And yet?

Marginally more exciting was the semi-recent news that Oasis has finally, benevolently broken up. It’s not that I would rather drive a railroad spike into my head than hear “Champagne Supernova” again, or that I put the musician brothers Gallagher on the same level as the comedic brothers Gallagher. No, the imminent demise of Oasis elates me because it guarantees something awesome: the Ride reunion is totally going to happen.

Ride, for anyone who somehow missed them, shot a burst of excellence over two underrated shoegaze-related LPs and four impossibly good EPs in the early 1990s, and a subsequent burst of mediocrity over two other albums, before breaking up in 1996. Here’s a good song that you will love:

Andy Bell—who, along with fellow singer-guitarist Mark Gardener, was the driving force behind Ride—was hired in 1999 to be the bassist of Oasis. This was an annoying development for the admittedly small he-man-Ride-lovers-Oasis-haters club because it further diminished Bell’s incentive to engage in Ride-based activities. And since joining that band, he has resisted a full-fledged reunion, despite being somewhat open to the idea.

But now Oasis is no more. Which can only mean one thing: It’s so on. Please?

In the wake of the Pavement announcement, here’s an updated list of the six bands that I hope to see reunite before I die—which, if the first one happens, might be impossible, as I would surely have a heart attack upon hearing the news.

1. The Smiths

2. Guided By Voices

3. Ride

4. Soundgarden

5. Archers of Loaf

6. Kyuss

Ah, supergroups, those bloated Frankensteins concocted by two or more well-known musicians in what must only have been a moment of hubris or extreme inebriation. Supergroups, which, with their marquis names and zero chemistry, almost always feel like a Major League Baseball All-Star team: coddled, well-compensated studs getting together to do something that ultimately means very little.

So far this year we’ve already heard from Tinted Windows, a power-pop amalgam of fading semi-stars, such as James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins and one of those formerly adorable kids from Hanson. We’ve met the Dead Weather, a gang of indie-rock bad-asses assembled on a whim by Jack White, this one involving members of Queens of the Stone Age and the Kills. And we got Chickenfoot, which is not a podiatric affliction but a quartet of aging rockers you probably haven’t cared about since high school. Each of these projects has its selling points—Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick! Jack White on drums! Joe Satriani!—but whimsical team-ups like these would be enough to make a person skeptical. Assuming he wasn’t already skeptical.

Like other men of my age and temperment, my mistrust of the supergroup emerged in 1990, when Electronic’s debut single, “Getting Away with It” arrived in the U.S. as if heralded by cherubim, or at least “Melody Maker.” Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr, the life-changing guitarists from Joy Division/New Order and the Smiths, working together? Seriously? Just the thought of what magic might occur was enough to make me overlook that Neal Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys was also involved. Or that the tune itself, synth-pop at the outset of the grunge era, immediately felt dated. Because of my love of the two founding members’ other bands, I was guilty of liking the supergroup’s stuff before hearing it: premeditated infatuation.

But at least Electronic was a bona fide supergroup. The term has been misapplied so often that it could use some clarification.

1. For a band to be considered a supergroup, it must feature at least two well-known musicians. And unfamous members of well-known bands don’t count. We need successful solo artists or actual well-known members of well-known bands. How to define well-known? Gut check. For instance, in the Dead Weather example above: Dean Fertita, the rhythm guitarist of Queens of the Stone Age doesn’t fit the bill, but Jack White (duh) and Alison Mosshart, the lead singer of the Kills, do. I mean, Fertita is awesome. But could you pick him out of a police lineup?

2. The more well-known the well-known musicians involved are, the more supergroup-y the band is. A good litmus test here is Tinted Windows. Sure, it has Iha. But Zwan had Billy Corgan. Hence, Zwan trumps Tinted Windows, at least on the supergroup scale.

3. Equality matters. If one member is significantly more famous than everyone else, the supergroup smacks of a side project.

With apologies to Velvet Revolver and Audioslave, the truest supergroup in history—and this is not only based on the three rules above, but on any subjective estimation, really—was the Traveling Wilburys. George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne. Now that’s a supergroup.

Monsters of Folk, whose debut album arrives September 22, fits the three criteria more perfectly than any other band that has come down the pike this year, and their music feels the most thought out. Consequently they shall be granted the coveted Supergroup of the Year award—unless Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones are about to unleash a tour and album that I don’t know about. Oh, wait.

Check out Monsters of Folk’s first (and very Beatles-esque) single, “Say Please,” here.

Related “awesome” song of the month: Electronic, “Getting Away With It”

Few things in recent memory have annoyed me quite like the opening scene in the trailer for Fox Searchlight’s upcoming film “500 Days of Summer.” This is surprising because it involves two of my very favorite things: Zooey Deschanel and the Smiths.

The trailer begins with two apparent strangers, played by Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, standing next to each other on a workplace elevator, the young man clearly listening to “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” through his headphones. The woman, by way of introduction, says, “I love the Smiths,” and then breaks into a few bars of the song. The elevator doors open, she leaves, and the guy’s mind (and quite possibly something else later in the corporate bathroom) is blown. Check it out:

Gah.

Now, I usually refrain from talking about romantic comedies, as I’m not exactly their intended target. But “500 Days of Summer” is different, for two reasons: 1) I am the world’s biggest Smiths fan, or at least the biggest in the 11218 zip code, and 2) Fox Searchlight wants guys like me to see the movie. I know this because the trailer first came to my attention on Fox.com during a commercial break in an episode of “24,” the most male-friendly show this side of “WWE Raw.” So I felt obliged. And a little disgusted. I mean, if there’s a more inappropriate marketing partner for a romantic comedy involving the Smiths than an outlandish action series about a morally questionable brute who tortures people for a living, then I don’t want to know about it.

Anyway, there is a lot wrong with this scene, but what charts highest on the annoyance meter is that it’s a blatant rip-off of the most cringe-worthy scene in the history of independent cinema. Of course, I’m referring to the “You gotta hear this one song—it’ll change your life, I swear” fiasco from the 2004 sleeper hit “Garden State.” In that painful movie moment, a bummed-out Zach Braff befriends Natalie Portman’s headphones-wearing flibbertigibbet in the waiting room of a doctor’s office and proceeds to ask what she’s listening to. “The Shins,” she replies. Cue worst line ever.

Now granted, both the Shins and the Smiths are excellent bands, worthy of inclusion in all manner of Hollywood fodder. But this trend of movie characters earnestly declaring their love for certain bands is just embarrassing, not to mention wrong-headed. Such lines are obviously intended to goose the target demographic into sympathizing with the characters: “Ooh, she likes the Shins/Smiths! I have no choice but to root for her now!” Instead they land more like a hammer to sensible indie fans’ collective emo-loving noggins. And groins.

Imagine that everything else in “Garden State” was exactly the same except Portman announced that she was listening to “Tell It To My Heart” by Taylor Dayne. Would the scene have resonated the same way? The answer is yes, but only to members of the Official Taylor Dayne Fan Club. And I’m pretty sure Zach Braff was hoping for a larger audience than a few washed up drag queens and, well, Taylor Dayne.

To avoid these failures in the future, I propose that all indie filmmakers angling for the emo crowd be required to watch John Hughes’s “Pretty in Pink” whenever they’re mulling over having their characters saying something as insipid as “I love the Smiths.” There, as Duckie mopes to “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” or furtively pedals by Andie’s house while New Order’s “Shellshock” plays, they’ll find Hughes’s timeless primer on how indie music is best used in a movie: without comment.

Related Awesome Song of the Month: Morrissey, “Something Is Squeezing My Skull”