oasis

This beautifully shot, career-spanning, feature-length doco leaves a lot of threads hanging for those who didn't follow every nuance of the relationship between the four members of Brit-pop's Blur, and you certainly get the impression that guitarist Graham Coxon -- often a blitzkrieg of noise on-stage but nervous, reticent and slightly precious...
> music/2915/blur-no-distance-left-to-run-emi-double-dvd-set/

It was one of the saddest days I can recall, and yet it had started out so well in Birmingham, a place where I had been drawn to interview the Britpop band Ocean Colour Scene in their hometown. It was 1998 I think. OCS never really made an impact in New Zealand, which was a pity because the night I saw them they were spectacularly good,...
> mybackpages/777/ocean-colour-scene-here-in-my-heart/

There is an easy and convincing case to be made for Radiohead's more obvious OK Computer of '97 -- or the even more edgy Kid A of 2000 -- as an Essential Elsewhere album. But The Bends was their turning point, the album which took them from the pop culture hit Creep (which appeared in the teen comedy Clueless where the main character's...
> essentialelsewhere/2313/radiohead-the-bends-1995/

A couple of months ago I was invited to give a lecture to Auckland Uni music students about a contemporary songwriter of my choosing whose catalogue of work was interesting and worth studying.I picked Paul Weller on strength of this quote from him about his forthcoming album: "It takes in soul, rock'n'roll, there are some folky moments,...
> music/1719/best-of-elsewhere-2008-paul-weller-22-dreams-shock/

Somehow it seemed inevitable that an English musician would talk about clothes. These people work in a world where a photo shoot can be as important as the album of the moment. And right now with the 70s revival, bell-bottoms, chokers and an Afro are being analysed as “cultural signifiers.” Every music has its own pair of trousers....
> absoluteelsewhere/2075/damon-albarn-of-blur-interviewed-britpop-v-usa-1993-england-made-me/

By any measure, 1990 was a pretty good year in rock and pop: Sinead O'Connor announced herself with the single Nothing Compares 2 U and the album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got; George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1 delivered timeless music; and things toughened up in Seattle with Sub Pop signing Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone,...
> essentialelsewhere/1966/world-party-goodbye-jumbo-1990/

Well, no one - least of all the man himself - ever said Noel Gallagher was a wizz with a lyric, but this rowdy and sometimes thrillingly psychedelic album hits some new lows when it comes to raiding his beloved Beatles or just going for the bleedin' obvious. Among the laugh-out-loud moments here are references to  "revolution in...
> music/1919/oasis-dig-out-your-soul-sony-bmg/

When Oasis, out of Manchester, started to gain real momentum a decade ago one wag wrote to a Britrock magazine and said this was all very well, but they were dull to watch live: just hold a postcard of them at arm's length and move it about a bit, he said, and that's about it.That was true but he forgot to factor in one thing, that they could...
> absoluteelsewhere/827/oasis-definitely-maybe-dvd-reviewed-2004/

The best thing about being in a band? You get to stay up late and make a lot of noise, maybe make some money and become famous. If you want people to notice your group it's a good tip to all dress alike so when you walk in a room you come off like a gang. Black is good.Worst part about being in a band? Well, these two docos about noisy gang...
> absoluteelsewhere/829/the-ramones-end-of-the-century-metallica-some-kind-of-monster-dvds-reviewed-2007/

By the time he came to releasing albums under his own name in the early 90s, Paul Weller had already had two separate careers: first in the Jam and then the Style Council. If the Jam had been quintessentially English and took its references from the Who, the Small Faces and Ray Davies as much as Mod culture and the rage of the punk years,...
> essentialelsewhere/798/paul-weller-wild-wood-1994/