Weekly > Reviews
Oasis - Sunderland Stadium Of Light
Oasis heirs-in-apparent- The Enemy are up first; ‘Are you ready Sunderland? Then let’s begin.’ Tom Clarke so resembles a young Paul Weller it’s spooky. Not as good a hairstyle yet though. The band tear through a breathless set that only really get’s the crowd going when they plunder through the first album. ‘Music for the People’ clearly hasn’t gelled with people yet and even ‘Sing When You’re In Love’ fails to really take off.
On the other hand ‘We’ll Live and Die In These Towns’ soars while Tom’s bloodthirsty snarling during ‘Away From Here’ and in particular the superb ‘It’s Not Ok’ is a sight to behold. They’re ready to headline massive gigs like these themselves already. Follow that Liam….
Kasabian’s set on the other hand I missed entirely (sorry folks). ‘What was he doing for Kasabian’s 75 minute plus set?’ you ask? I was queuing. Queuing for a drink, queuing for the toilets, queuing to get back in to the stadium. The shoddy, borderline incompetent organisation was a joke – I was witness to three crushes, and was myself involved in one – and the bands, and in particular the fans deserved much better.
Rumours are floating around that U2 are going to be coming up here. Let’s hope things improve and we don’t have a situation where thousands of fans are packed around a bar no bigger than my front room again.
And on the lads come. ‘Alright Durham?’ says Liam…..um, Liam? Off we go, straight in to ‘Rock N Roll Star.’ Naturally the crowd are in raptures and the band is in good humour too. Apparently the Manchester set was marred by problems (‘amateurs, amateurs’), but tonight they’re like five T1000’s, coming at you unceasingly. ‘Wonderwall’, no longer the bands elephant in the room is despatched with relatively early.
‘Slide Away’, the best Neil Young song never written by Neil Young’ finds the band in wonderful form. I swear I caught Liam smiling at this point….probably wind.
- Oasis
- Sunderland Stadium Of Light (10th June 2009)
- Category: Live
- Label: Big Brother Recordings
- Support: Kasabian + The Enemy
- Reviewed by: bobbins
- Published on: 29 Jun 2009
- Comments: 0
- Beat Surrender Rating:
Weblinks
Add to favouritesDuring ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ the band are everything they ever said they were with Liam at his sneering, bullying best whilst ‘Live Forever’ finds the band and crowd almost merge. The best moment occurs during one of Noel’s solo acoustic moments; ‘Half the World Away’ is sung back to him by every single person in the stadium. The song’s a b-side!
It’s intensely moving stuff. Liam comes back on all attitude (God he hates Noel getting any credit), for a welcome run through ‘My Big Mouth.’ Alright, the album was a disaster, but its fun to revisit ridiculous line’s like ‘Out of my big mouth, you could fly a plane.’
The encore was as expected an acoustic ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ (shouldn’t have worked as that drum solo is one of the truly great moment’s in rock but it does) and ‘Champagne Supernova.’ Maybe the bands greatest seven and a half moments, it’s songs like this, sung by bands like this, sung back by crowds like this, that makes things like alcohol completely unnecessary.
Now to my mind, in terms of ‘Madchester’ Oasis come a poor fourth behind the Roses, the Smiths and the Mondays. In terms of mass communal sing-along, and general great feeling however, they are second only to The Beatles.
Have your say...
Comment Guidlines
You must be logged in to post a comment. Go Login or Register first.
We waffle on enough without letting you lot do it too. Comments are limited to 300 characters.
Try and keep on topic if you can and no insulting the contributors. All hate mail can be addressed to Kev.