Busy, busy, busy! What an amazing few days it has been for pop fans. On Wednesday, the remastered Beatles albums were finally released, and everyone appears to have fallen in love with them all over again. And just as the whoops of acclaim were reaching orgasmic intensity, Oasis threw in the towel as if realising they would never be one hundredth as good as the Fab Four, after yet another violent dressing-room altercation between the unlovable Noel and the even more unlovable Liam. One does so fervently hope this is a split that will last and that the bothersome brothers won’t patch things up. As Mr Bennet observed of his daughter’s piano playing, Oasis have delighted us long enough.
As for the Beatles — well, I’m afraid you will have to buy the albums all over again unless your original LPs are still in good nick. The CDs issued in the Eighties never captured the warmth and exquisite detail of the Beatles’ music, but the new remasters restore all the old magic and more. I thought I had played the Beatles to death. But having had a long sabbatical from them, I have been won over again by their charm, wit, tunefulness and originality. They make Oasis, who so often claimed to be the Beatles’ successors, sound like plodding, semi-literate yobs. The Beatles were blessed with sharp intelligence and an insatiable curiosity about both music and the world around them. Oasis only seemed to be interested in boosting their egos and, in Liam’s case, getting wasted.
As well as listening to the Beatles, I also found myself unintentionally attending my first Wagner opera. It takes disorganisation of a high order to find oneself at a concert performance of Wagner by mistake but I managed it.
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