Authenticity and an Un-lived Nostalgia: A Biblical Night From a Gen-Z Oasis Fan
“It seems like the audience is Gen-X’ers with disposable income and kids who weren’t even alive in the 90’s.” - Gen-X guy I overheard in a merch line.
Since the start of the band’s North American leg of their tour my social media has been full of fans and journalists proclaiming the tour’s glory.
“The Gallagher’s at long last BREAK America!” I remember one reporter saying.
One specific article though that after reading immediately had me reflecting and was on the front of mind throughout the show was a guest essay from the NY Times entitled “Oasis Finally Sells Out (Stadiums)” written by the extremely talented Lizzy Goodman.
In the article Goodman speaks about Gen Z’s specific obsession with the band and points out not only towards the specific streaming numbers coming from them but also how the brothers have become for the generation these for a lack of a better term, total badasses.
Goodman writes in the article,
Gen Z kids have grown up in a world where everyone everywhere is afraid of saying or posting or retweeting the wrong thing all the time. The enemies of rock ’n’ roll are self-consciousness and self-seriousness, and although the guys from Oasis take themselves and their band seriously — sometimes painfully so — they also get that this is supposed to be fun.
Although I think Goodman is on the right track mentioning how this love of the Gallagher’s from Gen Z is rooted in the way many of us were raised online there’s another part to this as well. And it’s relatively simple.
It’s their authenticity.
And I use the word authenticity specifically because I think it’s a term whose definition (though heavily debated by professionals) has changed to be a word with a clear cut definition on social media.
Being "authentic" (again the definition is highly debated by psychologists) is defined in the Psychology Today article “What It Means To Be Truly Authentic” as “behaving in congruence with one’s values, beliefs, motives, and personality dispositions”.
Instead many on social media believe that another person, whether you’re a rockstar or a beauty influencer, must behave in a personal value set that they online have deemed authentic.
Whether I’m watching a clip of Liam swaggering over to fight a pap or watching Noel state to camera that he’s “part of the greatest band in the world” what makes many, including myself, so obsessed with watching these video clips is seeing that Gallagher authenticity. It’s evident all these years later that Liam and Noel are acting in accordance to how Liam and Noel act. It doesn’t feel like today where most artists now (sans a few) have completely lost that self authenticity, and through that lost a sense of what makes them unique. It’s why these PR moments feel recycled month and month and why whenever an artist does make a statement it reads like it went through a dozen hands and suits before being posted as an Instagram story.
As the lights went down “Fuckin' in the Bushes” played while the screen displayed dozens and dozens of headlines and tweets praising the brothers getting back together. It’s in your face from the start that the show you haven’t even seen yet is going to be fucking legendary. I remember laughing aloud during this part because I finally felt that Gallagher authenticity in person, even before the brothers took the stage.
Being a notorious critic of LA crowds I remember being nervous about how the crowd was going to be that night. But something I quickly noticed in the multiple lines I stood in that day was how international the audience was. Where I stood near barricade I and three other people were the only ones who live here in LA. So when we did the poznan for "Cigarettes and Alcohol” early into their set and beer was thrown and people crashed into each other I knew this show wasn’t going to be my average LA gig experience.
As the band progressed with often short intros in-between songs (something I remember the band has spoken about in interviews) that raucous energy was able to be maintained rather than dissipated because the artist wants to blab for five minutes about the state of the nation.
With a relatively bare stage the band lets the audience experience and feel the music they’re putting out. It’s this idea that this music is for the audience rather than what’s usual at most stadium concerts today where there’s so much flash on stage it feels like it’s more fun to be on stage. With this pretty mundane stage setup (but incredibly vibrant visuals) the fun and enjoyment I had that night was with the people around me and it was being backtracked by Oasis.
Whether belting out the outro to “Slide Away” or singing the "Octopus’s Garden” outro for “Whatever” the feeling of other’s nostalgia was thick in the air. With in my opinion the idea of nostalgia and being nostalgic being such a lived experience the specific attachment I have towards Oasis and Britpop isn’t necessarily the same exact feeling of nostalgia I feel when listening to music released when I was growing up.
(I mean the only song on their setlist that was released after I was born is a personal favorite of mine and an amazing highlight live 2002’s “Little by Little”.)
Despite that though the feeling of many other’s nostalgia for the period was infectious and felt tangible. I was able to feel and experience this un-lived nostalgia for a time period that was previously unfamiliar.
As I was leaving the show I made conversation with a straight tattooed English guy in possibly his mid 30’s who very early into our conversation exclaimed his surprise that I was a young gay American Oasis fan.
“Yeah I feel like we’re few and far between.” I remember telling him.
And that final conversation I had with another Oasis fan that night was a funny full circle moment. Just how different the two of us are shows the power that the band has held and continues to hold on multiple generations, races, sexualities, and gender identities. It shows how it was relatively recently that this shift occurred and there’s really no such thing anymore as your “average Oasis fan”.
Seeing Oasis wasn’t just me, a young fan seeing this band I like because they decided to finally go on tour again. It was me having this desire and fascination for a nostalgia that though wasn’t lived was able to be shared with me by thousands of screaming and crying fans yearning for something lost.
The show will stick with me for a long long while.
Cheers,
Dev