Stuart Hall Has News Of A New Stevie Riks DVD

The Stevie Riks 2008 Xmas DVD, "Festive Frolics", is NOW Available.

The New Triple DVD for 2008, is also available called "Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad DVD" It features most of the videos from 2008.

For more information click here.

Oasis In Los Angeles Setlist

Last nights setlist from The Pearl, Las Vegas, USA.

Fuckin' In The Bushes
Rock 'n' Roll Star
Lyla
The Shock Of The Lightning
Cigarettes & Alcohol
The Meaning Of Soul
To Be Where There's Life
Waiting For The Rapture
The Masterplan
Songbird
Slide Away
Morning Glory
Ain't Got Nothin'
The Importance Of Being Idle
I'm Outta Time
Wonderwall
Supersonic
Don't Look Back In Anger
Falling Down
Champagne Supernova
I Am The Walrus

Did you go to last nights gig or future gigs or even past gigs?

Send in your pictures to scyhodotcom@gmail.com and I will add them to tour archive.

Next stop Denver...

The Brit Is Back: Gallagher Talks Oasis, Past And Present

Of all the excuses Oasis has doled out for canceling gigs, at least the one that made headlines in September can be easily verified.

"Just go to YouTube -- it's there for all the world to see," guitarist and bandleader Noel Gallagher said, referring to the Sept. 7 attack by an audience member who rushed the stage during a concert in Toronto.

The online clips show Gallagher getting tackled from behind with linebacker-like force and landing awkwardly on his stage monitors. Don't look for the British rocker to make any more excuses, though, as his band finally returns to Minneapolis for its Target Center concert Wednesday with Ryan Adams.

"I've been given the all-clear and everything's healed," he said in a phone interview before the tour kicked off last week. "I'm back to the way I was before."

Indeed, Oasis' new album, "Dig Out Your Soul," offers the same Beatles-and-Stones-copping sound that made the band famous in the mid-'90s, which is to say it's their best album since their heyday. Likewise, Gallagher showed the same flashes of arrogance and inhibition that have made him one of rock's great characters -- and the same contempt for his brother, Oasis singer Liam Gallagher.

Q What do you remember about the incident in Toronto?

A I don't remember a great deal about it and, of course, I'm not able to discuss it much because there's a legal case going on at the moment. Anything I say can be used against me. But I really don't have any recollection of it. I was just playing away in my own little world. I had my back turned, and the next thing I know it was total chaos all of a sudden.

Q Any lingering physical or mental effects from the attack?

A No. It was two months with three broken ribs and five bruised ones. Mentally, no, not at all. I'm not that fragile upstairs.

Q Is it true Liam tried to kick the crap out of the guy?

A Yeah, you can actually see that on YouTube, too. It's very embarrassing.

Q So he does like you.

A No, no. Of course, he doesn't. We have a mutual understanding in that department. Nothing has changed there. At best, we have a hostile relationship. At worst, it's nasty. I can live with that, though.

Q One thing that has changed: Liam is writing more songs [three on the new record]. Is it a case of you letting him, or him insisting on it?

A Yeah, I don't like that term "letting him." I'm not letting anybody write songs. It's our band. It belongs to the four of us. Going back to the early days, everybody was required to write songs, but it just so happened that I wrote more than everybody else, and mine were better than everybody else's.

Q How do you rate Liam as a songwriter?

A He tends to write a lot of ballads, which is quite annoying. I've got to say, though, if I didn't like them, I'd say so. But I generally think his songs are pretty good. The best thing about him is his music. The rest of him I could live without.

Q You guys get a steady balance of criticism and praise for not trying to reinvent the wheel from album to album. Do you consciously follow the same formula?

A I genuinely don't care what people say. I write my songs on guitar. I can't write on keyboards. I do what I do. I don't analyze it. Other people do, and I don't care what they say about it. When we first arrived on the scene, and everybody was saying I was the greatest songwriter since Lennon/McCartney, I never believed it. And then in the middle bit, when they said it wasn't happening for me, I didn't believe that, either.

Q You've admitted you were in a creative rut around 2000's "Standing on the Shoulder of Giants." What happened?

A Yeah, I personally had a great lack of inspiration around me. That particular album, we were kind of doing it for the sake of it. There's some good stuff on it, but when it was time to go make another record, I didn't want to be bothered. If I had that time over again, I'd have resisted making that record. But in the grand scheme of things, you've got to go through some of the [expletive] to get to some of the stuff that's good. You can't be brilliant all the time. Even the Beatles had some [expletive], you know?

Q Can you credit some of your turnaround to you guys mellowing out a bit and avoiding a lot of the excess?

A Oh, yeah, definitely. Liam would try to convince you that he hasn't mellowed, but he has. We're all fathers now. If that doesn't change your life, then you're a bit of an idiot. But all the stuff that goes on outside of what's on the stage is kind of irrelevant anyway. All the scandals surrounding "Definitely, Maybe" and "Morning Glory," you can't remember any of it now, can you? What you're left with is the music. So as long as you get that right, who gives a [expletive]?

Q Oasis fans definitely demand those old songs at shows. Are you cool with that?

A I love it. I only get to do it every three years or so, so it stays fun. I also particularly like playing the songs from "Morning Glory" because that album kind of annoys me a little bit. We only spent 12 days in the studio recording it. It's really a bunch of demos. I think those songs now sound way, way better live than they do on record.

Q I understand you became a Ryan Adams fan after he covered your song "Wonderwall." What did you like about it?

A That song is essentially a blues song, and he kind of found something in it that I never knew existed. Like the point I was making before about that album, "Morning Glory." Ordinarily, I'll have put songs on a demo a year before and make constant changes to them until we put them out. That song was just captured in an embryonic state. I maybe would have gotten to that version he made if I had a year to work on it. He found something I thought was really quite moving.

Q Do you have a favorite album or song of his?

A Well, he's made so many [expletive] records and written so many songs, where do you start with him? He's doing stuff on tour with us that he did on that Nashville album [2000's "Heartbreaker"]. He's doing those but in more of a rock style, and they sound great.

Q Ryan has a reputation for being a bit of an ego case and troublemaker. Any worries that could be a problem on a tour with, um, Oasis?

A No, no, no. You'll find that most rock stars who are known like that are not really like that. A lot of them just get nervous around journalists. I've always found him to have a bit of nervous energy. I think people who come off like that are trying to mask something. He's actually sort of a shy American rock star.

Source: www.startribune.com

Happy Birthday Gem Archer

Colin Murray Archer (born December 7, 1966 County Durham), turns 42 today. Colin who is better known as Gem Archer, is an English musician best known for his work with Heavy Stereo and Oasis.

