How Brits hear Oasis and Blur (and Slade?) differently than Americans

here in boston, around 1997 or so, one of the local modern rock radio stations tried to hype things up with a big Blur vs Oasis "battle" that must have been imported from the UK. I dont think anyone really cared all that much one way or the other.

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Slade cut their hair in an attempt to jump on the skinhead bandwagon, for they were the Bravery of their day, before going on to invent Oasis. I recommend the excellent 'Glitterbest' compilation, which captures the glam/gutter crossover perfectly.
-- snotty moore (liljelvi...), April 22nd, 2005.

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So were there skinhead bands BEFORE Slade, then? (I mean, if they were the Bravery, who were Franz Ferdinand or the Killers, or even the White Stripes or the Strokes? If such bands existed, did they *sound* like Slade?)And do people believe that Slade "invented Oasis" *musically* (or just, you know, in that way that apparently in England the Oasis brothers were apparently advertised as "hard drinking men starting rows in the loo" even though you can't remotely hear it in their music?) Because I don't think I hear any Slade in their music either. To me Slade sound like they invented the Clash and AC/DC (and the 4 Skins and Kix and Girlschool) way more than they invented Oasis.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), April 22nd, 2005.

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Slade were experienced musicians who saw a bandwagon and jumped on it, with limited success. The skinhead fashion was a spin off from the mod scene by those who rejected hippiedom. So I suppose the Bravery are more analogous to the brickies in eyeliner who rode the glam wave. The Oasis/Slade comparison is perfectly valid in that both were genuinely huge with genuinely noisy guitar records, something which, outside the glam era, has very rarely happened in British pop. Singles flying in at number one, temporarily more popular than football etc. They even covered a Slade tune, pretty much note for note and it still sounded like Oasis. They do not sound one bit like the Beatles (unless they're making a real effort) but they held a similar position to Slade at their peak. I don't hear the slightest hint of Slade in the Clash and very little in AC/DC (perhaps 'Alive', but not the singles). But I grew up with these records in their original chart context during my schooldays, so my Anglo view is entirely skewed to that. White dogshit, Spangles, Magpie with Jenny Hanley etc...
-- snotty moore (liljelvi...), April 22nd, 2005.

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Uh, OK. I guess you could say the same thing about David Bowie. If you really think that Slade sounds more like Oasis than the Clash and that Oasis sounds more like Slade than the Beatles you must be listening to different Slade records than I.

-- walter kranz (kranz_walte...), April 23rd, 2005.

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I don't think Oasis necessarily sound a lot like Slade, but I think it's in their mix -- as is Bowie, at least on 'Definitely Maybe.'
-- Rickey Wright (rrricke...), April 23rd, 2005.

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I have admittedly never heard Oasis's Slade cover, so who knows about that. (I have heard Quiet Riot's Slade covers, though; they were okay. ) But judging from the three or so Oasis albums I've heard (i.e., the ones with the hits, most of which were swoopy and timidly ornate but not remotely rocking ballads), Oasis never had "loud guitars," not in any songs I've ever heard.; that's just bizarre. They never much stomped and never did gang shouts, not like the Clash (early on) and AC/DC did. (Heck, not like Twisted Sister or Andrew WK or Lil Jon and the Frigging East Side Boyz did!) Oasis rocked harder than Coldplay or Radiohead I guess (not necessarily harder than Blur, though, who I gather were considered aesthetes or dilletantes in he UK, but who now and then could be vaguely glam-pop-punky in a sort of Mott/Boomtown Rats way when they speeded up), but big deal. Their music did not swing; their whitbread bland singing and whitebread bland rhythm section have nothing to do with what Slade did. (Actually, Noddy's vocals, when he wasn't doing the Cockney stuff, sometimes veered toward a post-Janis wail that's closer to the vocals in Guns N Roses or Nazareth than to anything Oasis ever did.) I'm not saying Oasis didn't somehow serve a sociological function in England (i.e.: football hooligan music); I know nothing about that, and I know nothing about what fights the tabloids might have reported about band members. And I'm also not saying they sounded very much like the Beatles, though they may have tried (actually, isn't more of their music closer to, say, random tracks on Lennon and Harrison solo albums?) I remember a couple isolated but failed attempts at a sort of Bolan/Ian Hunter glamminess (what was that cigarettes and alcohol song they did?), but they never matched T. Rex's or Mott's beat, and they sure never pushed like Slade could push. But then, few bands do.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), April 23rd, 2005.

