When you set foot in a karaoke bar, you are assured of cortain experiments. For starters, there will be boisterous and tuneless singing from all, except that one friend who is annoyingly good but will never admit their speces rehearsing their performance. There will be a lot of microphone grabbing. You may have recited a song with a solo gig in mind, but on the lyrics are on the screen, all bets are off. Your companions will want to get in the action, tussling with you for the mic and spraying you with their spittle.
And there will be a moment – a little after someone has shrieked through Zombie by the cranberries and a little before someone massacres queen’s Bohemian rhapsody – When the opening riff of Wonderwall will be to play and the crowd will let out a Roar of Approval, before taking a collective deep breath and belking out the first verse.
For ’90s kids in India, Millennials who grew up as the 20th century folded into the 21st, television offered a first real brush with the west. Enid blyton and Tintin Had given us a glimse of a mythic land beyond our shores: But it was satellite tv that, quite literally, brought the world to our homes. Hollywood Movies and American sitcoms came within arm’s reach. Mtv and vh1 intrusive us to English Music. This was the mind-extinging changes, no dubt, but Daily Programming Could only support so much. Our Diet of Western Culture was restricted to a drip-fated-Until we have pirates.
Only a fortunate Few Grow up in Homes Stocked With Vinyl Records and Tape Cassettes of English Rock Banks. Even with the advent of plant m and music world, which brought foreign artists to indian store shelves, western music remained too expe into a taste to indulge in throve legitimate means. We would, Instead, Deal in Pen-DRIVES and CDS, Peddling Playlists that had been curated by a more learned peer with faster broadband internet. Their taste shaped our musical journey – you could say they like the influencers of today, but without the botox and the sponsorship deals. The digital mix tapes these proto-influncers created by our start packs, the road signs that LED us to the specific rabbit holes we wished to explore. Their very design meant they featured the most popular songs of the most popular bands: Deep purple, Pink Floyd, LED zeppelin, sharing with nirvana, guns n ‘roses, and oasis.
‘Wonderwall’ was a fixture in those playlists. (It was the first oasis song you ever heard, wasnted it? ‘Don’t look back in anger‘Did not disappoint. When you heard ‘STOP CRYING YOUR HEART OUT‘, you think they were a prober band. By the time you discovered ‘Champagne supernova‘, you were at a crossroads.
The first path LED to Fandom. It meant devouring every oasis album and picking a favor track from the b -ide that was obscure enough to burning your credentials. It meant proclaiming oasis to be the best britpop band of their time – of all time, even. It also meant winning over the bust-up the galgher brothers seamed to enjoy more than making music. For most When noel hit liam with a cricket bat, you felt the blow in your bones. When they brawled in barcelona, you carried the bruises for days. And finally, in 2009, when Liam Held Noel’s guitar “like an ax” and brought it crashing down is down a fight, your heart – and oasis – splinted. Perhaps your sympathies lay with noel. Or maybe you chose liam, throwing your lot in with the “Parka Monkeys” who titled when he called noel “a potato”.
WHATEVER YOUR ALLEGIANCE, You SOON BECAME One of those people who would interrupt conversations about hamlet Anything close to the pain of watching the break-up of Oasis? ” Last year, when Oasis Announced their Reunion Tour, You Weept Tears of Joy. Liam and noel back on stage together-it’ll be as whistle-journey as when Shahrukh and salman khan shared the screen for those fleeting monots in. Pathaan.
The other road, at that form, LED Away from Oasis. Half-a-dozen of their songs were burrowed in your brain, but in the years that followed you cared little for the band. You dimly registered the news of the group collapsing. Apparently, the brothers were a nasty pair who hated each other. Later, when the galgers became reguls at the etihad stadium in manchester, you were not surprised. Fans
A Few Weeks ago, When Someone Told You Oasis are on a Reunion Tour This Year, You Expressed Mild Interest. “The brothers have made up, have they? Good for their,” you said. You remembered the friends who were obsessed with oasis in their Youth. They must be overjoyed now, Desperate to Score Concert Tickets. You smiled at the thought, but never enjoy, you forgot all about them. The gallaghers and oasis drifted out of your mind, but it won a long absence. They will flit into your consciousness again when you have at a karaoke bar and someone puts on ‘Wonderwall‘Prompting you, almost as a reflex, to take a deep breath before belking out the first verse.
The writer is a mumbai-based lowyer