The Oasis Book

Wednesday is about books, and reading, and writing. Today, it's the Oasis book you didn't know you needed. For the Oasis fan in your life. A tender tribute to a different time...

It was a couple of years ago now, I got an email from someone called “Kazz”. I had to believe it. They wanted to write a book about Oasis. Not only that, it was going to be specific. Very specific. It was going to be about the time - 25 years ago in fact - when Oasis played two shows in New Zealand. Two slightly shambolic shows. Two shows where Oasis fought and fans craved more music than they actually got. It was a time when the Britpop kings were the biggest band on the planet. It was their only visit to New Zealand. (The Gallaghers have both been back with their own bands - but this was the one time we got to see Oasis).

Who cares, you say. You’re not an Oasis fan. You never were…

Some things are bigger than just your own personal take on a situation. When Oasis came to New Zealand it was news for days. And days. Everyone knew someone who saw it, or tried to, or was connected in some way. I had a friend who was working the venue, she said after that the fight we all worried was somewhat staged was definitely not; they’d done $7000 of damage to the green room, smashing up the lamps that were hired from Freedom. Chump change to the world’s biggest band. Someone connected to the touring party would have thrown a few bills in someone’s direction to clean that shit up…

As soon as I read this email from Kazz. I was remembering stories about the band in New Zealand. The email went on to say that Kazz had found my review of the gig. He hoped he could use it. It was polite of him to ask, and I was probably a bit embarrassed to think that something I scratched out in the early days of trying to write about music (I’d paid for my own ticket, attended as a fan, then written a review for Salient - the student rag) was going to be immortalised in this way. But it was part of the bigger story, so sure. I offered to write a foreword to the book.

I probably didn’t think the book would ever fully happen. It was such a lofty idea. Who wants 300 pages focussing on a 70-hour timeframe from 25 years ago?

Last week “Kazz” - aka Karamdeep Sahota, an author and archivist (and now editor and publisher) - dropped a copy of the completed book in my letterbox as a thankyou for my involvement.

It was launched yesterday. You can purchase it. You can read about it on Reddit, on Amazon, you can read my wee review on Goodreads. The link above tells you where to buy it, online, but I know there are a couple of copies at Unity Books in Wellington. So get in quick there!

This is a great Christmas present for the Oasis fan in your life. Maybe that’s you. Maybe it’s your partner, your mum or dad, brother or sister, uncle, aunty, etc…

Get On The Rollercoaster: Oasis In New Zealand, March, 1998, is a book specifically - as its title tells us - about the Kiwi tour on the back of the release of the band’s third album. This was when Oasis was huge. At their peak. It was when I was a fan. My interest in them dwindled off, almost immediately after the show, and yet I have fonder memories of the actual music on that night in Wellington than some of the other fans. It was a shorter show than it should have been, Liam and Noel were at each other, but what I remember was Liam’s swagger. When he was on (stage), it was on! He arrived like the last great rock star. It was compelling.

But how is this A BOOK? You (rightly) ask…

Well, Sahota has gone deep. He has the photographs of the time, all of the reviews, the interviews, the features about the band - many of them clipped and presented as they appeared at the time in The Listener, and Salient, and The Evening Post, and The Dominion, and so on…

He has provided his own writing about the band, and tour. And then he has assembled an amazing oral history-styled deep-dive by finding the fans of the time.

This is New Zealand. So you will know names in these pages. I spotted about a dozen people who I know well, or have met briefly. I recognised myself in some of their comments. Because it’s all about record collectors, and concert goers, and music retailers, and not just reviewers, but review-readers.

In the end, what is most compelling about this book is the memories - not just of the music and the band, but of a different time. You will see photographs of Wellington and Auckland in the late 1990s. You will remember when Wellington had two thriving newspapers - sent two seperate reviewers along for their morning and evening editions; now the city limps along with a daily pamphlet, its contents (if you bother) already scattered online in the days before.

It’s simply a snapshot of a different time.

In those emails I exchanged with Kazz, he asked if I had any other memories of the show beyond my review - which was why I offered a foreword, and whether I knew of anyone else who had a story. One of my great university chums had a yarn about working in a shoe store and selling Liam some kicks on the day of the gig. So that’s in the book now. We also liaised about how you get something like this off the ground and into people’s reading hands. How do you make this an actual book, and make the book a reality? Well, I was blunt. I didn’t think any local publisher would take it on. But I gave some names and places to try. And I recommended self-publishing; there’s no shame in that (ironically back in the time of the book’s events it was about the lamest thing you could do).

I’m so thrilled Kazz went down the path of doing this on his own. Such commitment to the bit.

And the end result is amazing. And was actually close to emotionally overwhelming. I read stories from friends I didn’t know. I read great writing from people that aren’t (necessarily) writers. I saw photos that took me back to the place I used to live (I still live here, but the place has changed). I read names I knew, it made me want to reach out and say hi, get back in touch.

And this is what music is about. Community. This is why we share our stories, why we go to gigs, why we save clippings, read books, collect ticket stubs….etc.

So it is bigger than Oasis. And this is when Oasis was at their biggest! But that’s music. That’s fandom. It sent me back to the music, of course. I won’t stay forever, but it was nice to be reconnected.

In the foreword I say, “It was a moment in time. And to see that moment frozen here. Held up not really for scrutiny but held up entirely by and fore love, well, that’s what music’s about init? That’s the very best thing about music. It brings us together, builds communities, even sitting in a bedroom or walking down the road now with our headphones on, or in…the music of the moment makes us feel less alone in this world”.

Those first few Oasis albums still stand up - well, the first one does especially for me. Your mileage will vary. But I have nostalgia attached to the second (I was in a covers band that played about half of it) and the third one is linked to music retail, midnight openings, queues just to buy an album - and of course to this messy, maddening, and magical gig. Which is now all memorialised in this beautiful tribute to not only the band and the event but a lost ‘era’.

Check out the book here. Buy it for the fan in your life.