Dodgy as fuck head gear but ....what a performance

I've always liked this performance much better than the album version. 

i like the album versoin, but this is much better, actually sounds like a song and less of a noise. the solo part (or whatever) in the middle with the keyboard/organ is amazing. must be a better quality version of this somewhere that they havent released. i have always thought IGBM is a great song, up there with anything from 94-96. one of their best bridges and chorus. classic oasis sound

Like I said in my earlier post, Noel's glory years of songwriting are still evident throughout all of BHN, its just that it's often lost under all the loud noise and heavy mixes of the final record version.

Hearing the DYKWIM 2016 remix, this clearly shows how the songs can be transformed. BHN is crying out for an entire album remix. Once this finally gets done, I'm sure many Oasis fans who don't rate BHN will see the album in a totally new light.

It's a glorious album, but it's not a masterpiece.

The song-writing isn't quite as perfect as the first two albums, but neither is any rock song-writing since - it's still a bounty of unbelievable melodies. I've said it before, but the bridges on this thing might just be Noel's peak as a melodist. They are all just unbelievably good, and some other tunes like All Around the World have more catchy tunes in them than some bands manage over a full album. And, of course, it's got Liam singing it. Not peak Liam, I wish he could have sang some songs a bit higher to give them a lighter feel, but still - Liam Gallagher. It's endlessly fun and catchy and joyous. But there are problems. I think to make the album a masterpiece, three big changes would need to be made:

1) Trim the Songs - Not cut them down to four minutes, but just trim the places where they drag. The outro of D'You Know What I Mean and Gettin' Better Man, the chorus of Stand By Me, the second half of Fade In/Out. Not massive cuts, just trims. It's amazing how much punchier a song can be when even just twenty unnecessary seconds are shaved off. All Around the World, for instance, should always be a magnificent carnival of a tune, but there is no way that "and I know what I know..." needed four repetitions. 

2) - Save "The Masterplan" for it - Controversial one, but I do think the album needs one more single to push it into masterpiece territory. If The Masterplan had been saved, given Liam vocals, and released in 1998, I think you're talking about another monster hit that could quite possibly have pushed another few million onto the album sales. You might say that The Masterplan would sound rubbish with Be Here Now production, but that leads us onto point three, which is by far the most important. 

3) Improve the Arrangements and Production - By far the biggest problem with Be Here Now is that the way the core melodies are brought out often actively works against them. My Big Mouth and Gettin' Better (Man!!) are two of the best tunes Noel ever wrote, but they don't hit as hard as previous bangers because the tunes are masked in the disaster of noise. The album should always have been loud and dense, but things are only loud when there's something quiet to compare it to - the chorus of My Big Mouth is amazing, but play it to a casual listener and they won't even notice that there is a chorus. The whole song just sounds like one guitar slog. If the bridge had dropped the noise out, let that pretty melody twinkle, let the guitars shimmer rather than slam for a second, then when the chorus hits, brought the sound back with a sledgehammer, it'd drive home the dynamics of the songwriting rather than suffocating it. A similar thing could be said for countless songs on the record.

But I don't think it's as simple as just clearing up the noisier moments. The album should really have blended in a lot more different sounds than it did - continuing the progression that Morning Glory was to Definitely Maybe. D'You Know What I Mean should have been the poster child, with it's cinematic strings and sexy bass. A white-hot brass section could have added to the title track like how Liam plays it now, while the wild rock 'n' roll pianos of My Big Mouth's later live performances could have been added to the second set of verses to make that tune more varied. Let the pianos on Stand By Me blend with the guitars. Throw in some crazy choral chant to give the second half of Fade In/Out more ideas. Let us hear that rich keyboard jamming away on Gettin' Better Man. The Masterplan would suit this more ambitious sound too, with the backwards guitars. I know this all sounds a bit OTT, but I think the masterpiece version of Be Here Now is one that is long, loud, and dense with different textures. Whereas the version we got is too long, loud in a way that pulls the songs down, and not nearly imaginative enough with the arrangements to follow up Morning Glory. It's more of a glorious mess than a magnus opus.