Joyous scenes outside the stadium!

I’ve been speaking to fans as they leave the gig. I’ll collate them all for a story tomorrow morning, but this one really resonated.

Couple Jarvis and Valentina had travelled from north London for the show. “It was absolutely incredible,” he said. “Liam’s voice hasn’t sounded that good since the mid-90s. At the end of the 00s his voice was shot. That’s incredible.”

The pair knew what they were talking about: Valentina said they saw them about 40 times during their initial incarnation. She had moved from Italy to the UK in the year 2000 because of her love of the band. “We used to follow them everywhere,” she said of herself and her teenage girl friends. Once in Florence, she said, they snuck into the band’s hotel “and spent the afternoon drinking with them.”

She clarified: “There was no malice. We were good Italian girls. But Liam was drinking from 2pm until 7pm, and by the end I was seeing double. We talked about the Beatles. We would follow them everywhere and if we didn’t have a ticket, they would say, ‘Girls, do you have a ticket?’ and get us in.”

Tonight’s show, she said, brought back “so many memories of happy, better times, lots of us cried. They’re a working-class band and they attract that audience: no band has touched a generation like that.”

“If I’d dreamed it,” said Jarvis, “they couldn’t have been better.”

Our football writer Jonathan Liew has got in touch, with some advice on how to go about things tomorrow when you’ve got Wales v Netherlands at 17.00 and Oasis v pints at 20.15.

Look, we get it. You like Oasis. You like football. You like Wales. And you’ve got a problem. Because tomorrow Oasis are playing the Principality on the same night Rhian Wilkinson’s team play their first ever major tournament game against the Netherlands. Two defining events in Welsh cultural history, sadistically scheduled against each other. Can you do both? Is it feasible? Is it wise? Does something have to give?

The good news is that you’ve got a little leeway. And in many other respects, the cards have fallen in your favour. Wales kick off at 5pm, just as the turnstiles click open at the Principality. Avoid the rush and take advantage of the fact that Cardiff’s central square mile has a higher concentration of pubs than anywhere else in the UK. Watch the first half, which Wales will gallantly try to keep goalless against Vivianne Miedema, Jill Roord and co. Cast will be tuning up as the second half begins. Let’s be honest: you didn’t part with a week’s wages to see Cast. Hold your nerve, grab another drink and watch as Wales’s heroic defensive rearguard is eventually broken down in the second half.

Barring a shedload of injury time, Richard Ashcroft’s set will begin just as the football ends. If the Netherlands are several goals up by this point, you should – if you’ve chosen your establishment wisely – be able to sneak out early and get to the venue in time for curtain-up. Alternatively, stay to the bitter end and then hot-foot it over in time for Bitter Sweet Symphony. Smile smugly as you sashay through security, the smile of someone who has squeezed every last drop of entertainment out of the evening.

More on that match here from Louise Taylor.

Love this purely happy, almost genteel moshing, just vertical bunny hops as everyone stays fixated on the stage and tries to drink in that this is really happening.

I mean, I wouldn’t call it a hug. More the kind of pat a footballer might give to a member of the opposite team who used to play for them but there was that unpleasantness with the salary negotiation. But still.

Here’s Laura’s lovely report from earlier in the day, speaking to the fans who have devoted so much energy to coming to this concert – including in some cases, coming from the other side of the world.

Outside the stadium there is another merchandise booth, where Marina, 36, and Shun, 29, are waiting holding a Japanese flag. They have flown 16 hours from Tokyo to see Oasis for the first time. It is personal for them, too. Marina translates for Shun: “He has a brother and it was not a good relationship, similar to Oasis. But they are in a band: Shun plays drums and his brother plays guitar, and they have a good relationship now. The music helps.”

At least a few fans seem to have travelled from even further away. Back in Spillers, a group of three friends are wearing T-shirts that say: “We live in desert looking for Oasis – 2025.7.5 – From Shanghai to Cardiff – 8,100km”. The trio travelled to the UK last month for their first Glastonbury and to finally see Oasis live after 20 years of being fans.

