The title gives it away, of course. The clocks have been stopped at 1996, the nation is waiting for new Labour to step in and abolish the Conservative Party for ever, the England football team are preparing to win the European Championship at home and Oasis are in their pomp.

That, at least, seems to be Noel Gallagher’s interpretation of his band’s history. Fourteen of the 18 songs on this selection date from the time when the planet’s biggest band (or so it seemed) was also the best, before cocaine and hubris dulled them. An awed if sarcastic friend nailed it back then, observing: “Football is almost as popular as Oasis these days.”

How five young men from a nondescript Manchester suburb became megastars remains a mystery. Britpop was little more than the application of marketing techniques to a previously marginal genre, but Oasis went beyond appealing to mere music fans. At their peak you could hear every tune from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory on any provincial pub crawl.

They were also the noisiest pop sensation (as opposed to a critical sensation) since T Rex and Slade. No wonder the much-loved Cigarettes and Alcohol borrowed Marc Bolan’s boogie so blatantly. Often Oasis improved on their inspirations. Morning Glory shared a guitar hook with R.E.M.’s The One I Love but it remains a sight more exciting.

Champagne Supernova, the apogee of Dadrock, was modelled on the Beatles’ While My Guitar Gently Weeps, but the solos of Gallagher and his guest Paul Weller were made for stadiums. Yet it took his mercurial brother Liam to turn Rock’n’Roll Star from statement of intent to plain fact. The pounding Acquiesce, their only shared vocal, is probably the best B-side since the Beatles.

One story has it that not only had Noel already penned the songs that sealed Oasis’s reputation before the band were signed, but that the sporadic highlights of their later, weaker albums, overlooked here, were leftovers from this original bounty. Certainly by the time success was a given, pastiches such as the Kinks copy The Importance of Being Idle and the comic-psychedelic Go Let It Out were pleasing, and nothing more.

Despite their efforts, they never really resembled the Fabs, beyond Liam’s Lennon-esque rasp. Their style of an undisputed leader playing overlong guitar solos probably owed more to Neil Young and Crazy Horse, hugely influential in the early Nineties. Yet they were anthemic, not introspective, as raucous as the Sex Pistols but unafraid of sentimentality. If there really is anyone in Britain who doesn’t own the first two Oasis albums, this overpackaged Christmas present of guilt-free nostalgia will substitute.

Weirdly, the band that killed off indie music forever with their all-conquering success turned out to be its saviours. The generation that grew up playing these uncomplicated songs now dominates the charts. None of them has written a Live Forever yet but at least the guitar industry was saved. This snapshot of an unrepeatable era certainly entertains. Terry Venables is back on the England bench too, so maybe history really is repeating itself.

(Big Brother)

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