Oasis were quite good on their day. Everyone I knew was already pretty over them after a few months of MORNING GLORY back in the day, but the old songs like "Cigarettes and Alcohol" or "Shakermaker" hold up well.
As for best guitarists, this was off an album with annoying pretensions (what the fuck was that five minute intro with bird sounds on "Breaking Into Heaven"?), but Squire is gorgeous:
Love Butler and Coxon, and fuck Noel Gallagher, but that was a great band. I've got a lot of love for Nick McCabe too, he's really wonderful at leaving a little space in the mix on early Verve recordings like this one:
As far as Blur versus Oasis goes, the main difference is that Blur actually like other people's music. Noel Gallagher pretty much just likes what was in his record collection in about 1985.
In Blur's case there was no escaping the eventual intrusion of hardcore, punk, hiphop, electronica, lo-fi etc into what Albarn and Coxon were putting out.
There's still something sui generis about Oasis. I used to laugh about their lyrics being absurdly poor, but now those same lyrics sometimes feel like the work of an idiot-savant, and there's a whole generation that loves them.
"Slip inside the eye of your mind / Don't you know you might find / A better place to play?" I mean, what the fuck?
Blur by contrast were at their creative nadir for the albums that got compared to Oasis … they were better as shoegaze and post-hardcore than they ever were as that kind of music hall comedy / slice of life act. It's mostly the dreamier ballads and out-and-out post-punk interventions from MODERN LIFE, PARKLIFE and THE GREAT ESCAPE that have a bit of endurance, and there's an embarrassing amount of filler on those records.
