If I’m being honest, I was never especially blown away by Oasis. I mean, they were certainly quite capable of cranking out a series of perfectly respectable-albeit-derivative singles that were loaded with catchy hooks and reminiscent of various well-established rock motifs, but I couldn’t quite understand why they enjoyed such a robust amount of popularity when – to my mind – some of their more musically adventurous fellow countrymen in bands like Suede, Blur, Pulp, Elastica and several others were stalled on lower rungs of the ladder. I mean, despite what short-lived NYC indie band Thin Lizard Dawn suggested, I never believed Oasis sucked, but I just didn’t think there was anything especially exceptional about them. I also never really warmed to Liam Gallagher’s voice, a sort of whiney amalgamation of Lennon and Lydon. I also never understood his penchant for basically standing stock-still when performing.
But, y’know, what the Hell do I know? Oasis went onto become one of Britain’s biggest musical exports, for a while, until the wheels fell off and the Gallagher brother could no longer stand each other. I’ve frequently suggested that if their music was as entertaining as their endearingly contentious interviews, I’d have been way more into Oasis. At the very least, Liam and Noel were quite handy with their pithy quips.
I’m only invoking their name here for a couple of reasons. I was recently discussing them with some work colleagues, and I came across the shot above. Somewhat famously, Oasis’ New York City debut performance was at Wetlands Preserve down on Laight Street in TriBeCa, a storied venue most renowned for spawning the neo-hippy jam-band scene comprised of bands like The Spin Doctors, Phish, Blues Traveler, et al. To be fair, while that was indeed Wetlands’ whole shtick, most of the bands I went to go see there had nothing to do with that vibe. From ska to funk to hardcore punk, Wetlands’ booking policy was refreshingly open-ended with regards to genre, so Oasis playing there wasn’t all that out of left field. More to the point, one could argue that Oasis’ music was no less retro-philic than the club’s more celebrated acts who were continually invoking the spirit of Woodstock, et al.
Regardless, while it was a decent-sized, bi-level club, the actual performance space was fairly intimate. I seem to always remember it being oppressively loud, as the sound bouncing off the back room’s concrete walls (floridly painted with pastoral scenes of flower-children dancing in leafy glades) had nowhere to go. That said, it was always a fun space to see a band. I never had a bad time there.
In doing research for this post, though, I discovered that the band actually graced the Wetlands stage twice on their debut American tour – first in July of 1994, and a second time three months later in October. You can see their full performance from the October date here.
I’m including the photo above from the July gig not just because it seems like a typical shot of the band, finding Liam in his signature stance, but also because it’s so telling of its era. Not only does no one have their fucking phone out, but I just love the guy pictured in the background just under Liam (the bespectacled gent in the Failure t-shirt). Dutiful rock journalist that he must have been (and given my own involvement in that vocation, I believe I might know the dude in question – Jon Wiederhorn, is that you??), he’s staring intently at Liam and actually taking notes with a pen and pad. That’s some goddamn dedication, right there. Here's another take...
The July gig was actually part of an annual music industry convention called the New Music Seminar, a string of dates every summer devoted to music showcases in various venues around town and schmooze-opportunities and panel discussions at a hotel in Times Square. I attended a few New Music Seminars, but I think I sat 1994’s out. I didn’t go to this Oasis gig, in any case. My former colleague Neil Strauss did, though, and wrote this little bit about it for the New York Times.
Just to bring things up to date as a side note, in the ensuing 28 years since this event, Wetlands Preserve is long, long gone. It closed in 2001, following the death of its founder-owner Larry Bloch. The building that housed the club, 161 Hudson Street, was converted into a luxury condo (of course) in 2004. The ground-floor space formerly occupied by Wetlands became an expensive bedding emporium of some kind for a while. Last time I walked by it, that concern had closed and it was awaiting a new tenant.
Both Jon Wiederhorn (if that's indeed him above) and Neil Strauss went further with their careers. I would later work alongside Jon during my tenure at MTV News Online circa 2006, and he’d go on to pen several books, including an authoritative guide on heavy metal called “Louder Than Hell.” Neil Strauss, meanwhile, who I’d worked with in 1990 at The New York Review of Records, later went on to write – as cited above – for The New York Times and other prestigious outlets. After writing some memorable profile pieces for Rolling Stone (including one where I believe he got into bed with Jewel), Neil was drafted to orchestrate (and presumably ghost-write) the fabled Motley Crue oral history, “The Dirt.” From there, Neil’s career took an interesting turn and he became an accomplished pickup artist, ostensibly for the purposes of writing a book on same. That book, “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists,” took Neil to a whole new level, so to speak. The last time I saw him was at a Cocteau Twins concert at the (since demolished) Roseland Ballroom. He was wearing leather pants.
Lastly, I stumbled upon this ancient video of Oasis and swiftly determined that it was shot here in New York City, possibly during the same stay as the first Wetlands gig. Herein we see the brothers Gallagher and cohorts playing in the Central Park bandshell, just steps to the south of Bethesda Fountain. There are also several shots of the band glumly burying their drummer in a makeshift public garden of the sort one used to encounter around certain portions of the Upper West Side and Lower East side. Can anyone identify the spot?
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