He joined Oasis as rhythm guitarist in November 1999, Gem also contributes towards the writing of some of the band's songs.

Oasis On Gonzo

Source: YouTube

The Funniest Clip Of The Year?

From Newsnight to YouTube - these were Observer Music Monthly's funniest and strangest screen moments of the year.

1. Liam Gallagher culinary critic on The F Word
Billed as this year's comeback kings, Oasis delivered some excellent live shows and the new album had its moments, too – particularly Liam's 'I'm Outta Time'. But his finest hour, surely, came with this surreal guest appearance on Gordon Ramsay's The F-Word. Wife Nic Appleton and fellow All Saint Mel Blatt have been cooking up a storm with their mums when the chef decides to see who's eating out front.
Gordon Ramsay: Good to see you.
Liam Gallagher: And you, brother.
GR: How you doing?
LG: Yeah, very hot. Chilled out now.
GR: What do you think of the food?
LG: Your fucking sweet potatoes are bobbins, man, because my missus does better than that.
GR: So bobbins means what? Shit?
LG: Yeah, shit, because it's a bit like clumpy....
And on the question of how Liam would fare with Noel in the kitchen? 'I reckon his head would be firmly pressed against one of those hot things.'

2. Jeremy Paxman left speechless by Dizzee
3. Doherty and Winehouse talk to the animals
4. Goldie throws down the baton on maestro
5. Cheryl Cole blubs on x factor: a nation swoons

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Noel Gallagher: 'Who Wants To Be A Drug Addict At 41?'

He had the Roller, the fur coat, the crazy party lifestyle. Now he's a sensible father of two who won't smoke in front of the kids. Simon Hattenstone finds Noel Gallagher is all grown up.

Noel Gallagher is listing the world's 10 greatest bands on his fingers, and working out where Oasis sit among this lot. "The Beatles, Stones, Who, Sex Pistols, Kinks, Jam, Smiths, Stone Roses, Bee Gees." He pauses. "I'm putting us at seven ahead of the Smiths cos we've done more." It's classic Gallagher, the great Mancunian motormouth. In the time it takes for some rock stars to muster a coherent sentence, he'll have set the world to rights, written off many of his peers as no-hopers, talked a great deal of sense, said something truly stupid or offensive or both, and provided a potted history of 128 years of Manchester City football club.

Now he's explaining why Oasis are different from other bands. "People like Coldplay, but they don't love them. People like U2, but they don't love them. But people fucking love Oasis. That's the way it is. It's more than the music." He's got a point, as I later witness at the gigs. Though it is also true that plenty of people can't stand the band, regarding them as crass copycats, playing 100 variants of the same song - when they're not ripping off the Beatles, they're ripping off themselves.

It's a bleak November afternoon in Aberdeen, freezing, already dark outside. On the telly, the news is even bleaker than the weather as we hear of shutdown after shutdown, and a recession that has been made official. Gallagher says it reminds him of his childhood days of three-day weeks, followed by industrial carnage and Thatcher. "I remember the 70s constantly being winter in Manchester and the Irish community in Manchester closing ranks because of the IRA bombings in Birmingham and Manchester, and you know the bin-workers' strike, all wrapped up in it... They were violent times. Violence at home and violence at football matches."

It was the 90s when things began to look up for Gallagher. If ever a pop group mirrored a political project, it was Oasis and New Labour. While they couldn't have appeared more different - Oasis all scruffy jeans and swearwords, New Labour smart suits and urbane accents - both grew out of the ashes of Thatcherism and the grey Major years. Both were determined, in their own way, to counter the cult of the individual and the ethos that there was no such thing as society. For the Gallaghers, it was obvious what society was - their mates at the job centre, their mates determined to have a good time despite everything, their mates standing at the bar drinking and taking drugs as they played.

Definitely Maybe, their first album, crackled with energy - in the song Rock N' Roll Star, they don't sing about what it's like to be a rock'n'roll star because they don't know, they sing about feeling as good as one. Live Forever, still Gallagher's favourite Oasis song, is about the invincibility of youth. He wrote it as a riposte to a song by Nirvana, the morbid grunge band, whose frontman Kurt Cobain went on to kill himself. "I heard this song called I Hate Myself And I Want To Die and I thought, I'm not having that, I cannot have this American rock star who everybody is lauding as a genius with all the money in the world sitting there in his mansion on smack saying that. What d'you want to die for?"

Live Forever was Oasis' first top 10 hit - a unique mix of raucous rock and drunken optimism. But while their first album anticipated success, the second (What's The Story) Morning Glory? was about rock'n'roll fulfilment. There was a sense of wistfulness in the famous ballads, Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger, as if Gallagher was already nostalgic for something that had barely started. These two songs became the supreme arm-in-arm, cigarette-lighter anthems of the 90s. They were also archetypal Oasis songs - loaded with emotional meaning, and yet virtually meaningless in themselves (what is a wonderwall, why is Sally waiting, who exactly is looking back in anger?).

He says he often didn't understand his lyrics, yet the larger meaning is transparent - the yearning for something better. One of his strongest memories is collecting the dole every week with his dad and seeing his friends there, too. "That was the Maggie Thatcher age - everyone was there with their dad."

Gallagher thinks he could have done well at school if he'd tried. He was expelled at 15 for throwing a bag of flour down the stairs and over a teacher. His mother Peggy was a dinner lady, father Tommy a labourer when he could get the work. "He was a typical Irish drinker-worker, always at the bookies, always gambling on something, didn't take his drink very well, quite violent." When Noel was 17, Peggy took the boys and moved away from Tommy.

In his early 20s, Gallagher worked as a roadie for the Manchester band Inspiral Carpets. "What a gig! Amazing. I was earning £300 for setting up a drum kit... Seeing the world, wow, couldn't be any better." That was when he started writing songs seriously.

One night he phoned home and asked Peggy what his younger brother Liam was doing. She told him he'd started a band. Gallagher couldn't believe it. "I'd shared a bedroom with him for years, playing my acoustic guitar and him sitting there going, 'You fucking weirdo' and all of a sudden he's a singer." On his return, he went to see the band, called Rain, told them it was a shit name, and gave them some of his songs to play. They changed their name to Oasis, and he joined them. Gallagher had to learn to play guitar all over again - he'd never played standing up before. "Then all at once, I turned into Paul McCartney. I was just like, 'Right, you play this, and you play that, I play this, you sing these words and sing it like this' and we were off."

Earlier this year, in a poll to find the 50 greatest British albums of the past 50 years, conducted by Q Magazine and HMV, Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory were voted numbers one and two respectively. It's incredible that Oasis are still going 15 years on - Gallagher himself thought of them as a here-today-gone-tomorrow band. With Definitely Maybe, he thought he'd done it all, said all he had to say, rocked all he had to rock. Yet here we are, Liam and Noel the only original members left, both embracing a maturity of sorts, the whole world changed around them and the band still churning out more of the same. Even more incredibly, they are as popular as ever (their last album went into the charts at number one, as have all the others) with an ever younger audience. How have they done it?