Teresa, 37, has loved the band since she was 13. “When I feel sad, their songs make it better,” she says. “The songs mean a lot – their spirit gives me the hope to meet difficult things and it can become the energy for me. I think the concert will become very important for me in my future life.”

And here’s my write-up of the night itself.

In my liveblogging haste I made the pics rather Gallagher-centric – big respect to the other players in the band, who do really give Oasis the thunderous heft they showed off tonight.

Here’s some video of that Diogo Jota tribute.

Maybe there wasn’t all that much warmth between them on stage – but just seeing this is enough to melt even a hard heart.

Lot of love for this fella too, who did sterling work with a YouTube live stream for a fair chunk of the evening.

And a new folk hero is born.

Don’t Look Back in Anger comes garlanded with bees in yellow on the visuals – a nod to the icon of Manchester, and how the song was taken up as an anthem after the Manchester Arena attack. And then Liam’s back for Wonderwall: “There are many things that I would like to say to you but I don’t speak Welsh,” he sings.

Another really clear moment of vocal interplay between them, Liam doing “maybee” and Noel doing “you’re gonna be the one that saves me”. ONE HUNDRED SINGLE TEAR EMOJIS. Come on lads, have a hug. Liam bids us farewell: “Thank you for being with us over the years. We are hard work – I get it. Champagne Supernova. Nice one!”

The encore begins, and with Liam still off stage, Noel comes on to perform The Masterplan with “our 14th drummer, Mr Joey Waronker, and this fucking uber legend here, Bonehead. This one is for all the people in their 20s who have never seen us before who have kept us shit hot for the last 20 years.”

Following Cast’s nod earlier on, there’s another tribute to the late Diogo Jota, at the close of Live Forever.

Whatever next, then Live Forever. Love the bite on “things they’ll never see” – the tension in Liam’s face makes it seem as if he’s still feeling every second of it. Meanwhile Noel has not shifted from a face that says: “It’s gonna be murder finding a parking space.”

Then Liam announces: “This is the last one: Rock’n’Roll Starrrrrrrr”. The woman behind me hasn’t heard of encores. “They haven’t done Wonderwall!”

Alexis’s favourite Oasis song now: Slide Away. I can see why: there’s real desperation to that “let me be the one”. Amazing bridge, too. I’m back on a crap live stream but the Gallaghers’ twinned vocals still sound amazing on this, with Noel taking an unusual higher harmony. “I really wonder how different this feels to Liam doing the Definitely Maybe tour solo. He and Noel might as well be in different universes on this stage,” Laura tells me.

“What’s happening? Everyone having a good time yeah? Is it worth the £4,000 you paid for a ticket?” A bold tack to take, Liam, after that whole dynamic pricing scandal. Having vampirically sucked up everyone’s recent disposable income, into Cast No Shadow they go. I never got why Liam always sings this differently live, with that high note at the end of each line. Takes a bit of the melancholy off I reckon.

Back to back Be Here Now numbers, with Stand By Me next. It’s so insanely loud, the outer reaches of sound crackling like setting lava.

A couple more shots of the joyous and semi-disbelieving crowd.

Little By Little brings the first song outside of the 1990s. Even during this Noel still looks a bit like he’s here under duress, but he’s doing these numbers not acoustically as some had thought, but with a big rock production from his backline.

Then Liam comes back on for D’You Know What I Mean? I really like this one, thanks to a heavy rotation of Be Here Now in the car when I was eight. And I used to work with Hamish MacBain at NME – co-author of a new book about Oasis with Ted Kessler – who had a habit of standing up in the office and asking “d’ya know what I mean?” in a way that usually meant “what is this shit?” that I found very enjoyable.

