On August 24, as Erin, W, and I drove from Montreal to Toronto for the last stop on our Adirondacks + Canada vacation, we were at a service plaza when I overheard some people talking about a truck fire having shut down the highway somewhere on the way to Toronto. We looked up driving directions and were dismayed to see that our drive, which was already set to be about tied for our longest ever in a day with W, would take considerably longer.
Despite this, we still made time for a stop at the amazing Big Apple roadside attraction that we'd become aware of in December 2023 driving from Toronto to Ottawa with an embryonic W on board. I don't regret the stop; it was everything I hoped for and more, but it likely did contribute to us driving into the Toronto area in the dark with a screaming W in her car seat behind us. She did eventually fall asleep in the car but woke up when we reached our Airbnb, leading me to take a short late night bike ride to a weird grocery store to buy some milk.
The whole thing was certainly worthy of Erin and Jeff Experience™ billing, and a fitting lead in to the Oasis concert the next day that we were in Toronto to see. Oasis's first North American show since 2008. An event that would be unforgettable for many reasons, some good, some bad, but I wouldn't change a thing because it all came together to make the whole experience even more unforgettable.
I realized in the days leading up to the concert that Oasis had been the first band I was really into of my own accord as opposed to because of my parents playing a band's music. I was in 7th grade. "Wonderwall," "Don't Look Back in Anger," and "Champagne Supernova" from the band's smash hit second album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? were all over the radio. I bought the album on CD and loved it and at some point also bought the band's debut Definitely Maybe. Then their third album Be Here Now, released in August 1997, became the first album whose release I ever anticipated. I remember following news about it on the primitive websites of the era. I had absolutely no clue at the time how central my love of music would become to my life, but I was excited about that album, and in some ways that was a preview of my future.
Be Here Now was widely regarded as disappointing. I didn't like it as much as its predecessors, but I still liked it a lot. Something interesting happened, though, which is that I kind of stopped being as much of an Oasis fan for reasons that simply highlight how impressionable children and teenagers are. As I recall, the modern rock station in Columbus (99.7 The Blitz) didn't play Oasis, and therefore I got the impression that they weren't as "cool" as other bands I liked such as Pearl Jam, Nirvana, or Smashing Pumpkins. I still listened to Oasis some - I had a weekly paper delivery route in high school and I strongly associate those Oasis albums (along with several other albums I have) with listening to them while doing that route - but I didn't really consider them a top tier favorite band anymore. And then for some reason, as an adult I basically just stopped actively listening to Oasis, although I'd still enjoy their hit songs if I happened to hear them somewhere.
When the much hyped 2025 reunion tour, bringing the notoriously feuding Gallagher brothers back together, was announced, though, I realized I'd really like to go. Toronto was the closest date and it would work to hit the night one show there on the way back from our vacation. It was something I was looking forward to, but not thinking about that much, but then in the weeks leading up to the show I got out my old Oasis CDs (which, unlike most of the hundreds of CDs I own, I had not ever previously ripped to my computer) and started listening to them and listening to them again and then I found I was getting really excited.
There was a great energy about the city of Toronto on August 24, the day of the show. As we went about our day, we'd occasionally see someone in Oasis apparel, and we'd smile at the recognition they were likely going to the same show as us that night. It would be the biggest concert I'd ever attended, and although I usually opt for much smaller shows, it felt really cool to be a part of something so big. And it really was a big deal, bigger even than most stadium shows. Really the most comparable thing I could cite to the feeling of being in Toronto that day would be being in Cleveland when one of our pro sports teams is in a championship series.
At one point we were walking through the city and saw a long line of people and wondered what they were lined up for. As we got closer we noticed a decent number were wearing Oasis gear. Then we saw that they were in line for an official popup Oasis merch store. I had no interest in waiting in the line, but just the sight of it raised my excitement further.
The concert was at Rogers Stadium. If you know anything about Toronto sports venues, you might think that's the Blue Jays' downtown ballpark. If so, you would join Erin and me in being incorrect.
Hearkening back to another moment of confusion about concert venue locations when Erin and I were planning the trip to California that ended up including our Yosemite elopement, when I first told Erin about the Oasis concert in Toronto we both thought it was at the Jays' stadium, but when I actually went to look at tickets, I discovered that "Rogers Stadium" is a completely different venue from the Rogers Centre where the Blue Jays play. Rogers Stadium is a 50,000 capacity outdoor concert venue that opened earlier this year on the site of a former airfield about 10 miles north of downtown. Which is pretty weird.