The one thing both Gallaghers knew was that if they made it, they were going to make the most of it. And so they did. By the time Labour came to power in 1997, Oasis were regarded as the biggest band in the world. Morning Glory sold 22 million copies worldwide, and more than four million in Britain alone. The band were constantly on the front pages of the tabloids - whether for manufactured rows with rivals Blur, hitting photographers, arguing among themselves, almost splitting up.

I ask Gallagher what it would have been like if I'd been here a decade ago. "There would have been a lot more hangers on... And the extracurricular stuff would have started already." I'd have had to kick my way past a mountain of coke? "Not a mountain. No, a little lump. When we started all the crew was from Manchester, and one by one they've all fell by the wayside, and it's a lot more professional now.

"Because it happened so quick, at Knebworth nobody really knew what we were doing. Normally when people play Knebworth it's the pinnacle of their achievement and they put on these awe-inspiring shows. We were just on the piss really. There's not so many fuckin' idiots surrounding the band any more."

What does he prefer? "I loved it then. But we couldn't be like that now because we're all late 30s, early 40s. I'm 41. Everybody says I'd be dead. Well, I wouldn't be dead, I'd just be a little caricature of a rock star. Who wants to be a drug addict at 41?"

In the mid-1990s, he moved to a salubrious part of London and a house he named Supernova Heights. "When I lived in Primrose Hill, I operated an open-door policy. I'd spent so long on the dole, and I'd moved to London and lived in this huge house, it was like, this is it, I'm living the dream, man. I invited a full awards ceremony back to mine once, George Best included. I won summat for summat or other, and it was the last award of the day and I gave out my address and said, 'Everybody back to mine.' And loads came. It was a great day. The police were called and all sorts."

Soon after Labour came to power, Gallagher was invited to Downing Street to celebrate their respective triumphs over Thatcherism. Tony Blair shamelessly tapped into the new wave of pop groups and designers that became known as Cool Britannia. "Alan McGee [Oasis' manager] got involved with the Labour party and he said, they want to meet you, and I was like, well of course they do. Who wouldn't? I was still on that euphoric night out that started in 94."

Did he have any qualms about endorsing Blair? "It wasn't so much an endorsement of him as, get these fuckers out." They all got carried away, he says - Blair thought he was JFK, Oasis thought they were the Beatles. When the band signed to Creation Records, Gallagher told McGee that if he made enough money to buy a chocolate-brown Rolls-Royce, he'd never want another thing.

After the success of Morning Glory, McGee bought him the chocolate-brown Roller and they turned up at Downing Street in it. Of course they did. "It was all symbolic. McGee used to work on the railways in Glasgow, I used to work on the building sites in Manchester. So we all piled in this Rolls-Royce and went down there. It was only four or five years since we'd signed off." Gallagher is a good storyteller. He can still recreate the weirdness of it all. "There was a strange array of people, Piers Morgan, Pet Shop Boys, Ross Kemp, Lenny Henry... It wasn't cool." Ever since, people have asked whether it was good for the band. For Gallagher it was just the first stop on a night out. "We left there and went somewhere else and then somewhere else and then back to someone's house and ended up back at mine at 7am, watching it on the news."

In the end, he says, Labour were corrupted by power, but he refuses to write them off. "Domestically, whatever Blair did will be overshadowed by Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction. But they brought in the minimum wage and for that alone it was worth it." He could never vote Tory. If Labour raised taxes for the very wealthy, would he still vote for them? "Yeah, totally." I remind him of the 70s when income tax rose to 98% and so many stars left the country. "It would be with a heavy heart that I became a tax exile, but then again if you're earning a pound and somebody's taking 98 pence of it, what's the point?" So what's a fair rate? "Well, I pay 40. I dunno - 50?" He settles on 50p in the pound.

I ask him if success changed him. "You'd have to be a fool to sit here and say no." Is it possible to become idolised without becoming a bit of a twat? "Well, I didn't become a twat, but I started to dress like a twat. I wore sunglasses a lot and I might have had a fur coat and I thought that was the correct procedure for being in the biggest band in the world, but no, I didn't become a twat." Nor, he says, did he go mad. "It's only solo artists who go mad; Robbie Williams, George Michael, they go mental because it is all about them, but it's not all about me."

What's the most ridiculous thing he bought? "A Jaguar Mark 2, Inspector Morse car, had it built specifically for me - a £110,000 car. Never had a licence. Never had a lesson. It sits in a garage." He's still got it? "Oh aye. It's got about nine miles on the clock. I've got a gateway that's a quarter of a mile long, and I've driven it up and down the drive. I'm going to give that car to my son, I think." What if his daughter Anais wants it? "She's not getting a big Jag. It's a lad's car. Totally."

Later, I meet Gallagher's girlfriend Sara MacDonald and tell her what he said about fame. She says it doesn't ring quite true. "Noel says to me he became a bit of a cock - being a bit mean to the people he was working with. Everybody says he's much nicer now he's not doing drugs. Everybody is, though. I mean, if you're doing tons of Charlie..."

Ultimately, the endless partying did become too much for him. He remembers the exact moment - when the band got home from a massive tour in 1998. "I dumped the bags, there were loads of people in the house, and the World Cup was on, and I still remember the one last line. I had a moment of clarity - I need a proper fuckin' life.

"I thought I'd done it all. I'd come from that rehearsal room in Manchester, gone all the way from the bottom right to the top, had all the money in the world, massive house in the country, there was nothing left to do beside go and buy a jet airplane and crash it in the lake. That's it. And I went to bed that night, and have never done cocaine since.

"Of course, nobody wants you to stop doing it because it's your house that everybody's in. So I started with a week and then it went to two weeks, and slowly but surely I began thinking, I don't really know any of these people. I'm not even sure that I know the woman I'm married to. It was a gradual dawning of, who the fuck are all these people? I know her, I know she's Kate Moss, I've seen her in the paper, and I know she's here because she manages to be with every rock band at some point so why wouldn't she be here, but everybody else I had no connection with except that they'd seen me on the telly.

"It was like, right, we're selling this house, then we're moving to the country, then the party moved to the country, then, right, this is not working - so I just stayed in, all the time, and just waited for everyone to fuck off. One by one they all left. The next thing was, well, I need to get divorced because this is rubbish. And that was it. It was very liberating."

