BARRIE, ONT. -- He came, he sang, he swore a lot, he left.

That pretty much sums up the first Canadian appearance of Oasis since bad boy Liam Gallagher finally ended his hissy fit and re-joined brother Noel and the rest of his merry band this week.

Not that Saturday's show -- one of those day-long affairs, this one headlined by Neil Young (more on him in a moment) -- went entirely routinely.

Following Noel's typically modest opening remarks -- "Show your appreciation for the best fookin' band in the world" -- wayward brother Liam casually strolled on stage, holding a beer bottle and clutching a soon-to-be-battered tambourine behind his back.

He then launched into Acquiesce, which, like virtually everything Oasis played last evening, took on an unintentional air of irony, during which he ceremoniously slammed down his tambourine after the second verse as if to say, "Okay, I'm back, are ya HAPPY now."

That was followed by repeated bursts of largely unintelligible profanity, an impressive slam-dunk of his microphone, a display of bra-sniffing -- the item in question had been tossed onstage by an amorous fan -- and a boatload of generally stereotypical Rock Star behavior.

All of which proved to be tailor-made for the band's surroundings. After playing what was by some accounts a very tense show the previous night in Detroit -- one fan report on the 'Net mentioned slurred vocals, audience-taunting, and the interruption of one of Noel's solos by kicking his guitar -- Saturday's display seemed almost calculatedly cartoonish by comparison.

Despite Liam's self-consciously loutish behavior, there was definitely an air of playfulness to the whole affair. Part of that can probably be attributed to the presence of Young on the bill. Both of the Gallaghers are huge Neil fans -- Liam surfaced during Young's set to get a close-up look -- and it's unlikely that they'd risk embarrassing themselves in front of someone they admire.

By the end of the 85-minute performance, both brothers had settled into needling the crowd, rather than challenging them. Liam, in particular, kept up a running gag about the terrible aim of those up front who kept hurling plastic bottles at the stage.

"Every fookin' thing that comes up on stage keeps missing me," he said after a blistering version of Morning Glory. "It looks like I'm not the only one who has to wear fookin' glasses."

By the time Noel launched into his mini unplugged set -- including Wonderwall, Don't Look Back In Anger, and a nifty medley of Whatever and The Beatles' Octopus's Garden -- it was almost as though none of the past week's lunacy had happened at all.

If anything, it added the extra bite that had been missing from the band's previous Canadian shows.

Neil Young, on the other hand, didn't need any help at all in winning over the sort-of-hometown crowd of 30,000. Except for a brief lull at the beginning of his two-hour set when he worked in a pair of songs from his recent Broken Arrow album, this was as big a love-in as Young has probably experienced this year.

There is simply something undeniably Canadian about seeing Young holding an acoustic guitar, blowing into a harmonica, and singing the words, "There is a town in North Ontario ..."

In fact, here's the kind of night it was: when he got to the line in Sugar Mountain that goes "With the barkers and the colored balloons," I swear to God someone in the crowd actually released a bunch of colored balloons into the night sky, and thousands of heads turned up and watched them float up toward the stars.

Only in Canada.

Here's the complete Oasis set list:

- The Swamp Song (taped intro)

- Acquiesce

- Supersonic

- Hello

- Some Might Say

- Roll With It

- Slide Away

- Listen Up

- Morning Glory

- Cigarettes And Alcohol

- It's Getting Better, Man (new)

- Champagne Supernova

- Whatever/Octopus's Garden

- Wonderwall

- Don't Look Back In Anger

- Live Forever

- I Am The Walrus

Here's the complete Neil Young set list:

- Hey Hey, My My

- Pocahontas

- Big Time

- Slip Away

- The Needle And The Damage Done

- Helpless

- Heart Of Gold

- Sugar Mountain

- Cinnamon Girl

- Fuckin' Up

- Cortez The Killer

- Music Arcade

- Like A Hurricane

- Sedan Delivery

- Tonight's The Night

- Roll Another Number

- This Town

- Rockin' In the Free World