I didn’t fancy either of the Gallagher brothers, deeming them both a bit big-headed and even pillocky with poorly-cut hair, but I adored singing along to songs like Roll with it, Champagne Supernova and Don’t Look Back in Anger. You couldn’t deny they wrote fantastic, singable-along-to songs, just like their heroes, the Beatles, had done.

Don’t Look Back in Anger had a fabulous video made for it featuring loads of beautiful models dressed in white and, to his obvious delight, the late Patrick Macnee of The Avengers fame. I still cry when I watch the video and see how happy he is to be included!

Christmas of 1995 was when both bands went head-to-head for the coveted Christmas Number One spot in the charts. It was Blur’s song Country House that won the Number One placing in the end, but the song/video simply couldn’t be as ingrained in your mind as the Oasis smash hit single Wonderwall and the black-and-white video they made for it.

That song was bloody well everywhere that year, and in the next one- 1996- as well. If I had a quid for every singer-songwriter who ever performed it on an Open Mic night, I’d be rolling with it- I mean, rolling in it by now. Some berk in the pub across the road from me plays it nearly every ruddy night. I wouldn’t mind, but Don’t Look Back in Anger is a far superior song, maybe the best they’ve ever written. He does murder that one too, though, in fairness…

From approximately 2006 to 2008, Ireland had a new music show called Popscene, fronted by little pocket rocket, Brian Devereaux. I had a new little ‘un as well by then, and we watched the show together twice a day, as they played all the Britpop hits from the ‘90s as well as the later Oasis stuff, like The Masterplan and The Importance of Being Idle. Both these videos were utterly superb, but it was the beautifully animated one for The Masterplan that had me in floods of tears every single time I saw it. It’s just so exquisitely done.

What did this new baby grow up to be, you ask? Only the biggest Oasis fan on the planet, lol. He loves them so much that it really annoys him when I remind him that I actually knew and loved them in the ‘90s, before he was even born. As it annoys him so much, I feel it my maternal duty to bring the subject up once or twice a day during this Oasis revival we’re currently living through, thanks to the reunion tour…!

Before this, however, Oasis split up in 2009 after Noel left, citing his brother Liam as the reason. As in, he hated his guts now. Familiarity had clearly bred contempt.The remaining band members played on under the name Beady Eye for two years, then disbanded. Noel had his own band, the High-Flying Birds, for a bit as well. Both names sucked so bad, lol.

For years then, whenever we heard about them, it was only in the context of the two Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, slagging each other off mercilessly in the press. I’d feel so sorry for their poor mother, who brought them up and presumably only wanted them to love each other like brothers should.

Now Oasis are back in the news, both for their reunion tour planned for 2025, and the controversy about the outrageously High-Flying Ticket Prices. (You’ll notice what I did there!) I won’t personally attend any of the gigs, because of my legendary fear of crowds and queues, but I’ll gladly dig out my Oasis CDs and give ‘em an airing because the music they’ve done up to now has been wonderwall. I mean, wonderfall. Sorry, I mean wonderful. The music is wonderful.

My son is one of the thousands of Disappointed who didn’t manage to secure tickets, but I’ve told him not to worry because the concerts probably won’t even happen. As I read somewhere recently, all it needs is for one of the Gallagher brothers to call the other one a greasy thick cunt or for one of them to declare that they and they alone were their mammy’s favourite, and it’s all off again. Some things never change…