We're sitting in Liam's changing room. He is the only band member with his own room because his guitar playing and warm-up vocal exercises annoy the others. Although there is an acoustic guitar in the corner, the room is anything but rock'n'roll - his "riders" are laid out on a table: seven bottles of Volvic, three packs of green chewing gum, three packs of blue chewing gum, fruit squash and honey.

How did success affect Liam? "He got drunk. For four or five years. I never saw him sober. I don't know whether he felt he didn't deserve any of the accolades, but he was trying his hardest to destroy everything, that's how I saw it. Like not turning up for American tours."

If you want to sum up Oasis in one anecdote, this is it. The third album, Be Here Now, was rising in the US charts, and with a grand tour to come they were set to conquer the States. Only Liam gets a phone call at the airport from his then wife Patsy Kensit and decides to return home to househunt. Noel decides he'll be fine on his tod, the band hurl a few barrels of abuse at the press, and America decides it doesn't like Oasis after all. With the world in their grasp, they blew it. "It would be like U2 turning up and the Edge going, 'By the way, Bono won't be here tonight but don't worry, I'll do it for you.' "

It's surprising how often U2 are a reference point for Gallagher, but it makes sense - while U2 are just about the most professional (and clinical) outfit going, for many years Oasis were just about the most shambolic. "People love us more for the fact that we went to America and did what they probably would have done - we had a bit too much to drink and we said the wrong things. And they love us for the fact that we never nailed it there and we keep going back and plugging away." The American tour taught him another lesson. Until then he had assumed that because he was the brains and engine of the band, the grunt with the whining voice and hyperbolic sideburns was a mere accessory. After he took over the singing duties for the tour, he soon realised that most of the fans came to listen to the band and stare at Liam.

What did America do for their relationship? "It's always been the same," he says. "I'm not one of those boys from the home counties who'll sit there and seethe and write poetry about him. I give him a clip round the ear and call him a fuckin' knobhead and then we move on."

Would he say they were friends? He's not sure. "If I don't see him from one end of the year to the next when we're not gigging, that's fine by me, and by him. The safety valve is knowing that eventually you end up in a rehearsal room together writing songs. But he's one of the few people who can make me laugh out loud and vice versa. For someone who's not got a sense of humour he's hilarious. He's got a weird way with words. Only me and him can say the things we say to each other..."

Were they ever jealous of each other? "There's a real journalistic way of going, 'Well, Liam would always want to be Noel cos he's the talent and he writes the songs, and Noel would always want to be Liam cos he shags all the supermodels.' Yeah, you can say we snipe at each other all the time... You'd have to put me on a couch and hypnotise me."

The thing is, he says, Liam was born lucky. Fact. "I'm not jealous of him, but I can't understand why someone would get on stage and attack me and not him." A few months ago a "fan" in Canada pushed Noel off stage and he broke three ribs. "If ever there's a bottle thrown on stage, it always manages to miss him and hit me in the back of the head. My point is he always lands on his feet. I always land on my arse. I've always had to work for everything I've got, and he's always just in the slipstream."

As the crowd gathers before the show, I spot three young Liam lookalikes - always Liam, the cool one. I ask one of the Liams why he thinks Oasis are still so popular. "The atmosphere. A lot of the songs are big singalongs, get your mates together, get pissed, have a good laugh," he says.

An Oasis gig is unlike any other I have been to. It is more football match than concert. The young men (mainly boys, actually) walk in with a pint of lager in each hand - more for throwing than drinking. As soon as the gig starts, mini beer fountains fly through the air like so many teenage ejaculations. As boys push their way into the mosh pit, they are patted on the back - young soldiers off to do their time at the front.

There are a good few girls here, but this is a lads' night out. When the band play the ballads, they come together, arm in arm, singing every word, living the dream. From the band, there's no small talk, no niceties, just singing and yearning. Sometimes the band stop and allow the audience to do all the singing and yearning for them.

Four nights later, we're in Glasgow. It's just as bleak, just as bitter. Gallagher has a cold and is knackered, but he's ecstatic. "I've been up all night watching the election. To sit and watch all those states swing to a leftwing politician is amazing enough, but the fact that he's a black man is just mind-blowing. Wow!"

Again, we're in Liam's changing room, and Gallagher is talking about how Oasis reinvented themelves after two of the original members, Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs and Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan, left in 1999. "That's when Oasis mark 2 started. We became more professional. Bonehead was a big drinker and Guigsy was always stoned. So when Andy Bell and Gem joined, I guess they felt they couldn't just rock in with a bottle of Jack Daniel's in one hand and a spliff in the other. They were easing their way in and that helped Liam and me be on our best behaviour."

What interests me is how he managed to keep going when he thought his best work was behind him. He says maybe he shouldn't have done. After Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger became national anthems, he struggled. Paul Weller gave him the best advice when he told him that one day the songs would stop coming, and he musn't force them. He ignored him. "Between Be Here Now and Don't Believe The Truth, which spans five years, I was putting out records for the sake of it. We shouldn't have bothered, I didn't have anything to write about."

The trouble is nobody told him he was writing rubbish songs. Liam would tell him everything was great because he'd be desperate to get back in the studio and record something new. "A lot of it I listen to and think only an egomaniac would convince himself that that was worth putting on. I say to my manager, 'You told me it was brilliant.' And he goes, 'Well, you don't tell the goose that laid the golden egg that his arse is blocked up, do you?' " If he'd been really brave, he says, he would have called it a day after Definitely Maybe. "Morning Glory is for the squares... It's up there with all those great crossover albums like Thriller, and the greatest-selling albums of all time like Phil Collins and Genesis."

I ask him what a wonderwall is. He smiles. "There's a film called Wonderwall and George Harrison did the music. It's about a guy who lives in a bedsit and in the next room to him is a hippy student. He spies on her through the hole in the wall and he christens it the wonder wall. It was made in 67, appalling film - I thought what a great word, though."

These days, he says Oasis is a more democratic band - although he is still the main songwriter, all of them contribute. On the latest album, Dig Out Your Soul, there are two outstanding tracks - Falling Down is written by Noel, I'm Outta Time by Liam. The album has done well around the world, even in America where Oasis reached the top five for the first time since Be Here Now and the disastrous non-Liam tour.

I ask Gallagher if he thinks the songs have returned. "Yeah," he says, with less certainty than normal. Does he think he could write another Definitely Maybe? "No. I wrote that album when I was 21/22, and the people who picked up on that album were 21/22-year-olds. You can only do it once. We went on that tour and we were the same as them. We had no money, the people in the crowd had no money. We're rock stars now, we don't live in the same circumstances as any of these kids, so you can't even begin to write from a position of where they're coming from. But there's a point that lasts for about three years where you're in the same circumstances, you look the same and you dress the same as your audience, and that, my friend - you cannot buy that. I'd give it all up to go back to those three years.

