Feud of the year?

From the BBC: “Bloc Party blast ‘stupid’ Oasis“.

Rock group Oasis have “made stupidity hip”, according to the lead singer of indie band Bloc Party.

Lead singer Kele Okereke hit back after Liam Gallagher said Bloc Party were “a band off University Challenge”.

Okereke told Uncut magazine: “Why is it bad to better yourself? It is really daft to reinforce the idea that there is something cool about being dumb.”

Gallagher made his remarks in the NME two years ago, when he also called the Scissor Sisters “weirdos on stilts”.

Yes: two years ago. That’s some resentment building up there.

The thing is, though, Kele Okereke does have a point about the encouragement of dumb, but Oasis are the wrong target really; Pete Doherty would be the right target. I’ve used many of the same arguments against Oasis before, especially the one about their constantly infuriating Beatles comparisons, but they’re really not the problem anymore in the same way that Razorlight et al are; besides, they made two decent but highly overrated albums, which is more than Bloc Party have so far (with two patchy but highly overrated albums). Despite this, however, he gets a perfect little barb in:

Okereke responded by saying Oasis were “overrated”, although he admitted the University Challenge comment was “quite funny”.

“It probably would have been a lot more funny had he not used exactly the same words to describe Travis a couple of years ago,” he added.

Oh, yes. Now this is a rock feud to watch out for – the Gallaghers against someone who actually knows how best to insult them. Watch this space.