Don't Look Back In Anger

Rock history time. And I mean the version the version of rock history pertaining to, y'know, things that actually happened. Something I bet people in the UK don't know: Oasis did have one bright, shining moment in the United States in the 90s. It all happened in the fabled, vaunted summer of 1996, and it certainly wasn't Wonderwall. Rather, in the US, in the summer of '96, as Jennifer Strawser and I did our dance, in State College and elsewhere, and as Smashing Pumpkins and Mellon Collie made a rent in national consciousness, Don't Look Back in Anger defined the summer by dominating a bunch of economies. It was everywhere then. Back in Gulph Mills, not well, I nonetheless marveled at the idea that the Gallagher brothers had achieved at least some of their American aims. For a brief moment, everything in America did fall into line with that big, booming chorus, blasting through enough speakers that Jen and I did hear it at least once at Arts Fest. Also, with the sense the 90s palpitated with in the States, that everything and everyone was coalescing into a unified front, from Lollapalooza to littler versions like Outlaw Playwrights. It didn't happen twice, though: on both sides, before and after, Oasis fell through the cracks as another stalwart 90s act who were just around. Making the Oasis story in the United States a more complicated one than perhaps it at first appears. As is the story of that summer.