1994. More than 20 years ago. It’s not the last time I was carefree and happy but that year those two emotions certainly played out to a soundtrack.

I was almost as old then as Definitely Maybe, the debut record by Oasis, will be in a couple of years time. Financially independent, living in the British capital, all I found was cigarettes and alcohol. Good times.

Oasis, fronted by roustabout Liam Gallagher and steered by his brother Noel, riffed and raged, all for one, one for all, like voice and guitar armed musketeers.

Definitely, no maybe about it

The record remains capable of inspiring a nostalgic emotional warmth to this day for many, myself included.

(For my treatise on gin and tonic, as demanded by Liam in Supersonic, please read one of my former posts).

The record also happens to be one of only a handful of recordings I bought in the Mini Disc format.

An early adopter of nearly all music formats, I really believed that the mini disc was the format of the future.

Slipped discs

I had already amassed quite an impressive collection of compact discs — including Definitely Maybe, having lost a large number of my cassette tapes following a flatshare move.

I still have my suspicions that one of my “friends” may have pinched the entire box of tapes.

The Definitely Maybe sound of Owen Morris’ mix, capturing that big night out live vibe, really demanded a place on my confused, multi-format music shelf.

I still have the beginnings of a mini disc collection of classics but like many other ill-feted miscellany, they’re under the roof.

And I still return to that debut from Oasis.

Noel Gallagher was 50 years old the day I wrote this. He was only 24 when the record went on sale, in all formats.

“There we were now here we are
All this confusion nothings the same to me”

— Columbia

Now Noel is probably the funniest stand-up not working in stand-up.

So I shall continue to revisit, to sing along, asking aloud if maybe you’re the same as me, we see things they’ll never see. You and I are gonna live forever.

Cheers boys.

I have an odd gait. Some people ask about it, others pretend not to notice. Everyone always clocks it. For years I have walked this way.

I only realised recently that it was not my charm and winning smile that made me memorable, but my ungainly walk.

“Good to see you again Stuart,” people would say. How did they remember me and my name? Your walk, this way, dummy.

The good news is my walk has absolutely nothing to do with my love for the sample-pioneering, Adidas re-branding rap trio Run-DMC.

It really is like that

The American hip hop trio from Queens in New York, founded in 1981 by Joseph Simmons, Darryl McDaniels and Jason Mizell, reached my young Scottish ears in 1985.

But it was many, many years later in a bling-ed out basement nightclub in Cannes, France when I got a personal Run-DMC moment.

Reverend Run (Joseph Simmons) had been booked to do a late night set with DJ Ruckus while the Cannes Film Festival occupied the town above ground as part of a promotional attention seeking event by Belvedere, the vodka company .

Despite the hideous prospect of being in a sweaty French basement club, strobes illuminating the army of black-tied slavering old rich men Dad dancing with their “nieces,” I couldn’t miss the chance. It was the Rev from Run-DMC after all.

Finishing off my own monkey suit with a pair of white Adidas shell-tops I arrived fashionably late at the venue and walked up a red carpeted corridor lined on both sides by the bold and beautiful massed ranks of hired hand party fillers popular with organisers at such events.

As I strode along, funny gait and all, I noticed I was flanked by a large contingent of Ray Ban-shaded dudes wearing tight suits cut neatly around enormous muscles, their big precious metal chains swaying imperceptibly around thick necks.

I nodded at my fellow cool music seekers and limped on unabashed before being ushered through the roped entrance by guards and down the guilt-edged gold stairs.

It was only as they turned right through the “backstage” door at the bottom of the steps as I walked straight through a black velvet curtain into the club that I realised I had come in with the Rev and his VIP crew by accident.

Probably noone had wanted to ask the handicapped kid who he was.

It was a great moment for me and my Adidas.

Dust off that track (suit)

Boy, was it a late night. He mustn’t have been reminded he was in France, six hours ahead of Queens, NYC.

But despite the late hour, DJ Ruckus and the Rev rocked the Riviera for the tragically hip Canadians and everyone else in da club.

I wonder if they ever thought who that weird walking white dude was.