Sunday, October 29, 2006

19th June 2002

I am sitting in my back room at the computer, I am listening to my
Father's Day present ( Queen, The Platinum Collection ), it is sunny
outside and it feels good to be alive. I have got plenty of Queen on pony
old cassettes but I don't own any CDs so I thought I was obliged to get at
least one. There is some shit on here from later in their career but it is
worth having for the classics, I am sure that you all have at least one
fave Queen track?? I have had a bit of a realisation listening to this and
it is this: A lot of people say that some of my music has Beatles, Beach
Boys, etc. influence because of all the tracked-up harmonies but I think
there is more Queen in there than anything else and I have never really
been aware of it because I rarely listen to Queen. I watched a documentary
on TV recently about the Freddie Mercury Tribute gig because is was ten
years since it happened. I remember that while I was watching this ten
years ago, two things occurred to me; I realised that George Michael was a
superstar of world proportions. His performance of "39" and "Somebody To
Love" were truly brilliant and he wrung every once of emotion out of the
latter and dragged the Wembley audience along with him. He also looked
absolutely killer in a very sharp suit and shades. I think Freddie would
have been very proud of him. The other thing was that Axl Rose should be
executed for crimes against music, I can't even bring myself to discuss it
as it is too distressing but I will say three words "shrieking fucking
tosser". "We Will Rock You" should have been called "We Should Shoot You".
I apologise in advance but I have to mention the World Cup and the
rollercoaster ride we have had following the boys in green. We had the
Saudi Arabia game (in O'Neils, with Mr Smart and Wickster and Veej) which
we won and put us up against against Spain who are one of the tournament
favourites. Spain were played of the park and should have lost during
normal time and extra time. The game went to penalties and Ireland lost. I
have never experienced such emotion on a Father's Day before. The penalty
shoot-out was horrible and I had a feeling that is was all going to go
horribly wrong and it did. It was the first time I have come close to
crying at a game which I will put down to the large quantity of Murphy's
rather than sentimentality but I was gutted. We were in O'Neil's again
with my mate Pete from the 'pool and Mr Smart and Wickster. The Wickster
is an absolute classic. He had asked me to call him on Sunday morning to
see if he was popping up for a few. When I called him at 10.20 he had only
been in bed twenty minutes but it did not stop him from rising and going
out again. He had been out celebrating England's win the day before and
was up for the Ireland game and a bit more celebrating. I guess that's the
disadvantage (or advantage, depending on how you look at it) of having an
English and an Irish parent. I thought that was the end of my excitement
in the World Cup until yesterday when I was watching South Korea play the
Italians. They beat them which left the Italians moaning about "dodgy
refs" and "conspiracy" but the truth of the matter was that they didn't
deserve anything out of the game. When Korea scored the Golden Goal I was
out of my seat and wishing I was in downtown Seoul with a bottle of sake.
You may have seen the scenes on the news. The Korean supporters were
amazing. They are quite new to the game and have yet to become cynical and
twisted like us lot. I think they feel privileged to be there with the
eyes of the world watching them and they sang in unison from start to
finish. Now we have the Brazil v England game on Friday to look forward to
and, typical of this country, everyone is getting far to carried away with
themselves. I have just heard an MP is going to approach the House Of
Commons about having a national holiday if England win the World Cup???
Now we are getting a little ahead of ourselves here are we??? Still it
should be a cracker and something worth getting up early for.
Moving on to this weeks pic. My mate Peter from Cromford was up in the
capital with his brother Phil who was my mate before Peter. I hadn't seen
Phil since our wedding day and he lives in Australia. Coincidentally he
came to see Queen with me at Liverpool Empire when we were both still at
school. I went into the West End and toured a few pubs and spent to much
money on over-priced crap beer but had a good time nonetheless. The next
day we decided to visit the exhibition Body Worlds down in Banglatown in
the East End. The exhibition was in Brick Lane which is the centre of
London's Bangladeshi community and famous for it's curry houses and
authentic cuisine. Prof. Gunther von Hagen has developed a process called
"plastination" which basically goes into bodies and turns then into
plastic allowing you to slice them etc. and see the internal organs as
they really are. It was interesting and I was divorced from the fact that
all the parts and exhibits that were there had come from real people. The
picture of the man above is one of the exhibits holding up his skin. If
you want to know more about the exhibition then you can visit
www.bodyworlds.com and check it out for yourself. The one thing that
reminded me that these exhibits were real was when Phil pointed out some
tattoos and one man. Our appetite was not destroyed despite looking at
corpses and we went for a pint and a curry in one of the little cafes
there. Nice curry and good company, you can't really ask for more than
that can you.
I got my new hard disk recorder the other day and spent an hour installing
it to find that one of the buttons was sticking and it had to be de-wired
and re-boxed and taken back to the shop.....bummer. Still, I should be
making music again by next week which is a convenient excuse to sit on my
arse watching even more football. You may notice that there have been no
matches today and that's why you are reading this.Seeya.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home