and so some more vibes purchased within the week of release, look you see, rather than the actual day of it. but i did try to, as we shall see. well, we will if you elect (or select) to read on, i of course know this information. no, this has not started well.
i think (and i could be wrong) that, as we stand here in June (2020), my purchases of "new" vibes for the year is decidedly low. less than the conventional number of fingers (plus thumb) on one hand would be able to count. from memory, i have picked up Morrissey's new album, with that being the only "new" music as such. beyond that, it was Now That's What I Call Music 5 in a CD, and abridged, format, and now Liam Gallagher MTV Unplugged by, let me not shock you, Liam Gallagher.
this equates to a pretty much bad year for vibes, then. once more from memory, i seem to think the last year where "new" music was so limited was 2017. not sure if much beyond Liam's debut solo album and the Kasabian one came out then. since there was neither an invisible war nor a plague at the time, 2017 lacks the excuses of 2020, but anyway, enough, Liam.
so, what's all this then? pretty much what it says on the box. which is Liam Gallagher doing an MTV Unplugged gig, a mere 23 (give or take) years after he was invited to do so, with the band he was in at the time, but in rather (in)famous circumstances (never categorically explained in a way all agree on being the case) opted out of it about an hour before the gig. i suspect this selection, being ten songs and running just south of forty five minutes, is not the full gig, but rather "highlights" of it.
for those of you in a rush and wishing to see me just get to the point, yes. should you be a Liam Gallagher fan, be it passing or full tilt, it is (totes) worth getting. if you are one of them hankering (or even longing) for an Oasis reunion, well, 50% of the tracks here are from that band.
now, then, if you are prepared to extend me some more time, i shall go into a bit (but not a lot) more detail for you consideration. mostly, i suspect, a peculiar number of you will be interested or curious about the provenance of my copy.
yes, in a moment of crowning glory for any rock star, MTV Unplugged by Liam Gallagher is the album of the week, which i did not know they even troubled themselves with, at Tesco. the price was neither south nor north of £10, but rather £10 on the nose. an equatorial tenner, if you will.
efforts were made to purchase on day of release, as in as far as i went to two supermarkets operating on such (12 June) who stocked discs, but alas neither Morrison nor Sainsbury had it. indeed, consideration was given to getting it on the day i did (Monday 15) from HMV, as they were re-opening. and they had it listed for 99p north of £10, but with the selling point of a "free" (ahem) sticker.
switching on the news (provincial and national) on that Monday morning rid me of any quarrel about going to HMV, or town. glorious leader Boris and his chum Rishi pleaded with all to shop on the Monday, and they did, with huge queues and crowds all over. it was very clear that this "social distancing" business was soon thrown out the window as a consequence. so, no, i figured either Tesco shall have it, or i will just order online, but Tesco had it.
that's the tracklisting, then. as you can see, and immediately calculate, 50% Oasis, 50% Liam Gallagher solo tunes, 0% Beady Eye, with the latter being a bit of a shame as they actually did some smart tunes. i happen to like both of their albums, and not just the second simply because it has some nudies on the cover.
of the 50% of songs what are Oasis, 40% of them - Some Might Say and Cast No Shadow - were done by Oasis sans Liam in 1996. better or worse here? well, unlike Noel, Liam had considerably more than an hour (or ninety minutes) to prepare to sing them.
we now then live in a world where both of the more famous Gallagher brothers have done a version of Some Might Say live, and for the life of me i cannot think why anyone would. not that i dislike the song, actually far from it, and if forced to select i may say it might be my choice for the greatest thing what the band done. it's positive, uplifting, life affirming beauty, though, comes from the electric guitar reverberating and bouncing off full tilt, maximum throttle Liam vocals. unplugged, or if you like acoustic, it remains a good song, just not the f*****g great one that it is in its original form.
oh, sure, there shall be more on the Oasis songs in a bit, but let us be fair. despite never wishing to be a solo artist (if i remember right he said that solo artists are "c***s", and in fairness he did announce the fact that he was going at it as a solo artist by saying "now I am officially a c**t"), that he very much is. and a relatively successful one too. whereas the complete mess they have made of the singles chart robbed him of some solid on the record hits, they haven't destroyed the album chart yet, and both his albums have sold (physical copies) many tens of thousands, actually hundreds of thousands i believe.
a deal was done, i believe. we, the people, need a proper rock and roll star. there is no doubt at all that Liam Gallagher is a proper rock and roll star, maybe the last one standing, and it is unlikely he would be much good at doing anything else. of course there are many who do not like him, but there you go.
does the solo material stand up here, as in hold its weight against somewhat more widely known and firmly established songs? reasonably so, but honestly not with any immediate feel of equality. to pick out some moments, Wall Of Glass was a big bold statement of intent as a debut solo tune and it holds up, Now That I've Found You is a beautiful, personal song, Once is arguably his finest (to date) moment as a solo artist, and there's no faulting Gone or One Of Us.
the flaws of the folly in MTV Unplugged? not too many. again i shall speculate that this is truncated or abridged, but it really does fly by fast, feeling even shorter than the running length. i get that he really, really wishes to perform as Oasis again, having never wished the band to end, but this little bit of them, little bit of me might be somewhat distracting. by no means was it ever a given that such will happen, but something of a "hallmark" of the more celebrated MTV Unplugged sets was the presence of one of covers or new material. but, then again, Liam would probably be the first to state that the fans had come for something very specific, and not to hear him "f*** about".
something else that happens (or happened) from time to time on MTV Unplugged was guest stars. the pinnacle of this was probably Ronnie Wood joining Sir Rod for his, with that being the first time the two of them had played together for some 20 years. here, we get Paul Arthurs, better known as Bonehead, the other guitarist in Oasis. no matter how short this record is (or feels), Liam finds the time to tell us that this is the second time what Bonehead has done MTV Unplugged, which certainly puts him in a small, elite bracket.
but, yeah, go on then, the Oasis songs. wisely Liam selects songs only from the "golden" era, the first three or four years, the ones clamouring for a reunion only consider. at the far end of that period comes Stand By Me, a simply brilliant song which might have gotten lost under the mess what it was eventually decided Be Here Now actually was.
every now and then there is a song which can only be done with but one voice. two such Oasis songs feature here, Cast No Shadow and, very much in particular, the closing tune Champagne Supernova. with regards to the latter, well it is i remember the reviews of Morning Glory when it came out, with most dismissing the album as average at best, condemning it in particular for the on paper awful lyrics of this song. but, you know, there was just something about the way it sounded, the way Liam sang it - and still sings it - that makes it all make perfect sense.
indeed Liam Gallagher's MTV Unplugged was recorded in Hull. an immediate thought is that this is not quite the most rock and roll of places, but then there is such a thing as an album called Live At Hull by The Who, and of course Heaven & Hull by Mick Ronson. my understanding is that Liam insisted the gig be done there simply because he heard Noel describe it as a "f*****g sh!thole", and so but of course if Noel doesn't like something then Liam immediately does. i totally get why so many wish for an Oasis reunion, but honestly it's so much fun seeing them apart i am not bothered either way.
at the time if writing this i'd played the album twice through, with no skipping and just the one instance of pause to rather go for a cigarette. i can imagine this getting played a fair few more times, and, oddly, thanks to the reminder, Liam's solo albums being given another spin. generally, i reserve Oasis for when driving, so as to ensure my inevitable "shoutalong" to them affects no ears beyond my own. so, yes, Liam Gallagher's MTV Unplugged may feel short and have every sense of being incomplete, but full worthy is it of owning.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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