As Oasis announce that they will be including America in their reunion tour, to finally ‘take’ the country that famously resisted their charms back in the day, what of Radiohead? A band who, while Oasis fell into coke-bloated decline after Knebworth, easily ‘took America’ the first time around in 1997 following the release of Ok Computer, and fulfilled Oasis’ fading dreams of being the biggest band in the world.
Just as Oasis with all their rage and defiance and hope, captured something important in the national mood of the UK at least, so Radiohead captured the disquiet around Blair’s messiah-liar PM performances, the pre-millennial paranoia, the anxiety around consumerism-as-fulfilment, and dawning digital alienation (all things which we readily accept as just daily life These Days, proving rock n roll can’t save the world after all).
