A conversation with James about the English rock band Oasis, including details about their story, music, lyrics and the sibling rivalry between Noel and Liam Gallagher.

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Introduction

Hello listeners, how are you today? Welcome to this new episode.

As you can see from the title, this episode is all about Oasis – and yes, that is Oasis the band. Do you know them? Many of you will be thinking “Yes, I know them Luke!” or “Of course we know them – and you like to do impressions of them on the podcast. So yeah we definitely know them!” but some of you will be thinking, “huh?” “who?” “Oasis?” “what?”

The name might be pronounced differently in your country. In France they’re called “owA-zees”. In Japan it’s オアシス “O-wa-shisu” (something like that).  In English it’s a 3-syllable word and the stress is on the second syllable. o-WAY-sis.

Anyway, Oasis man. Do you know what I mean?

*Luke plays some musical clips to make sure you know who Oasis are

Do you know what I mean?

Most of you probably do. But in any case, here is a pithy summary.

Oasis are (I’m saying “are” because it’s a group) a rock band from Manchester in England. They became famous in the early to mid 1990s, but they continued as a band until 2009 when they split up, acrimoniously (which means that they had an argument and fell out).

The most famous members of the group are the Gallagher brothers – Noel and Liam. They were born to Irish parents living in Manchester. So they’re English, Mancunian to be more specific, but with Irish roots.

They are famous for their particular brand of rock & roll music which seemed to be heavily influenced by so many classic British bands from the 60s, 70s and 80s, and their general attitude and demeanour – unpretentious, cool and funny, but also arrogant, cocky, rude and sometimes even violent and aggressive.

There’s a lot more to it than just those things and that is why my brother James and I decided the other day to record an episode all about this band.

Yes, this is a long episode, but it should cover most of the significant details (although I’m sure that we’ve missed certain things).

Remember, you don’t have to listen to this episode all in one go. You can pause and the podcast app on your phone will remember where you stopped, and then you can carry on later. So, break it up a bit if you like.

The aim for the episode is to tell you the main things that I think you need to know about Oasis and their music and to try to explain their cultural significance (in the UK at least) and personal significance (to us). Also, I just want to provide you with more content which I hope is interesting to listen to in order to help with your English.

At the end of the episode you will hopefully be more able to understand and talk about this iconic English band.

Just one other thing before we continue… There is quite a lot of swearing in this episode, so it’s not really for children or the swearing intolerant.

Right then, without any further ado, let’s get fockin’ started man.

Videos (some things we mentioned in the conversation)

Supersonic (Official documentary from 2016) (2 mins)

Oasis perform Supersonic on The Word (1994) The first time they appeared on national TV (3 mins)

How Supersonic was written and recorded (from the documentary) (1min30)

Bad behaviour (1min30sec)

Slide Away (with Lyrics) Every line is like the title of a song or album

Liam and Noel argue, then Liam refuses to sing (I can’t really follow what they’re saying but it’s quite interesting to watch anyway!)

Noel talks about his song being sung by the crowd after the Manchester terrorist attack (3mins)

Champagne Supernova (with Lyrics man)

Kevin & Perry (from BBC’s Harry Enfield’s Television Programme) Perry becomes a proper geezer after a trip to Manchester (2min30sec)

And more videos…

Some other interesting and funny Oasis moments.

Noel Gallagher’s DVD commentary for the Live Forever video (5mins)

Noel Gallagher interview with comedy legend Frank Skinner (30 mins)

Liam listens to other people’s music and gives his opinions (2mins20sec)

Noel talks about why Oasis split up (7mins) “I never had enough of Oasis, I had enough of him [Liam]”