Nostalgia overdrive

I usually write about poetry adjacent subjects and this article will mainly be about music, so please let me explain the link. If you have read or heard my poetry, you will already know how heavily influenced it is by pop culture, by rhythm and lyricism. I would not write the way I do without music. I may not even view the world the way I do without music. Music is ingrained into my life story. I may not always know it is, until I hear a song on the radio, or in a shop on a random Saturday afternoon and an entirely dormant memory floods back.

A few weeks ago I went to see Pulp play the Co-op Live Arena in Manchester. If you have seen the front cover of my book, you will instantly recognise their influence on me, as it borrows the Chromium One font that they have used. My Edinburgh Fringe show was called ‘Do you remember the first rhyme?’ and when I was flyering for the show some people would instantly pick up on that saying ‘I LOVE PULP!!’. Another told me it sounded really like a song by Pulp as if that wasn’t the specific and deliberate point. That was kind of sweet. My show started and ended on me telling the story of how my first love of rhyme (Spike Milligan) influenced me. I told stories of my life, peppered with poems that rhyme, but also nodding to pop songs throughout. Girl from Mars, Boys and Girls, and Puff the Magic Dragon to name a few. I referenced Smash Hits and NME, the graduation of leaving ‘pop’ to childhood and the cool bravado of an indie teen. I was never actually cool though. I loved pop music just as much as I loved indie. I loved dance. R&B. I loved music full stop. The labelling as tribal is as much as for marketing and it is for identity. Once you realise it is the weight of marketing, be it through algorithms of today, or copy of the music press of the past pushing you into a tribe or a niche, you realise you are neither in a tribe or in a niche. You’re free to be whatever you choose. Yes, that is an oasis reference.

Which brings me to the band sweeping up this weeks headlines. The return of oasis. I was 18 in 1994 when oasis were breaking through, and by the time I was 21 they had played the biggest concerts in ‘historeh’ at Knebworth. I was at Knebworth and their Maine Road gig, which is the gig I have even stronger memories of. Not because I was an archetypal 90s ‘if you can remember it you weren’t there’ kind of person, but that my memory is just bad. I also think I remember more about Maine Road because of where it was. It was oasis home turf. The whole place was fizzing. You were able to see them drive in and out of the stadium and waving out of windows at the crowds. The hangers on and semi famous were in the boxes we could all see. We all felt the same. It felt like anything was possible. These friends and brothers from Burnage owned their teams football stadium for the weekend.

The detailed memories are hazy but the feelings are not. It was the most electrifying show I had ever seen. The collective euphoria was the biggest part of that. Before I had even got into the stadium I had seen Noel waving out of a high up window at the end of the stadium the stage was on. I waved back in excitement but looked behind to see he was probably waving at the tall blonde girl behind me. I was in the kippax lower tier seats with my brother and sister. We were all told not to stand on the seats (fair, they were those foldable plastic things so not 100 per cent safe), but we all stood on the seats. My five foot two frame needed the height. Everyone else was just trying to be as close to the band as they could. We watched the wave of people moving in joyous unison for the full show. Crowd surfing. Arms in air. Lighters. Liam prowling. Wise cracks. The roar of recognition as a new song chord was struck. Every single song was all of our favourite song. We screamed our hearts out. Word for word. We felt one hundred per cent alive. Adrenaline was palpable. I remember the roar as they took to the stage, from ACQUIESCE, WHATEVER, CAST NO SHADOW … BANGER AFTER BANGER…. to the reverb of their infamous I am the Walrus cover. I have just googled the setlist which tells me the encore was Come on feel the Noize, which was boisterous fuzzy fun. The boys knew how to work the crowd into an utter frenzy and they literally had us all in the palm of their hands that night.

Cut to 2009. I was at V festival in Staffordshire, not as in love with their later work as their earlier albums and stood a very sensible distance away from the stage. The front of an oasis gig in 2009 was a super laddy affair. Lairy. Lager, lager shouting. Sometimes not lager being thrown in … excitement? A phenomenon that should never have been allowed to happen after the first pint pot of urine was thrown at a festival became horribly normal. Festivals were for standing at the back unless you were prepared to take the risk of being soaked to the skin by some neanderthal p*ss. Up on the stage, it was a noticeably banter free zone. The swagger that had us entranced a decade prior was nowhere to be seen. The songs, classic and new were being plodded through joylessly. It made me sad to watch. I kept saying to my brother, who was also at Maine Road, ‘this is no Maine Road’. It transpired that was to be the last show they played together and they split up later that week. Noel was at a festival I went to in 2016 with his high flying birds, but other than that, I never went to see Liam and Noel play as solo acts.

Cut to 2025, they are back. And when the shows were announced I knew I was still on their mailing list, from when mailing lists and the internet in general, were first created. I got a pre-sale code and thought I should at least try. Unlikely to get them, I thought. But then, I got them. Really easily as it goes, before the next days debacle of dynamic pricing of the general sale. In a few weeks I will see them again and I am praying I see something joyful. I am hopeful of this, having felt the power of nostalgia seeing Pulp reform with new music. When Pulp started playing Sorted for E’s and Wizz at the Co-op Live I was whooshed into my teenaged and middle aged body all at the same time, I was in the moment but also could visualise myself at the front of the Liverpool Royal Court going over the barrier due to excitement, and underestimating the surge of the crowd that would happen when the band took to the stage.

Being confronted with nostalgia is to confront the reality of the passage of time. I am actually aging. Of course I am. What a privilege. What a shock.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a call out by the British Culture Archive for fans photos to go alongside an exhibition of photos by Jon Shard of fans queuing for Maine Road tickets, that is on at The Refuge in Manchester all July. I sent off the above photo of me, minus 30 years, outside Maine Road, with my what’s the story Tee, and now it is sitting proudly in the ‘wonderwall of fans’. Which makes me part of a history exhibition. This is a more confronting feeling than I gave it credit for when I submitted the photo. Although, younger me would undoubtedly be pleased as punch that I am part of that specific moment in history.

