As I reached 12, I had already fell under the spell of music deeply. I'd started to move away from Glam but everything was guitar based.
On the Monday of Release, my dad brought home Springsteens's Born To Run. I hadn't paid much attention to the previous Boss albums that were in the house and as my dad quickly got the album on the Stereo, I was a bit more irritated that I couldn't hear the program I was watching on TV after school.
Suddenly, the Jungleland Solo started, the television became secondary, I was completely enthralled.
36 Years on, that solo still sounds as wonderful as it did on that day.
My tastes developed into Prog and I can listen to Jazz, Big Band and non Brass stuff such as Classical as easy now as my beloved Guitar music.
36 Years On, I still remember that evening and how that solo awakened my curiosity for what was out there.
My dad died in 1980 and never fullfilled his yearning to see Springsteen Live. He'd seen probably everyone he wanted to live except Springsteen. He was at the Cavern at the very start of The Beatles shows, he's seen his beloved Dylan in 1966 at the legendary Judas show, but not The Boss.
So twelve months on, it was with a heavy heart that I attended the Newcastle and Manchester shows on The River Tour.
The shows were magnificent, but I was transfixed by Clarence Clemons.
His Coolness and his ability to turn an instrument that was usually used for freeform noodling into a melodic wonderful solo, opened my eyes and properly introduced the Saxophone into the Rock Canon.
No longer was it backing fodder, it was just as important as the guitar.
Rest In Peace Big Man, your contribution to Popular Music should never be underestimated.
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Sunday, 29 May 2011
It Was Just That Barcelona Were Too Good?
That would appear to explain Man United's hammering last night. Some of it is true, a lot of it isn't.
The at least we got there and we are the second best team in Europe arguments fall into the First is everything, second is nowhere category.
I'm a Liverpool fan, but an objective one. I don't revel in the Dalglish euphoria and see how a big a job there is to repair the damage and I don't fall in to the Man U are just lucky brigade either.
Alex Ferguson has proved himself to be the best domestic club manager that this country has ever seen bar none. When compared to Liverpool, it must be remembered that his achievements have been for longer and the club's success has coincided with him always being at the helm, Liverpool had different managers.
People object to his blinkeredness, his side never get any dodgy decisions, he never makes any mistakes, any excuse gets rolled out apart from the team weren't up to it or that he got it wrong.
To be honest, he shares a lot of these failings with Dalglish, although the latter has a wicked sense of humour which veils this.
The current Man U side remind me a lot of Liverpool from 1988 onwards, the wins kept coming but via flukes and luck and a couple of years later they ran out of luck. Great players got old and were replaced by far inferior versions, big money buys were misguided and they won the title because they weren't as bad as everyone else.
Dalglish and Ferguson share another trait in that they develop unknowns and youth players superbly, but their buying is questionable. Liverpool stopped developing kids and then had to throw them in too early. Man U have stopped developing kids.
People are saying last night's performance wasn't a typical Man U performance, but to be honest for 85 minutes it was, it just lacked the last five minutes and injury time's inspiration / luck.
Manchester United are deserved Premier Champions because the rest were worse than them, not because they were exceptional. Was there more than three or four exhilariting performances in the Premiership this year? They won the title with the lowest amount of points for a long time and their away record was mid table.
Again as Liverpool found, when you rely on your home record, you start dropping points at home and you are done for. Man U will have to go out and buy players now and as I've said Ferguson doesn't naturally buy well. The team this year has been built around three aging players.
So Ferguson is the undisputed English League king, however his burning desire is to be known as the European king and it's a long way away. His two Champions League successes were against teams who play in the English Style. One a very fortunate win against a side that hammered them on the night and one against a Premier club.
The great European teams share one thing, they were all pass and move. They play it from the back and are patient, no counter attacking team becomes a great European team.
Man U had a mini dress rehearsal at Anfield this season, when a Liverpool side played in a basic Barcelona (and their old) style. Liverpool moved the ball so quickly that Manu were all over the place and the central defenders (who are generally great man markers) had no one to mark. You get Vidic turning and he is in trouble, so he sits back which allows players to attack him.
I'm not comparing Liverpool with Barcelona, it's that style of play.
Man U's midfield is probably the worst of the top six, it's pedestrian and again every great European side was built on an outstanding midfield not one containing a 36 and 37 year old. I don't believe that Scholes and Giggs would have played as much if their replacements were deemed better by Fergusson.
The nearest the Premier has as a team who can play this way is Arsenal, their midfield certainly is, but they lack quality up front and Defenders who are comfortable on the ball.
Man U may win next year's premier. Man City will buy big, put Mancini's set up not to lose style and players getting used to each other will hold them back. Chelsea have to lose their managerial merry go round and Champions League obsession to succeed as well as their owner's interference.
Tottenham have tactical naivety and no depth, Liverpool have given Dalglish three years in the knowledge that it's going to take at least that to get them in shape for a challenge, they don't beat poor sides, the three relegated sides all beat them, yet their record against the Top 4 is exceptional.
The competition will get better, it will be interesting to see the response.
So, all credit to Barcelona who are a great side, but Man U need to look at themselves hard now and not use the excuse that they would have beaten anyone else.
