Saturday 16th November 2024, 8.50pm (day 4,832)
How Goat are good? Sorry…. How God are Goat? Surely the best band ever to hail from Sweden. OK… maybe the second, but only in more general popular opinion.
Goat (pagan rock perfection)
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: rock music
The Pixies
Wednesday 21st August 2024, 9.10pm (day 4,745)
My 2023 Christmas present off Clare — the ticket for this gig — finally pays off. I guess you either know this band or you don’t: most likely it will be the track “Where Is My Mind” that rings bells, particularly if you’ve seen Fight Club. Having thought they were firmly on the “disbanded band” list, it turns out they reformed in 2004 and have been happily touring and releasing albums for the last 20 years without my noticing, but hey. Nice to finally make their live acquaintance. Here, the bassist seems to be consciously avoiding the limelight.
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Thursday 18th July 2024, 9.35am (day 4,711)
This sits on my usual walking route to campus so I know it hasn’t been up for long. I wonder how many other artists who have been dead for 30 years might still receive such tribute. Or perhaps it is a political message. Perhaps the reference is to hidden subliminal messages in Bobby Brown. Perhaps all those 12 key changes in every track will assist in unlocking the secrets of the tellurian currents. But I’m probably not going to start listening to Zappa — I did try, a couple of times, but it really didn’t work out.
Jane’s Addiction
Sunday 2nd June 2024, 9.15pm (day 4,665)
So that’s another one ticked off the list of ‘Bands I Have Liked for Thirty-Plus Years But Never Before Seen Live’. Then again, Jane’s Addiction did their first ‘farewell tour’ in 1991, have still only ever managed to scrape together four studio albums, and the original four members have only just decided they are still prepared to talk to each other and go on the road again before one or more of them dies. Which in singer Perry Farrell’s case, has always seemed likely to happen imminently. Therefore, I never really had the chance to break the duck before tonight. But I’m not complaining — they were worth the wait.
Rock photos exhibition, UoM
Friday 10th February 2023, 1.10pm (as you can see) (day 4,187)
So little time do I spend on campus these days that I had not noticed the great exhibition of old Manchester rock scene photographs in the main canteen, in University Place. Some superb pictures: notice Ian Curtis to bottom left, the rest of Joy Division above, and then Tony Wilson, Peter Saville and Alan Erasmus (Factory Records more or less) under the relevant sign.
Fantastic to look at; but I wonder whether it’s wasted on the students, most of whom, let’s face it, have been born since 2000 AD and unless they have very cool parents haven’t the slightest idea who Joy Division are or ever were — particularly if they come from China. It’s not a value judgment.
Tear down the wall
Tuesday 16th March 2021, 9.05am (day 3,491)
I don’t pose or stage photos for this blog. But sometimes I do choose them in advance. A year ago today I was walking in the Lake District. When I got home, all had changed. So, today, to mark one year since Bojo the Clown couldn’t decide what else to do and stuck us all under house arrest, here’s a tribute to a certain early 1980s rock album with which some of you may be familiar. The walls must come down, there is no alternative. How this happens is largely up to us: even if Authority will insist it’s up to them.
Bassist, the Dictators
Thursday 4th August 2016, 9.20pm (day 1,806)
I do the blog with a fairly crappy compact camera that needs replacing, only I can’t afford to at the moment. Rock gigs are like football matches, I’d probably be able to capture much better images of them if I had a proper lens or flash unit; in the low ambient light the participants tend to need to be stationary, which doesn’t happen that much. Best effort from tonight, where me, Clare and about 50 other people turned up to watch The Dictators go through their set: a band that can be dated by the fact they appear on a compilation I picked up last year of, not 70s punk, but 70s pre-punk… There were a few of people in the room aged under 40. But only a couple.
The drummer
Saturday 5th December 2015, 9.35pm (day 1,563)
Michael Dean, drummer of New Model Army, goes for it during tonight’s set at the Academy… It would be lovely to be able to get close-up shots at gigs with all the sweat and energy of a rock band but my days of mixing it in the moshpit have passed, sorry. Not a bad shot for someone standing more meekly nearer the back, with a long zoom, however.
In the crowd — Nine Inch Nails, Manchester
Sunday 25th May 2014, 10.20pm (day 1,004)
Tough choice today! Felt moved to do a Flickr album for the first time in ages as I felt I had a few to choose from. In the end though I went with this one, of the crowd rather than the band, because I was trying for ages to capture this bloke with a good combination of arm position and lighting, and then when I did so, the focus is all wrong — but! It still works.
Oh and by the way. NIN rock.
Being 42 