Ryan Adams & The Cardinals/Oasis

Normally I wouldn't subject myself to a concert like this, but I'd never seen Ryan Adams before and so there you have it. Not ideal, but it had to be done. Held at the WaMu Theatre, seemingly carved out of the corner of the Quest Field complex, it promised all that I disdain about large venues: expensive booze, inexperienced concert-goers, lack of intimacy between performer and audience, bad acoustics. WaMu lived up to all this...and the name, the name...gak.

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals put down an amazing set - tracks from Cold Roses & Easy Tiger dominated. The band was easy going and comfortable with improvising, which they took advantage of on several songs. Yay for accomplished musicianship! 'Cold Roses', featured solid vocal harmony between Adams and his band mates, the song swaying and building up to vocal peaks - a definite highlight of the set. Adams, wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt, bantered with the audience on several occasions; hilariously, warning everyone about the dangers of math, and then later giving a shout-out to a friend who was wounded while allegedly hunting for bison. 'Easy Plateau' closed out the performance, beautifully swaggering along at the start, and ending with Adams repetitively screaming, 'I want an easy plateau!', within a wall of noise and reverb from the band. Fantastic!

Then there was Oasis. As my own mother put it, 'Their time has come and gone.' Oasis gave the kind of performance I could have enjoyed from the comfort of my own living room, over YouTube or a DVD. I was bored. Not even my contraband whiskey made a difference. I considered leaving the show on several occasions, but decided to stick it out until the bitter end - did anyone else just think of bad sex here, or is it just me? Oasis does not have a dynamic sound. When seen live they are static, oh so static. Liam Gallagher is about as dull as a front man can get; he stands at the mike, hands clasped behind his back, and that's about all. The crowd didn't seem to notice, and hung on his every non-movement. Twice, Liam gestured (meaning he lifted his hand a little) to the audience, illiciting some freaking out from the front section. The hits were played (a la 'Champagne Supernova', 'Morning Glory', 'Wonderwall'), interspersed with some non-hits, and ending with the Beatles' 'I Am the Walrus'. Unoriginal, anyone? Curiously, Oasis was to drunken blokehood as St. Patrick's Day is to fake Irish accents.