London Calling - if only for London 2012

If only...

Were he still with us Joe Strummer, born John Graham Mellor, would have been sixty today. He was, as the result of a congenital and undiagnosed heart defect, taken away in December 2002.
Were that not so I can hardly imagine that he would not have been on the stage at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympiad. 'The Clash' was not the first punk band, by any means, but they gave the whole genre wings...
They focussed their anger on sensible issues. In fact the members were from really quite comfortable backgrounds; and while they were genuinely angry they were also rather annoyingly but curiously, simultaneously, disarmingly literate.
This 1979 album was, I think, not just the defining moment of British Punk...

Had it not been for this album, and the inspiration it provided, the whole punk movement might have faded into obscurity - a bright spark, lit for the most part by angry young men in a fit of pique, that lasted for so little time.
There would thus have been no Green Day, just to make a single example.
The bad behaviour in this image is all down to Paul Simonon, who lives on, and so does the bass guitar in question (in bits as destroyed in this rampage, something that he later much regretted doing), in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH.
The inspiration for the album cover is down to that of Elvis Presley's first.

The end of the road?

The retail crisis has come to music. UK high street music/video/games retailer Zavvi, formerly known as Virgin before a management buy-out not long ago, has become the latest high profile casualty of the recession.

It is another sign of the times and I feel for its staff above all other considerations. I can live without Zavvi as a chain and I don't think I've actually bought a single item from it since the name change. If its demise eases the pressure on HMV then so be it. If HMV were to fail too then it would leave the UK with no widespread high street entertainment chain and that would be a shock.

What bothers me more is the effect that the current circumstances will have on the few remaining independent music retailers in the UK, and without doubt it is these that I would miss much more. They are real shops staffed by helpful, knowledgeable and totally dedicated music lovers.
I mention this with some sadness as London's 'Sister Ray Records' called in the administrators on 24th December. I just hope that a way can be found to keep it trading for now, strangely enough more than ever, we need stores such as this. Whether visiting in person or buying from them on-line it is vital that we show our support for them - and the only worthwhile way of doing that is to give them custom.

It is literally a matter of life of death.
If they vanish it is very unlikely that they will ever be replaced and I rather doubt that the situation is any better in other countries either.

Glastonbury 2008 and other festivals.

The tickets for Glastonbury 2008 went on sale at 9am (BST) today only to those who had pre-registered earlier in the year. If you were in the running then I hope that you were one of the lucky ones!

The weather here in Somerset is always a matter for conjecture when it comes to the Festival but the one thing it is unlikely to do in late June is snow. In fact it rarely does that here at any time of year, and I live barely more than ten miles away from the site, but for the first time this winter it did so last night. Not much admittedly but at 8am there was the better part of 1" of the white stuff on the ground; by 10 am it had almost all vanished.
I've not posted anything here for the last week as I've been away in the hills of NW England pursuing other interests that leave little time for listening and no possibility for blogging. That said I have returned with some new ideas and a long list of things to do or hear. It is going to take some time to put some of these plans in place if indeed they even prove practicable.

On the subject of 2008 Festivals the programme for Leeds/Reading 2008 is now available and the calendar of events continues to grow in response to the apparently inexorable rise of live music to the extent that now there is often more than one taking place on any given weekend. While Cowell et al are apparently hell-bent on finding new talent what Britain really needs right now is more summer weekends and better weather for those we already have. If only we could have a climate rather than mere weather!

I was lucky last year. It rained very little at Latitude 2007 and one of the heaviest showers was this one, just after I had pitched my tent (the red one in the foreground) on the evening of Thursday 12th July. Let's hope for a long, warm and dry summer in 2008!

Thank God for 'Take That'...

No joking, damage limitation is the best we can hope for in the run up to Christmas and so this was never going to be the greatest week for UK music. Few would have expected otherwise but when the chips were well and truly down today only the reformed Take That, the butt of so many boy-band jokes more than a decade ago, came like King Arthur and his Knights to the rescue of the UK Singles Chart in its time of greatest need!

With all other heavyweights opting out of releasing singles in the UK during the Christmas madness only they were likely to be able to stand between Sir Cliff Richard and the #1 spot (it would have caused him to have a UK #1 in six successive decades and thus be in the record books for at least a billion years) but they proved well able to hold the line, keeping their 9th UK #1 on top for a fourth week. The release on Wednesday of the single by 'X-Factor' winner Leona Lewis should ensure the threat of a back-lash is minimal.