Stadium Concerts and the Iconography of Totalitarianism
I am going to start with something polarizing. I like the band Oasis.
When people who don’t like Oasis find out that you do like Oasis, they will often try an intervention, like they discovered you’re in a cult where everyone wears white Skechers and signs a suicide pact. People who are musically inclined will explain that your taste is basic, and start suggesting bands that use weird time signatures and exotic modes. If I wanted to listen to King Crimson, I would just listen to King Crimson.
Plenty of Oasis’ music is simple. “Columbia” is A-D-C in a loop for five minutes. But AC/DC proved fifty years ago that there is a bottomless appetite for three-chord party rock, and I think it comes down to branding. Britpop produced a lot of interesting and thoughtful bands—Stone Roses, Suede, James, arguably Radiohead—and then there were Liam and Noel Gallagher, a two-headed wrecking-ball of surly Manchester sex-appeal.
This branding divide was captured in the short-lived but intense Oasis vs. Blur Britpop rivalry of the mid-nineties:
Blur:
- Thinking person’s Britpop band
- Sing about gender fluidity
- Rhyme “Balzac” and “Prozac”
- 7 million albums
Oasis:
- Wankers
- Concerts full of chavs
- “Fuckin’ in the Bushes”
- 75 million albums
Behold your revealed preferences.
The Gallagher brothers famously despised each other and the band broke up in acrimony in 2009, years after their creative peak. But the shimmering aura of money has magical healing properties, like an amethyst chandelier, and the brothers embarked upon a reunion tour this year.
My family and I lucked into tickets to the concert at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena last month. The Gallaghers could remember at any moment that they hate each other and tumble back into violence, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see them together as it might never happen again. We had a great time.
Imagethief 