The recent story of yet another breakup of the band “Oasis” between brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher is strangely reminiscent of the constant friction in another rock band from a different era: “The Kinks“, which featured those legendary fighting siblings Ray and Dave Davies.

Both bands feature (seemingly) hot-tempered and quick to act brothers that are constantly at war with each other. If you know the story of Oasis, then you know this is not the first time they have broken up: usually after a fist fight. It also seems to happen during each and every tour they go on, beginning back in 1994, when Noel walked off the stage in Los Angeles in the middle of a concert when Liam changed the words to one of the songs. And let us not forget the 2000 tour in Barcelona when Liam questioned the parenthood of Noel’s daughter Anais, causing the tour to continue minus one family member (two counting the daughter).

And who can forget the immortal fight the two Kinks brothers had in broad daylight in a fancy downtown New York City restaurant in the seventies, when Dave lunged over the table brandishing a dinner fork in a mad desire to stab his brother Ray. Ray even wrote a song about this part of their relationship that the Kinks recorded called “Hatred“. It is on their last release from a major record company (Sony).

Of course now that Ray would like to put the Kinks back together, and years since Dave had a stroke and has struggled to regain his health, I am sure a lot of the reasons for the fights have become lost in the mists of time. Time will only tell if Oasis will get back together again, but I am betting that it will be hard to walk away from their rock and roll lifestyle.

Surely you have heard about the Beatles Remasters coming out 09/09/09, timed for the release of the Beatles version of the video game Rock Band. Well mixed in with all of that news, you may have missed the fact that the Rolling Stones are on the second phase of their catalogue remastering effort.

A few years ago, all of the Abkco Rolling Stones releases (read: all of the essential Rolling Stones releases) were remastered and released in the Super Audio Compact Disc format. And they really sound super. But that only brought us up to the end of the sixties, with the last release being “Let It Bleed“. Unless you count the two singles from “Sticky Fingers” included on the triple-sacd “Singles Collection”.

So now the Rolling Stones have released their post-1971 catalog (not however, in the SACD format), and they did it earlier this year to get a jump on the fab four. That is, all but the highly sought after “Exile On Main Street“. They have decided to make this release, considered their double-album masterpiece, a very special deluxe release next year.

A word of warning to those thinking about getting “Goats Head Soup“: for some unknown reason, the newly-remastered version contains an edited version of the highly controversial “Star Star“; but you can find the original unedited version of this song on the 1990’s Virgin compact disc. Stones fans know what I’m talking about.

Beatles remastered catalogue is due on  09/09/09.   A perfect date since #9 was John Lennon’s “Number”.   It’s hard to improve on perfection, but it should be interesting to hear the records in remastered form.   Talent still beats technology every time….

According to a recent report on MSN, it looks now that the number of active bloggers on the internet grows by about 100,000 every day. This puts us in the neighborhood of about 60 million current blogs, so says the Blog Herald. Who in the world is reading all these blogs?

Maybe there are more people writing blogs than reading them.