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I meant I'm not saying they didn't serve a sociological function SIMILAR TO SLADE in England; they most likely did--just not by sounding like Slade.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), April 23rd, 2005.

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(and okay, "whitebread bland" might be a bit of an exagerration -- not to mention a cliche in the Xhuxk Eddy insult lexicon -- but sorry, Oasis's vocals and rhythm are just not *full bodied* the way Slade's and Slade's descendents' were. Slade's rhythm often harked back to New Orleans r&b and, as I say above, even Jamaica -- Frank Kogan has written more eloquently about this than I have. And Oasis sounded pretty thin, for the most part. And the Oasis bros may well have had a lot of drunken fight in their lives, but they didn't have a whole lot of drunken fight in their music. Even ask the Anti-Nowhere League if you don' t believe me. Hell, even ask the Pogues!)
(Also, am i wrong about blur being considered aesthetes/dilletantes? maybe; again, i don't read british music papers. but i somehow get the idea they were marketed as nice boys from the country house in the village green -- whatever that means; we don't have those here -- not bad boys from the streets. correct me if i'm wrong. at any rate, the new wavey glammy kind of blur nugget i'm thinking of would be something like "jubilee": ok, maybe closer to a fast early police song, or 999 or somebody like that, than mott? you figure it out. still more energetic and effervescent than anything i ever heard from the oasisites. and it's no mistake that in the states, where people cared about what these bands sounded like more than what they supposedly "stood for," "song no. 2" wound up as the "whoomp there it is"-style jock jam, and nothing by oasis did.) (not that i'm a big blur fan or anything; even their best-of album seems to me bloated with a lot of crap. i'm just talking about peak moments here.)

-- xhuxk (xedd...), April 23rd, 2005.

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the only Blur song I'm familiar with is "Girls and Boys," from '94. Locked-in post-disco rhythm section, guitar swoops. I am light on that era of British pop music, actually. On the same comp CD my buddy made me, there's a good Morrissey song from the same year, "The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get," which I like far better, even though I'm not a big fan of Morrissey or the Smiths. More heart, more to my taste as it's kinda British-pop-soul like they did in the '60s.
I always for some reason associate Status Quo with Slade--was that the same kind of thing, or were Status Quo more twee, like the Move or Vanda and Young or something?

-- edd s hurt (eddshur...), April 23rd, 2005.

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so, wait, back to the topic not at hand: is it possible that snotty moore meant that oasis sound like slade's BALLADS? Like, you know, "Far Far Away" and the Christmas one? Maybe that would make at least a little more sense, now that I think of it, though I still don't hear how the singers sound remotely similar. Anyway, when I think of Slade, I think of the 90 percent or so of their catalog that was stomps, but is it true that the ballads were (and maybe still are, at Christmastime at least) more ubiquitous hits in England? Not that their ballads didn't stomp too; they kind of did. But usually when I think of Slade I forget the ballads ever existed; maybe that's part of the difference here?
-- xhuxk (xedd...), April 24th, 2005.

I don't know if I've ever actually heard the Skids, Scott! But they were the band that turned into Big Country, right? So that makes sense to me: "Whiskey in the Jar" ---> Irish-spring-commercial-style bagpipe parts! Which connects to Slade not only because "Run Runaway" was its own kinda Celtic new wave but because the numero uno source of The Stomp is The Jig, right? (I figured that out while watching the Duhks live the other night -- they did this one renaissance-fair-sounding reel number, and with the drummer pounding underneath I actually started thinking of Led Zeppelin! I am not making this up!)

blur came to me as i entered high school...across the ocean. innitially they were a nice poppy version of my bloody valentine, wierd, arty, exotic ... a far far cry from the guns'n'roses and far cry from janes addiction or living colour (who i liked quite a lot, but didn't feel all too connected to). as their sound expanded i heard more of the kinks and zombies and that sort. sure, there were tougher (read spaztic vs. stompy)little numbers and a bit of the clash on both modern life and park life, but i always heard them as a arty pop band.

i saw them as the sorts of guys i wished i could meet in subburban ny.

oasis were the swaggery glammier version ... less art, more blues-based britpop of the old variety. and they seemed like dicks.

when i moved to england, i was in a place where blur was played everywhere. it was comforting untilli came to understand that their popularity didn't correspond to scores of people that liked them for the reason i did. people i met who were big fans (or were) were very different from the sort of people i expected. they were average people, mass britons.

i wonder, in an absense of the press, how i would hear blur or oasis vs how a british person would.

