Brownie, Doesn't Have To Sell His Soul.........

The Carling Academy or Oxford Zodiac as it’s still affectionately known, seemed different and somewhat smaller than what I remember, which made the whole feel to the place a little odd. This was probably due to the lack of smoke in the air, which actually meant you could see from one end of the room to the other, with smokeless eyes and indeed lungs (not that you see with your lungs, but you get my point).

We arrived 30 minutes or so before the event which give us plenty of time to get a couple of Grolsch’s in, participate in the anticipation and get a feel of the already buzzing atmosphere.

The crowd a mix of old and new Brownie fans, eagerly awaited his arrival and I wondered what type of Brown performance we’d get tonight. Would it be full of new songs, from his new album ‘The World Is Yours’, or would he treat us to a back-catalogue of old favourites, with some Stone Roses anthems thrown in for good measure. Also. would he put on a decent vocal performance or would he come on stage, looking like he doesn’t want to be there, and trail through his songs, off key and languorous. I knew what I hoped for. A couple of die hard fans piped up with the, Ian Brown, Ian Brown, Ian Brown football-type chant as the guitar tuners and sound testers finished off just before he was due on stage, and it, it being the stage, was indeed set.

The blue stage lights faded and everything was dark as the dramatic orchestral sound from ‘Save Us’ off his new album accompanied Mr Brown and the band on stage. Once the cheers and whistles of the crowd died down, Brownie began rambling on about how going to college is good and if anyone in the room went to Oxford college, yadda, yadda. Brilliant, I thought, he’s going to start preaching to us and try to put the world to rights. But no, a baseline started up, quiet at first but got louder and louder, and not just any baseline, but the baseline of ‘I wanna be adored’. Fucking Brilliant. That got the crowd fired up from the off, all he had to do now was keep it going. He followed this up with fabulous renditions of ‘Dolphins Were Monkeys’, ‘Solarized’, ‘Time Is My Everything’ and ‘The Sweet Fantastic’ as he swaggered round the stage, tambourine in hand looking like he was actually really enjoying himself.

It was steaming hot and I could feel the sweat running down my back as a women was carried from the front looking like she’s fainted. Just then Brownie, in his true Mancunian style, microphone slung around his neck, decided to teach the crowd who couldn’t or weren’t prepared to dance, how to do the “Shoulder Shuffle”. This basically involved raising one shoulder in time to the music, but Brown enthusiastically encouraged it. He then introduced ex-Smith bassist Andy Rouke, “just flown in from Rio, that’s Rio, not rehab” before belting out ‘Keep What You’ve Got’ and ‘Corpses’ (accompanied by Browns Harmonica).

An unusual, but brilliant military style, marching drum rendition of ‘My Star’ preceded ‘Longsight M13’ and ‘Golden Gaze’ where Brown jogged though the whole song, bowing his arms like a athletic rapper which led up to his sets finale.
The set ended with an extended version of the Roses classic ‘I am the resurrection’ which had everything. Crowd participation, full instrumental, Browns charismatic swaggery dancing and finished with rapturous applause, whistles and cheers. Magic.

The band disappeared for a couple of minutes and appeared again as expected for their encore which began with the new albums lead single ‘Illegal Attacks’. This was followed by another new song ‘Sister Rose’, which has some feverish guitar blended with powerful lyrics. The next song was a bizarre but clever amalgamation of the music from ‘Fools Gold’ to the lyrics of ‘The World Is Yours’, it was a brilliant funk-infused upbeat combination, with a trumpeter and Rouke’s stylist bass playing.

They ended the night with ‘F.E A.R’, which was performed with aplomb and hauntingly finished. The audience showed their appreciation of a truly fantastic nights work by Ian Brown and his band as they left the stage to thunderous applause and chanting of Browns name. This was richly deserved as I don’t think I’ve witnessed a better performance by Brown, vocally or in stage-presence. Sweet Fantastic.