Half the World Away. The moody, reflective tone is quite nice, though I prefer the heavier songs that contain these unexpected emotional shades within them, rather than Oasis’s more uniformly melancholy hits.

Sidenote: the closeups of Noel are really showing how both Gallaghers are blessed with a hairline that many men their age would kill for.

The photographers have whacked on their telephoto lenses because we’re getting some more closeup shots coming in now.

I think it was Dave Stewart from Eurythmics who said that when they got incredibly successful, he got “paradise syndrome” – ie, he wasn’t able to enjoy it because the rewards were so relentless. The barrage of hits here so far feels a bit like that, almost enough to make you blase. Oh, Roll With It? Communal fervour off its nuts? Some primal howl emanating from inside that I didn’t know existed? Yeah, whatever.

Noel’s now doing Talk Tonight. Is it rude to say this is a built-in loo break? Liam has definitely taken one.

Roll With It now. For anyone hoping for a great fraternal reunion tonight, so far Noel and Liam haven’t even looked at each other, let alone been within two metres of each other. But Liam’s certainly chirpy enough: “How you getting on then, alright? You’re looking good. Especially you there. Stunning. Fucking stunning.”

What with the live streams popping up (and down) all over YouTube and TikTok, I’m thinking of all the global Oasis fans getting a tiny, tinny flavour of what’s to come. We all knew that the tour would be massive in the UK, but me and other Oasis observers were quite surprised to see just how quickly the international dates sold out, too. And, it turns out, so were Oasis’s own management company.

“Probably the biggest and most pleasing surprise of the reunion announcement is how huge it was internationally,” Alec McKinlay of Ignition Management said in May. “Honestly, we knew it would be big here, and that doesn’t take much intuition. But looking outside the UK, we knew they had a strong fanbase, we did all the stats. We were quite cautious about what that would mean when it came to people actually buying tickets but we were just bowled over by how huge it was. We could have sold out half a dozen Rose Bowls in Pasadena and probably eight MetLife stadiums in New York in a day.”

Then it’s Fade Away, and Supersonic, the latter heralded by that plectrum scrape down the strings then a lavish wobble of whammy bar.

Bring It on Down, then Cigarettes & Alcohol. I am not one for guitar heroics but the sound between Noel, Bonehead and Gem Archer is this amazing careening, cascade of noise. “Hello beautiful people, I want you to do us a favour,” Liam says. “I don’t ask much, I want you to turn around and put your arms around each other … and jump up and fucking down.”

Some Might Say, and the vocal harmonies cut through for the first time on this one. Genuinely so cool to hear them together for the first time – I’ve never seen them before. And I love this song’s silly, groovy pivot into the chorus.

The contrast in their faces is funny: Noel looks very placid and as if he’s concentrating, meanwhile I’ve always loved how Liam hangs off the mic like a bulldog pulling a toy out of your hands.

Ok. I’ve had three beers. But Morning Glory moves in a way that I imagine is how it feels to grind down a long rail on a skateboard – high-wire, pure and free.

Morning Glory next, as I know from actually watching the gig in my bedroom via a live stream by a certain YouTube user. This is a new facet of the modern gig experience afforded by 5G and smartphones, one that was supercharged by the Eras tour. I’m getting a full whack of that disparaging “what’s the story, morning glory” from Liam even through this crap tinny version recorded from towards the back of the room.

Finally the cement mixer sound finds the vehicle it needs – it feels like the thrill of being turned upside down by a wave in the sea. Into Acquiesce now, and there’s a proper mosh pit, you can see the front middle moving like a tide. And there’s a camera fixed to Liam’s mic so you can see right up his nose! Crowd surfers are going for it!

Alexis is currently at his most animated point of the evening, as Cum on Feel the Noize is playing on the PA. “God, I love Slade. It’s sort of my idea of perfection. It’s probably why I like Oasis.” Now the Jam’s Town Called Malice is playing and getting everyone going all the more.

