Whose side are you on? Liam Gallagher and Damon Albarn. Photographs: Yui Mok/PA
The high-water mark of Britpop is generally agreed to have been the rather ludicrous media battle between Oasis and Blur in 1995, when the latter's record company adjusted its schedules so that the two bands went head to head in a race for number one.
Despite its brazen artificiality, the 1995 clash between Blur's Country House and Oasis's Roll With It succeeded in mobilising some genuine passion among the young consumers manipulated into taking part.
Inflected partly by the cartoon casting of Blur as arty southern fops and Oasis as salt-of-the-earth northern yobs, large numbers of teenagers rallied to the tills to show their allegiances. (In the end, it was a pyrrhic victory for Blur, who reached the top spot that week but were vastly outsold by Oasis over the following 12 months.)
Given the media's attachment to anniversaries, it's understandable that what appears to be a repeat run of this battle has attracted some attention. It's a long way from being a full replay, however.
In the first place, Oasis's contender, The Importance of Being Idle, is already out, and already number one. Secondly, the "Blur" single squaring up to it isn't actually by Blur, but rather by Damon Albarn's carefully anonymous cartoon band Gorillaz.
Perhaps the most important difference, though, is in the attitudes of fans. This time round, only a handful of journalists thirsty for copy at the end of the silly season appear to have noticed there's any kind of contest going on.
This seems in keeping with the increasingly marginal importance of bands to teenagers' identity. Rock'n'roll helped invent teenagers, and for some decades remained a key component of adolescents' construction of an identity separate from their parents.
When I was a stroppy young teen, the values I wanted to embrace - and my aspirations for an interesting adult life - focused around my favourite bands.
Risible though it seems at this distance, Echo and the Bunnymen really meant something to me in those days, and I wasn't alone: it was writ large every week in Smash Hits' pen friend ads. Asked to describe themselves, the correspondents would simply say things like "Dave, 16, into Housemartins, ABC, Human League". And of course, as a fellow fanatic, one could read these as perfectly lucid self-descriptions.
Apart from the slightly anachronistic fringes inhabited by Marilyn Manson fans, it doesn't work like that these days. Not only is rock'n'roll thoroughly incorporated into the consumer establishment, any attempt to define rebellion by allegiance to Oasis or Blur is doomed. Your dad will likely as not have bought the records before you.