Halleluiah

The red faced idiot has been sacked. He was given a massive get of jail free card on Saturday, but still couldn’t deliver. The question is, why wasn’t he sacked sooner.
I’m still blaming the people at the FA who employed the incompetent fool, who incidentally are the same people who have just said "The recruitment process for the new coach begins now and we will do everything to get the right man for the job." Really, oh well, that’s reassuring. Didn’t they do that last time but made a complete hash of it, chasing coaches across Europe to be publicly humiliated when the said ‘coaches’ rejected them. They’ve also said that they are going to do a “root-and-branch" review of the England team set-up. Ooh buzz words, great. Sack the fucking lot of them. But who’s job is it to do that?? Nobody can, as they rule, so we are fucked as the people who go about employing the England manger aren’t even football people, just big wigs that have possibly frequented a few games.
Next summer is going to be Bore-ring

Mr B..

Can you remember that midfield dynamo Newcastle signed a few years ago? With his previous club he was a total box to box player, biting into the challenge, full of energy and regularly got double figures on the goal scoring front. He truly was magnificent for his former club and was sought after by many top clubs, Liverpool being one of them. He did have a reputation for being a bit of a mental though, and often got into a scrape or two on the pitch. He also came with additional baggage, and that came in the form of a racism court case for assault. This brought the media spot light to St James Park for the wrong reasons, however, luckily for him he had a good barrister and was found not guilty.

His playing career at Newcastle didn’t get off to a flyer and pretty much never got going at all. He never re-captured the form that he left at his former club Leeds. All he managed at Newcastle were merely average games with a couple of goals a season thrown in and never set St James Park on fire like he did Elland Road. Oh except for when he had a fight with his team mate. Great, time for the media circus again.
Obviously I’m talking about Lee Bowyer, but does this story vaguely remind you of any recent signing Newcastle has made?

Hmmm, lets just hope Mr Joey (Innocent until proven guilty) Barton’s performances improve at Newcastle, because so far he has failed to impress. I’m not sure if this is down to fitness, but I hope that he delivers the goods that his ability is capable of soon. If only he could emulate his performances at Newcastle to that of his former club, then he could, could, become a true Newcastle great. The ‘ball’ is in his ‘court’. (see what I did there).

No More Johnny Foreigner??

Well there is a lot of press coverage at the moment regarding the state of out national side and that there are too many foreign players in the Premiership. Well here is my view on the matter, for what it’s worth.

They claim, and when I say they the list is endless, from Steven Gerrard to Alex Ferguson and even Paul Parker (what the fuck), that the England national side is struggling and faltering due to the number of foreign players in the Premier league and that they want the FA to introduce quotas on foreign players in Premier League teams.

Well I think that’s a load of old clap-trap and that they are merely papering over the fact that our national side has catastrophically failed in this recent competition due to the manager and the players preparation and attitude. The squad we have in my opinion, given the right leadership, management and organisation should be capable of beating any team in the world and not just in Europe. As you may already be aware, I’m not the biggest fan of Steve McClaren but enough is enough, especially now that they are blaming the Premier League’s foreign players.

We have arguably the best, most entertaining league in the world and that is due to the fact we have the majority of the best players in the world. To scrap this and to quota a teams overseas players would destroy it.

There are other factors that people are forgetting. Before the influx of foreign players, lets say, before 1995 how well were we doing in international competitions? Exactly, poor, we didn’t qualify in 1994 (a squad Paul Parker was a member of) and was this due to the fact that there were to many foreigners in the league? No. We haven’t won anything since 66, foreigners or not so how can all of a sudden this be the blame.

I’m a believer that you tend to raise your game when your playing with quality players and your game also drops when your playing with poorer players, so to me English players playing with the best players in the world can only be good for them. Also, will the standard of players suddenly become greater if less foreigners come to play in the Premier league? Again, No. I would understand it if we only had one league in the whole country to blood young players, but there are five professional leagues with many more semi-professional and that quality will always shine through and be spotted. There are more scouts and academy’s now then ever, so how can young players be getting poorer, because that’s essentially what ‘they’ are saying.