I saw online that the opening evening had influencers who weren’t even born when I was in that photo. And even though I know that people have been being born literally every day since then, it still blows my mind that all of this is something before their time. All the time that has passed. All the things that have been, and haven’t. Lyrics of songs I sang that night have memories attached to them. I know I will well up when I hear some specific lyrics live again. I am hoping the euphoria will kick back in. I am lucky to be there. I am lucky to have the experience of nostalgia.

Having now seen the build up around the Cardiff shows, I am excited to see them again. In that build up I saw that there is a photo of the club of my youth featured in the official oasis tour programme. The Buckley Tivoli had an indie band and disco every Wednesday night in the 90s. Oasis played there on 31 August 1994, just before Definitely Maybe was released. I was not at that show, but I was at so many other shows there. Super Furry Animals, Stereophonics, Catatonia, Dodgy, Shed Seven, Lightning Seeds, The Seahorses to name a few. These nights were magic to me. Dancing at the Tiv was a huge joy. Live music, straight from the pages of the NME, within 15 minutes of my front door was such a privilege. I even have a poem dedicated to the The Tiv in my poetry collection. Seeing oasis remember the Tiv as fondly as I do was really special, especially when I was at the Tiv this week in an extension of my nostalgia binge to see Shed Seven. A band I remember standing watching at the barrier of the venue, but joked that I am sure all of us remember doing the same, but we couldn’t all have been at the barrier. I loved that Shed Seven came back to this venue. It is a venue that helped so many big acts on their way up. So many other venues of that time have since closed, and only a few weeks ago, the infamous Leadmill in Sheffield was sold out to a corporate promoter. It doesn’t exist in the same way that supported, for my money, some of the best televised performances at Glastonbury this year, including Pulp and Self Esteem. Shed Seven were also at Glastonbury and were one night away from a massive outdoor show in Manchester, and it meant the absolute world to all the overgrown teenagers trapped in middle aged bodies to see them again in that venue. Shed Seven put on a charming show that was designed to let us all have a good time. They did shout outs and sing alongs. This was a band who were never too serious about themselves, never arrogant, never to out there, but clearly always loved performing live. To still be doing it and showing they love it, is a massive achievement.

Nostalgia is a funny thing. When I was younger I used to think old people watching old bands from their youth were embarrassing, stuck in the past. I now see that it is more than that. It is always about connection. About feeling in a moment. Feeling a sense of belonging. Appreciating we are not who we were. We may not have become who we thought we might. Our heroes became fallible. We didn’t idolise them forever. We don’t Live Forever. We are lucky to have nostalgia. Nostalgia is only whatever you compare it to. I don’t think the past is better than the present. I am not blindingly tied to a version of the nineties. For example, as I got older I see with even greater clarity how lad culture started to dominate and how lad-ette culture wasn’t actually all that great. It was about survival. It was about wanting to enjoy the music as equals. But I liked wearing trainers on a night out more than heels. That was definitely a plus of ladette culture. I didn’t see that the female artists who were my age at the time would have been experiencing the same sexism that existed in every other industry. Of course they were. But just like every other industry at the time, saying nothing was about survival. Speaking up was a huge gamble. Walking away was sometimes the only option to escape intolerable behaviour. The result of all these factors was, and still is, male dominated festival posters. Bjork was the singular biggest female voice of that time for me, and she grew into the most incredible truest artist of them all. The Cranberries and Catatonia were in my top 3 female fronted bands of that time and I was lucky to hear their voices live - searingly strong voices of their generations. On a pop star level, it has always been Kylie. I pretended I had given up my childhood love of her music when I became an indie kid. But I didn’t. I wasn’t ever only an indie kid. I was a pop kid. An MTV kid. A dance kid (I went to Liverpool University at the apex of Cream). I was what I wanted to be, not who the writers of the NME told us we should be. I am glad of that, as that left the door open to let me enjoy much more music than one category throughout my life. That is why I have enjoyed going to festivals over the years.

The biggest festival of all is Glastonbury, which I only went to for the first time in 2019. Every year people have argued what kind of music they think Glastonbury should play. Folk, rock, guitar are regularly shouted out by people imposing their musical opinions on it. The organisers have never done that, they deliberately encourage eclecticism and variety. I am sure I have even seen opera when I have lucky enough to go in the past. Walking around the vast site and seeing something you wouldn’t usually see is the festivals greatest gift.

That is the greatest gift we have outside the festival too. To always broaden our horizons. Don’t restrict yourself to nostalgia only. Don’t deny it either. We are the sum parts of what we let ourselves see. We don’t have to like it all, we can form an opinion and move on from an educated place instead of an assumption. We may surprise ourselves and love a rock song in equal measure to an acoustic ballad. We may change our minds over time. We may love a band and fall out of love. This is true of relationships of all kinds. We may learn to love something, see it from someone else’s perspective. Read a poem once. Read a poem like a prayer, year after year returning to it, finding the same message you found comforting. Finding new meaning and reflections in it. What I think I am saying is, making new nostalgia can be just as exciting as enjoying the old nostalgia. Do not deny yourself something new by clinging to the past too tight and definitely don’t feel shame for remembering your past with fondness. Especially when you know appreciate what a privilege that is to be able to do.

Thank you for reading this edition of Poems & That. This was very much an ‘& That’ edition. More typically, I write about what I have learned about myself and the world around me through sharing my poetry. Sometimes I share a poem too. If you would like to read more of my poetry you can buy it here and help me raise money for Choose Love and Refuge.