Ferguson is a great believer in enjoy the moment and move on. He'll know his targets but the likelihood of people like Wesley Schneider making a difference is small.
If he wants to become a European great, he has to change the team's style of play and buy accordingly. Hernandez is a player who can play that style, Rooney is too, Giggs can, but the rest of the team unfortunately cannot. His reliance on workhorses for the big matches will work in England, it won't in Europe.
The at least we got there and we are the second best team in Europe arguments fall into the First is everything, second is nowhere category.
I'm a Liverpool fan, but an objective one. I don't revel in the Dalglish euphoria and see how a big a job there is to repair the damage and I don't fall in to the Man U are just lucky brigade either.
Alex Ferguson has proved himself to be the best domestic club manager that this country has ever seen bar none. When compared to Liverpool, it must be remembered that his achievements have been for longer and the club's success has coincided with him always being at the helm, Liverpool had different managers.
People object to his blinkeredness, his side never get any dodgy decisions, he never makes any mistakes, any excuse gets rolled out apart from the team weren't up to it or that he got it wrong.
To be honest, he shares a lot of these failings with Dalglish, although the latter has a wicked sense of humour which veils this.
The current Man U side remind me a lot of Liverpool from 1988 onwards, the wins kept coming but via flukes and luck and a couple of years later they ran out of luck. Great players got old and were replaced by far inferior versions, big money buys were misguided and they won the title because they weren't as bad as everyone else.
Dalglish and Ferguson share another trait in that they develop unknowns and youth players superbly, but their buying is questionable. Liverpool stopped developing kids and then had to throw them in too early. Man U have stopped developing kids.
People are saying last night's performance wasn't a typical Man U performance, but to be honest for 85 minutes it was, it just lacked the last five minutes and injury time's inspiration / luck.
Manchester United are deserved Premier Champions because the rest were worse than them, not because they were exceptional. Was there more than three or four exhilariting performances in the Premiership this year? They won the title with the lowest amount of points for a long time and their away record was mid table.
Again as Liverpool found, when you rely on your home record, you start dropping points at home and you are done for. Man U will have to go out and buy players now and as I've said Ferguson doesn't naturally buy well. The team this year has been built around three aging players.
So Ferguson is the undisputed English League king, however his burning desire is to be known as the European king and it's a long way away. His two Champions League successes were against teams who play in the English Style. One a very fortunate win against a side that hammered them on the night and one against a Premier club.
The great European teams share one thing, they were all pass and move. They play it from the back and are patient, no counter attacking team becomes a great European team.
Man U had a mini dress rehearsal at Anfield this season, when a Liverpool side played in a basic Barcelona (and their old) style. Liverpool moved the ball so quickly that Manu were all over the place and the central defenders (who are generally great man markers) had no one to mark. You get Vidic turning and he is in trouble, so he sits back which allows players to attack him.
I'm not comparing Liverpool with Barcelona, it's that style of play.
Man U's midfield is probably the worst of the top six, it's pedestrian and again every great European side was built on an outstanding midfield not one containing a 36 and 37 year old. I don't believe that Scholes and Giggs would have played as much if their replacements were deemed better by Fergusson.
The nearest the Premier has as a team who can play this way is Arsenal, their midfield certainly is, but they lack quality up front and Defenders who are comfortable on the ball.
Man U may win next year's premier. Man City will buy big, put Mancini's set up not to lose style and players getting used to each other will hold them back. Chelsea have to lose their managerial merry go round and Champions League obsession to succeed as well as their owner's interference.
Tottenham have tactical naivety and no depth, Liverpool have given Dalglish three years in the knowledge that it's going to take at least that to get them in shape for a challenge, they don't beat poor sides, the three relegated sides all beat them, yet their record against the Top 4 is exceptional.
The competition will get better, it will be interesting to see the response.
So, all credit to Barcelona who are a great side, but Man U need to look at themselves hard now and not use the excuse that they would have beaten anyone else.
Ferguson is a great believer in enjoy the moment and move on. He'll know his targets but the likelihood of people like Wesley Schneider making a difference is small.
If he wants to become a European great, he has to change the team's style of play and buy accordingly. Hernandez is a player who can play that style, Rooney is too, Giggs can, but the rest of the team unfortunately cannot. His reliance on workhorses for the big matches will work in England, it won't in Europe.
Monday, 21 March 2011
HMV
I've read many things about HMV over the past few years and that downward spiral was pretty obvious, but it's perhaps the severity and speed that wasn't.
What is irritating is the way people dance on it's potential grave from music lovers to the media at large.
We in the UK love bad news, so instead of perhaps (heaven forbid), looking for ways to help, we just seem to revel in the things that are wrong.
Music lovers blame the megastore for the loss of the Independent Music Shop, the place where we hung out in earlier years and made a lot of our friends and built a lot of our musical tastes. So now they revel in the downfall of the company.
HMV didn't close the indy, it was a gradual thing over a generation. It's too simplistic to blame a big store with a large stock that still didn't have what you necessarily wanted and when it did, it was top dollar to get it.
