My body feels young but my mind is very old.
One of the rapidly diminishing perks of being on the wrong side of 40 is that my formative years were in the '90s—a decade that played out to a gloriously chaotic soundtrack. It was a time of Madchester, boybands, acid house, the death throes of hair metal, the rise (and fall) of grunge, and the tabloid-fueled battle of Britpop. And yes, it was also the decade when Bryan Adams seemed determined to never leave the number one spot.
They say the music released when you're 13 or 14 becomes your forever soundtrack. If that’s true—and I believe it is—then I was blessed. Because that was the moment Oasis exploded into the world.
They didn’t just enter the charts—they kicked down the door, swaggered in, and changed everything. To a kid trying to figure out who they were, Oasis didn’t just provide music—they provided a mood, an identity, a vibe.
As Dickens might have put it:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
It was the epoch of Oasis, it was the epoch of Blur,
It was the season of Grunge, it was the season of Boybands,
It was the spring of Pulp, it was the winter of Robson & Jerome,
We had everything before us, we had nothing before us.”
And through it all, Oasis played on—raw, loud, imperfect, and unforgettable.
90's Image by the Excellent Jim made in Microsoft Paint, get a print here
She is electric... Can I be electric too?
I first heard about Oasis not through speakers, but through felt-tip ink on a school bag.
It was 1993 or maybe early ’94. We were in the 6th form common room, the kind of institutional beige space lit by vending machines and teenage ambition. Laura Green—always three steps ahead of the rest of us—had scrawled the word OASIS across her Army & Navy Surplus backpack, claiming cultural dibs on a band that, at that point, most of us hadn’t even heard play a note.
If Laura wrote it on her bag, it mattered. It was like a quiet prophecy: something was coming.
Before long, they were everywhere. Not just on Laura’s bag, but on the radio, in the magazines, at house parties, on compilation tapes, and in conversations. They were urgent, loud, swaggering, melodic, and impossible to ignore.
They were electric.
That scrawl on Laura’s bag was enough.
Enough for most of us to realise we needed to know more—urgently. No Shazam, no YouTube rabbit holes, no Spotify algorithms to serve it up on a plate. Just rumours, scribbled names, and half-remembered quotes from someone’s older brother.
Then, like contraband treasure, a cassette started doing the rounds. A copy of a copy of a copy—hissed to hell, warbly from overuse, with hand-written track titles in varying shades of Biro. Looking back, I think it must’ve been the Gleneagles gig from ’94, though at the time it could’ve been from Mars for all we knew. All we cared about was how it felt.
And it felt like electricity.
The kind that buzzes just under the skin when you know you’re hearing something before the rest of the world catches up. A secret signal for the disaffected, the hungry, the just-bored-enough-to-believe-this-might-be-the-thing-that-saves-us.
Round Are Way
We were lucky—though we didn’t always know it at the time.
Right there on our doorstep was The Leadmill. A proper venue. Grimy, loud, sticky-floored, and somehow sacred. The kind of place where future icons came to cut their teeth, and where legends were spotted just before they became legends.
It still irritates me—deeply—that I passed up the chance to see Oasis play there in early ’94. A bunch of schoolmates went. It wasn’t even a question of cost or transport. I just... didn’t go. Maybe I didn’t quite get it yet. Maybe I thought there’d be more time.
There wasn’t.
Weeks later, they were exploding out of radios, taped onto Top of the Pops, slouched across the pages of NME. You could feel the ground shift. My mates came back from that gig buzzing like they’d just glimpsed the future—and maybe they had.
I missed it. But somehow, they didn’t miss me. The music still found its way in.
I had to wait almost a year before I finally saw them live myself.
April 1995. Sheffield Arena. Their first proper arena gig—and the biggest gathering of Oasis fans to date. It felt like the whole city had converged in one sweaty, charged-up space, everyone singing, swearing, surging in time.
What made it even more surreal was that Pulp—our very own local heroes—were drafted in as last-minute replacements for The Verve, who’d had to pull out.
It was the first time they played Don’t Look Back in Anger live. I was there. Though if I’m honest, I can’t really remember hearing it. Not clearly, anyway. The whole show is a bit of a blur—fittingly. What I do remember is the intensity. The sheer weight of it all. The noise, the unity, the sense that something massive was happening right in front of us.
We weren’t just watching a band—we were part of something.
Oasis had arrived. And by then, so had I.
The trip over felt monumental. In hindsight, it was probably the closest my generation got to our own Spike Island. Just five years earlier, The Stone Roses had drawn thousands to a windswept field near Widnes for something messy, beautiful, and historic. Now it was our turn—same wide eyes, same sense of something bigger than just a gig.
'Cause I've been standing at the station
As if our sleepy northern town needed any more reason to adore Oasis, they went and put our local train station on the cover of their Some Might Say single in April 1995.
That was it. We were in the artwork—part of the myth. It felt like they’d reached down from the heavens of Top of the Pops and said, “Yeah, you lot—you count too.”
Naturally, within days, the platform became a pilgrimage site. At some point, most of the school had made the trip down, armed with disposable cameras and the vague hope of recreating the cover. The results were, of course, rubbish—blurry, awkward, mostly just photos of teenagers standing around looking cold and proud.
But that didn’t matter. For a brief moment, we were part of it.
Oasis weren’t just a band anymore. They were ours.
'Cause all of the stars are fading away
By pure chance, I was there at the final Oasis gig at V Festival in 2009.
It was... underwhelming, to say the least. There was practically zero crowd interaction, and the whole thing felt like a gig-by-numbers. Looking back, it’s clear why now—worn down by years of battles, bruises, and the unbearable weight of expectation.
If I’d known it would be their last chance to see them for sixteen years, I probably wouldn’t have wandered off halfway through.
There’s a melancholy in that—like watching the last embers of a fire flicker and fade. But even as the stars dimmed, the music that ignited my youth never really went away.
Oasis wasn’t just the soundtrack to my life—it was the spark that kept me electric when everything else felt quiet.
All my people right here, right now
Since those early days, I’ve seen Liam and Noel individually more times than I can count. Each show has its own vibe — the raw energy of Liam, the storytelling charm of Noel. But one of the absolute highlights has to be their (not-so-well-hidden) surprise set at Latitude Festival in 2018.
And now, here we are.
Both Noel and Liam have played their so-called “final” solo gigs—at least, until Oasis reunites and suddenly that becomes the new finale. I was lucky enough to catch Noel at YNOT Festival earlier this year, soaking in every note like it might be the last time. Meanwhile, Liam was performing just last weekend in Malta, as I write this
Just try not to worry, you’ll see them someday
For the better part of 15 years, an Oasis reunion felt more like a myth than a reality. But now? It’s actually happening.
Summer 2025 still feels a long way off, but I’m already dusting off my bucket hat, ready for Noel to shout “This is History!” all over again.
Of course, we all know they probably won’t do a 2.5–3 hour marathon set like the good old days, but hey, a dream can’t hurt.
Here’s my ultimate setlist—because if we’re going to do this, we might as well go big.
Looking back, Oasis was more than just a band—they were the soundtrack to my youth, a lightning rod for a restless generation, and a shared language for millions of us figuring out who we were. Their music captured the messy contradictions of growing up: the swagger and the doubt, the joy and the heartbreak, the electric highs and the quiet moments in between.
Were you at any of these iconic Oasis gigs?...