Why does Noel and Liam’s Adidas campaign poster look as if they’re about to drop an elevated-horror film called In League With the Devil about two football casuals whose Man City firm is actually dedicated to worshipping Baphomet?

Right then! Half an hour until Oasis, who start at 20.15. While we wait, let’s reflect on how the reunion tour isn’t the only reason 2025 is a big year for Oasis: it’s also when Noel Gallagher gets the rights to his songwriting catalogue back.

In 2021 he explained: “I get mine back, all of it, in 2025, because I’ve been knocking years off the deal as opposed to taking money advances. I was like: ‘I don’t need [the advances] anymore.’ The way that I look at it is I’ll be approaching 60,” – Noel is 58 – “and it’s like, do I want to leave it to my kids, who’ll probably swap it for a fucking PlayStation game? Or do I get rid of it now and set everybody up for life?”

He said he fancied buying a superyacht. “You know, you see them in the sea, and it’s like Ocean Breeze. I want to call mine Mega Mega White Thing. Like, the biggest fucking superyacht of all time.”

Since 2021 there has been a huge vogue for major artists selling off their catalogues: everyone from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen to assorted members of Fleetwood Mac, Dr Dre and dozens more. Some artists such as Taylor Swift and Zara Larsson are going the other way and buying back their rights from the companies who own them – but these tend to be younger artists who are more engaged in how the catalogue is used and want control over it, and potentially stand to make more money in the long run through holding on to those rights. But if you’re an older artist, potentially worrying about how your rights and image might end up being mismanaged after you die, it makes sense to sell them to someone you’ve done the research on. And, of course, you get a vast cash windfall to make your retirement truly decadent. Superyacht included.

The value of the catalogue is predicated on how much money buyers think they can make from it, and over how many years, whether via royalties, advert and movie syncs, and more. So Noel will want to get out there and show just how timeless and well-loved this music is.

“Oh yeah, what a crowd tonight!” Ashcroft says. “This thing couldn’t have started in a better place. It starts in 45 minutes – so I’m gonna leave you with a big one.” Predictably enough, it’s Bitter Sweet Symphony, and even me and Alexis are on our feet. “This one’s for Noel and Liam! This one’s for all of Oasis from start to finish.” He doesn’t even have to sing the first line, he lets the crowd do it for him, and lots of people are climbing on shoulders.

The Drugs Don’t Work prompts the first proper singalong of the evening. Phone torches are on. Men are embracing. A pink flare has been set off in rear standing.

Ashcroft’s face, shown in moody black and white on the screens, is eerily impassive – but the room feels almost full now and the energy is definitely crackling a lot more than it was for Cast.

By Lucky Man, everyone is properly singing along and starting to stand in their seats – it feels like a taste of what’s going to happen when Oasis come on. If I’d drunk five more beers I might be on my feet, too. I haven’t thought about this song in years but hearing it has reminded me of when we first got MTV2 and I discovered indie music – I was definitely partial to Lucky Man when I was about 12. Though the strings are on a backing track! Bit budget for such a momentous occasion?

That leaked setlist from stadium rehearsals suggests that Hello will feature, but some unnamed sources told the Sun that it wouldn’t, because it features a snippet of Gary Glitter’s Hello, Hello I’m Back Again – Glitter has been convicted and jailed for various child sexual abuse crimes in recent years. Hello features Glitter and Hello, Hello I’m Back Again’s co-writer Mike Leander in the songwriting credits, meaning that were it to be performed, Glitter would technically be in line for royalties. Though after another Glitter song was used in the film Joker, the UK and US rights holders said he wouldn’t receive royalties from that.

Hello, which opens What’s the Story (Morning Glory), is a really, really good song – the way the chorus shifts through various shades of melancholy and nostalgia is top-tier songwriting from Noel – and the “it’s good to be back” makes it an obvious candidate here in some ways. But is it good enough to warrant a bit of potential bad press? Will the words of a convicted sex offender be sung in front of thousands each night? Probably not, given how many other songs they’ll want to fit in.

