Summer's last breath already blew when Oasis held court over MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. On a cool Labor Day Sunday, beneath an ashen night sky painted with smog-courtesy of the apocalyptic refineries that haunt the New Jersey Turnpike-Manchester's greatest musical export shook the home for football of a different kind than these blokes in their fifties are used to.
Rogers Stadium, the unwieldy, dubiously thought out, deeply controversial stage, may stand as the sole venue on earth equal to Oasis' own mercurial reputation. The almost indignantly inaccessible location gives up the ghost early on, with a packed subway ride to nearly the end of the TTC's northbound line after which still lies a hike long enough to draw a crowd of opportunistic entrepreneurs, peddling everything from water, to jerk chicken to rickshaw rides over hills and up and away to the far-off gates.
