“In Russia, nostalgia is regarded as an illness,” declared the mighty comedian Simon Munnery once, “or at least it used to be, in the good old days.” Zing! Oasis, who 30 years ago represented a kind of condensed nostalgia for the previous quarter-century of British rock, are re-forming. The cocaine dealers of Britain are already putting in advance orders so thousands of middle-aged men can stand in stadiums next summer bellowing trivial conversations about fuck all at each other all through the gigs they’ve paid hundreds of pounds to touts to attend. The trail of dead South American drug war casualties will stretch all the way from Heaton Park to Pablo Escobar’s ruined hippo enclosure. All the same, I wish I was going.
It used to be embarrassing when bands re-formed, didn’t it, like your dad dancing at a wedding? But when 70s New York televisionaries Television regrouped in 1992, I was delighted, as I knew all the solos on Marquee Moon off by heart and hadn’t seen them in 77 owing to being eight and preferring the Geoff Love & His Orchestra Bond themes album that I bought in Woolworths. Bands didn’t get back together in those days, unless it was to cash in on the Saga holidays circuit, where my mum was disappointed to see PJ Proby fail to split his trousers on demand sometime around the turn of the century. Nostalgia, she noted, wasn’t what it used to be.