We’ve deduced why the roof is closed: to stop drones filming it as there’s a documentary coming out next year.

Bono recently talked up the likely quality of the incoming Oasis set. “I’m still very close with Noel, and he sent a message to me saying he’s kind of shocked by how great the band is [sounding at rehearsals]. I think we’re going to have a good summer,” he said to Zane Lowe. I mean, you wouldn’t really expect Noel Gallagher to tell Bono that the band were sounding not very great, actually. But still.

The U2 frontman continued with some decent enough musicological analysis: “I remember what they did. Those big guitars, big Neil Young [inspired], generous sounds – they were against the law in the UK. But they were like: ‘No, I’ll do what I want.’ They had this rhythmic, beautiful quality to them … and Manchester was very influenced by dance music, so they were groovier than anybody, they were rawer than anybody.”

Far be it from me to cast (no pun intended) aspersions on the support acts, but instead of watching this bunch and Richard Ashcroft warming the stage for Oasis on Saturday, night two, you could be watching Wales make their debut in the Women’s European Championship. They may be the lowest-ranked team at the tournament, but the Guardian’s Louise Taylor reckons their performance might be surprising thanks to coach Rhian Wilkinson turning the team into tricksy opponents, with the “incomparable” Jess Fishlock and Sophie Ingle in midfield. I wish them luck – so that unlike the men’s Euro 96 team, they don’t have their defeat soundtracked by Walkaway.

First pic of Cast has dropped in. They look as if a doom metaller, a Madchester refugee and a white reggae artist have collaborated. That would go some way towards explaining the strange genre-mash Laura mentioned.

Cast have just played Flying. Even for a something of a landfill indie band, they’re a bit incoherent – tuneful whimsy; tuneless space-prog; this is a bit Americana lite.

But wait, now it’s Guiding Star – I actually do know this one! It provokes what I would call the first sign of life among the crowd. “So good to be here on a momentous occasion”, says frontman John Power.

In an example of opportunistic branding so brazen that we simply must applaud it and post it on the live blog, we turn briefly to Graham Conway, managing director of Select Car Leasing. “How can we crowbar our motoring company into the Oasis conversation, despite it having absolutely nothing to do with Oasis?” Graham beseeches his marketing corps in a break-out huddle-pod. “Erm, paint our EV fleet pink and dub it She’s Electric?”, someone suggests, but Graham senses the wokerati won’t like it.

Instead, he does some truly cerulean sky thinking and comes up with this, reported entirely straight by the Manchester Evening News.

“While it’s not illegal to wear a hat while you’re driving, there are rules around fashion items obstructing you while behind the wheel. Rule 97 of the Highway Code states you must have ‘footwear and clothing which does not prevent you using the controls in the correct manner’, while the Road Traffic Act says that anything obstructing a driver’s view is considered a hazard – including hats. And because bucket hats are generally pulled down low over the eyes to complete the look, that could be a serious problem when it comes to getting a full view of the road.”

Perhaps it was Graham’s influence that has so dented the aforementioned bucket hat sales trajectory. Your move, Adidas.

Thank you to X user Miss S, who posted this clip of sound emanating from the Principality Stadium on Monday. We must presume from this that Oasis are going in a bold industrial/musique concrete direction for a live album to be released on Black Truffle or the resurrected Table of the Elements.

Oasis Mania had this rather better quality recording:

Though Liam scotched the idea that he was actually doing the singing:

Just now there was some fretboard tapping going on, creating absolutely horrible, squelchy spacey zapping sounds. Awful. From Alexis: “That response to that song indicates a crowd determined to enjoy themselves.”

But then there’s a really touching moment when they dedicate Walkaway to Diogo Jota, the Portuguese footballer who died in a car crash yesterday, aged 28. Jota had a storied career at Liverpool, in Cast’s home city, winning the Premier League and FA Cup with them.

