麻豆社

There was a time when 'indie' music meant earnest young men and women, invariably with a floppy fringe and a cardigan, playing shambolic but charming music in the back room of a pub somewhere, to about four or five people.

But by the mid-90s, Britpop changed all that.

As much a reaction to the dominance of grunge, as a step forward into something new, Britpop kicked down the doors of the mainstream, and saw all manner of bands swaggering into the charts, as the era of Cool Britannia dawned.

But when it came down to it, there were two Big Guns in town, and they both couldn't have been more different. Blur were southern, art school boys, with a neat line in witty insights into London life. But across the North-South divide, Oasis were a different breed; full of stadium sized anthems, a cocksure confidence, and a songbook for the ages, they were, as the often proclaimed, MAD FOR IT.

This episode of Long Player attempts to put their 1994 debut album in context, showing just how a record like Definitely Maybe came to strike such a chord, and how they won a chart battle against an unlikely enemy: The Three Tenors...