What an emotional sight. Fifty thousand beer sponges soaking up the city's alcohol reserves like tomorrow had been declared No More Beer for a Year Day.

It was a liver-popping festival of dedicated lager imbibing rudely interrupted only by the singing of some songs by some bands.

One of these beat combos was a certain Oasis. A band from what is dubbed by one of my colleagues as my "lost decade." Ord: The 25 to 35 Years (certificate 12A).

There was a time when my choice of band was based on haircuts and decibel levels. (It's a little known fact that the PG Tip pyramid tea bag was modelled on an X-ray of my ear-drum perforations circa 1992-3.)

Today I have more refined demands and expectations of my rock bands of choice. Chief among them is punctuality. Punctuality and comfy seats.

Fortunately Oasis, like Morrissey and other performers who sprung up, and I followed, in the eighties or early nineties have grown with their fan base. No more frenetic baying from the crush of the mosh pit for the band, already 30 minutes late, to take the stage.

The last time I saw Morrissey he was on stage at 9pm on the dot. On Wednesday, Oasis came on stage 15 minutes earlier than I expected. As if they knew their aged following would have settled themselves down early for an evening of entertainment, with one eye on that bus they had to catch later on.

The show was good, but the audience made the best viewing.

Club officials had brought in special beer dispensers that could pour a pint in three seconds flat. Well, three seconds considerably frothy.

They dispensed with glass pint pots on the night for obvious safety reasons. They should have binned the plastic cups too on the grounds of inconvenience. They acted like a barrier between the drink dispenser and the drinker. They would have been better off directing the beer tap straight into the customers' gobs. Most beers were poured in three seconds, drunk in two.

To ensure all were well served (in both senses of the expression), beer was delivered onto the pitch by staff armed with alcohol backpacks.

They looked like Ghostbusters. Instead of firing laser beams, these Beerbusters fired drink. They were the most important people in the stadium. They should have been on the stage, the bands on the sidelines. The Beerbusters certainly had a bigger following.

They were like the fourth emergency service. I saw one being dragged by punters from the sidelines to administer emergency beer to a desperate queue that had been abandoned after one Beerbuster had run dry. It was an emotional moment.

The Oasis gig I believe also heralded the beginnings of the green shoots of recovery for our ailing economy.

And I don't just mean the £40m the Take That and Oasis gigs will have brought to the region, but the fact that despite being £3.50 a pint, fans were chucking plastic cups of beer into the night sky throughout the evening. At least, I think it was beer…

It was a night to remember for a crowd that, the following day, would have little memory of the night before. Just how rock shows were meant to be enjoyed.