Andeth - Observations and opinions

Liverpool FC - Manchester United week....

2011-10-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

When I stopped to take an actual look at the stuff, I had written on this blog, I was surprised that I had never written anything football. Football here better known as soccer to Americans. Very surprised since football has been my number one love since early childhood and speaking of childhood, I picked my favorite team very early in life and this team is still the sports team closest to my heart and everyone with just a minimum of knowledge about me will know that this team is Liverpool FC. No other football team has caught my attention like the Reds from Merseyside, not the local team from where I grew up and still live today, even the Danish National team plays second fiddle compared to my life long Liverpool FC love affair.

Again speaking of my childhood, one very fond childhood memory would certainly be the day, when I arrived home from school to find a letter from Liverpool FC with photos of the players with printed autographs and more. I cannot emphasize it enough just how fantastic it was for a 7-8 year old kid to receive such an unexpected gift ( I learned that it was my father, who had written to Liverpool FC), and in this connection it has to be mentioned that this took place in the early/mid eightees, long before football merchandise was accessible outside the U.K. unlike now, where you can buy football shirts just about everywhere.

Unfortunately the above mentioned merchandise dissapeard from our house. I do not know what happened to it, it may very well have been stolen, though I do not blame anyone and I am over having lost it. I still have memory of seeing the letter fresh in my mind and I can guarentee that this will never go away and quite frankly this is much more important than looking at some old papers with signed photographs.

All in all, I have been a Liverpool fan for close to 30 years now. The first 10 years were filled with success while the last 20 years have seen the team being completely dominated by the annyoing rivals playing in red from Manchester. Domination to the degree that Manchester United now have the record for most league championships.

This weekend, Liverpool will take on Manchester United at Anfield. While "warming up" for this huge match, I somehow found a video clip from the match at Old Trafford a few years ago, the match where Liverpool won 4-1. As enjoyable as this game was for me, the clip does not focus on any match action. Instead the clip shows an incredibly dull atmosphere at Old Trafford, an athomosphere which is in stark contrast to the fantastic football served to the fans over the years.

Having seen this almost hilarious clip, I remembered a clip from one of the worst Liverpool seasons ever, 1993/1994, where the team of course also lost the last game of the season, a game which also was the last with the Kop as a standing terrace. Despite the horrific football played both the in this match and the season in general, the atmosphere was breathtakingly good. I know it was a special occasion this particular game against Norwich in 1993/1994 but I must also highlight that the game at Old Trafford was something special since a game against Liverpool is always massive and a victory here could basically secure Manchester United yet anohter league trophy.

Watching these clips brought back memories of a great trip to Barcelona a few years ago, where my brother and I way watched Barcelona play against RCD Mallorca at the famous Camp Nou. I witnessed first hand that the football culture in Spain is certainly different from what I have come to know from watching games in Denmark, England and Germany. 10 minutes before kick off you would not guess that there was a game to be played, since the stadium was almost empty (I guess the only ones present at that time must have been tourists ) and despite FC Barcelona putting on quite a show in their 6-0 victory most fans had already left the stadium before the match ended. Talk about fans, who take such fine performances as the norm.

This way of attending a sporting event must be the complete opposite of what you see in America, where the fans gather hours before kick off in the stadium parking lot, cook their own food and make attenting an NFL game an all day event. More over I find it fantastic that fans of both teams can sit side by side in the stadium without any violence taking place. That is the way it should be. I would love to try the American stadium experince one day.

Anyway, here are the two clips, I talked about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjnXzdvc1R8

Liverpool - Norwich 1994

OK ,this is what an athomphere inside a stadium should be like. I guess this shows why Anfield and not Old Trafford is known for its match day athomosphere. As mentioned earlier, this clip comes from a special occation with this being the last game in front the classic Kop standing terrace, but if you look at clips from later years, for example the Chelsea CL Semi finals, you will still experince a WILD atmosphere. Wild is not exactly the word, I would use to describe the pre match atmosphere at Old Trafford in the next clip....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqGwoTVqzO0&feature=related&noredirect=1

Manchester United - Liverpool 2009

This is just laughably ridiculous. A few years ago, it made head lines when Manchester United legend and former captain Roy Keane criticised the atmosphere at Old Trafford as being lame, while he saluted the fine support from the Manchester United faithfull at away matches.. After watching this clip, I know exactly, what he was talking about.