It started with vinyl's demise, the compact disc was just not as precious, then came the upsurge of the Record Fair in the Nineties, you could spend a day and see nigh on a hundred different dealers. There was bound to be a dealer who specialised in just the sort of genre you wanted.
Then came Mail Order and you could find hundreds of specialists just by paying a few quid for the Record Collector Magazine and their overheads were much lower.
Finally came the internet and Apple and that's were the story of bricks and mortar largely ended.
We forget other things, Record Companies releasing singles to Radio seven or eight weeks before they had an official release. It didn't create demand in most cases, it just meant you were sick of them by the time they were released and the singles market just went tits up.
Having said all that, what about HMV now? Well I believe there could be a future.
Physical product is over, I'm a massive collector and rarely buy a cd now unless it's by a band that I have lots of albums on the shelves of.
I love the ipod, it's convenience, managing stuff on the pc is a pain, I don't have the love of an album that I did when I could hold it, but I have convenience.
So if HMV are not going to sell physical product, why have a store? Well they will have to downscale in size, but they could go back to the past to find the future.
Record Shops were meeting places, HMV can be that too. If most of the product is downloaded, well let people download in store, have bands perform, promo appearances, make it the place to be, to spend a morning at.
There'd be a loyalty to HMV because of the part it could play in people's lives. People would download from HMV and maybe buy their next phone, ipod, hard drive whatever from there.
The current generation of teens are lost, but the generation before them aren't. There's nothing in town for them at all yet.
All a bit pie in the sky, well it may seem that way, but one retailer nearly did it.
When Zavvi took on the Virgin Megastores, they were sinking fast. They re-invented themselves, made a store that gangs of teenagers were encouraged to spend hours in, not forced to move on if they didn't spend.
They had loads of Games Machines and Listening Posts for customers to while away hours on. The result was that when they did buy something and the Wii was the hot thing that year, they bought it from Zavvi.
It was building up one hell of a reputation and it was mainly Woolworths demise just before Christmas that cut off it's source of supply that did for it.
It may not have worked but it seemed to be giving itself a chance.
For HMV to do this, it would have to change it's management and Store Management. HMV used to have managers who loved the product and knew the local market, now it's Managers could be running anything from a supermarket to Superdrug.
It is one way forward, because you cannot keep doing the same in a rapidly declining market and not expect the same results.
What is irritating is the way people dance on it's potential grave from music lovers to the media at large.
We in the UK love bad news, so instead of perhaps (heaven forbid), looking for ways to help, we just seem to revel in the things that are wrong.
Music lovers blame the megastore for the loss of the Independent Music Shop, the place where we hung out in earlier years and made a lot of our friends and built a lot of our musical tastes. So now they revel in the downfall of the company.
HMV didn't close the indy, it was a gradual thing over a generation. It's too simplistic to blame a big store with a large stock that still didn't have what you necessarily wanted and when it did, it was top dollar to get it.
It started with vinyl's demise, the compact disc was just not as precious, then came the upsurge of the Record Fair in the Nineties, you could spend a day and see nigh on a hundred different dealers. There was bound to be a dealer who specialised in just the sort of genre you wanted.
Then came Mail Order and you could find hundreds of specialists just by paying a few quid for the Record Collector Magazine and their overheads were much lower.
Finally came the internet and Apple and that's were the story of bricks and mortar largely ended.
We forget other things, Record Companies releasing singles to Radio seven or eight weeks before they had an official release. It didn't create demand in most cases, it just meant you were sick of them by the time they were released and the singles market just went tits up.
Having said all that, what about HMV now? Well I believe there could be a future.
Physical product is over, I'm a massive collector and rarely buy a cd now unless it's by a band that I have lots of albums on the shelves of.
I love the ipod, it's convenience, managing stuff on the pc is a pain, I don't have the love of an album that I did when I could hold it, but I have convenience.
So if HMV are not going to sell physical product, why have a store? Well they will have to downscale in size, but they could go back to the past to find the future.
Record Shops were meeting places, HMV can be that too. If most of the product is downloaded, well let people download in store, have bands perform, promo appearances, make it the place to be, to spend a morning at.
There'd be a loyalty to HMV because of the part it could play in people's lives. People would download from HMV and maybe buy their next phone, ipod, hard drive whatever from there.
The current generation of teens are lost, but the generation before them aren't. There's nothing in town for them at all yet.
All a bit pie in the sky, well it may seem that way, but one retailer nearly did it.
When Zavvi took on the Virgin Megastores, they were sinking fast. They re-invented themselves, made a store that gangs of teenagers were encouraged to spend hours in, not forced to move on if they didn't spend.
They had loads of Games Machines and Listening Posts for customers to while away hours on. The result was that when they did buy something and the Wii was the hot thing that year, they bought it from Zavvi.
It was building up one hell of a reputation and it was mainly Woolworths demise just before Christmas that cut off it's source of supply that did for it.
It may not have worked but it seemed to be giving itself a chance.
For HMV to do this, it would have to change it's management and Store Management. HMV used to have managers who loved the product and knew the local market, now it's Managers could be running anything from a supermarket to Superdrug.
It is one way forward, because you cannot keep doing the same in a rapidly declining market and not expect the same results.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)