I love watching Top of the Pops reruns on iPlayer, and especially discovering the megahits of the time that have no lasting cultural footprint – such as 80s megastar Howard Jones: who he? Etc.

Cast seem like a classic example of this. I was born in 1989 and grew up familiar with Oasis, Pulp etc, and have been a music journalist my entire adult life, but until I listened to them as homework for seeing Oasis, I’d never knowingly heard a note of Cast. And as Alexis reminds me, they had two platinum albums! The 90s: a hell of a drug.

We’ve got our hands on a programme. There’s a lavish photo feature with specifics on the equipment used by each band member. The best bit is Liam’s spread: just a Shure mic and a chrome stand and base. Curiously, no tambourine – major stylistic shifts could be afoot.

Of the two discount supermarkets generating Oasis-related lols, who did it better: Lidl’s Lidl by Lidl jacket, or Aldi’s Aldeh rebrand in Prestwich?

Laura and Alexis have taken their seats and this is their view. Pretty great!

Here they are with their best Liam impressions. Apologies for the offensive hand gestures.

We are tactfully drawing a veil over the supposed leaked setlist, because we can’t remotely verify it – it’s based on the sound of production rehearsals floating over the air from the stadium. But! If it’s correct, there really won’t be much from the post Be Here Now albums. Alexis’s fave from that era is The Shock of the Lightning: “a potent, motorik-powered 2008 single – rare evidence that Oasis didn’t always consider the concept of musical development to be something to be avoided at all costs,” he wrote this week.

In the course of going back to those old album, I found I hadn’t even noticed before that Oasis had a song called (Get Off Your) High Horse Lady.

Further to Ben’s shopping data mention, Oasis-themed press releases – from the legit to the highly spurious – have been off their clackers in recent weeks. Just a quick scan of my inbox details an auction of the handwritten Wonderwall lyrics, a giant Oasis mural in Cardiff made entirely of “their iconic bucket hats”, and Google launching “several exciting Easter eggs” ahead of the tour: if you Google Oasis, it will ask: “Did you mean: madferit”; and to Rock ’N’ Roll Star, it asks: “Did you mean: rock n roll staaaaaaaaaar”. How chucklesome!

Fans at the gig, meanwhile, are supposedly set to miss more than 17m minutes of the tour because they’re busy recording it on their phones (not sure how they’ve worked out that maths), with the average attendee expected to watch more than 12 minutes of it through their screen. And Oasis and Taylor Swift are the bookies’ favourites to headline Glastonbury on its return in 2027 after next year’s fallow year.

Oasis first played the Welsh capital on the Definitely Maybe tour on 2 June 1994, performing just nine songs in a small room in the university. At least as far as I can tell – there don’t seem to be any surviving reviews online – that show passed without incident. (Their first Welsh gig, however, came a month earlier, on 3 May at TJ’s in Newport.) Both shows preceded the release of their debut album on 29 August – itself exactly a month before the infamous gig at Whisky a Go Go in California, a total shambles in which they allegedly took crystal meth by accident, then Noel quit and disappeared to San Francisco before being tracked down by management and persuaded to rejoin the band. But when you look back at their touring schedule that year, it’s no surprise that the band started coming apart at the seams: they played 143 shows and more or less only took July off.

Our writer Huw Baines – who writes brilliant features for us as well as live reviews across the west and Wales – was out reviewing Slayer for us at Cardiff’s Blackweir Fields last night (lots of simulated blood, still very much got it, four stars). He sends this dispatch:

As I was walking up to the Blackweir a few lads selling bootleg Oasis bucket hats chanced their arms with any Slayer heads who might be pulling double duty – looking around the field later on, it appears there were a few of them – but on the way back the atmosphere was really starting to build. At 10.30-ish there were maybe a dozen tents already arranged opposite the stadium in anticipation of doors, the merch stalls were decked out, and the pubs were doing a decent trade. Outside one bar on Westgate Street a bloke pointed at me, looked me in the eye and quietly said, “Oasis”, before going back to what could have been his 12th pint of the day. There was a big drone display spelling the band’s name out above the venue the other night but this felt like real, granular excitement.

