Oasis reunites, sort of

This has been the biggest story in music over the past few days, even though it's just the Gallagher brothers reuniting without any other original members of the band.  Now, I doubt there's any added money to be made by announcing the names of additional backing band members.  But Liam Gallagher has been performing "Definitely Maybe" with his own band in arenas across the UK.  Does adding Noel produce more than the sum of the two parts, i.e. an upgrade from 10K seat arenas to 60K seat football stadiums?  Apparently it does, although I have been surprised at the demand and excitement for the reunion so far.  With a year to go before the shows actually happen, the hype can only get bigger.  

Of course, (almost) everybody reunites.  Reliable estimates predict that the tour will draw 400 million pounds, with each Gallagher earning 50 million.  And that's just for the fourteen shows announced thus far!  How stupid would Noel and Liam have to be to not mend fences, at least temporarily (or pretend to mend fences!) with that kind of money at stake.  This only could have happened post-divorces (driving the need for extra income) and post-COVID (driving the demand and prices for concerts way up).  Obviously Taylor Swift and Coldplay have been able to print money with multi-year tours and ridiculous demand.  But the better comparison for Oasis would be Guns 'n' Roses, who took two killer albums released decades ago, a bitter rivalry with a miraculous reunion, and milked it for kingly sums of money for much longer than anyone thought possible.  Another example would be Jane's Addiction, whose reputation is also based on two huge albums (the post-reunion material, much like nearly anything released by Oasis after 1996, are fairly inconsequential), who have settled into a lucrative never-ending touring routine with surprisingly excellent reviews.  

And I'll say it again -- Morrissey may be insufferable and perpetually on the verge of being cancelled, Johnny Marr has a successful solo career and never hesitates to throw shade on the idea, and Andy Rourke recently passed away -- never say never to a Smiths reunion.  The money will be there, they just have to want it enough.    

Music in Canada summer '24

What are the hot new sounds in Canada this summer?  I have no clue!  However, I have been listening repeatedly to a top 100 Canadian songs playlist on Spotify, composed of classic Canadian rock from the 70's through the 90's.  Essentially these are the songs I grew up with, and it didn't matter whether you loved or hated them, because they were everywhere and they were the songs you absorbed simply by being near a radio while growing up in Canada during those decades.  

Funny how many of these songs sound better than ever, probably because we all eventually revert back to idolizing the stuff we heard when we were young.  But on the other hand, my six year old spontaneously breaks into singing BTO's "Taking Care of Business", so perhaps there is an objective case to be made for the indisputable greatness of this music compared to whatever the kids listen to these days.  

Amongst the Guess Who and Bryan Adams hits (guess what?  I can even tolerate "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" these days), still sleek and edgy new wave classics (Rough Trade's "High School Confidential", Spoons' "Nova Heart"), hearing these songs gives me a reason to revisit The Tragically Hip and their complete lack of success in America.  "Fully Completely" was supposed to be the breakthrough, but with "Nevermind" and "Ten" blowing up on alternative radio in 1992, what chance did the Hip have with MOR pub rock and Gord Downie's twisted introspective ramblings?  The production is really thin and reedy too, projecting too many remnants of dated 1980's production.  The drums are absurdly gated and plastic-sounding, the guitar too clean, the vocals too upfront.  There's simply no bite to the music, nothing to grab the attention of the average Soundgarden or Alice In Chains fan.  Perhaps the hope was they'd hop on with REM's audience, but REM had been steadily building their US fanbase for a decade to that point.  The Tragically Hip had no history there.  "Fully Completely" is still a great album once you invite it in, but they needed to blast down the doors to get noticed in America in 1992 and this wasn't the album for it.