some important oasis math to consider:
the first oasis album definitely maybe was released 29 august 1994.
and they split 28 august 2009.
that’s just 1 day shy of 15 years that oasis was an active band with an album on the shelves.
(if you count it from their first single release, they were together for 15 years 4 months as an active band. and if you count since the start of the band in 1991, it’s 18 years. but we're using the first album metric so stick with me here.)
in the runup to the definitely maybe 30th anniversary, another looming milestone was discussed among fans: that on 28 august, oasis would officially be disbanded for longer than they were an active band with an album on the shelves. a somber moment for fans to consider.
however the reunion announcement happened 1 day before the 15th anniversary of the band split on 28 august 2009. so the official time oasis has been disbanded is just short of 15 years. by 1 day.
the time oasis is together as an active band with an album on the shelves: just shy of 15 years by ~1 day.
the time oasis is split up: also just shy of 15 years by ~1 day.
so we have to go down to the hours here to complete the comparison. this gets a bit complicated, so i'm checking my work with timeanddate.com's duration calculator.
looking at it by hour, the reunion announcement was 8 am gmt. the split was after a fight just before the paris gig (rock en seine 2009). from this schedule of the festival, oasis was set to go on at 22:00 (or 10 pm) paris time:
reports say bloc party announced the fight/cancellation onstage just moments before oasis was set to go onstage. noel announces the end of the band via oasisinet statement 2 hours later, so let's say the split is official a few minutes before midnight. paris is ahead an hour from gmt, so let's use 22:55 or 10:55 pm. this means the split would have reached 15 years on the night of august 28; 1 day shy of that exactly would be the night of august 27. by announcing the reunion in the morning instead, it's about 9 hours less than 2 days shy of 15 years.
here's the entire length of time between the split and the reunion announcement:
to compare with definitely maybe release to the band split, i need the opening hours of record stores in 94. i'm not quite sure about that. going from current shop hours, it’s definitely by noon; but record shops aren't what they once where either. maybe a big store like virgin megastore was open by 8am in 1994 for new releases. i’m not quite sure. using 8 am makes it longer and using noon makes it shorter but not by enough to change the outcome. let’s just use 8 am for an easy comparison. by this metric, the band would have made it to 15 years from definitely maybe's release on 29 august 2009 at 8am. by splitting at just before midnight 28 august, they missed that milestone by 9 hours or so. much less than 1 day shy of 15 years.
here's the entire length of time from the first album release to the split:
by announcing a reunion on 27 august 8am, oasis just barely makes it so the time they have been disbanded doesn’t surpass the time they were a fully active band selling a full LP of music.
the length of time oasis was together as an active band with an album on the shelves is officially greater than the length of the time they spent split apart.
by a bit longer than a 1 day.
about 30 hours to be exact.
