Oasis | City Jackdaw

After recently visiting the sounds and sights of Mars, it’s back to a more local setting today.

Though he’s slipped from his northern roots, Noel Gallagher has cast his mind back to his Mancunian beginnings with his latest High Flying Birds album, due out in June.

Titled Council Skies, here is the cover reveal:

That spot, where the band’s equipment sits, is the preserved centre circle of Manchester City’s former home in Moss Side. For eighty years, this was where fans watched their heroes in blue take the kick-off that would begin their games.

There is a generation of City fans today who never got to experience Maine Road, the club having in 2003 relocated to the Etihad Stadium in East Manchester. With the former stadium now demolished, houses have been built around that circle which has been left for sentimental supporters, like both Noel and myself, who have long historic and emotional ties to the place.

Having said that, I’ve yet to go and pay homage, but it’s on my list.

My first game was in 1982 and my last was that final one, held there twenty-one years later.

In addition to the hundreds of matches that has drawn me through the network of surrounding side streets of that inner city town, there has also been the odd concert, too. I was there for one of the two-night gigs put on by Noel’s former group, Oasis, when they were at the height of their powers in the 1990’s, with Britpop in all its pomp.

I can remember the moon coming out, the blue moon, adding to the saved inner image as it hung above us all, a sign of the musical Gods’ approval, as the band belted out Champagne Supernova.

It was a great night. A great band with great support (Ocean Colour Scene and Manic Street Preachers ). Maybe my favourite ever gig.

On the other night, a couple of my friends were mugged in one of those shadowed back alleyways as they made their way back home. What the Gods giveth the Gods taketh away.

All sorts of memories. Most of them good.

You may have seen something of the celebrations taking place around the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend. (Some people have referred to this as ‘Platty Joobs ’ but personally I think anyone heard to utter this travesty of a term should be imprisoned by Her Majesty in the Tower. Or taken straight to Tower Hill to have their head served up on a silver platty. Platter! Damn it! I meant platter!)

Naturally a lot of the focus was down south on our Nation’s Capital, but what about locally?

Well, in my town, it was advertised that a beacon, one of more than 1,500 throughout the Commonwealth, would be lit at 9.30pm in the aptly named Jubilee Park.

In theory, such an historic occasion sounded like something worth attending, but it didn’t quite pan out that way.

Although it was advertised to take place in Jubilee Park the beacon was actually on the park’s edge, just below the wall of St.Leonard’s church. This meant that the majority of people, gathered high inside the church grounds, were unable to view what had actually attracted them there like, yes, moths to a flame, in the first place. And also they were unable to hear the rehearsed speeches as the microphone, working in the two test runs, didn’t work for the real thing.

The best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

But still, the beacon was lit, let the records show, as Middleton took its place in the symbolic line of celebratory fire.

Earlier in the week (and less of an anti-climax), there was another celebration as Manchester’s own Liam Gallagher made a triumphant homecoming return to the Etihad Stadium, home of his (and my) football team Manchester City, as the warm-up gig to his upcoming Knebworth show.

A friend of mine was attending. We’d both previously seen the singer perform at the Etihad before as part of his group Oasis, as well as at the Reebok in Bolton. The first time we’d seen them live was at Maine Road (City’s previous ground) a jaw-dropping twenty-six years ago. 1996. Though we didn’t know it at the time, the group had peaked musically but there was still some good music to come and there was some great music then. My abiding memory of that might is sitting on the shoulders of another friend as the sky darkened, the moon rising over the stadium, as the band launched into Champagne Supernova.

(For any music aficionados reading this, there were two great support acts that day: Ocean Colour Scene and Manic Street Preachers.)

1996, though. Twenty-six years-how time flies!

This time around my friend had gone to the gig with his daughter-how time’s change!

Good music survives through generations, with the older influencing the younger, and there they both were connected to it, and each other, in that incredible middle ground.

By all accounts it was a fantastic gig and he took this equally fantastic photograph.