"Listen, I'm 41, I've got two kids, I don't expect a 16-year-old to be looking to me for inspiration. It's the Arctic Monkeys' job now. I've done my bit. Now we go in the studio and it's just like, let's make some records, let's do it cos we love it."

There aren't many other contemporary bands he rates. "People say I seem very negative about new music - well, if somebody asks me what I think of Keane, I'll tell 'em. I don't like 'em. I'll obviously take it a step too far and grossly insult the keyboard player's mam or summat, but I'm afraid that's just me." His most famous insult was directed at Blur's Damon Albarn and Alex James when he said he hoped they'd die of Aids. Unforgivable, he says - he was so young, and off his head to boot. "Looking back now that fight's all so pathetic over two really quite shit pop songs." How do he and Albarn get on today? "He's a great artist," he says. "He's different from me. I'm not an artist - for me, it just comes out. He does Chinese operas and that kind of thing, he's got more strings to his bow than I'll ever have." So how do they get on? "There's always been something between me and him, and I don't know what it is."

At the aftershow party, Gallagher's girlfriend Sara is showing me pictures of their one-year-old boy Donovan. "What d'you mean, he's sweet?" she says. "He's more than sweet." There is no sign of Liam. She says he generally disappears after the gig. "He goes off quietly with Nicole [Appleton]. They're not really party types. Noel likes to chat, you can see, can't you?"

Gallagher's actually playing the DJ - flicking between the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Hives, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. He says if the children were here he certainly wouldn't be doing that. "The kids rarely come to see the band, and when they do it's a dry night. You wouldn't be like Keith Richards, smoking fags in front of the kids, man, it's not right, is it?"

The drummer from the support band Sergeant has been giving Gallagher an earbashing all night, telling him how thrilled he is. "I told my mum I was supporting Oasis, and she just said, 'What time will you be home?' " Gallagher laughs. He tells me he has never seen crowds as young as tonight, and he doesn't really get it. "That freaks me out a bit, and I'm starting to get self-conscious thinking, wow! I'm some old dude, man, and they're all going mental for these songs I wrote."

It is strange, but there's a good reason Oasis continue to appeal to kids - unlike the Beatles and Stones, say, their music hasn't evolved. And although Gallagher is now one of rock's elder statesmen, his attitudes haven't much changed either.

Well, some have. It's 1am, the party's been going for a couple of hours and he looks around at all the young aspiring pop stars. "Right, let's be having you," he says, in his best pub-landlord voice. Time for bed, he says. "You've all had your fun."

• Oasis' single, I'm Outta Time, and album, Dig Out Your Soul, are out now. The band tour the UK next June.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

The Enemy On The New Album And Touring With Oasis

Coventry boys The Enemy on the release of their new album next spring and the fourthcoming stadium tour supporting Oasis.

Source: YouTube

Noel Gallagher Interview

Before he even gets on the phone backstage at an arena in Oakland you can hear Noel Gallagher swearing up a storm. Oasis is big enough and powerful enough that neither Noel nor brother Liam has had to censor themselves while speaking.

But he wants to speak, as he's proud of the new album, Dig Out Your Soul, a focused, hard-rock album unlike anything Oasis has done in the past.

It's not all smooth. Gallagher was injured in Toronto earlier this year when a fan got onstage and violently knocked him off of it, sending him to the hospital and causing a YouTube sensation.

You're backstage a few minutes before the first night of your tour kicks off. Do you ever get nerves anymore?
"No. I feel sorry for the people who buy tickets for the first couple of nights because you're always a bit rusty. We haven't played now ...we've only played three times in the past month. The first couple of gigs will be rough. But what's the worst thing that can go wrong?"

You found that out in Toronto, didn't you?
"Well, yeah, all right. Other than being violently attacked, right? It's probably a million-to-one that'll happen again. Apart from that what can go wrong? People start slow hand-clapping and walk out. (Expletive) that. I don't give a (expletive).

You had to change drummers from Zak Starkey to Chris Sharrock. Was that a problem?
"Major (expletive) pain in the ass. It's a major pain in the ass. But every time we've gotten a drummer they've been slightly better than the last one. Chris, I hope he just sticks around. I think he will, to be honest. He's from the same part of the world as I am, from the northwest of England, so there's already that. He hasn't got that much of an ego. He just feels like he's right for the band. As for drumming skills they've each got their strong points. Zak was on the (expletive) money every night. Chris is a little bit looser but he plays in a bit more Oasis style. Chris is great to watch, believe you me. There's no point in comparing the two."

Dig Out Your Soul seemed very focused. Was that the intent going in?
"The big difference was I gave up the control of co-producing. I always co-produce the records. I don't' trust anyone else. I trust Dave (Sardy) now. Here you are. You (expletive) tell me what to do. I can't be bothered with it anymore. Instead of sitting by the mixing desk.... I could focus on what I was going to drink that night. It's a big deal for me because usually I'm (expletive) twiddling knobs till 6 in the morning."
The other guys in the band are writing more songs. How did that come about?
"I'm more comfortable with the band having everybody contributing songs. That's what bands should be about. I was sick of all the writing, all the recording, all the (expletive) producing, coming up with ideas for the artwork, all that (expletive). My name's not on the front of it, so (expletive) that, know what I mean? I said to Gem (Archer) and Andy (Bell) when they joined they'd better be prepared to write songs. If you're going to be a (expletive) session musician then I'm going to pay you like one. If you wanna be in the band you'd better start contributing. The first year was a bit difficult because they were kind of writing songs like what I write. I remember having to say 'Look, you have to write how you write, don't worry about me. You can't write songs like I write. That's what I do. Don't do my thing, do your own thing.'"

You've done rich, famous, stadiums, honors, awards. What gives you satisfaction in music these days?
"(Long pause). Eh...it's quite diminishing returns once you've done it all, I have to be honest with you. Um...I don't know. I just don't know what else to do. Don't get me wrong, I love (expletive) getting up onstage and playing the guitar in front of (expletive) thousands of people. Who wouldn't like that? It's glorified showing off, do you know what I mean? This record has given me a great deal of satisfaction. I don't really analyze it that much. I get up in the morning and I'm having a shave, am I happy with what I'm doing? I absolutely am. If I'm not happy I'll go and (expletive) do something else. That day's not come yet."

Do you need a record label anymore?
"We don't' have a record label in England. We do it ourselves. In America we're on Warner Brothers or reprise simply because we don't live here. What are we going to do, mail-order records all over the (expletive) world? That'd be insane. In England we look after ourselves. Around the rest of the world we picked whatever labels gave us the best deal. We're on various record labels now. It's insane."

Does that arrangement give you more power?
"I couldn't tell you. I won't pay my manager 20% of everything I earn then do his job for him. You look after this, I'll look after getting (expletive) drunk, writing songs and being cool."

