Despite our culture’s new interest in septuagenarian rock stars with immortal careers, artists do have expiry dates. Yes it’s true that sometimes we can fish them out of the bin and scrape off the rot, but for the most part artists show us their ideas and either set the zeitgeist ablaze and fizzle out when it moves on, or find some niche corner to slowly burn up in. It’s all fossil fuel stuff, ultimately. Non-renewable. And Oasis certainly can’t get out of this rule. Their audaciously bone-headed, supermoronic sound -defined by a simplistic set of rock n roll riffs, blues tricks, chord hackery, and a handful of properly charismatic melodies- can only really work once.

For Oasis this once was roughly 1994-1996: Definitely Maybe through Morning Glory and the Knebworth concert. They came along with a genuinely independent voice: A kind of impassioned apathy. A kind of “I really give a shit about appearing not to give a shit.” which, counterinuitively, was thrilling. Then, with (What’s The Story), whose major singles were heavily sentimental ballads, it transpired they really did give a shit. And the swagger was rendered as bravado; these were brutes with great big hearts. This trick, and its impact, its affectiveness, cannot be repeated. This is the main reason I would insist that Oasis not reform. However, (if you need them), here are eleven others: 

1.  Failure is more interesting than success. Therefore, let BeadyEye continue.

2. Oasis are not a Pink Floyd, or a Led Zepplin. Or, if all that keeps them from attaining that status is a little time, then it is up to us to avert this outcome: A true generational struggle, from which no one should shrink.

3. The Gallaghers are genuinely unpleasant chaps. Noel said he hoped Damon Albarn would contract AIDS and die. Liam threatened to physically assault the Spice Girls. No more of this please.

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4. Give Liam a few years and he’ll become an actor or shit talk show host or a judge on Britain’s Got Mouthy Cunts. Who wouldn’t at least enjoy complaining about that?

5. We don’t want to see print journalism churning out patronising phonetic spellings of the Mancunian accent in words like “Fook” and “Nowt”. The incidence of this would explode under a new Oasis regime.

6. Failure is more interesting than success. Therefore, let Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds continue.

7. Like certain religions, Lad Rock is a plagiarism of a plagiarism. What could be more stale or unworthy of revisiting? Once and never again.

8. For their live shows every bad piece of new music they released would lengthen the distance between their hits and dilute the ratio of quality (Definitely Maybe) material.

9. A resurgent Oasis would help to recrudesce the Gallaghers’ ugly 2^nd life in the tabloids. Endless “reports” of (internal) feuds and (celebrity) slams and any other half-formed thoughts (like dismissing the idea of Jay-Z headlining Glastonbury).

10. Noel only knows one guitar solo, and we’ve now heard every possible permutation of it.

11. Britpop is best remembered, not relived.