I find it particular amusing at 1,08 min. in the clip, where the singer is singing "the fans are going wild" as part of the lyrics from the song, which should help pumping up the home the home crowd, but despite the singer's best efforts and this of course being a Manchester United home game against their bitter rivals, what you hear most clearly are the 3,000 Liverpool supporter singing "You'll never walk alone".....

Finally, my prediction for tomorrow will be a 2-1 Liverpool victory, but that may just be wishful thinking since Manchester United look really strong right now.

Sing me a song.....

2011-07-24T06:16:00.000-07:00

A while ago, the British magazine "Classic Rock" published a list of the 30 best rock vocalists. To be perfectly honest, I am not quite sure how this top 30 was put together. Was it chosen by so called experts among the editors of this, by the way, great magazine, I have subscribed to for several years now ? Was it conducted by votes among the readers ? I do not know and at the end of the day, it is obviously not that important.
Without thinking of who I would include in such list, I realized that it is a lot harder than one would think to create such top 30. At least it is positive, that the list only includes vocalists, who fall into the music genres covered by the magazine "Classic rock". By this, I want to highlight that I find it totally impossible to compare singers, who excel in completely different types of music. How can you for example compare Roger Daltry and Roy Orbison to Sam Cooke and Patsy Cline ? Rolling Stone magazine tried to do so and just like everything else, I have seen from this incredibly overrated magazine, I thought their top 100 singers of all time list was as worthless as the Chamberlain document that should secure peace in our time (Both Bruce Springsteen and Kurt Cobain are in the top 50... Yep, it is THAT lame.....).

Anyway, The Top 30 published in Classic Rock Magazine looked as follows:

1. Freddie Mercury
2. Paul Rodgers
3. Robert Plant
4. Steve Marriot
5. Rod Stewart
6. Ian Gillian
7. Ronnie James Dio
8. Sammy Hagar
9. Steve Perry
10. Janis Joplin
11. Noddy Holder
12. Steven Tyler
13. Roger Daltry
14. Meat Loaf
15. David Coverdale
16. Paul Stanley
17. John Lennon
18. Ann Wilson
19. Layne Staley
20. Steve Winwood
21. Chris Robinson
22. Jim Morrison
23. Robin Zander
24. Glenn Hughes
25. Danny Bowes
26. Steven Wilson
27. Brian Connoly
28. Phil Mogg
29. Lou Gramm
30. James Hedfield

My thoughts about the Classic rock top 30

- It is all VERY VERY British. Would for example Danny Bowes from Thunder be included in a top 30 published by an American magazine or for that matter any other country outside the UK ? I doubt it. Furthermore, the top 6 six are all from the UK.

- Speaking of British and how the list is dominated by British singers, I was amazed not to see Bruce Dickinson or Rob Halford in the Top 30. Very, Very strange...

- The number of British singers in the top 30, would make me think that the readers of this British magazine had something to say, though on the other hand, I would doubt that the readers' votes would send Sammy Hagar all the way up to number 8 - How on earth can he be considered the 8th best rock vocalist in the world ?

- Noddy Holder on the list ? Noddy Holder at number 11 ? When I listen to Slade, I hear a very average vocalist at best.

- Phill Mogg and Brian Connoly ?? Seriously....

- James Hedfield -- You got to be kidding me... What's next ? Lars Ulrich a better drummer than Neil Peart ? Thank god some kind of sanity was restored, when none other than James Hedfield himself, was quoted for saying something like "he did not consider himself to be a good vocalist" in a later edition of Classic Rock magazine. The gifted composer and frontman, but not so talented vocalist, got that one right....

- Rod Stewart. Is he really a rock vocalist and more importantly; is he any good ? Though, I know he did have a more rocking side before his incredibly annyoing pop songs such as "Hot legs" and "Do ya think I'm sexy" made him a superstar among house wives, I think it is a border line decision at best to consider him a rock singer. After all this is a list of rock singers. And as said, I am just not a Rod Stewart fan..

