Every Record Tells A Story
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Deep Purple at Knebworth – Mud and Bottles in ’85
The comeback concert that Deep Purple played at Knebworth in 1985 went down in history as one of the muddiest rock concerts of all time. As Blackadder once remarked about a girl with the worst personality in Germany – that’s up against some pretty stiff competition. It rained all day. The mud was six inches deep.…
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Laser 558, what’s wrong with Radio 2 and the real reason people liked Genesis
So what links Laser 558, Radio 2 and Genesis? Not that you need a reason (yes you do) but it is worth taking a look at the musical landscape of 1985 to put into context (some would say justify) why I (and many people like me) liked Genesis. My theory is that it’s all because…
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Genesis – Duke – Is it time to Turn it on Again?
Duke by Genesis is perhaps the band’s best album as a three piece. Duke was the third concept album I heard (after 2112 and Nursery Cryme) and the first one I managed to listen to all the way through. I know it was a concept album because lyrics and parts of tunes reappeared later in…
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This Man has the Greatest Job In The World
Dean Chalkley is a rock photographer par excellence. I promise I’ll get back to talking about my mundane early life soon, but it isn’t every day you meet someone in your home town who has the best job in the world… It’s probably just as well. If you constantly met a stream of people who…
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Dispatches – The Great Ticket Scandal
The way concert tickets are sold nowadays does little but irritate everyone involved. Twenty five years ago, I was occasionally pretty good at getting good tickets for gigs: front row for Def Leppard, Judas Priest and Anthrax shows at Hammersmith Odeon, and best of all Aerosmith supported by Guns n Roses at Hammersmith. I was…
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My Big Sister’s record collection: less cool than Cameron Crowe’s big sister’s record collection
Genesis were huge in the eighties (and indeed seventies). But with Nursery Cryme I got off to a bad start… In the film “Almost Famous” by Cameron Crowe, a love of rock music is instilled in him when he is bequeathed a number of albums by his older sister, Anita when she leaves home after…
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The Top Ten Worst Dressed Rock Bands of All Time
Which is the worst dressed Rock Band? After my post querying whether Rush’s Kimonos were a nadir in the relationship between Rock and Fashion, I thought about a few other bands that I knew who perhaps ran Rush pretty close. I read every copy of Kerrang! for several years: so here is my cut-out-and-keep guide of…
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Live Aid – Queen in “better band than Status Quo” shock
Live Aid was the most exciting televised concert there ever was. The thing I was most excited about before Live Aid began was, of all things, watching my favourite band (Status Quo) open the show on prime time TV. In addition to having playground conversations with friends about Status Quo’s superiority to Paul Young, I…
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Are these the worst dressed men in rock?
The cover of Status Quo’s On The Level album has record-breaking flared trousers. Were Quo the worst dressed rock band? With my first record under my belt – ZZ Top’s “Eliminator” – I bought Status Quo’s “Back to Back” album, and quickly started a pattern I have continued ever since: truffling out the rest of…
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My (less) embarrassing first record: ZZ Top – Eliminator
ZZ Top’s Eliminator album, with singles such as Sharp Dressed Man and Legs was a welcome relief from the rest of the charts. The singles charts in the early eighties were wonderfully diverse, but they rocked about as hard as a James Blunt-themed episode of Glee. There were more balls in the East German Women’s…
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The Black Keys – Best Band In The World Right Now
The Black Keys really are a great live band. You can keep your U2s and Coldplays. Right now I think we can nominate The Black Keys as the Best Band in the World. The two-ish piece from Akron, Ohio just left a pile of rubble where Alexandra Palace once stood such was their performance last…
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Van Halen – A Different Kind of Record?
Exciting times. Van Halen have a new album out today. I just saw a TV advert for it on Channel 5. One wrinkle though. The tune on the advert isn’t on the new record. The tune they played on the advert was “Jump”. Jump was one of the first songs I taped off the radio.…
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Home Taping is Killing Music Part 2: Top Ten Tips for Home Taping
Taping the charts off the radio has rather gone out of fashion… However, following the much publicised shutdown of Megaupload, keen file sharers may find it trickier to download music files (aside from using the hundred or so copycat sites of course…). With that in mind, here are my Top Ten Tips for Home Taping…(you have…
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Home Taping is Killing Music – Part 1
Home Taping / Taping music off the radio was rife in the seventies and eighties. On the inner sleeve of almost every record sold in the 80s was a skull-and-crossbones and the legend “Home Taping is Killing Music”. In the early 80s the charts were as packed with musical nourishment as a trombone pie. Status Quo’s…
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“The Inbetweeners? I lived that first episode…” How Status Quo rescued me from school turmoil
Status Quo were an important band when I was growing up in the eighties. As recent reality TV shows have shown, going to an Essex comprehensive school has never been the easiest start in life. And believe me when I say it’s even harder when you walk in on the first day in 1981 wearing…
Every record tells a story 