You're close with Russell Brand. Have you considered acting?
(laughs). To be honest he buzzes me on a regular basis about this, let's write a (expletive) sitcom, blah, blah, blah. I think I'd be too embarrassed. I've been on film sets and all that. When I'm in the studio I do it once, maybe twice. If I do a take for a third time it's because somebody (expletive) up and I'm not happy. If I'm doing the same (expletive) thing all day, 98 takes, I'd hang myself. I get in there, bang, get it done, get out."

Back to the attack in Toronto - what was that guy trying to do? What was his motive?
"This court case has been adjourned twice now, till January. Then we'll find out what his (expletive) explanation is for all this."

Does it affect the way you feel onstage now?
"Nope. Nope. Not at all."

What's it like playing stadiums in Europe versus arenas in America?
"In America it's more like a concert. It's all seats. Have you ever seen us in England? There's 60,000 people in the stadium and you all get carried away with it. (Expletive) knows what the gig is like. You're just in there an it's like whish, then it's over and you go 'Wow, what happened there?' In America it's a concert where people are listening. In England people don't listen. I'm not putting that down, it's a great thing, I wouldn't' have it any other way. People just let off stream and (expletive) go for it. In America they study you a bit more, which makes you play better, I think."

Do you run into creative dry spells?
"Oh (expletive) yeah. Just after Be Here Now till Don't Believe the Truth was a real uninspiring time for me. If I'm not inspired by the music around me I write (expletive) songs and I write songs for the sake of it. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants and Heathen Chemistry, there's kind of a few good tunes of my own but the bulk of it is fairly uninspiring. The one lesson I've learned from that is when it's not happening just (expletive) go on vacation. If I was to give anybody advice it's just don't chase it. Wait till it comes back. If your dog runs away don't go looking for the dog. The dog will find you when he's hungry, know what I mean? Who wants to go look for a (expletive) dog? That's mental behavior."

What's different about the new disc?
"It's an album. It's not a collection of (expletive) songs. I'm not putting us in the bracket with these bands, but it's an album the way Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd used to make albums. Every track on a Pink Floyd album is (expletive) great, but they also have context within the album .... When you put it where it's supposed to be listened to it's amazing. Albums are supposed to be journeys. With the advent if iTunes and cherry-picking songs the album is dead. Now it's 'I'll have track one, track three, track seven and track nine.' (Expletive) all that. You wouldn't do that with Dark Side of the Moon. You wouldn't do it with Led Zep IV. You can't do it with Sgt. Pepper. What's the point? We tried to make an album in that respect where it's right. If some kid is gonna cherry-pick three songs, then (expletive) him. Know what I mean? That's his problem. If they don't make sense that's his (expletive) fault."

What's coming up musically?
"I've got a (expletive) of songs. It could be electronic. It could be folk. It could be psychedelic folk. It just depends on what I feel like. The next Oasis record is going to be a difficult one. We've been trying to make the album we've made this time for a long time. I love this album. ... it has a certain direction and certain sound, while some Oasis albums previously have been a collection of songs. This is a proper album. Out of those 30 songs I could make three albums, all vastly different. Or it could be space reggae."

What's the view of America now from England?
"It's almost become really cool again. ... you can't really generalize about American people because there's (expletive) too many of you. When people think of Americans they kinda generalize - fat, loud, driving a big car. If you've been over here it's not like that at all, you know what I mean? I don't mean to be condescending and use the word normal, but the bulk of the people are just like the rest of us. Unfortunately the people who have passports are (expletive) idiots. My own take on it is recently, since George Bush was in town, when the real crunch time came America didn't do the right thing. Whereas this time America has done the right thing. It's not because Barack Obama is black. It's because they elected a Democrat. That's the most important thing. The words he says about the environment are really powerful. If he gets on with what he says he'll do, it benefits America. And if it benefits America they say it benefits the world."

Source: www.rockymountainnews.com

Win An Oasis Collage By Photographer Michael Spencer-Jones

Oasis collage

To celebrate the release of Out Of The Blue, a fantastic portfolio of photographs of Oasis by photographer Michael Spencer-Jones, the Observer Music Monthly is offering readers the chance to win a limited edition collage of one of Manchester's greatest bands.

We're giving away three A3-sized (42cm x 30cm) inkjet print collages, created from over 100 different photographs by Spencer-Jones, who shot all of Oasis' iconic single and album sleeves between 1994 and 1997. These are from an exclusive run of just 250, each one signed and numbered on the front by Michael Spencer Jones, and will be supplied unframed and tubed.

For more info on Out Of The Blue, see www.snapgalleries.com

Enter competition here

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Oasis In Los Angeles Review

It took Oasis only four songs Thursday night to start a ruckus at Staples Center, where a squad of security guards dragged a man from his front-row seat after he exchanged some unintelligible words with Liam Gallagher, the veteran English band's dependably cantankerous frontman.

Second (most of the time) to music, troublemaking has long been Oasis' stock in trade: When Gallagher and his guitarist brother Noel founded the group in the early 1990s, their project was pairing punk's spit-in-your-eye spirit with the compositional grandiloquence of classic '60s-era pop.

On huge-selling early records such as "Definitely Maybe" and "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?" the Gallaghers used melody to disguise the fact that they were shredding your eardrums with noise; meanwhile, both siblings have taken fame as a welcome opportunity to exercise their loudmouth tendencies. Today the brothers are the only original members left in Oasis -- "Would you like to say hello to our 15th drummer?" Noel asked the crowd at Staples Center -- and it isn't hard to figure out why.

Thursday's show was the second of a current North American tour in support of the band's strong new album, "Dig Out Your Soul," which, after a decade of creeping irrelevance, makes a fairly convincing case that Oasis still knows the shortest distance between a smile and a snarl.

Actually, "smile" might be overstating the case: For most of their 105-minute set, the Gallaghers and their mates played with all the evident enthusiasm of a bunch of old-timers putting away after-work pints at the pub. By the end of the show, Liam had even done away with the customary song introduction and had begun simply naming songs before the band played them. (Of course, that might've been because most of Oasis' best songs, like "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova," aren't about anything.)

Thanks to the miracle of guitar fuzz, that seeming indifference came off less like boredom and more like an appealing act of confrontation: Liam didn't need to beg us to sing along with "Cigarettes & Alcohol" and "Supersonic" because what choice did we really have in the matter?

Examined in close proximity to those indelible hits, new tunes such as "Waiting for the Rapture" and "To Be Where There's Life" lacked the anthemic brio that always distinguished Oasis from artier Britpop peers like Blur and Pulp. And though he's by far the band's most talented songwriter -- indeed, Oasis albums invariably suffer when he passes the pen to his brother or one of his bandmates -- Noel made for a rather ho-hum frontman during the handful of songs he sang.

