Noel plays “Let The Lord Shine A LIght On Me” for the first time ever in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
It’s very civilized rock ’n’ roll for couples.
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Liam Gallagher ups the sibling rivalry with Beady Eye - Arts - The Boston Globe Liam, describing Noel’s High Flying Birds album. |
Well, I’ll tell you this, if there are hints of psychedelia to the High Flying Birds then Gaz and Brian have taken those hints and exploded them. They say that they’ve finished but they still haven’t delivered it. I know they’re still tweaking it, making it go even further out there. I think there’s going to be about ten intense psychedelic songs and three songs that are on the High Flying Birds album but reworked by them. How we’ve envisaged it is like a modern take on Dark Side Of The Moon, with lots of texture and ambient noise on it…
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| — | A Quietus Interview | High Flying Birds, Musical Kettles And Exploded Psych: Noel Gallagher Speaks |
Everybody’s On The Run
A few thoughts after seeing Noel Gallagher in Boston on Saturday night, done bullet style due to my incredibly busy day today:
- Great show, but even better crowd. A friend suggested grabbing a beer at a bar called The Tam, which was one block down from the venue. This turned out to be an amazing decision. I got there at 6 p.m. to see some other friends and by 7 p.m. it was full of Oasis fans putting songs on the jukebox and singing along. It was SO MUCH FUN. They kept it up at the actual gig. It felt like a soccer match. Lots of rowdy people having a good time. Only one person in my immediate area sat down the entire night. Best!
- The Wang Theater was magnificent. So ornate. Great acoustics. It was marvelous.
- Noel sounded brilliant, although I wish he would be a little more lively on stage. His voice sounded great and his band was also excellent. I was very impressed with his drummer, who was way up high in the mix. Better than any Oasis drummer not named Steve White or Zak Starkey.
- The set was the usual one and it worked fairly well. The new songs sounded great and it was a real treat to hear “Half The Word Away” and especially “Talk Tonight.” The only real mis-step in the set was “Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks” and “AKA..Broken Arrow” late in the set. Those are the two weakest songs on the HFB album and Noel shouldn’t play both of them. The energy in the hall lagged noticeably then, it was bathroom break time. Noel should drop Broken Arrow and play something like “Cast No Shadow” or “Stay Young.”
- WOULD IT FUCKING KILL HIM TO PLAY SOMETHING OFF OF BE HERE NOW?
- Oasis material seemed to either be mega-hits like “Wonderwall,” “Supersonic” and “Don’t Look Back In Anger” or choice b-sides like the aforementioned “Half The World Away,” “Talk Tonight” and “It’s Good To Be Free.” We also got the new b-side “The Good Rebel” which the Boston Globe described as an “organ-fueled ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ played to the beat of ‘Ticket to Ride.’” Truth!
- I appreciate Noel playing something off of Heathen Chemistry but I’ve never been a big fan of “Little By Little,” which opened the encore. I would have loved to see Noel go a bit more rock at the end and play “Waiting for the Rapture” and “Lord Don’t Slow Me Down.” But that’s just me.
- Lastly, after going to this gig I realized how truly burnt out I am with going to concerts. It’s probably been a good 6 to 8 months since I’ve left my camera at home, went to the bar to pre-game and then gone on to the gig to sing my brains out. It felt SO GOOD. I wanted to go around and hug everyone in the venue. I miss liking concerts. I only work at concerts these days. And that’s not me complaining, I love taking photos at the gig, it just seems like it’s taken a lot of the joy I otherwise get from concerts away from me. So this 24-hour road trip that I took strictly for pleasure really recharged my batteries, which was something I sorely needed. Thanks Boston, for showing me a great time.
- Saturday was the 19th time I have seen Liam and/or Noel perform.
- In the end, this was my big takeaway for the weekend:
I’ll put it this way to you: the first two Oasis albums were a complete and utter dictatorship, and they’re the best records we ever made. Democracies are bollocks; they don’t really work. British bands generally have two people driving them, and two or three people in the passenger seats. In Oasis we tried to do something different – I wrote one half of the album, they’d write the other half. We’d try to make it concise and have a narrative but eventually you’d run into a brick wall. One song would never quite run into the next and the balance was all wrong. We got it right once on Don’t Believe The Truth but there was too much compromise and trying to keep everybody in the band happy. Oasis in its essence was me doing the writing and Liam doing the singing. As the years progressed, I wrote less and he sang less and then it became something else.
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| — | Noel Gallagher, Resurrection Man |
Ewan MCGregor was my neighbour, right, and he came round (to) my house the night he got the part of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I just happened to have two of those lightsaber toys, so I said, ‘Come on - in the back garden.’ And we had a f**king lightsaber fight. His first Jedi training session was with yours truly in my back garden at eight in the morning.
I’m no Johnny Marr, Liam is no Morrissey, and we were no fucking Smiths. But what we had was primal. The Smiths made music for the brain— you thought about what Morrissey was singing, and it was very intricate. Our appeal was more direct. It went straight into your heart. We were a band of 23 year olds, and we fucking did it. We didn’t have a Morrissey whose view on the world dominated the band. Our manifesto was simple: We fucking live for the weekend, we still want to get fucked up. Girls, drugs, money. Who can’t relate to that? I’ll tell you who: idiots!
