As you’ll certainly know, I spent last weekend in London, catching up with (ex-) colleagues from work and hanging out with the Gallagher brothers at Wembley Stadium… To sum up the Non-Oasis part of the weekend, it was great seeing everyone again. We should do this more often, even if Atlas/MSFT doesn’t foot the bill anymore. I hope we’ll stay in touch one way or another… And “Credit Crunch Bunch” truly is an inspired name. To those I didn’t get to see, there’s always next time! And I’ll bring something better suited to playing basketball than a pair of jeans…

Right, onto Oasis then. I arrived at Wembley about an hour after the gates had opened. First order of business was getting some food in me, since the English breakfast that morning really didn’t agree with my intestines… So I got a Cheeseburger for SIX FUCKING QUID! WTF? Granted, the thing was about the size of the Isle of Wight, but still. And this was outside the stadium, figuring it’d be even more expensive inside. Going inside, I was surprised to find there were no security checks, especially at an Oasis gig. They may be a band for studenty types in Germany, but the kind of crowd they draw in the UK, you’d think they’d have extra tight security… Apparently not.

Off I went onto the pitch then, and despite knowing what would happen as the day progressed, I went right up to the barrier they’d set up to separate the very front of the pitch from the rest. Not after getting a T-Shirt though, only for the price of three cheeseburgers!
Since Pongi and the rest of the guys must have already left for Wembley when I was out playing Basketball, they were way up front and I was on my own, until a nice chap offered me some pills and others started kicking a football around, which led to just about everyone slipping on the wet ground and/or knocking someone’s beer out of their hands and onto someone else’s clothes. I managed to avoid getting hit at this stage (this isn’t my first rodeo, after all), but once Rodney & The Mavericks (or whatever the fuck they were called) came on, it was a Mancunian deja-vu. If it’s cold, it’s probably beer. If it’s not, it’s probably… I think I must’ve been hit at least by a dozen cups throughout the night, and the warm/cold ratio was pretty close to 50/50… Thankfully it was also raining through the entire thing, so you could at least pretend it was being washed off immediately…
Anyway, Rodney and his band were the usual useless Oasis support band. The only thing about them worth noting was the woman in the band. Brunette, endless legs, short skirt, tight top and heels. I think they were from up north.. However, what was even more fascinating were her dodgy dance moves. It looked like… you know those girls you see in clubs at 5am, drunk and desperate to hook up? That’s what it looked like. When she wasn’t dancing she was playing keyboard, but I think it wasn’t turned on because I couldn’t make out any keyboard sounds during any of their songs. She had a pretty good voice though (she also sang on some of their songs).
Next up were Kasabian. Admittedly, I don’t know many of their songs, but I know they’re awesome. They *really* got the crowd going (and throwing… cups). I can’t remember now if it was the bass or guitar player, but one of them wore a cool hat. I wish I could pull off wearing hats… Seeing, hearing and feeling the atmosphere during Kasabian’s set, you could already tell it was going to be one of those nights, as Noel calls them over on his tour diary (it’s not really a blog and he wouldn’t want anyone calling it a blog either (because, let’s face it, it’s a daft sounding word)). And boy, was it ever… They entered the stage to Fuckin’ in the bushes, which looked a little somthing like this from where I stood:

Only a true Oasis nerd would appreciate that the entire band seemed to be clad in Pretty Green gear… And I did.

They went straight into Rock’n'Roll Star, which really is the kind of tune that works best in front of 80,000 people, most of them declaring themselves rock’n'roll stars for the night. The same can be said for Cigarettes & Alcohol, which Liam dedicated to the “Pretty Green Posse”… Even after all these years, their presence on stage still amazes me. Where other people need to put fucking rockets, trains and elephants on their stages (more on them later), Oasis just stand there and play their songs and still manage to completely captivate entire stadium audiences for 2 hours (well, there was that Be Here Now stage, but those were different, slightly more coke fuelled days). It was *after* Cigs & Alc that Liam announced it was “enough with the exercise now, let’s play some real fookin’ rock’n'roll tunes” before launching into the next batch of songs (among them the song that gave this site its name, My Big Mouth), which… if those three were just for exercise, then this was going to be an exhausting night.
I can’t remember now which other songs they played at that point (Supersonic seems a safe bet), but I remember Liam eventually wandering offstage to let Noel take over on The Masterplan, a song I was sure I’d never see them play live, and there I was, belting out the chorus with the rest of Wembley Stadium. It’s in moments like these that you realize why you put up with the hours of waiting and all the beer and other liquids being thrown at you, because it’s just so out of this world… The Masterplan was followed by Half the world away, which is another song they don’t usually play at big gigs, or anywhere outside of radio sessions. For Sunday they replaced it with Whatever, which would’ve been even more amazing, but I suppose you’ve got to leave something for next time…

Liam came back to tell us that he’d heard about Take That being on stage at Wembley the week before, and apparently they had an elephant on stage with them. “I didn’t know they allowed that fat arse back in the band”, he said. YES! Huge applause from the crowd, because the only thing that cunt is good for is taking the piss out of him. They then launched into Slide away and I recorded the entire song with my phone, but it was way too loud for the iPhone’s mic it seems, as you can’t make out anything except massive distortion. Again, one of these songs I didn’t think I’d ever see them do live, but thankfully they dusted them off for this tour. Overall, the setlist was quite heavy on the flag-wavers, as Noel calls them (ballady type songs, such as the already mentioned Masterplan, Slide away, Wonderwall et al.). They finished the set with Live forever, which they hadn’t played on the European tour earlier in the year. Good to hear  and see it again.

Onto the encore. It’s safe to say that I witnessed something that will go down in Oasis history, something that will make legions of fans around the globe say “I wish I’d been there”. Noel returns to the stage and says “I don’t think I can be arsed singing this song anymore. So I’ll count you in and off you go”. What happened next was so fucking immense that words don’t do it justice…

There’s another version of it here, where you can see how awestruck Noel even is by the experience. Be warned though, the girl who filmed it has a nasty German accent and she’s obviously singing along. After that they closed out the set with the usual suspects (Falling down, Champagne Supernova and I am the walrus) and it was for the first time in those two hours I realized how fucking wet I actually was. I was completely soaked, or at least the upper half of my body was. And I don’t even want to think about the rain/beer/piss ratio… (there’s a picture of my shirt here, and that’s at least an hour after the gig is over, back in the hotel). After the lights came back on, they played Married with children over the PA system, and people started quietly singing along as they left the stadium… To me, it was a great way to end an unbelievable night. This gig is easily up there with the alltime greats, such as Glasgow Barrowlands ’01, Maine Road ’95 etc. Only this time I was there to experience it live…
And I think by the time the next UK stadium tour rolls around, I’ll be there again. While I was stood there waiting for the band to come on, I kept saying to myself “you’re getting too old for this shit”, but once Oasis had come on, I realized that I’m not… This might just turn into my own personal “Lethal Weapon” thing (where Danny Glover always complains that he’s getting too old for this shit). So yeah, until next time. Curious to see who the drummer will be then, and if I can make requests for the setlist please include The Turning, Whatever and (It’s good) to be free.