First look at the inside of the stadium here, via Spanish-language Oasis podcast Whatever.

And from superfan Chazza_Rkid:

In one of those examples of a brand trying to do something fun and lighthearted but really just revealing how much data they have on you – a bit like Spotify Wrapped – we have this from Klarna, who analysed millions of purchases and found some possibly Oasis-buoyed items. Bucket hats: up 79% year on year. Tambourine sales: up 155% in the last three months.

However, Shopify has its own set of bucket hat data, suggesting that in June, sales went up by only 32%. Combine the two studies and we must surmise that the intensity of bucket hat purchases is waning, people are becoming jaded with Oasis before the tour has even begun, and the Gallaghers should probably call the whole thing off.

While the Oasis subreddit is overspilling with speculation and excitement about the first gigs of the reunion tour, the Cardiff subreddit has been driven up the wall by banal questions from non-locals about travel logistics. It’s inspired increasingly deranged spoof posts about the so-called Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, that green Oasis® foam used for floral arrangements, the fruity soft drink Oasis and where you can weigh your sister in the city … geddit … oh-weigh-sis.

Fans have been soaking up the atmosphere – though I’m not sure that cardboard Liam is too happy about it.

I drove up to Cardiff first thing this morning from a trip home to Cornwall, and can report that Oasis fever had reached the outer reaches of the south-west, despite Cardiff being as close as they’re coming. At Rosudgeon car boot on Wednesday morning (a hot ticket – if you know, you know) a lad walked through the car park with a massive framed promo poster for Be Here Now lead single D’You Know What I Mean? And not long after, in Sainsbury’s Penzance, I spotted a chap in a T-shirt depicting Liam and Noel as birds: Crowasis, performing “Don’t Look Beak in Anger”.

As Oasis nuts know, the band have some core Cornish history: Definitely Maybe was partially recorded/salvaged at the Sawmills recording studio on the banks of the Fowey, and – if I remember correctly, though it doesn’t seem to be online anywhere – Liam got in trouble for being photographed walking down railway tracks when they played the Eden Project, just five weeks before the band split.

Embedding that video of The Drugs Don’t Work is a reminder that the most tearjerkingly poignant places on the planet are the comment sections under YouTube videos. Oof.

First on the bill is Cast, whose frontman John Power couldn’t contain his verbosity when he was quizzed about it earlier this morning on Virgin Radio.

I’m just about now getting excited. I mean, the thing is, the way I live my life and look at things is, I kind of take each day as it comes and not try and look too far ahead. But there’s no doubt about it now that, you know, Friday is upon us, and the first chord of this tour is going to be one I hit. So it’s going to be quite a moment, I think, Cardiff Principality Stadium.

Steady on, John! Don’t add too much coal to the hype furnace!

With 15 minutes until the Principality Stadium welcomes a sea of chanting, singing and people keeping on their Stone Island jacket even though it’s really warm out, Laura is right in the mix: “Lots of spontaneous breakouts of song outside the stadium as doors are preparing to open – it’s human soup outside the City Arms.”

We’ve been doing a fair bit of Oasis pre-amble prior to this pre-ambling blog. Not least with the poet laureate, Simon Armitage, writing us an essay on the momentousness of their return, and why the weird psychodrama of the Gallagher brothers keeps hooking us back in.

Also today we’ve had Rachel Aroesti opining on how Oasis created the formula of the gobby contemporary British musician – but how they could never exist in the same form again.

And Dave Simpson spoke to 17 different indie musicians – and Princess Superstar! – about their favourite Oasis song. I know it’s pure clickbait to say it, but you really won’t believe what Johnny Marr picks here.

Your set times for tonight: