Oasis

There are times when a band comes along and takes possession of the moment — carries you along with them. I want to tell you my story of Oasis and why it matters today.

Somewhere in the dregs of being a desperate, unsigned musician in San Francisco in the spring of 1994, I got a meeting with the booking agent at Slim’s nightclub. I was impoverished and barely holding a lineup of my band Third Eye Blind together. I sat in her office in the Slim’s basement, hoping for a gig. Just receiving her attention felt like stepping up to a new level. I was excited to be there. Her office was under the stage. Her name was Kat.

Kat noted she’d received my demo tape. Then she asked me what my goals were. What an unexpected question. It felt like someone with power was taking interest in my aspirations.

“I want to be the biggest band in the world.” Big smile on my face.

Kat seemed taken aback.

“Well… I mean, you need to pay your dues,” she said.

“Hmm,” I replied, “My dues — according to whom?”

Needless to say, I never received a booking at Slim’s. Insolent little sprat that I was. They sure showed me!

A few dreary, no-gig-having months later, that lineup of Third Eye Blind disintegrated. I, battling disheartenment, walked into my friend Kim’s warehouse in the Lower Haight for a photo shoot. Kim was a talented photographer, and her studio’s atmosphere rivaled what you’d imagine in SoHo in New York. I don’t know why she wanted to blow film on me, but I was happy to have new photos.

Kim had a CD turned up spiritedly loud, and on it was a “Bang a Gong” rip-off with a John Lennon-goes-Johnny Rotten-in-sport-mode vocal on top. It was rudimentary as you please — root note bass, nothing too fancy on the drums, and a T. Rex cop to be sure — but this guitarist’s chords rang, the leads sang, and together it all sounded huge, like acid house slurring off the walls of an arena. My head started involuntarily banging. It was reckless and matter-of-fact and soulful. I felt something depleted in myself being replenished. That rare feeling of being main-lined by music. Magnificent.

“Kim, what is this?” I asked.

“Oasis!” Her eyes glinted and she smiled at me in recognition. “Right?!”

“I have been needing this!” I said.

Oasis’ debut CD, Definitely Maybe, played on loop as Kim fiddled around with lighting and backdrops. The lyrics sounded like Noel Gallagher just wrote down the next rhyme that popped into his head. But I felt their message sink in and liberate my psyche:

I need to be myself
I can’t be no one else
I’m feeling supersonic

No pretense. No apologies. Oasis was void of indie’s elitism or grunge’s propensity to whinge. Fuck your dues and fuck your dress code. We’re the rock stars now, and it’s on our terms they were saying. Oasis’ rebellion was optimism. They had a dream and an aliveness in their sound, and no one was going to step on it.

Listening, I could feel the cloud I was under in my beloved San Francisco dissipate. Navigating the SF music scene then was like trying to be friends with snitches. It was riddled with self-appointed arbiters of cred, each impugning the other over flannel shirts or some shit. In my forward-thinking city, the scene felt like it was constricting into itself until it suffocated.

It could be I’m just grousing about that period in San Francisco because no one was paying attention to my band. Either way, in a moment when I needed it, Oasis reactivated a scrappy optimism within me.

I wasn’t alone in resonating with Oasis. Over the next two years, while I struggled to get a record deal and break out of a local scene that still had little interest in me, Oasis did indeed become the biggest band in the world.

At the height of their success, Oasis booked a show in San Francisco. As if by magic, their American record company rep, David Massey, had taken a shine to our demo and wanted to see us. And I, insolent as ever, proposed Third Eye Blind as Oasis’s opener. And he went for it!

On April 13, 1996, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in SF, Third Eye Blind actually did get its big break opening for Oasis. We knew, as an unknown band, that to this sold-out audience of ravenous Oasis fans, we would be, at best, patiently tolerated. But we rolled through our brief set with a heads-up exuberance that caught momentum from Oasis — and something else happened altogether. When our set ended, the crowd called us back for more, and the promoter said we had to do an encore. The San Francisco Chronicle mentioned us with praise in the next day’s review. A bidding war to sign us ensued, and a year later, our songs embedded themselves in alternative radio.

You can’t fake swagger. Swagger means your vibe comes from knowing what you’re about and standing by it. Swagger is infectious. It draws people in. It crushes fear. Oasis had theirs, and they reconnected me with mine a long time ago. We don’t sound the same or explore the same themes, but there is a bit of Oasis in our DNA, and I am forever glad for them.

Now Oasis has reformed for a tour, and here is the point of this whole essay: I don’t believe their return after 15 years is random. It’s not because Noel needs to pay for his divorces, or because Liam mellowed, or some nostalgia nonsense. I believe they are being called back by the collective consciousness of a culture longing for that precious swagger’s return.

These days, people of good conscience have been balled up into a defensive crouch for more than a minute now — and they’re ready to emerge. We’ve been told to be afraid while the bullies eat cake. We’ve been encouraged to acquiesce in despair while the world around us is defouled. Might as well just park your sad blue face in a screen and cuck out till you rot.

As an artist, I sense a collective voice gathering that says: Fuck all that. I think the millions of people at the No Kings protests were there less for a specific policy than because they are ready to feel optimism over fear again.

Music resonates at a higher level when it illuminates a culture’s subconscious aspirations.

Oasis is not Kumbaya, but something in their music says all together. They’re not anodyne, but these council estate lads refused to surrender to their circumstances — so when they say things can get better, it hits different.

When you go to an Oasis concert, the loudest thing you will hear is every soul in there, at the top of their lungs, singing “DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER!” People are ready to move on from this nightmare moment, and that readiness creates agency. People are ready for a glint in the eye and a chip on the shoulder — and that is why Oasis is back. And that is why, when they play America next, it will hit different. Just you wait. When you see Oasis play again, you will see a collective mood galvanize — just as surely as it did for me.

Maybe politicians will catch up to this moment, as well. If House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, listened to “Supersonic” every morning before entering chambers, he might say something worth remembering. But I digress.

Here’s the truth: I’m here telling you — you need Oasis. I NEED OASIS. I’m ready to feel supersonic.

Welcome back, lads. Just when we needed it most.