Vinyl Records Were Ditched For A Reason

For some reason, despite most people consuming music digitally these days, sales of vinyl records are up with an increase of 26% in the UK last year and one in 10 physical music purchases are now vinyl, with high street stores and online retailers both stocking it in greater numbers.
It's renaissance has puzzled me because those of us who had been there in our teenage years know that vinyl records are not a patch on CDs.
My memories of vinyl records are them scratching and once scratched you are forever consigned to your song jumping at the same part forever or even more annoying, keep repeating the same line over and over and over until you nudge the needle. 
Then you have to tiptoe around your room while the record is playing or else the record player arm will jump and you will go from track 1 to track 3 in one swift movement and risking a dirty great scratch.
Vinyl records playback quality was questionable with constant crackling and hissing in the quiet bits of songs and the discs themselves warped and enough of a warp would annoyingly lead to the song playing slightly quicker and slower as the needle in parts navigated the ups and downs of the slab of vinyl.
Almost every cardboard sleeve i owned had sellotaped edges as the disc would cut through the sleeve edges and if your collection got large enough you would need to set aside half a room for storage.
Finally downloads and CD's are portable so you can hear your music anywhere you go, try that with a record player and see how far you get.
Vinyl was ditched in favour of digital versions of music for a reason so going back to a less superior version doesn't make sense to me because i for one was happy to see those warped and hissy vinyl discs consigned to history.

Lucy Museum of Musicians - Madness

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.


Madness
Qualifying Songs: One Step Beyond, The Prince, Baggy Trousers

Madness were a band who went from amazing to awful almost overnight, from 1978 to 1981 they were a brilliant ska band and then suddenly and unexpectedly, they changed direction to a more pop sound and it was all 'Wings of a Dove' and 'My Name Is Michael Caine' and by 1986 they had split.
'One Step Beyond' is probably their most famous, and best, song, a fast ska sound with a bass running up and down the scales while a saxophone blasts away and its almost impossible to hear without wanting to do that little jerky side to side dance they did which can be embarrassing queueing at the checkout in Sainsbury's.
'Baggy Trousers' has that same ska sound they mastered so successfully to start with as did 'The Prince' which was their first single in 1979 and was a tribute to Jamaican ska singer Prince Buster, whose song the band took their name.
Then it all went southwards but they are back again now and it is the pre-82 hits that they play at reunion shows which proves that although some bands mature and change style successfully, sometimes it is best to stick to what you know because the Nutty Boys matured but the style change did them no favours whatsoever.

Arsene Wenger, Thank You And Goodbye

Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, calls time after 22 years at the club which to be fair was about four years too long but thanks Arsene, now let's get someone in who can hopefully emulate what you did for the first 10 glorious years.
It says a lot that his media conference today included the line 'We want to finish in front of Burnley' which says everything about how far we have fallen since our 'invincible' days when we were winning titles by not losing a game all season in 2004.
My phone has been buzzing all day with fellow Arsenal fans relieved that Wenger has finally taken the cue for his ride into the sunset as every season he hung around chipped away at his legacy which included three Premier League titles and seven FA Cups.
But now, after years of under-achievement, months of discontented rumblings and weeks of empty Emirates seats, Wenger has finally decided that the game is up and will depart amidst a waterfall of tributes and even more if he can steer Arsenal past Atletico Madrid and in the Europa League Finals.
All the talk now is who will replace him with Patrick Viera being touted as the favourite but i have my eye on German national team coach Joachim Löw, Atletico's Diego Simeone or Massimiliano Allegri of Juventus to take over the reigns.
As Wenger has gone with a year left on his contract the talk is that Arsenal have someone lined up but they had to take him now or lose him elsewhere so its thank you for everything Arsene but time to let go and allow someone else to have a go at restoring our club to a place higher than making sure we finish above Burnley.

It's Only April!!

It's April. It shouldn't be this hot!
Mid twenties and it isn't even summer yet, that joy is still months away and it was only 4 weeks ago that snow was on the ground and the weather girl was telling us to wrap up warm.
April temperatures are around 12C, today in London it was 28C and is set to be the warmest April day since 1949 but definitely the hottest day of the year so far.
As with most things, the blame sits with the Portuguese where a spike of warm air is pushing up from Portugal and roasting us all in our cars in the UK.
The stupidly hot weather is expected to last until thunderstorms come along Saturday evening to push it away.
It isn't fair that it is going to be hot and humid until September and i will spend until then smothered in sun cream but don't lets start it even earlier than usual in bloody April, that's just ridiculous. 

Lucy Museum of Musicians - Led Zeppelin

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.


Led Zeppelin 
Qualifying Songs: Whole Lotta Love, Rock N Roll, Stairway to Heaven

'Stairway To Heaven' was placed at number 31 on the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and i once saw an interview with Jimmy Page who went through the process of how he wrote the tune and not once did he mention him directly swiping it from the song Taurus by Spirit.
Still a great song which builds and builds to the amazing crescendo but i would pick the fast paced 'Rock n Roll' as my top Led Zeppelin song, it just keep up a relentless pace throughout.
'Whole Lotta Love' was the background music for the Top of The Pops chart rundown so i heard it every Thursday night but never realised until a long time afterwards that it was an actual song although in true Led Zeppelin fashion, it was nicked from someone else and the Band settled out of court with Small Faces and gave them a writing credit on the song.
Ironic that as it was the theme to the biggest UK chart show but the song was never released in the UK at the time and put in a belated showing at number 21 in 1997.
Amazingly in their career which came to an abrupt end in 1980 with the death of drummer John Bonham, they only spent 3 weeks in the UK Singles Charts and that was a re-release of Whole Lotta Love in 1997 but happily the songs from which they ripped off the majority of their tunes spent much longer in the charts.

