90s Music Monday

Circa 1994 a magazine called Loaded ushered in a whole new era in British culture known, for want of a better word, as New Laddism.

Subtitled "For men who should know better" Loaded represented the antithesis of the Sensitive New Age Guy stereotype that was a dominant social attitude in the media at the time - it celebrated infamous rogues such as Oliver Reed, football, drinking and a general "having fun with your mates" air - a sort of GQ-esque lifestyle magazine for those without a 6 figure salary.

The first issue featured Gary Oldman on the cover

Loaded_#1

and in the first few issues featured genuinely excellent articles and interviews with the likes of Hunter S Thompson and a pre-megafame Tiger Woods although soon the covers began to almost exclusively feature under dressed starlets and low level female celebrities (when I last looked a few years back it had descended even further into a barely concealed soft-core porn mag but you'll have to trust me on the earlier years).

It was into this environment - and the post Cobain-suicide declining grunge musical landscape of the same time - that Oasis released "Definitely Maybe" - a swaggering, under-polished, unapologetic anthemic balls out rock album. They sounded like the best pub band you'd ever heard. Hell they looked like it too - I mean, sure Liam had a undeniable charisma but his brother sported a unibrow, badly fitting shirts and looked, to be honest, like he was holding a guitar he didn't know how to play.

For me, the video for "Supersonic" contains all the elements - starting with Liam's madchester swagger at the start with its distinctive outward turned toes, taking in the sheep skin coats, Noel's untucked Ben Sherman, Bonehead's receding hairline and the general sense that the entire band picked up their instruments about 3 weeks back and still find them slightly awkward to hold.

But despite the fact, or maybe because of it, that its only got 3 chords, the simplest of progressions and nonsensical lyrics it's the kind of song you want to drink to and shout along with your mates. There's no pretensions, no side - it's all honesty and attitude.

Written, by all accounts, to fill a gap in a recording schedule:

"It was written and recorded in one night in Liverpool. We went into do a demo on "Bring It On Down" for McGee and a we couldn´t get it right.. and we had to have something, and i went into that room and wrote "Supersonic" in about half hour. It was never re-mixed either."  

the alka-seltzer loving Elsa is not about a girl fond of the old Bolivian Marching Powder, as one would suspect from the lyric "she sniffs it through a cane" but instead about a 9 stone flatulent Rottweiler in the studio at the time. And, if you believe Popbitch (and let's face it, who doesn't?) then the line "Can I ride with you in your BMW" refers to Smith's guitarist Johnny Marr giving Noel a lift in his car.

...

Oh dear, I think I may have just scraped the bottom of my pop trivia barrel.

But yes, the whole album was good and lo, scenes like this did happen all over middle-class surburban homes the land over