Where Have All The Rock Bands Gone?
And the day the music died
With all the hype surrounding Oasis burying the sibling hatchet and going out to perform live again, not so much to the accompaniment of guitars but the loud ringing of cash tills (assuming they still ring), Noel Gallagher has been doing the media rounds. I caught a small video clip where he compared today’s music scene to the nineties, the heyday of so called Britpop from which Oasis briefly rose to spectacular heights. Unknown at the time, it also turned out to be one of the last decades when rock bands still ruled as a pertinent cultural force.
He remarked that bands like Oasis were always anathema to the chief executives, and their ilk, of the music industry. For a while they were a necessary evil they could well do without — if only. They were necessary only in terms of making the big wigs a lot of money. The ‘evil’ was because they were working class lads, who were viewed as over opinionated, and consumed naughty quantities of booze and drugs. They were less easy to control — unpredictable, unmanufactured — and less easy to manipulate than the current breed of pop music icons like Harry Styles. And although they drove the business model, their presence made it less certain. The creative and aesthetic spark at the heart of their business, allowing the suits to make their millions, was the Vesuvius ready to…