Even weirder is that the stadium was built to be temporary - after five years it will be demolished to make way for planned development. Apparently the Toronto area needed a really big outdoor concert venue and this was decided to be the best solution to the problem (for now, I guess?). At one of the first concerts held there, Chris Martin of Coldplay called it a "weird stadium in the middle of nowhere."
As we'd find out, this was a very accurate description.
Doing some research on Rogers Stadium as vacation approached, I learned that after the venue's inaugural concert, some fans had had to wait up to two hours to exit the stadium, but that the issues causing this had mostly been worked out in time for the Coldplay show. Still, the location was not convenient, to say the least. It looked like taking a train and walking from the station was our best bet. Google Maps showed about a 15 minute walk from the station to the stadium. Not bad, right?
In typical Erin and Jeff fashion, we decided to ride bikes from our Airbnb to the train. While handing W off to the babysitter, the topic of rain came up (it had sprinkled on us in a park earlier in the day). I looked at the weather on my phone and saw a 0% chance of rain through the 11 pm hour.
We biked to the subway station, locked our bikes up, headed down to the platform, and boarded a train with lots of Oasis fans already on board (another train, jam-packed with people headed to the concert, had departed the station a couple minutes earlier just as we got to the platform). Again, it gave a fun feeling of being part of something really big. Apparently there were two train stations at which we could exit that were supposed to have similar walks to the stadium. We weren't really sure whether one was better, but at the first of the two, a bunch of people exited our train, so we followed them.
When we emerged onto street level, we could see the weird stadium looming in the distance, and it truly did look very weird and very in the middle of nowhere. We started walking, following other concertgoers, and soon realized we were getting farther away from the stadium. Then we came to a street that was where the Google Maps directions would have had us turn, and saw a sign saying we couldn't go that way, and to continue to another street, so we continued to walk and the stadium continued to recede into the distance behind us until we finally turned toward it.
It turned out that the walk from the train station to the stadium gates took more than half an hour. On the way, some cycle rickshaws passed, offering a faster alternative to the lengthy walk, for what I'd imagine was a substantial fee. Each was blasting Oasis songs from speakers.
I think everyone making that long walk felt a shared sense of bewilderment, like, what even is this place? What are we doing here?
We finally reached the stadium in time to hear, but not see, the last couple songs by opener Cage the Elephant while we waited to use the bathroom and then finished walking to the grandstand entrance.
As we waited for the main event, it was fun to just look around at all the other people and soak in the excitement. People of all ages (we were probably at about the average age of the crowd). I especially enjoyed seeing how excited the younger audience members were, people who weren't even alive when Oasis's most popular music was released. A couple of Gen Z girls in front of us asked Erin to take their picture with their handheld digital camera, which is apparently a trend with that cohort, which I love. There was also a teenage boy with his parents who was wearing a t-shirt of perhaps my favorite Oasis song, "Supersonic," the title stylized like the familiar Oasis logo, and a bucket hat - I glanced his way when that song came up in the setlist and loved seeing his reaction.
When this tour was announced, a lot of people wondered if it would really work. Would the Gallagher brothers manage not to be at each other's throats? Could they even make it through a whole tour? Would the band be able to bring it on stage like they did when they were younger?
Wonderfully, the answer to all these questions was a resounding yes. The songs sounded as great, or even better, in concert in 2025 as they had when I was spinning those CDs in my bedroom or my portable disc player in the '90s. The Gallaghers seemed genuinely happy to be on stage together. And man, the band just has this seemingly effortless swagger that few modern rock bands can pull off, and they still have it after all those years off, and it's really fun to experience in person.
If you want a more in depth review of an Oasis reunion tour show, I really liked this one: How the Oasis Reunion Has Become 2025’s Most Wholesome Story. I guess this post is more about the wild experience we had in seeing the show than it is a detailed review of the show.
But back to the show, everything was going great, basically matching my expectations (every night on the tour had the same setlist so we knew what we were in for), when about halfway through Oasis's set I noticed some ominous clouds rolling in to cover the previously clear skies. That was funny, I thought, given the 0% chance of rain I'd seen forecast, but of course, clouds don't always mean rain.
