A Britpop experience

The past 10 days have allowed me to see the two bands that dominated the music scene in the UK, certainly in the mid 1990s - Blur and Oasis.

When I booked the tickets back in the winter I was more excited to see Oasis. However as the dates became closer I saw clips of Blur's other gigs, especially Glastonbury, and I knew they'd put on a fantastic show.

And they didn't let me down.

Blur's second night at Hyde Park was one of the best gigs I have ever been to. I can't recall ever having so much fun at a show. I came away with a feeling that it was one of the best, if not the best gig I had ever been to.

The variety of songs they have is excellent and the performance of Damon Albarn was of a man who most definitely was up for it, loving every second of the band's reunion and the closing song, The Universal, was one of the best moments I have ever experienced at a concert with all 55,000 singing along.

So what of Oasis?

Well I was looking forward to their show, not with the same excitement as I did with Blur but still looking forward to see what sort of show they'd put on.

For me the best parts of the show was Noel Gallagher's acoustic songs, in particular The Masterplan and Don't Look Back In Anger. He really got the audience going and they were singing their hearts out for all of his songs.

He managed to get a connection with the audience during those songs I felt, without jumping around like Albarn did, but with playing good songs that everyone at Wembley enjoyed and could join in with.

I don't think though the same could be said of Liam Gallagher.

When he's on stage I find it hard to connect as he just stands there, whether he's singing or not without trying to entertaing the audience or anything. Although given his comments last week maybe that wasn't so surprising.

It's a very different show to Blur's, with less movement and literally more standing around and just playing which I don't enjoy as much as watching someone go round the stage getting the audience going and giving an entertaining spectacle for the eye as well as the ear.

The other thing that slightly irritated me during their performance was a particular drum beat that just kept on appearing. I must have heard it on half a dozen songs in all which after a while is quite annoying.

Dont get me wrong, Oasis have a very good back catalogue with some awesome tunes, I know that. But this drum beat just kept on cropping up and was quite annoying as I'm sure they could come up with another one if they tried (I still think Zak Starkey is a better drummer too).

This is a very brief and rather poor attempt at reviewing the two gigs but I've tried to do it from the point of a fan rather than a critic like you normally read in the paper.

A year ago I if I had the choice of seeing one of these two again it would have been Oasis. Now however it would most definitely be Blur.

I love their variety of songs, and their live performances are amongst some of the best of recent times.