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Concert Review: Oasis Cool To A Fault At Target Center



Wonderwall



Don't Look Back In Anger



Champagne Supernova

The Brits had some mean words and not enough mean rockers, while Ryan Adams didn't say a word (gasp!)

Here's the ice-cold reception mouthy British guitarist Noel Gallagher expressed for our fine state, in a diary report posted on his band Oasis's website before Wednesday night's Target Center concert:

"Tales from the Middle of Nowhere (10 December 2008): Think we're in Minnesota. Bob Dylan country. It's cold, flat, grey and bleak. No wonder he [headed] to NYC. Even the cattle look miserable."

Fortunately for the band, Minnesota gave Oasis a warmer if still not overheated welcoming for its first Minneapolis show since 2001.

The crowd was only about 5,000 in number, but the meager turnout was probably more a product of the sluggish U.S. economy than the sluggishly paced English rockers and their dwindling but still cultish fame. And anyway, the fans who were there stood and cheered throughout much of the 100-minute performance -- which was more adulation than Gallagher and Co. actually deserved.

Always wooden figures on stage, Gallagher and his singer brother, Liam, did not break from their norm on Wednesday -- even when their band was firing on all cylinders musically at the start of the show. They tore through the anthemic opener "Rock 'n' Roll Star" with gusto and kept it up with the truly electric follow-ups, "Lyla" and "The Shock of Lightning."

Deeper into the set, though, things started to lag, and the band's holes opened up. Liam essentially just shouted and muttered his way through lesser tunes such as the new dud "To Be Where There's Life" and the old one "Cigarettes and Alcohol." He even slept-walk his way through the finale of "I Am the Walrus." The guy's a consummate rock singer on record, but he certainly wasn't on stage Wednesday.

Noel, on the other hand, ate up the limelight a little better as he sang through "The Rapture" and, during the encore, "Don't Look Back in Anger," which became the show's second-biggest crowd singalong ("Wonderwall" took top prize right before the encore).

Noel was also a little more light-hearted toward the show's setting during some comments he midway through the show.

"Is it cold enough for you? Why do you live here?" he asked. "You are aware that there's a place called California?"

Met with a chorus of boos, Gallagher replied, "Yeah, but they're wearing shorts right now."

That's a new one -- lessons in happiness from a dour British rock star.

At least Gallagher was more chatty than opener Ryan Adams, who typically talks up a storm at his shows -- to the point where, at a drunken First Avenue show four years ago, some fans stormed out of the venue.

No problem this time, though. The North Carolina rocker said nary a word to the crowd and showed even less personality than the Brits. Infamously inconsistent onstage, Adams' problem on Wednesday was actually too much consistency.

He and his solid band of the past three years, the Cardinals, picked heavily from their lackluster new album, "Cardinology." Even beyond that, they played too many mid-tempo, downer rock tunes, from the poetic but pouty opener "Cobwebs" to the languid "Let It Ride" to the lifeless "Two." A few of his softer acoustic numbers would have been nice, as would have any of his swinging country-ish tunes, as would more blustery rockers like the Stonesy closer "Magick."

Source: www.startribune.com & YouTube

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