Also English players are already over-priced in the current market (look at Carrick, Curtis Davies, Reo-Coker etc) which is also a reason why clubs tend to shop abroad, but if you have to have a team mainly of English players then the price of the average English player is going to rocket. This also would make a difference for those smaller clubs in the lower leagues who make their money by bringing through young talents to sell to the bigger teams, because the bigger teams would end up signing all the decent and not so decent young players at a really early age (some are even doing that already).

I’m personally blaming the F.A (richest Football association in the world) for employing such idiots at the helm of the national side with no experience or quality. They always come up with a excuse and point a finger at some ridiculous reason for our failure, foreign players, need for a Christmas break, player burnout, but never at themselves for making the biggest mistake in employing a Muppet in the first place. They can sack a decent manager for his dealings off the pitch and then employ him again as a coach and assistant for a manger they’ve employed who is no more than a glorified coach?! How backward is that.

Sorry I’m digressing, anyway, so to stop the import of the Elano’s, Tevez’s, Fabregas’, Ronaldo’s, Drogba’s, Torres’s, Arteta’s and the likes to drag our league to a sub-standard league full of over-priced championship quality players, no, not for me thank.

Come on Israel.

The Fighters Of Foo

Me and my good lady (that’s the wife) ventured out to see the Foo Fighters on Tuesday night at the NEC and even though I’m not a huge fan, enjoyed their performance immensely.

It was rather nippy when we arrived at the Arena and in true, rock and roll fashion we found the Twinnings Tea shop and had a cup of Rosie Lea (well Lesa had a coffee, and we couldn’t find the champagne, but still). We’d arrived in time to see the second half of the support act ‘Serj Tankian’ (System of a Down lead singer), however, his whining tones didn’t draw us in from our cups of warmth, so we sat in the café area for a while discussing rock and roll affairs, as you do.

We got to our seats, which were rather exceptional I must say, 15 or so minutes before the ‘Fighters’ came on and you could feel the anticipation in the air. The gentle hum of thousands of voices and the expectancy rose as the time went on. Then bizarrely a Mexican wave started to circle the Arena accompanied by a cheer as it went. (How do you actually start a Mexican wave? Answers on a postcard.)

The lights of the Arena faded to a crescendo of screams and whistles as four shadowy figures appeared, walked over and picked up or sit at their favoured instruments. Then bang, straight into their opening number to a flash of strobe lights, and there they were, the Foo Fighters energetically thrashing out ‘Let it Die’ from their new album ‘Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace’. The whole arena driven by the crowd, seemed to vibrate along with every power cord struck by the American quartet.

As the opening number ended to an expected, enthusiastic applause, without hardly taking a breath they pounded straight into ‘The Pretender’ again from their new album. The back drop of falling red bombes accompanied the tune and similar images followed as the ‘The Pretender’ then became ‘Times like these’ from the 2002 album ‘One by One’, in a seamless crossover of songs. The ‘Fighters’ creator Grohl ran up and down a specially constructed, raised, narrow runway, which stretched out from the stage and into the centre of the arena floor. Energetically strumming his six string as the fans close by took out the camera phones for pics. To end the opening section of the gig, they belted out ‘Breakout’ which was also sang by the majority of how ever many thousand of fans were inside the NEC. What a start to a gig. Electrifying..