I mentioned that one above -- not an awful track; the closest (as far as I know) Oasis ever came to Mott (in Mott's ballad mode anyway) or T. Rex (closer to those bands than to Slade, who rocked harder and heavier -- okay, not as heavy as *Brain Capers* maybe, but again, I said Mott *ballads*), but an extremely wimped-down, watered-down, un-rowdy version of it. A mere shadow of glam, at best. Not even close to Nick Gilder level. Hell, not even close to Louis XIV level, really.

Where is the blues in Oasis's music, exactly? Not in the vocals, not in the beat, not in the guitar leads, near as I can hear. And what "old variety" do they sound like? Again, I'm not arguing; just trying to understand this. I'd say their sound is closer to the Smiths than to the Stones. They don't rock; they *shamble.*

Liam Gallagher's look and voice is the #1 reason why they were perceived as they were in Britain - that if anything was their "glamour".

The Placebo/Suede/Auteurs guys had way more glam (way more SWISH) in the vocals; Oasis's singing sounds totally straightlaced in comparison.

OK, so I just listened to this and I kind of see your point. It's kind of hard to see past the vocals though (which are like 40% of Slade's appeal).

and, yes chuck, yr right..ain't much blues in oasis...thinking them over now is making me hate them. if anything, i think oasis were closer to putting a touch of faces via weller and mott rock into things like the boo radleys. alan mcgee points out that oasis just wanted to sound like stars from the get go (orange amps, attitude, etc). i never really considered it much, but as were tlaking about them now i see that oasis were really a bit of artiface. they do lack the boogie, swagger, and stomp of the bands they claim(ed) to want to aspire to.

believe? something like that...

I also have an off and on collection of Slade stuff from after they were dropped in the US. "Nobody's Fool" was the last LP before Quiet Riot's hit with "Noize" upped their stock very briefly for two LPs, one of which was "Keep Your Hands off My Power Supply," had a great first side and an awful second, I think. In between, there was a third shabby live album -- still sounding nothing like Oasis -- and a bunch of singles and records which had them veering between stabs at what they sounded like in their heyday and heavily guitar-processed 80's cheese, still sounding nothing like Oasis.

That is exactly what makes it sound typically English rather than American.

There is some blues in album tracks such as "Colombia" and "Fade In-Out" though. Plus several of their most recent ones.

T.Rex are kind of different because Marc Bolan always had this boogie base that made his songwriting considerably different from particularly Slade. Slade had a lot of that highly melodic archetypical English Music Hall thing about them, while Bolan, with his empasis on boogie and blues, always sounded a lot more American (even though the glam, camp and kitchen sink approach in his image and lyrics was typically English)

Here we have that cross-the-waters divide thing. Loud guitars in Oasis? Not compared to Slade or even what I think of as "loud guitars" bands.

basically, in terms of songwriting, Oasis are a Beatlesque pop band, and not at all rock'n'roll. And that was the case with Slade too)

Slade was not at all rock and roll? Ha-ha. Nice try. "Rock and Roll Preacher," "We're Really Gonna Raise the Roof," "We'll Bring the House Down," "Lay it Down," "Good Time Gals," "Know Who You Are," "Gudbuy T' Jane." Not to mention all the covers of American rock and roll songs like "Move Over," "Let the Good Times Roll," "Born to be Wild..."

The point of similarity between Oasis and Slade is that both managed to appeal to people who didn't like actually like music all that much- 'Morning Glory' is the biggest selling album in the UK ever, bar none. And they didn't soften up their sound either. In fact when they attempted to, the rot set in sharpish (well, with that and the nose-up). Britain loved Slade so much that 'Merry Xmas Everybody' was still in the charts in March. Only last year it was voted best ever Xmas song on one of those poxy C4 Top 100 shows. To this day Slade are beloved in a way Bowie and Bolan, seen as rarefied or distantly symbolic of an era, are not. "Slade in residence' by Vic and Bob, Noddy Holder selling bar snacks (right now! on the telly next door!)- the public know who Slade are even now. And you could imagine the same happening to the Gallaghers- Noel is clearly the new Noddy, more entertaining talking than singing. But not Blur. They're in the worthy box, the sort of band who inspire parents to say 'You used to like them, didn't you?' to their grown up kids.

