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Cigarettes & Alcohol (And An Oasis DVD)




















We gave uber fans The Twang loads of beer and the Gallagher brothers new DVD - this is what happened.

Like most kids of the 90's The Twang's Phil Etheridge had his own private trove of Gallagher's Brothers porn: "I've still got it," he reveals. "I thought it'd be long gone, but I was cleaning out some drawers the other day and I found it again!" Whenever Oasis swaggered across the nation's TV screens, there you'd find a teenage Phil hunched over his VCR, finger poised on 'record', well-worn tape already rewound, ready to add a few precious minutes to his private reel.

For Phil, like a million kids in a million nowheres, Oasis were everything. Not only were they all you needed to know about being young and alive, they were a blueprint to making it out for all those whose horizons were being lowered year-upon-year. It was their spirit of f***-'em-all determination that drove Phil to the practice room after he clocked off from his job at the HP Sauce factory. And after his band scored a £1.6million publishing deal earlier this year, they splashed out on £6,000 coats from Harrods, "because Liam wore one once". The Twang are a band who believe it to be a moral failing not to live up the the ideals of the "rocknrollstar".

So who better to arm with a bottomless supply of beer in a Nottingham hotel room and ask to to pass judgement on Oasis' new DVD, 'Lord Don't Slow Me Down'? It's a stately portrait of the frustations a boredom of touring, intercut with the customary laugh-so-hard-you-die Gallagher banter. And blow us down if the sober habits of the grown up rock stars grown-up rock stars on-screen aren't outrun by the circus of bum-baring and hotel room-disrespecting off-screen.

Hour by hour, minute by minute, this is how it rolled...

7:15

NME arrives as The Twang are supping champagne at the bar of their swankey hotel on Maid Marian Way. It's just opposite Nottingham's Tails Of Robin Hood Experience and around the corner from the towns latter-day Gin Lane: Bathed in disco-light and vomit and saturated with students and townies in explosively equal numbers.

The Twang are on a tour of freshers' balls, a lucrative if spiritually unfulfilling pasttime, "Me and Martin have been dancing like this," Phil claims, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together in the universal gesture for 'Loadsamoney'. "The place was pretty empty.. everyone was more interested in the free Sambucca they were serving in the bar. Everyone was piling down to watch Dave Pierce, for f*** sake".

8:00

A DVD player is borrowed from upstairs, room service is ordered, and a shower cap is employed to bypass the smoke detector. The Twang have shoved Matty's girly mags aside and splayed themselves across his bed.

8:15

On-screen some shirtless hooli-goon is balling 'Live Forever' into a beer can as he queues for Oasis' Astoria show. "We're buzzing off this c***," Noel deadpans on the commentary "It's the Twang geezer," Liam drawls. Noel, Liam and Colin Murray hose themselves. It's not a direct likeness that sets them off, it's more the way that his face is arranged into an expression that cries, "I'm having soooo much fun".

8:16

"That's ace!" Phil wears the glazed expression of a man who's just been punched in the balls by a creature he had, until that very moment, considered mythical. Imagine being happy-slapped by a centaur: it's that same mix of pain, confusion and awe congealing on his face. "Yeah, but there saying 'Fook off, t**t'," Martin's girlfriend reminds him. "I don't care. Oasis know we exist. That's ace. Even if that bloke looks nothing like me...ace..." he mumbles. "Ace..." "Where's the room service?" Jon wines. Unable to last out, he attacks the minibar. Viciously: he's somehow yanked the door clean off his hinges, discarding it where it lies with little more than a shrug.

8:30

Stick a few drinks in Matty's tank and he transforms from shy band mascot into Keith Moon's loco nephew. He is now officially Acting Up. "Hey Andy!" Matty calls NME's snapper to come and capture him enthroned on the loo, trousers-around-ankles, pulling the same gurn he's been mugging for our camera all evening, before rising, knocking over some stray glasses and attempting to rip the curtains down in one grad gesture. He slumps back on the bed for a few minutes of gentle response, intermittently mooning his audience.

8:50

On the telly, Oasis are getting high: each filling their leathered bronchioles from a cylinder of pure oxygen, moments before going onstage in California. Meanwhile, The Twang are skinning up and discussing the possibility they too could get Oxygen on their rider. "Yeah, sure, costs about £60," their tour manager reflects. "No problem," Martin chips in, "We'll just take your wine off our rider then, eh?" Touche!

8:58

"Room service!" from where he lay prostrate on the bed, his trousers somewhere discarded, Matty now bounds up and hugs the waiter from behind, wrapping his long arms around his back. The faces of the service staff curdle into appropriate disdain, as they survey the demolished minibar door.

9:15

"Were' making a film about Japanese journalists," Noel tells a Japanese journalist on the DVD, in full Mancunian wind-up mode. "That's what all these cameras are for." The Japanese journalist nods, noncommittally. Phil leans forward, "It's rotter!!" The Twang, it turns out, have met this particular Japanese journalist. "Yeah, we met him when we were playing Summer Sonic," he relates. "Japan was mad. We all got arrested. We were out with some Australian guy and he was showing us around. We got back to the hotel about 4am when out of nowhere this Aussie geezer started smashing the f*** out of his motorbike that was parked outside. So we were like, 'F*** this' and all piled into a taxi. But somehow he managed to pile-in with us. The cops started chasing us - had us pinned up against the wall at one point. They took us back to the station, and as they were emptying our pockets I was like, "Thank you God that I don't have any sniff on me.' Two hours earlier, I'd been wandering around the centre of town randomly asking people if they'd got any." he shrugs. "This was Japan, so of course some guy was handicamming the whole thing, which is how we got off in the end."

9:25

Oasis are in the US of A: "So is 'Cast No Shadow' dedicated to Richard Ashcroft because he's so thin that if he faces the sun you can see him?" A radio DJ asks, "No," Noel says, "The reason one would 'Cast no shadow' in such circumstance would be if one were invisible..." "Oh, yeah..." The Twang laugh like Hyenas on helium.

9:28

"Matty, you're getting a hard-on," Martin's misssus complains. "I was trying to hide that," replies Matty. "Now you've gone and told everyone."

9:30

"Windmill! Windmill! Windmill!" For society's sake, Matty really needs no encouragement. But here he is, being brazenly egged on by the Twang WAGs. 'Windmilling', for the uninitiated, is a Twang custom that basically involves Matty getting his dick out and whirling it in circles until he gets bored or arrested. Matty's dick is a pillar of Twang folklore, because of both it's size and it's ability to emerge in the most incongruous places. Phil: "Me and Matty played a game once when we were waiting to get on a plane in Berlin. It went a bit like this: 'How drunk can you get drunk in a hour?' It turned out that the answer was 'very'. So we get on the plane, but we were so mashed by then the stewardesses came round to give me a colouring-in book to keep me busy. Then I see Matty has whipped it out. The stewardesses were like: 'That's nice... but we've got to get ready for take-off now.'"

10:00

Like a dragonfly that lives for a day, Matty's juices are now spent and the DVD winds to a close. We leave him and head to Chino Latino for more drinks.

Win a copy of Lord Don't Slow Me Down

To win, head to NME.COM/WIN and answer:
Which song are Oasis releasing in time with the DVD? The first five correct entries picked at midnight on 22 October win. T&Cs apply. See NME.COM.....

Source: NME Magazine

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