It was during the song "Stand By Me," which, it must be noted, contains the lyrics, "The cold and wind and rain don't know/They only seem to come and go away," that I started to feel some drops of water descending from the sky. I laughed, and looked around to take in other's reactions. It was a fairly light rain. It wasn't really bothering me, and especially given the timing, it kind of added to the fun and made the whole thing feel like even more of an Event.
I figured the rain would pass over, or come and go away, as it were, in short order.
I was very wrong!
In fact, the rain continued, and grew in intensity, becoming, at times, an actual downpour. It wasn't a warm night, either, so it felt rather unpleasant! Looking around, very few in the crowd had come prepared. I saw a few people who'd donned ponchos and I envied them a little. I was at least fortunate to be wearing a ball cap so my face was shielded; Erin didn't have even that.
The show went on. Liam Gallagher donned a hooded jacket, the hood pulled over the top part of his face as he sang, and between songs interjected some amusing comments such as comparing the weather to Manchester's, and also firing back at critics who said they were only doing this for the money because why would they keep playing through such miserable conditions if it was only about the money. He really seemed to be reveling in the situation!
The way the light show interacted with the rain was also cool to see.
So, a thing about this weird stadium is that, unlike a normal outdoor stadium, there's really nowhere to go to escape from the weather. (I don't know what would happen if truly severe weather hit during a show - it seems a little frightening to contemplate.) I don't know that I would have tried to seek shelter; I don't know if many of the people around us would have, but we didn't really have a choice. We were stuck there, getting drenched on a cool night in the middle of nowhere near Toronto, watching an Oasis concert. I had thought we were having a crazy experience during our long trek to the stadium. I'd had no idea what a crazy experience we'd been in for.
During "Live Forever," another of my favorite Oasis songs, I think I had a slightly manic grin on my face as I belted out the lyrics, "Did you ever feel the pain/in the morning rain/as it soaks you to the bone?" The whole thing was just so wild. The concert concluded perfectly, with the thrill of singing along to "Wonderwall," one of the most iconic songs of my lifetime, with tens of thousands of other people, followed by a performance of "Champagne Supernova" that concluded with a fireworks display, something that would have seemed over the top at most any other concert I've attended but felt just right at this one. An image of a setting sun filled the giant video screen behind the stage as the show ended and we began to file out of the stadium with the rest of the drenched but thrilled audience.
The whole thing was just such an epic experience. The crazy things about it - the weird venue with its absurdly long walk to the entrance, the heavy rain on a night with none in the forecast - as irritating or unpleasant as they might have been in the moment, they ultimately just made the experience more memorable and in a way I'm glad for all of it.
It's funny. In high school I got this weird impression that Oasis wasn't as "cool" of a band as a lot of the other music I listened to, and I think this had a long-lasting effect of making me basically stop actively listening to Oasis, but it turns out that I still really like them and in fact like them more than a lot of the other music I was listening to in high school. I started listening to my Oasis albums again in preparation for the show but have ended up listening to them a lot more since seeing the band live. Definitely Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? are genuinely great albums.
I remember well what my favorite songs on those albums were when I was younger. It's interesting to me that all my favorites from back then remain favorites now, but there are some additional songs that didn't stand out to me back then and have now been added to my favorites list. An indication of how my taste in music has evolved and expanded. Those albums must have been influential in the course my taste in music initially took. So, so much music has entered my ears and my brain in the decades that have passed since then. Some aspects of how my brain responds to music remain similar. Some have changed.
In the '90s, I don't remember being aware of the term "shoegaze"; as an adult, I became a fan of the genre, but never realized until revisiting their albums that Oasis had basically done a shoegaze song and a really good one at that, "Columbia," on their debut album, and that song is now one of my favorites by the band.
It's kind of staggering to think about how much I know about music now in comparison to how little I knew when I first got into Oasis. But I knew when I heard their music that I liked it a lot. And hey, I still do!
Thankfully, as we exited the stadium, we found that departing crowds were permitted to go the way that Google Maps had incorrectly suggested that we'd be entering, so it didn't take a ridiculously long time to get back to the train. Also thankfully, it was no longer raining when we rode our bikes through the cool night from the train back to our Airbnb, where a sleeping W awaited us.
Oh, but then she woke up when I was going to bed and took a long time to fall back asleep. The Erin and Jeff experience, indeed.