As much as Liam needs Noel's melodic know-how, Noel needs Liam's front-and-center star power.

Opening the show with his sturdy alt-country backing band the Cardinals, Ryan Adams tried to work a similar mixture of antagonism and affection. Here's another darn sunshiney anthem, he said (in slightly more colorful language) before playing "Go Easy," a typically melancholy cut from this year's fine "Cardinology."

Apparently irritated by the audience's reluctance to receive his music with the hushed reverence it deserves, Adams retreated to sarcasm (not to mention bizarre, possibly booze-fueled ruminations on Jethro Tull and "the tyranny and horrors of math"). As Thursday's headliners demonstrated, though, that's a weapon that requires experience to handle.

--Mikael Wood

Source: LA Times Music Blog

Sony/ATV Rolls With Rest Of Oasis

Sony/ATV has confirmed a worldwide publishing deal with Oasis members Liam Gallagher, Glem Archer and Andy Bell.

The deal means all members of the band’s publishing is now through Sony/ATV as Noel Gallagher was already with the publisher.

All four of the band are among the writing credits for the group’s seventh studio album Dig Out Your Soul, which debuted at number one in the UK in October with a first-week sale of 200,000 units. It also entered the top five of the Billboard 200 albums chart.

Liam Gallagher’s contributions to the album comprise the group’s new single I’m Outta Time, which is expected to chart in the Top 20 this Sunday, Ain’t Got Nothin’, Soldier On and the Japanese version of the album's bonus track I Believe In All, while Gem Archer wrote To Be Where There’s Life and Andy Bell The Nature Of Reality. The remainder of the album is penned by Noel Gallagher.

Source: www.musicweek.com

Tales From The Middle Of Nowhere

Taken from Noel's tour diary for Oasisinet.com

We were up in northern California yesterday. Oakland. The scenery from the airplane window on the way up was stunning - stunning, I tells ya!

Back on the road with Ryan Adams. Good to see him again.

Gig weren't all that. Had a few "technical problems" which pretty much amounts to cunts not doing their cunting jobs properly. I won't go into detail - I'll be here all morning. Mind you, someone in the front row fainted half way through. It's a strange sight when someone gets oxygen and then stretchered out while the band plays on!

Back in LA (AGAIN!!) today. Actually gonna get to do a gig here tonight. Seems like we've been here for weeks without doing anything.

They reckon Morrissey's on the guest list tonight! Really? I'll believe it when I see him. An Oasis concert doesn't sound like the natural environment where one would see a Morrissey.

Beautiful day though. I'm off for a walk with my girl and my boy.

In a bit.

GD.

Source: www.oasisinet.com

Oasis In Los Angeles Setlist

Last nights setlist from the Staples Center, Los Angeles, USA.

Fuckin' In The Bushes
Rock 'n' Roll Star
Lyla
The Shock Of The Lightning
Cigarettes & Alcohol
The Meaning Of Soul
To Be Where There's Life
Waiting For The Rapture
The Masterplan
Songbird
Slide Away
Morning Glory
Ain't Got Nothin'
The Importance Of Being Idle
I'm Outta Time
Wonderwall
Supersonic
Don't Look Back In Anger
Falling Down
Champagne Supernova
I Am The Walrus

Did you go to last nights gig or future gigs or even past gigs?

Send in your pictures to scyhodotcom@gmail.com and I will add them to tour archive.

Oasis and Ryan Adams Photo Gallery In Oakland

Manchester, England’s Oasis and New York’s Ryan Adams & the Cardinals both focused on workmanlike songcraft as they opened the United States stretch of their joint world tour last night in Oakland, California. Although both bands are known for the verbal swagger of their respective leaders, Oasis and the Cardinals both kept the emphasis firmly on their music: Adams barely spoke a word, while guitarist Noel Gallagher’s most pointed comment came when a nearby fan passed out during through a grinding “Slide Away.” “Did somebody get overwhelmed?” he quipped. “I’m sorry about that. Buy a T-shirt on the way out, please

Photo Gallery: Oasis and Ryan Adams Kick Off Their Tour in Oakland

The Britpop icons remained typically immobile bellow four massive video panels that mixed live projections with canned Pop Art imagery. Liam Gallagher clenched a tambourine in his teeth as the band opened with “Rock N Roll Star,” then held it behind his back in a defiant stance maintained throughout the night. Although his contemplative “I’m Outta Time” proved Oasis hasn’t run out of ways to effectively raid the Beatles’ songbook, it was mid-90s hits like “Wonderwall” that generated the most sing-along enthusiasm from an otherwise strangely sedate audience. Perhaps a newly mellow Adams had chilled the crowd: The former bad boy proved himself ready to inherit Tom Petty’s mantle with a set of countrified mid-tempo rock. While bassist Chris Feinstein roamed center stage, Adams humbly stood off to the side and plied ballad after ballad until his Cardinals finally let loose an anxious and succinct “Magick.” And then they flew away.

Set List: Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
“Cobwebs”
“Crossed Out Name”
“Everybody Knows”
“Fix It”
“When the Stars Go Blue”
“Let It Ride”
“Go Easy”
“Come Pick Me Up”
“Two”
“Sink Ships”
“I Taught Myself How to Grow Old”
“Magick”

Set List: Oasis
“Rock N Roll Star”
“Lyla”
“The Shock Of The Lightning”
“Cigarettes And Alcohol”
“The Meaning Of Soul”
“To Be Where There’s Life”
“Waiting For The Rapture”
“The Masterplan”
“Songbird”
“Slide Away”
“Morning Glory”
“Ain’t Got Nothing”
“The Importance Of Being Idle”
“I’m Outta Time”
“Wonderwall”
“Supersonic”

Encore:
“Don’t Look Back In Anger”
“Falling Down”
“Champagne Supernova”
“I Am The Walrus”

Source: www.oasisinet.com

Vote For Oasis At The Shockwaves NME Awards 2009

The Shockwaves NME Awards are back and only your votes can decide the winners.

Vote now to decide the nomination shortlists to be unveiled in January.

You'll also be entered to win tickets to the Awards ceremony in London and the NME Big Gig, headlined by The Cure.

Click here to cast your vote for Oasis.

Vote For Live4ever

Congratulations to Live4ever who have been chosen by the judging panel to go through to the on-air rounds of the Absolute Rock-Off!

Click here to cast your vote for the Forum NOW!!!

They are going up against the 'We Are James Forum' in Round 1.

The forum will now go into a playoff against another. The matches will open on Ben Jones’s show over the next week or so, and then Absolute Radio listeners will have a day to vote on their favourite playlist.

