“I give you bitter pills in sugar coating. The pills are harmless: the poison is in the sugar.”
-Stanislaw Lec

So Oasis have now thrown in the towel. According to various reports, principle songwriter Noel Gallagher has decided to leave the band, saying “I couldn’t work one more day with (brother) Liam”. Without going into a whole lot of detail, we can assume Liam’s drunken bafoonery probably played some large part in the split, while it’s also safe to assume that Liam probably didn’t really appreciate the tyrannical nature of Noel. Of course these are all speculations. Of course, I can’t for the life of me figure out why anybody would care as to the reason why Oasis is no more.

Instead, the real question here should be this: can anybody out there even extract a morsel of emotion one way or another concerning the departure of Oasis?

Now, I know I live in North America, and while we have bought a fair share of Oasis albums, we have never bought into the pandemonium that the UK seems to break into with the release of any new studio effort/subsequent tour. This is not something lost on the group, as our nation collectively committed the unpardonable sin of believing the Gallaghers had more in common with the Deville/Michaels tandem than that Lennon/McCartney one.

And it’s not that we hate Poison (well, I do). It’s just for the most part, we don’t see any reason to go bat-shit over a group that essentially rewrites the same songs over, and over, and over again, even if it is impressive in its own crafty way. The real haters will tell you they’re not even rewriting their own songs, but I’d rather suck on a urinal cake than get into that whole noble ‘thievery in rock n roll’ debate.

Besides, there are more pressing issues at hand. Like now that Oasis are dead to the world, do we have to pretend Heathen Chemistry’s best moments are at the very least hummable, as opposed to the previous knee-jerk reaction of wanting to leap head-first into the nearest oven on max temperature? Is it still OK for us to be firmly aware the group’s best song (Wonderwall) isn’t even the best version of that tune (it’s now a universal fact that Ryan Adams’ cover beats it in nearly every way possible. Just ask Seth Cohen). Finally, and least importantly, did the last real rock star on the planet die with Oasis?

All very good questions. For the record, Heathen Chemistry is still the musical version of rectal cancer, the original Wonderwall is still a distant second to its successor (even though the former was the quintessential 1996-98 mix-tape inclusion for any guy trying to court a girl through her tape deck), and as long as we have Bobby Gillespie kickin around, we really don’t need Liam as some sort of relic reminder of how one-dimensional rock stars used to be.

This is probably as good a time as any to clarify I do not hate the music of Oasis. I don’t understand why the motherland religiously buys any release after the bombastic Be Here Now (and if now isn’t the appropriate time to use that adjective to describe this album, we might as well yank it out of Webster’s, because this is as literal a use as you will ever see), but I don’t hold that communal zombie-march to the closest record outlet on any Oasis release date against the band, and I also understand there was a certain merry appeal to their best stuff.

It’s not that Oasis have painted themselves into a corner over the years – they’ve painted themselves into a crawl space, and every lumbering chorus is the sound of a padlock slamming down. The cultural paradox seems to be this: the English continue to get pissed up on lager and guiltlessly (perhaps robotically by this point) slide hard-earned money down the crevice, while we’re stuck here pondering the phrase “give em an inch, they’ll take a mile”.

Not sure if any of you are acutely aware of this, but that mile has stretched fifteen years wide. Yup, the twenty-year anniversary of Definitely Maybe should arrive in fairly swift order, and considering that was their last truly impressive album, I would say those Manchester boys had a nice little run, wouldn’t you?

I get asked about shit all the time I have no opinion on. “What type of trajectory design do you like in a golf ball?”, “do you think the Stone Roses will ever reunite?”, “so you like my new tattoo?” When I read about the termination of Oasis the other day, I was expecting to have some sort of very strong feelings on the matter, one way or the other, but as the end of the article began to creep up, it began to dawn on me that not only do I not give a fuck, it was completely incomprehensible to me why anybody else would either, and this isn’t just some elitist North American snarling at one of England’s musical legends.

There is no next chapter for Oasis, but there never was when they were active either. It was like they existed in some parallel universe, where everything they said and did was the same over fifteen years, but the general public perpetually reacted like it was the first time they were hearing it, even if they were just living in a dream inside their record machine. You can tell a lot about a mega-band by who they influence, and without a doubt, we are now completely hip to the fact a trickle-down effect can be a pretty awful thing (just listen to the Dentists for tangible proof).

Some may call Oasis contemporary rock gods, others will say they’re post-modern doppelgangers. Me, I think they’re revolutionaries in the sense they not only made mediocrity cool, but also fun and most importantly, familiar to millions.