Cuba Now A Castro Free Zone

Raúl Castro, 86, has stood down as president of Cuba and has been replaced by Miguel Díaz-Canel, 57, the vice-president which means almost 60 years and 11 US Presidents later, Cuba is about to be governed by someone other than a Castro for the first time since 1959.
Usually you can determine how successful a leader has been by asking the question 'is my country better off at the end of this persons leadership then when they took over' but the sheer length of time between these events makes that poser almost impossible to answer.
Depending on which side of the political fence you sit, you can point at the economic problems of the island, the denial of political diversity, and its dreadful human rights record and justifiably say Castro and his brother has not been a success.
Alternatively you could point to despite its scant resources, Cuba has fashioned education and health care systems that is the the envy of far richer countries. Illiteracy has been eradicated, while life expectancy at birth in Cuba is about the same as in the US, despite health care spending per capita one 20th the size of that of its richer neighbour.
Considering that most of the 11 US Presidents spent time and resources trying to assassinate the Castro's, that they lasted as long as they did is an achievement in itself but history will be left to decide just how good their leadership was.

The Hapless Conservatives

We have had some hapless leaders but Theresa May has just been hopeless.
The Conservatives have always been known as the nasty party and this Government  have kept that label accurate but Theresa May just seems to fall from one awful decision to the next.
The Brexit debacle which is still spinning in the wind to the decision to hold a General Election she couldn't lose but saw her majority almost wiped out and now the Windrush cock-up with her seeming to point to everyone else and everyone else just pointing straight back at her.
At first she refused to meet the West Indian delegation in the country for the Commonwealth meeting and after the media got hold of the Windrush stories, where people we had invited over were refused benefits, NHS treatment and housing as they were unable to prove they had been living in Britain, she then decided she would meet them after all.
When it was then leaked that the boarding cards, the only proof the incomers had to prove they had been living here had been destroyed in 2010, Theresa May blamed the Labour Government.
Nope, was a Home Office decision and you were in charge of the Home Office at the time the decision was made cried the Home Office staff backed up bu the currenmt Home Secretary who refused to accept the blame for the cock-up.
The strangest part of the story is that the Conservatives have been awful, have inflicted severe austerity and Brexit upon us and have been caught out in so many ways so many times but still they are neck and neck in the polls with Labour who should be sprinting away from one of the most dysfunctional British Governments many of us have ever seen.
The Labour Party should be asking itself the same question because if they can't take power away from this shower, then they never will.

Lucy Museum of Musicians - The Kinks

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.


The Kinks
Qualifying Songs: Sunny Afternoon, Waterloo Sunset, You Really Got Me

The story goes that the Kinks first two singles failed to find the top 40 and the record company gave them one more chance and if the third single failed to chart then they would be given the hook but the third song was 'You Really Got Me' which got to number one and the P45's were never written.
'You Really Got Me' had a hard-driving rock edge to it but they shifted to a more toned down, gentler sound such as the very summery 'Sunny Afternoon' which includes an always welcome dig at the Taxman and includes a video of them playing their instruments in a snowy park.
'Waterloo Sunset' is another slower effort but the lyrics about watching two lovers meeting on Waterloo Bridge are beautiful and sits proudly at 42 in The Rolling Stones magazine top 500 songs ever.

Lucy Museum of Musicians - The Jam

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.

The Jam
Qualifying Songs: Going Underground, That's Entertainment, Town Called Malice

Paul Weller always seems a bit of miserable git to me and i associate him and The Jam with the whole MOD thing which never really interested me and i had no interest in his music after the Jam split up.
'Going Underground' and 'Town Called Malice' were wonderfully driven angry songs which is the same reason i like 'That's Entertainment' even though it's a slower acoustic song but Weller still sounds like he has just found the cat has pooped in his slippers.

Lucy Museum of Musicians - Guns N' Roses

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.


Guns N' Roses 
Qualifying Songs: Civil War, Paradise City, Sweet Child O' Mine,

If what you want in a band is for them to land like an explosion, churn out a couple of the greatest albums ever recorded and then implode spectacularly, then Guns N' Roses are for you.
Use Your illusions I and II was those rarest of albums where almost every song was brilliant and i remember queueing at midnight outside HMV on a balmy September night in 1991 to get my hands on the double Album.
The hard part is just picking three songs from the treasure trove of songs they had but 'Sweet Child O'Mine' ticks every box and is almost the perfect song, great lyrics, an amazing Slash guitar solo and ends as a different song to the one it started as.
Probably the greatest anti-war song ever penned, 'Civil War', and the opening lyrics of 'Look at your young men fighting, Look at your women crying, Look at your young men dying' should be etched on the forehead of every armchair general the next time war rears it ugly, ridiculous head. 
'Paradise City' where it goes double time and Axel wails the chorus repeatedly while Slash does magnificent things to the guitars fretboard is genius and if there is a city where Slash is topless playing his Les Paul and Axel is running around in tight Lycra shorts doing that snake hipped shimmy then that's Paradise right there.
Guns N' Roses were about the only band i would say i was sad about about when they broke up but as we were just launching into the Grunge scene it softened the blow a bit but for four glorious years they debauched their way around the charts, so much so that bass player Duff McKagan's Pancreas exploded and it doesn't get much more rock and roll than your bodies internal organs rebelling and trying to blow themselves up.