Oasis's incendiary 1994 debut album
Definitely Maybe managed to summarize almost the entire history of post-fifties guitar music from Chuck Berry to My Bloody Valentine in a way that seemed effortless. But this remarkable album was also a social document that came closer to narrating the collective hopes and dreams of a people than any other record of the last quarter century. In a Britain that had just undergone the most damaging period of social upheaval in a century under the Thatcher government, Noel Gallagher ventriloquized slogans of burning communitarian optimism through the mouth of his brother Liam and the playing of the other Oasis 'everymen': Paul McGuigan, Paul Arthurs and Tony McCarroll. On
Definitely Maybe, Oasis communicated a timeworn message of idealism and hope against the odds, but one that had special resonance in a society where the widening gap between high and low demanded a newly superhuman kind of leaping. Alex Niven charts the astonishing rise of Oasis in the mid 1990s and celebrates the life-affirming, communal force of songs such as "Live Forever," "Supersonic," and "Cigarettes & Alcohol." In doing so, he seeks to reposition Oasis in relation to their Britpop peers and explore one of the most controversial pop-cultural narratives of the last thirty years.
Foreword Intro: A speck of dust in a football stadium 1. Earth 2. Water 3. Fire 4. Air Postillegalscript: Quintessence
Reading and Watching Notes
As well as an accomplished assessment of an underrated album from an overrated band, the book is a salutary example of how to interpret politics through culture, and culture through politics. Rhian E Jones Los Angeles Review of Books
Alex Niven is a writer from the north-east of England. He writes regularly for the
Guardian,
Tribune and
New Statesman, and has also contributed to publications including the
New York Times, the
Independent,
Pitchfork, The Face and
VICE. As well as
Folk Opposition (Zero, 2011), he is the author of an instalment in Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series (on
Definitely Maybe by Oasis, 2014) and
New Model Island (Repeater, 2019), a critically acclaimed memoir of Englishness and regional identity. Currently Lecturer in English Literature at Newcastle University, he helped to start the radical publisher Repeater Books in 2014.
Über den Autor
Alex Niven
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Foreword
Intro: A speck of dust in a football stadium
1. Earth
2. Water
3. Fire
4. Air
Postillegalscript: Quintessence
Reading and Watching
Notes
Klappentext
Oasis's incendiary 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe managed to summarize almost the entire history of post-fifties guitar music from Chuck Berry to My Bloody Valentine in a way that seemed effortless. But this remarkable album was also a social document that came closer to narrating the collective hopes and dreams of a people than any other record of the last quarter century.
In a Britain that had just undergone the most damaging period of social upheaval in a century under the Thatcher government, Noel Gallagher ventriloquized slogans of burning communitarian optimism through the mouth of his brother Liam and the playing of the other Oasis 'everymen': Paul McGuigan, Paul Arthurs and Tony McCarroll. On Definitely Maybe, Oasis communicated a timeworn message of idealism and hope against the odds, but one that had special resonance in a society where the widening gap between high and low demanded a newly superhuman kind of leaping.
Alex Niven charts the astonishing rise of Oasis in the mid 1990s and celebrates the life-affirming, communal force of songs such as "Live Forever," "Supersonic," and "Cigarettes & Alcohol." In doing so, he seeks to reposition Oasis in relation to their Britpop peers and explore one of the most controversial pop-cultural narratives of the last thirty years.
Author is Oxford scholar and was founding member of the Manchester indie band Everything Everything