My own top 10 list

As mentioned earlier I enjoy reading such lists and making my comments of what I consider to be wrong with such top something lists. However, Instead of just criticizing, I found it more interesting to make my own top 10 list of my favorite rock singers. To spice it up a bit, I went for the challenge of making the top 10 with the obstacle that I was only allowed to hand out 3 "wild cards", meaning that my top 10 should only include maximum 3 singers from the top 30 list published in Classic Rock.

When I put the list together, I actually came to conclusions, I found surprising. Who are my favorite rock bands ? The list includes the following artists.

- AC/DC
- Rush
- Pink Floyd
- Tom Petty
- Van Halen
- Savatage

But are Bon Scott, Geddy Lee, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Tom Petty, David Lee Roth or Jon Oliva anywhere to be found in my top 10 ? Nope... So though I say I find vocals extremely important, I guess it is much more important to be a good composer and song writer.

In my list, I have not put much focus of how long the singer's career was and how he (or she) sounded early or late in their careers. Instead I have focused on how they sounded, when they were in their prime. After all, it is only natural that you lose some of the power and ability to hit the high notes, when you get older (usually when singers are in their mid-forties)...... Someone just forgot to tell this to Roy Orbison and Ronnie James Dio.

Who is missing ?

Narrowing the list down to only 10 singers was a lot more difficult than I had thought it would be. As I mentioned earlier in this blog post, I was shocked that Bruce Dickinson did not find his place in the Classic Rock top 30. However, I must admit, I am even more surprised that I have not managed to find a spot for him in my top 10. But again, creating such a list is no easy task....

It would would have been cool to include a singer, who did not have English as first language. If such one should have been picked for my list, it would certainly have been Michael Kiske. After all, I am not sure that I have ever heard a better sounding heavy metal vocalist live than Kiske on the Helloween "Live in the UK" album.

In earlier blog posts and when I talk about music in general, I make it clear that I think the band "Queen" is one of the most overrated bands in the world. Having said that, I would also like to point out that I think Freddie Mercury was one hell of singer and I did consider including him in my top 10. With Queens very average catalouque of songs, it is basically only down to the incredible vocals by Freddie, that I pay any kind of attention to Queen.

Since I had only three wild cards at my disposal, I would also like to highlight that it was a very tough decision not to use one of the wild cards on Lou Gramm from Foreinger. He is awesome on album and he sounds fantastic on the very underrated Foreigner live album "Classic hits live".

Anyway, it is time to focus on the top 10 list. As already mentioned, I had a lot of fun putting the list together and I have carefully picked the songs and clips to present the singers. Boy I listened to some good music, while selecting the songs/clips....

10. Bob Catley

I am a big time fan of the 1980s albums by Magnum such as "Vigilante", "Wings of heaven" and especially one of favorite albums of all time, "On a story tellers night", and this has certainly a lot to do with the stunning vocals by Bob Catley. There are move powerful singers and vocalists with a greater vocal range than Catley, but few has such a great voice as Catley and he certainly lifted the awesome Tony Clarkin compositions to a phenomenal high quality standard.

Though he was featured in the Classic Rock sister magazine, which focuses on AOR, when they listed their top 30 AOR vocalists, I find it very odd that Catley is not mentioned in the CR Top 30, especially with the huge focus on Bristish vocalists in this poll.

As examples of the great Bob Catley, I have chosen two of the great anti war songs by Magnum. The 10 minute epic "Don't wake the lion" in a live version (Please release this concert on DVD) and the studio version of my favorite anti-war song of all time "Les morts dansat"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVgd-HSRRtE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U-MfTNwL-Q

9. Geoff Tate

Now here is a (heavy metal) vocalist with an incredible vocal range from the lowest low to the highest high and with a very powerful set of pipes. However, He manages to divide many music followers and he is certainly not everyones' cup of tea, so to say. This slightly divided opinion of Geoff Tate goes for my as well. He has made his signicant contributions to some of the best songs in rock history but sometimes he is just too much.

I have heard some live performances, where he is not quite up to his usual high standard, especially compared to the Queensryche albums up till and including "Promissed land". This makes it hard for me to justitfy placing him higher than number nine in this top 10

Having said that, he is absoultely superb in the clips, I have chosen to represent him here. Especially his vocals on "Gonna get close to you". I have always loved the "Rage for order" album" (Unlike most other Queensryche fans, I like this album better than "Operation mindcrime", mainly because it was weird, very different from other albums but still magnificent). For many years, I had not paid attention to the fact that the song was actually a cover version, but I still think very highly of the Queensryche version, even after having heard the, by the way also awesome original version of his "creepy" masterpiece.