‘Breakout’ finished and was met by the again thunderous applause and Grohl decided to give a run down of what to expect for the rest of the gig. “We’re going to play some shit” he announced, to unanimous amounts of laughter and shrieking. “And when I say shit, I don’t mean shite, I mean we’re going to play some damn, good, shit, if you know what I mean”. I kind of got the gist along with the rest of the crowd judging by their screams, and he continued. “As it’s cold outside, I want it red hot in here, and as I’m already wet, I want the sweat from you guys, dripping off the ceiling”. Hmmm that sounds lovely, I thought, I bet the missus can’t wait for that, rained on by sweat, nice. He went on “We’re going to play some new, some old and some acoustic numbers until you tell us to stop. Deal?”. More shrieks and cheers inevitably followed, as the crowd eagerly waited for the next number.

The ex-Nirvana drummer picked up his guitar and fired back into things with another new song 'Long Road to Ruin'. This went down quite well but before the audience could reflect or give their opinion on the new song the fighters of Foo quickly followed it up with the ever popular DOA. Hundreds if not thousands of fans singing along to the lyrics ‘No ones getting out of here alive’, plus most of the other words made the arena sound like a church with a choir of rockers. It was a neck hair standing up type of thing. .

Then came the highlight of the show, the Foos drummer (Taylor Hawkins) who, on a blacked out stage, picked out by a solitary spotlight, played a unbelievable drum solo which would have put Grohl to shame in his Nirvana pomp. As the solo ended a large, red, ring shaped, chandelier appeared on the ceiling in the centre of the arena, and began to get brighter as it slowly descended towards the centre of the arena floor. It was then apparent that a figure was walking round the circumference of the chandelier contraption as it descended getting ever brighter. Then as the acoustic notes of ‘Skin & Bone’ rang out everyone realised it was good old Mr Dave Grohl who had somehow appeared on the arena ceiling. It was then even more apparent that the chandelier was a stage complete with drum kit etc. As it touched down at the end of the runway linking it to the main stage, dead centre of the arena floor. The rest of the band members ran along the runway to meet the ‘new stage’ and accompanied their front man in an acoustic set including a sublime rendition of ‘My Hero’, followed by Cold Day In The Sun’ and ‘But Honestly’.

We were then introduced to the band, including a violinist, organist and a triangle player?? who had all joined the band for their unique acoustic set. Grohl who was in a jovial mood started the surrounding crowd clapping, so they could keep time as he began plucking his way through the intro of 'Everlong' as the rest of the band made their way back to the main stage. He continued his solo in the centre of the arena floor before running the length of the runway back to the stage which enabled the rest of the band to pipe up with a gigantic sound and light explosion.

‘Everlong’ continued as a two minute instrumental ending with raptures of applause, when Grohl noticed that someone had thrown something at him. It was a thong with a note asking him to ”put these on, and pose for pics”. He declined to moans from his adorning fans, only for him to respond with. “Yeah right, because you would put a strangers thong on and pose for fucking pictures”. He had a point I thought. He then took the attention off the thong by announcing “this is our last one, goodnight”. They ended with a great performance of ‘Why did you have to go away’ before they all walked off to deafening applause, whistles and screams.

The “we want more” chants and encore-whistles were halted when Grohls face appeared on all of the stage, background graphics screens. He was backstage with a type of handycam, mouthing “so do you want some more” and then gesturing with his fingers how many songs were wanted. The screams obviously got louder the more fingers he held up and soon the four Foo Fighters were back on stage and smashing out ‘In your honour’. They followed that up with a high energy performances of ‘This is Call’ and ‘Generator’ before Grohl addressed the crowd again. “Right we’re going to have a bit of fun now, we’re going to play a song we haven’t sung in 12 years, and not because you want us to, but because we want to”. ‘Alone & Easy Target’ was then cracked out as the decibels seemed to raise. But they were still keeping the best till last. After wishing everyone a “Goodnight and thanks for coming” the Foo Fighters ended their evening on stage with an immense ‘Best of You’ finale.

Some of their tracks sound very similar in my opinion, and they might not be everyone’s cup of tea (tea - rock n roll don’t forget) but they don’t half put on a earth shaking, noise intensifying, spectacular show. A truly entertaining night, and the missus loved it.!