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Oasis: a guilty pleasure without fringe benefits | Stewart Lee

The comeback could be a coup or a crash, but it has already obliterated accommodation for the 2025 Edinburgh fringe

They were a mighty full stop, consolidating the past and boldly nailing all the best bits together, the Trigger’s broom of pop When the studious Television, not an especially lively band in their heyday, took the stage of the Town and Country Club in London in November 1992, the 24-year-old me was amazed at how brilliant they were, despite what I considered their impossibly advanced ages. Some – Love, Nic Jones, Heavenly, the Sex Pistols, Green on Red, Ut, and the Crome Syrcus – played the hits; some – the Stooges and the Soft Boys – knocked out an accompanying album for added authenticity; others – Patti Smith, Mission of Burma, the Dream Syndicate, the Nightingales, Shirley Collins, Slowdive, the Long Ryders, Faust and Träd, Gräs och Stenar – started significant second careers. Much is made of the eye for talent of Alan McGee, boss of Creation, Oasis’s first label, but he also signed Technique, the Legend!, and Keith “Smelly” O’Connell’s Five Go Down to the Sea?, the managerial equivalent of a massive hose spraying shit against a wall.

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