The other song "The prophecy" is from the early days of Queensryche, where they admitted that Iron Maiden was a huge influence. Certainly nothing bad about this, I am big Maiden fan myself, and this VERY Iron Maiden-like song from the Queensryche EP shows great, powerful heavy metal singing from Geoff Tate.

Gonna get close to you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWjSfNHjIuI

The prophecy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxVmkmNcAi4&feature=related

8. Bob Seger

Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp are often refered to as "The big four" in the genre called "American heartland rock". When comparing these artist, I have often ranked them via categories such as "Who released the best albums in the 70, 80, 90s", who is the best live act, who has the best backing band..... and who is the best vocalist. In the latter catogory, I certainly think that Bob Seger is the best one, with some distance to number two (By the way, I am not a big Springsteen fan, so I have ranked him last in basically all categories or perhaps not live act, only because I have not heard John Mellencamp live, in the flesh or on album).

Unfortunately there are no good live videos of Bob Seger, so I have not included any live versions of the great Bob Seger songs. However, I rate both "Live Bullet" and "Nine tonight" among the very best live albums of all time, not least due to Bob Seger's vocals. Therefore, I have decided to let the video made for the soul / rock classic "Night moves" represent the great Bob Seger. Rock with clear soul influences done a lot better than any Rod Stewart song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN1_3zHjhW8

7. Rob Halford

I am not the biggest Judas Priest fan on earth, but I do certainly like some of their songs and I rank Rob Halford among the very best heavy metal vocalists of all time. In fact I would never have continued to listen to Judas Priest, if it was not for Rob Halford.

Like I have done it for several singers in my top 10 list, I have included a cover version, where the singer in question sings material made famous by another artist and we thereby sometimes see another side of the singer's talent. I have always loved Judas Priest 's version of the Chuck Berry evergreen "Johnny B. Goode". I have heard loads of cover versions of this iconic rock'n'roll anthem, but none quite like this one. Rob sounds absolutely amazing here.

The other clip is perhaps not Rob's best vocal performance ever, but the song "Delivering the goods" is definitely one of my favorite Judas Priest songs. In the clip, Rob is playing with the band "Skid Row", since he had already left Judas Priest. The clip also works as some kind of history lesson... It was filmed for MTV !!! Yes, Ladies and gentlemen, there was a time, where there was music on MTV and not just docu soaps.

And one final observation from the clip. Sebastian Bach's microphone looks weird..... And what the hell is Rob wearing ??

Johnny B Goode
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xef99_judas-priest-johnny-b-goode_music

Delivering the goods
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tThO7L10rYE

6. Brad Delp

With the layer on layer on layer on layer on.... sound, which made Boston a big time band in the 70's, you could forget just how great a vocalist Brad Delp actually was. It is just a shame that the band, he was associated with, had so many issues with record companies and internal strugles that his golden voice was so criminally underused on albums.
As mentioned earlier, the incredible sound captured by Tom Scholz on the Boston albums could potentialy overshadow Brad's fine voice, but in the bootleg live clip (which audio wise is a far cry from the over the top sound quality created by Tom Scholz) of Long Time, Brad Delp really shows that he was one of the best rock vocalists of all time.

The next clip.... How can you talk about the band Boston without bringing the attention to "More than a feeling".

However, The first clip has no real music in it. It is much more serious than that and is unfortunately connected to the fact that this wrting about Brad Delp is past tense. Brad Delp seemed like such a great guy, loved by everyone. In addition to being a great vocalist, he was just a soft spoken, likeable guy, you would love to hang out with. However, In 2007 Brad Delp commited suicide. The clip is an interview Brad gave to a radio station just two days before he took his own life. Very creepy indeed; He does not exactly sound like a man, who would kill himself just 48 hours later.

I guess there is a lot more to life and death than one would think and human behaviour is a complicated matter.

Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA5Zg56vJI4

Long time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btLuzjHbCUU

More than a feeling
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xz339_more-than-a-feeling-boston_music

5. Eric Adams

By far the most "controversial" choice in my top 10, at least according to me. I went back and forth on this one, but at the end of day, I included Eric Adams in my list - and even in the top 5.