(But whoever compared Oasis to Crazy Horse was closest. Lots of marijuana, long long guitar solos and all played at a pace even the most befuddled could keep up with- now that was the true, forgotten sound of the early nineties.)

At Slade's time? Well, Alice Cooper, maybe? Nazareth? Aerosmith? Kiss? Geir and Snotty, Slade were a METAL band -- at least as far as their guitars were concerned (and later, as far as Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister were concerned.) They were way BETTER than Kiss, but it was the same genre. And no way do Oasis fit with that company.

>The point of similarity between Oasis and Slade is that both managed to appeal to people who didn't like actually like music all that much<

Again, this has absolute zero to do with how the two bands sounded (though I'm glad you mentioned "Merry Xmas Everybody", which answers a question I asked upthread: You consider Slade a ballad band, right? That's completely bizarre; what percent of their songs were ballds??

I have no idea who I'd consider a loud guitar band that's topped charts in the England in the '80s and '90s; I don't keep up with Brit charts, but I also kind of assume Brits don't much like loud guitars anymore. (The Wildhearts? Therapy?? Motorhead? Though as I said, Girlschool sound closer to Slade to me. Did they have UK hits?)

wow, that's snobbish and fucking retarded...

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>Noel is clearly the new Noddy, more entertaining talking than singing<

But then, I have never really heard Noddy talk. He would have to be UNBELIEVABLY entertaining talker to be more entertaining than he is as a singer, though.

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Now I get it. You mean Slade and Oasis to Brits are like Styx and Nightranger or Damn Yankees are to Yanks. Although Styx, Nightranger and Damn Yankees all were louder guitar bands than Oasis.

Damn right.

I get the impression in this thread that Slade would have been thought not be an influence on or like Oasis if they had been more of an abject failure like they were in the States. Slade did try in the US and it just wouldn't do. Maybe "Cum On Feel the Noize" is known but as such, mistakenly thought to be written by Quiet Riot. If "Run Runaway" actually charted years later, it didn't help them. And nothing from the early albums did anything although "Gudbuy T' Jane" is known to hard rock and some metal fans, Britny Fox, for example, covering it. And that was another US metal band that had a sound that was patterned on Slade.

"In Flame" -- the record, not the movie, was released in the US but no one listened to it as far as I know. They opened for Black Sabbath in support of it, something Oasis wouldn't survive in the US if it were tried. Slade didn't do any Beatle-esque numbers from "In Flame" that night.

Noddy Holder now advertises peanuts, for what it's worth.

Alice Cooper advertised for cheap and clean hotel rooms a year or so ago. We'll trade you!

As for post-Slade, Slade, Quiet Riot hit with "Mama Weer All Crazee Now" in the '80s too, didn't they? (And didn't some other metal band called the Mama's Boys, who I never heard, cover it simultaneously?)

Actually, he is pretty entertaining. I watched the DVD of Slade In Flame (the movie) a while back and thought he was quite a good actor and the special feature interviews were fairly amusing. I suppose I might take it all differently if he were constantly on the TV over here but then Ozzy's recent overexposure hasn't dampened my love of Black Sabbath at all.

Alice Cooper advertised for cheap and clean hotel rooms a year or so ago. We'll trade you!

Even worse he was shilling back-to-school supplies for someplace like Target or Wallmart.

Paradoxically, the "Boots" anthology is kind of shitty with regards to what the US experience vis-a-vis vinyl was with Slade. The new compilation is predominantly their singles and the singles mixes and they don't sound like what was the vinyl experience in the US, the big easy to find catalog pieces being "Slade Alive," "Slayed" and "Sladest." And the mixes on those records are harder and heavier and that's how I remember them, so the Shout reissue basically sucked from my perspective because it portrayed a history and sound that just never existed in the US market for Slade. Shout should have just stuck with the "In Flame" DVD and worked on getting the rights to release the originals at a budget price.

Obviously left off the art for the domestic release in 72.

Slade were generally an important influence on 80s hair/glam metal.