Oasis: Supersonic

Just returned from watching this at Vue Bolton. Was mesmerising. The live Q&A after the film was light hearted & warm, with Liam trademark expletives. Charts the remarkable meteoric rise from a Manchester council estate to the massive Knebworth brace of gigs pumping out tracks to 250,000 exuberant fans. They were so hot, with 2.5 m requests for tickets, as Liam says, they 'could 'av still been playin now!'. In their own words, 'the biggest band in the world' at that time. This film was heartwarming in it's authenticity, it's portrayal felt very real. I left the theatre with a real sense that I knew Liam and Noel a little better, and understood them a little more. Their journey was extraordinary. The soundtrack powerful. There were many points in the film when the volume ramped up the rockin beats and the audience excitement palpable. A great feeling in the theatre that we had all seen something special. I also laughed many times. I hope there is a 'Part Two' charting what happened after Knebworth. Brilliant film & documentary. 9.5 / 10. Tony P

Regardless of the subject matter or the music, this is a brilliant documentary, never anything other than subjective. Obviously I'm a fan-boy, loving the first album despite phasing out after the release of the SOME MIGHT SAY single and disliking the 2nd album with growing apathy with each release and the growing super-stardom that followed. The summer of '94 brings great memories, with friends, whirlwind romances, chemical discoveries, and what not, fun coming out me ear-holes, with Definitely Maybe sound tracking it. I'd managed to stave off the tracksuit image....just.....but it all felt real still. I'd grown sceptical of what the band later achieved and audiences that followed them. I guess it was inevitable, and call me a snob, but it was satisfying that last night this doc identified exactly what happened to Oasis, what they became, beyond any media promotion or shallow hipster idolisation. They simply haven't got the creative nous to produce further albums of greatness beyond that exhilarating debut (think the Pistols here also, like). And its for all to see up there on screen, the original bands awareness of themselves beyond the cocaine fuelled hedonism and, of course, the wealth. Of course it carried on as we know and the rest is history, a disappointing history for me, alas. Because Definitely Maybe is a f*cking mega album, end of. And this doc is too. Its not DiG! that the f*cking hipsters all think is great (Its not guys - its a shocking doc, but has great music). Its the real deal whether you like the band or not, an expose of EXACTLY what it must be like for a bunch of scallies from Burnage, with a love for hedonism and rock 'n' roll, who got marketed and became massive beyond their control. Mega! x.

source: Oasis: Supersonic

source: Supersonic

Supersonic

Supersonic

Oasis is probably the post-Beatles band that captured a piece of that band's impressive rise thirty years on. It was a long time since The Fab Four had done it, and to see an impressive degree of that mania in a latter-day setting was, perhaps, unbelievable in that it was generally accepted it would never happen again. Though history will downplay it today for a run of almost five years it was like the craziness of 1964 all over again. Only this time not just the era was different. The band itself was like a battlefield sewn with landmines. The Beatles, mostly, made peace offerings among themselves allowing more greatness to spawn even as they, wisely, quit touring. So what caused Oasis to truncate their massive popularity? Supersonic gives that insight. Unlike The Beatles, whose settled on democracy worked, with Oasis something explosive was always brewing. It began and ended with Noel being the creative leader and Liam being the mercurial equal that wasn't really equal at all within the band - even as he was more loved by many fans. Something that only competitive blood brothers are saddled with. Add more anger, bad drugs, and recklessness to the Gallagher brothers and it seems a wonder the band achieved what it did. This is a warts and all look into their wild ride. It could have shown more shed blood, but the viewer gets it quite well with the chaos shown here. As of 2016 that chaos matters less and like Noel says the music is still here. That doesn't mean you don't pine for what could have been if a massive dose of maturity just couldn't have plopped itself down. But, you get a glimpse of why that was never really what Oasis ran on. It ran on borrowed time and in it's short time it conquered the world musically and left a lot to still enjoy. Like so much great music it was an alchemy of a certain space and time which could only exist for a finite period. This is a pretty entertaining, though often uneasy, window into that time. It's very likely to be a protracted time for any other band to get a window into Beatle Mania (i.e. mania, not importance), so watch this in a bit of amazement as it may never happen in this century, or ???

Wow. As a mega fan in the 90s, and still following them despite my taste in music changing over the years, I will always come back to Oasis. These guys radiate energy from their core and the people just soak it up and exude it back to the band. This took me back to all their shows, Liam's stances, the crowd, jumping as a whole in unison, to. every. single. song. that could be jumped to. Love the archival footage. The audio clips of last ten minutes had me tearing up. After the internet, live music has never been like this. No one could touch Oasis. The last truly great mega-band. If you saw them live in the 90s, that is an experience that will go unmatched. This doc captured their energy perfectly.

In retrospect. The internet ruined many things and technology ruined many. One of the things was authentic rock music. As you can see what it is 2018. It's absolute severe crap. Nirvana ( which was a excellent innovative band ) was around much longer in the beginning and then died because of Kurt Cobain and now we have the success of the drummer called Foo Fighters which continued to be successful for over 20 years but why ( I think they're lousy ) ? Yes Oasis for two albums and three years made a album or two and then boom was extremely successful practically from the day of formation, they were lucky the time was right. The difference is I didn't really like Oasis. And what happened to them from 1997 to 2007. Did they continue their popular success or did Brit Pop turn into The Spice Girls and pansy Brit pop boy bands and then the internet ruining everything slowly in the process. Was Oasis any good after Knebworth. Probably not cause they didn't mention it. So ok it was a three year ego trip with two LP's. Beatles ? not even close by infinity . However I did watch this entire documentary. Reminded me about those times when I was in my 20's and their hits are good but how was 1997 to 2007 did the hits fade did the popularity fade. It had to by that point they were hit with competition all around them. And I'm sure their music didn't change much just rehashing .... Again in retrospect.

Popular musicians can pass from obscurity to worldwide fame in a very short period of time; and that's the focus of 'Oasis: Supersonic', a documentary which charts the rapid rise of the Gallagher brothers' band. It's a not uninteresting story: the group sprung from humble origins, its two leading figures were both combative in nature (especially with each other), but the basic narrative here is the story of sudden, overwhelming fame. There's a merciful absence of outside talking heads, which means we are spared solemn pontification abot their musical significance, but also there's no discussion of the general 'Britpop' phenomenon of which Oasis were just one part. But Noel and Liam are sufficiently frank that it doesn't feel like an airbrushed history either; we do get a sense of what it was actually like to be part of Oasis at this time. As with any music documentary, the music itself is part of it: personally I liked Oasis's their retro rock-and-roll sound even if it wasn't outstandingly innovative, so I enjoyed the soundtrack. The film ends with musing that, in the modern digital age, a similar story couldn't happen now. In general, I'm sceptical about theories about the end of history; even so, twenty-plus years since Oasis played Knebworth, it's hard to think of a band since that has, however briefly, seemed so totally to capture the national mood.