LTW newsletter 105…

Dear Warriors,

We imagine you must be totally Oasis’d out by now and probably felt that way before the reformation but in pop culture terms this has been a truly remarkable and fascinating few weeks. 

The five Heaton Park shows totally engulfed Manchester with joy as a multi generational audience poured into town and then the roads up to Heaton Park, creating an ecstatic carnival that continued to the end of the gigs in Manchester and has now started in London. 

In the past month, there seems to have been a cultural shift that goes beyond the band. It helps that Oasis have never sounded better and their new three guitar line up certainly did the songs justice whilst Liam’s vocals somehow remarkably are the best we have heard and with the requisite level of intensity needed to make the songs work. 

Whether it was an exercise in nostalgia or just bloody good there is something stunning about the shows and with half the audience being first timers to the band there is suddenly plenty of opportunity for where this goes next - will these shows inspire a new generation of bands who take this as their cue and go off in their own directions and avoid the carbon copy, will guitar sales soar in the shops and the people’s music which is so often guitar music have an unexpected last gasp?

Even before these shows there have been more young guitar bands cooking up something special from Manchester like the K’s and now a brace of three new bands who are already at a level for breakthrough including the Postcard records infused Arkala and the post Arctic Monkeys rush of the Florentenes. Both bands played together a couple of weeks ago at the packed Gorilla venue in town and both bands have also announced their own upcoming shows in much bigger venues as their ascendant rise begins to accelerate as well.

Another band that seems to be in an even bigger rush is The Guest List, who come from Altrincham and bring a suburban twist to their indie classic that drips melody and a poetic smithery that somehow reminds of that micro Mersey Paradise period of the Stone Roses when they were in between their punky beginning and the first album.

One of the great drummers of the post punk period was Budgie who moved down to London from Liverpool in the punk wars to add the mystical feminine rhythms to the Slits which was ironic.  He was then poached from that band by the iconic Siouxsie and joined the Banshees and helped to take their music somewhere else that was further explored when he and Siouxsie put together the Creatures whilst they both became an item, which he covers in the book with a heartfelt honesty. 

We were sorry to hear of the passing of Ozzy Osbourne this week. Truly one of the giants of rock who somehow combined a befuddled take on the stardom that surrounded him with a mad charisma that stumbled through the reality TV series that made him a national treasure. His fame over shadowed his prowess as one of the great rock singers whose stage presence and vocals helped to define Black Sabbath who were one of those rare bands who created a genre. A genre that still dominates music to this day. I was in Birmingham the day that Ozzy died and paid my respects at Black Sabbath bridge whilst Richard Houghton pays his respects in the piece below.

It was good to hear of the return of Ash - the Northern Irish punk band who somehow got caught up in the punkier end of Britpop with their savvy and smart songs of pop punk perfection. I remember bumping into them in Cuba in 2001 when they were making a video for ‘Sometimes’.  We were in a late night bar and they were surrounded by a swarm of prostitutes who they nimbly avoided with their innocence and lack of rock n roll piggery. 

Decades later, it’s still hard to think of them being veterans! 

Steve Harrison was the manager of The Charlatans who was also asked to manage Oasis in the very earliest days. He also put out the Charlatans records on his Dead Dead Good record album and was very much part of the Manchester scene at the time. He has written up his adventures in a recent book which is an account of the ups and downs of band management. He found time from his recent spoken word tour to promote the book and to give us his top 10 favourite albums. 

Another great new band in Manchester are Hungry, who are less of the classic Manc indie sound and more of the post-punk quirk that is perhaps more Franz Ferdinand than Oasis. Their new single is an excellent piece of work and comes highly recommended.

Bodega the post-modern Brooklyn art rockers played Manchester recently where they paid tribute to Ozzy Osbourne and rail against corporate rock at a wild show…