Along with the usual crop of interesting new bands, we had the welcome return of a few old favourites in the shortlist for my Album of the Year 2013 , one or two of whom have been away for too long.
I suppose it is only to be expected in this world of instantly-downloadable individual tracks that back-catalogues are being visited by new generations of music-lovers, but it is still interesting to see the age-spread in the crowd for a gig by any big names of the previous century, when they make their return to the stage after a long absence. Such as when we visited the O2 back in June to see a band I hadn’t seen live for over 45 years – The Who. They came to Bath several times in the ‘sixties, and my main memory is of a cold November night in 1965 when hundreds of us, parka-clad, packed cheek-by jowell into The Pavilion, a venue only designed for half our numbers, in the hope of hearing something discernable come out of the crap PA. It didn’t, and nobody cared, but was it any wonder the band smashed-up all their kit at the end? Continue Reading
I have probably purchased more albumsduring 2011 than for some years and, what’s more, it’s been more difficult than I can remember for many years to select a short list of just the ten. So quite a bounce-back for this, my 49th annual round-up which includes my album of the year 2011 . Hopefully my fiftieth will be just as interesting next year; if not, I guess I can always do a retrospective!
2010 seemed to be a somewhat slow year on the music scene, reflected in the fact that my album purchases were probably the lowest they have been this century; in fact quite a lot of the output seemed to have somewhat of a retrospective air about it, including the influences that inspired possibly half of this year’s selections and the final choice for Album of the Year 2010 .