The winner will then go through to the next round.

Ding Dong Merrily I'm High

At this time of year you can't get away from those catchy Christmas songs.

Liam & Noel Gallagher, Snoop Dogg, Jonnny Rotten and more join forces for 'Ding Dong Merrily I'm High'.

Source: YouTube

Adams Is An Oasis In A Musical Desert

But he may still be overshadowed by the more ballyhooed act for which he opens

Based on musical accomplishment alone, Ryan Adams should be headlining a bill with Oasis on Saturday night at the Pearl. But alas, the bigger egos — and bigger record companies — appear to have won out.

Undertaking its first U.S. tour in three years, Oasis, anchored by the cantankerous Gallagher brothers (Noel and Liam), comes to Las Vegas to support the band’s seventh studio effort, “Stop the Clocks.” Apparently, the British band, according to a news release promoting the show, has reinvented itself as a bunch of “indie rockers,” with a set of “hauntingly familiar” songs.

Oasis, it must be noted, is as indie as Britney Spears, but promoters deliver on the second count, and it’s because the band’s new record fits nicely among its aggressively mediocre output.

Don’t get us wrong. Oasis was great in 1994, when “Definitely Maybe” became the fastest-selling debut album in British history. Serious nods to hits “Supersonic” and “Live Forever.”

A year later Oasis was even better, releasing the classic “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” The Gallagher brothers, fueled by drink and drug, were inescapable. MTV even needed subtitles to keep up. “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova” were everywhere.

With Axl Rose off working on something called “Chinese Democracy,” the brash, snobbish embrace of rock ’n’ roll decadence was just the right medicine to get us over a bad grunge hangover.

But then came the talk about being bigger than the Beatles. And for all the talk, what did we get? — the wholly forgettable “Be Here Now,” in itself a reference to John Lennon’s quip about the philosophy of rock ’n’ roll. The Gallaghers spent the subsequent years churning out three generic albums and a live record.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to beat Oasis when it comes to solid British rock. Here’s to hoping for the classics.

Around the time Oasis’ star was fading, Ryan Adams, leading the alt-country outfit Whiskeytown, was taking off. When his band called it quits, the prolific Adams embarked on a solo career, releasing an album a year since his 2000 debut, “Heartbreaker,” including three in 2005.

To be sure, it wasn’t all good — far from it. But Adams just couldn’t stop himself. Take, for instance, last year’s “Easy Tiger,” among the better efforts. Adams, with some assistance, whittled more than 100 songs down to the 13 that made the final cut. The praise was steady and it clearly went to the songwriter’s head. While recovering from oral surgery and a broken heart, Adams (living in the Chelsea Hotel, of course) covered the Strokes’ debut, “Is This It,” on mandolin and banjo. Come on.

Stunts like that prompted former Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg to suggest in a 2003 interview that it might do Adams some good to get his teeth kicked in. Bruised, Adams told Rolling Stone recently that he “can’t listen to (Westerberg’s) music again, ever.” Come on.

Later, Adams reportedly went through therapy to get over antagonistic fans who would come to his shows and shout Bryan Adams song requests. “Summer of ’69!” The shows were notoriously erratic. Consider a 2003 gig in Minneapolis (Westerberg’s hometown, by the way), where a drunk and rambling Adams played several songs twice, allegedly excused himself from the stage to puke and continuously complained about the bad sound system. (A Google search for “Ryan Adams” and “tantrums” gets 16,900 hits.)

Last year Adams, on a steady diet of alcohol and speedballs, hit rock bottom. He quit cold turkey and sobriety seems to have served him well. “Cardinology,” Adams’ new record with his band the Cardinals, is truly a great album, a testament to the power of picking your spots instead of releasing the floodgates.

With just one real rocker on the roster, “Magick,” the record is a low-key, largely acoustic, country-rock affair, chock full of Grateful Dead and pedal steel. It’s just the type of music that pops in a small venue such as the Pearl.

Adams has summed up his influences like this: “Growing up, I had a Grateful Dead Steal Your Face sticker on my skateboard next to a pentagram logo and a Danzig sticker. I couldn’t differentiate.”

Here’s to hoping the therapy holds and that all of that shines through Saturday.

If you’re lucky, Adams might even play his acoustic cover of Oasis’ “Wonderwall.” That one earned him a Grammy nomination.

Source: www.lasvegassun.com

Oasis In Oakland Concert Review

Many have wondered why Oasis, one of the most popular live acts in its native U.K., isn’t a bigger draw on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s a good question, given how consistently great the Britpop band’s albums have been over the last 15 years, and one that will probably be debated as long as the highly volatile group sticks together.

The basis for a solid hypothesis, however, could be readily found during the Manchester troupe’s gig on Wednesday night at the Oracle Arena in Oakland. The 100-minute set was low on energy, personality, theatrics and razzle-dazzle, all of which usually goes over like gangbusters with American audiences.

As with past Bay Area outings, Oasis just showed up, plugged in and performed the songs in a straight-forward, straight-ahead manner. That’s just how the band does it – or, maybe, that’s just how the musicians do it on this side of the pond.

Rick Allen, a longtime Oasis fan from the U.K. that is now living in San Francisco, was at the Oakland show and was shocked at what he saw.

“If they’d come out onstage like this in England, with this lack of energy, they’d get booed off the stage after two songs,” he said.

To that point, the 6,000-or-so fans in attendance – a less than half-full house - should feel grateful that they weren’t watching the concert in England. For if the band had been booed off the stage after two songs, listeners would have missed 19 other tunes, many of which rank among the best pop-rock numbers in recent history.

The set list was terrific, a proper sampling of the many wonders found on the band’s seven studio albums. The group – led by the brothers Gallagher, vocalist Liam and guitarist-vocalist Noel – paid particular attention to its most recent offering, “Dig Out Your Soul,” but also played most of the old hits.

The songs are so well-written, full of anthemic sing-along choruses, and feature so many wickedly slick guitar parts that they more than compensate for any performance issues. Indeed, it was hard to worry about a lack of energy from the band when one was singing along, at top volume, to such smashes as “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star,” “The Importance of Being Idle” and “Slide Away.”

The players did seem a bit more motivated toward the end of the night, closing up the main set with a fiery run through “Wonderwall” and “Supersonic” then returning for a four-tune encore that included a psychedelic cover of the Beatles’ “I am the Walrus.”

In all, it was a much better offering than what the fans saw immediately prior with Ryan Adams and the Cardinals. The hipster alt-country band leader, a true critics’ favorite, set the table for Oasis and did even less than the headliner to connect with the crowd.

Each person has his or her own list of the most-overrated performers in the business, and Adams most definitely belongs on mine.

Source: www.insidebayarea.com