45s for the over 40s

We went to see Dead Men Walking at Huddersfield town hall tonight. A tribute band to the sex pistols, stray cats, alarm, big country and spear of destiny ... but the clever marketing catch was.. with the actual band members not pub band impersonators!! And that's how it mostly sounded ... mostly great, sincerely revamped versions of the songs they wrote when they had less wrinkles and more passion. But they strayed in to one or two pub singer moments and the Rock-a-Billy version of God Save The Queen was just surreal. Kurt Brandon still has a big, left-field voice and his song writing stands out for me. It was smallish crowd full of balding men and their Mrs’s - girls who've piled on the pounds a bit since they first dolled up and went to see bands. The lack of posturing and hormonal bravado was very nice though :-)

All change

A couple of guys at work are moving on soon – ‘enhanced’ deals that means they play ball in handovers and therefore avoid a quick redundancy and also get more dosh. I made the offers to both, which was hard but karma being what it is I think someone may be making a similar offer to me soon. Ha ha.

We have a new head of unit, the role I’ve filled since the last one left. I haven’t filled the ‘acting’ role with anything like the seriousness or gravitas it needed perhaps. Or maybe a factor of having come up through the ranks rather than as an external appointment – external recruits always seem to have more cred and people start talking to them like the role / dept is a brand new concept (I’ve seen it before when I’ve been the new ‘guru’ – twice in fact). Anyway – probably means my number is up here. Ho hum.

aint noise pollution

We were at the Leeds Festival a weekend or so back and I’d like to say it was rock and roll but I couldn’t really get into it. Partly because of slight hangover (I get belter headaches after quite literally 3 bottles of beer nowadays. Pathetic). Also because the crush of drunken boys and girls who’d been there all weekend became annoying after a short time .. bah moan from 40 yr old Git. Being there for the full weekend would no doubt be good but a one day-er is hard to get into (unless it is only a one day-er of course and you are all in the same boat).

And the boys got freaked by an E-d up teen girl who thought it was ammaaazzing that we had taken them to see white stripes. She spent 10 minutes trying shout above the band facing directly at us with her back to the stage. Whatever love, get out their faces.

Okay, White Stripes were good. And Morrissey. But the rain was drizzle and the food over-priced and youth very drunk and annoying.