In music terms the early 1990s were, for me, all about alternative rock or what became known as "Grunge". The most groundbreaking band of this era were, in my opinion, The Pixies. They were hugely influential for Nirvana etc. However, my "Nirvana moment" came when I saw Kurt, Krist and Dave performing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on The Word one Friday night in 1991. I was hooked immediately and, of course, they became the band that opened the floodgates for all the other successful alternative rock bands of the time.
The "Madchester" scene was dying a death with the implosion of The Stone Roses and the time was right for a changing of the guard. I was only ever an onlooker to that scene anyway. I never really got into any of the "baggy" stuff. I was the right age to be taken in by it but it just never felt right for me. The dance fusion element to a lot of it never appealed to me as I was (and still am) an unashamed first and foremost guitar driven rock music fan.
Anyway, by 1993 American alternative rock had blown away most other forms of guitar based music in the UK and was very much in vogue. Nirvana's In Utero had just been released and there was no let up in the explosion of copyist bands achieving success. In the middle of all this I agreed to go and see a jangly guitar band from Burnley called The Milltown Bothers at the Academy 3 on Oxford Road in Manchester (small-ish room in Manchester University). They were never really "Madchester" but their sound was similar to The Charlatans and others. They had released one decent album and it was a cheap ticket on a midweek night so I went along with a couple of others.
We got there very early. After a couple of pints the support band came on. They started playing to a room of no more than 50 people including my 2 associates and I. The lead singer appeared to me to be an Ian Brown(Stone Roses) clone. They were playing what sounded like badly out of tune Happy Mondays throwaways. The assembled few were far from impressed and each song ended with a few muted claps. After about 10 minutes I'd seen/heard enough so retired to the bar area for some respite. 20 minutes or so later the strangled, nasal Mancunian voice of the lead singer mumbled something about The Beatles, then they started playing a version of "I Am The Walrus". There was much discontent among the people around me with remarks such as "This is dreadful" "I've never heard this song slaughtered like this before". I didn't even bother to look at my ticket to see what they were called.
After they shambled off, the audience were pleased to see The Milltown Brothers and they put in a decent performance but it felt like they knew the stuff they were playing was not currently popular and the audience, of now around 200, were polite but never really got into the show. I made my way home thinking it was an average night but I could have done with missing that crap support band.
Around a year later, I was getting my regular Friday night fix of the ground-breaking early 1990s show, The Word, when presenter Terry Christian introduced a band who were, in his words, "City fans but I won't hold that against them". This got my attention and as they started playing I thought they looked familiar from somewhere. After 3 or 4 minutes it dawned on me. "I don't believe it, I think this is that crap band I saw supporting The Milltown Brothers last year" I think I said to no one in particular. At the end Christian gave their name as "Oasis". Well, it's at this point that I will confess I am a concert ticket geek and save all my tickets no matter what the night was like. The following day I rummaged around my concert ticket box (how sad is this? I really DO have a concert ticket box) and found my Milltown Brothers ticket from the previous year. It read "Milltown Brothers" in large letters then underneath in much smaller letters "supported by Oasis". Yes, I wonder whatever happened to them?
Footnote: The Oasis performance I witnessed was prior to Noel Gallagher joining them.
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