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

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...

xp

>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.

xp

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.