Manowar has one of the most dedicated and loyal fan bases in the world. However, I do not really consider myself a massive fan of this New York state band. I certainly enjoy listning to them in sort of small doses and not exactly 24 7. Their "no sell out approach" is to my liking but at the end of the day, I would not listen to this band if it was not for Eric Adams, and this is obviously something that speaks volumes for when ranking vocalists. His vocal performances on albums such as "Fighting the world" and "Kings of metal" are SO magnificant, that I actually consider him the 2nd best metal vocalist of all time.

Nowadays, he does not quite have the vocal range he had 25 years ago, but hey that is only natural. As mentioned earlier, this list focuses on the peak period of each vocalist and not necessarily how great they sound, when they get older. Therefore, do not get fooled by all the Manowar concert clips on Youtube, which are mainly recorded in the last few years. He sounded absolutely amazing in his true hey day (and by the way, most singers would be glad to sound as good as Eric Adams does in his mid-fifties, when they are in their early twenties).

Heart of steel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFuIc2sRFxs

Defender
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRWcmYLVKG0

4. Rob Zander

Time to hand out my first wildcard and it goes to Robin Zander, the vocalist of the slightly odd american Power pop group "Cheap Trick". Odd among other things refering to how the band members look. Rick Nielsen, the guitar player with all the goofy faces and some times weird looking guitars, the fairly normal looking bass player Tom Petersson, the coolest looking drummer in rock history, Bun E. Carlos (He looks more like your high school math teacher than a rockstar) and finally the lead singer Robin Zander, who looks exactly how you would expect a rock singer to look like.

Since this is the first of the three wild cards, I will try to explain just why I went with Robin Zander ahead Lou Gramm, who would certainly have found his way to this top 10 list, had I had four wild cards at my disposal. The main argument for picking Zander is simply him being THE reason, I even listen to Cheap Trick.

The first clip I have listed here, is a live version of the bands' only number one hit single, "The flame". The band was less than thrilled with the song and since then, they have not recorded that many power ballads but they could just easily have jumped on the power ballad bandwagon and made millions and millions of dollars, because Robin Zander sings this type of music better than all the lead singers from the hair metal bands of the 80's - Combined... It seems like he says wow at 5.18 in the clip after hitting a note perfectly. When I watched it, I said wow too...

The 2nd clip is a cover versionen of "Don't be cruel", of course made famous by the King himself. Elvis had the ability to sing asbolutely any genre of music - and sing it very well. In my humble opinion, Robin Zander is also very much capable of that. He is called "the man of 1000 voices" for a reason.

The flame
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4atvmuqNew

Don't be cruel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HJrNiuow8Y

3. Don Henley

Is Don Henley a rock singer ? Well I admit that it could very well be argued that Don Henley has not recorded enough"rock music" to be considered for this list, but if Rod Stewart can be labelled a rock singer by Classic Rock, then Don Henley should also eligible for this list. In this connection, I remember seeing a Don Henley interview in Classic Rock a few years ago, so let us just end the discussion about whether he is enough of a rock singer to be considered for my top 10 list here.
I have no special remarks or anecdotes about Don Henley. I really liked him from the very first time I listened to him. I still listen to some of his solo albums mainly because of his phenomonal voice. When you add his brilliant voice to very fine composotions, like the ones I have chosen to represent Don Henley, you have some of my favorite songs of all time.

The last resort
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3shyv_the-eagles-the-last-resort_music

The heart of the matter
http://www.mojvideo.com/video-don-henley-the-heart-of-the-matter/2e64c64dc8c8f38318a7

2. Ronnie James Dio

Now it is time to hand out the 2nd of the wild cards and this is to none other than the late, great, Ronnie James Dio. A bit like it is the case with Don Henley, he is a better singer than composer but over his long, stellar career he added his voice to brilliant compositions, resulting in some of the best heavy metal songs of all time and he has made average compositions into pretty good songs due to his phenomenal singing ability.

In my mind, there is no doubt; Ronnie James Dio was THE best heavy metal vocalist of all time. There are singers with a larger vocal range, but simply put, no one sounded as good as Ronnie. What is really fascinating with Dio was his ability to stay on top of his game all his professional life. Just look at the clip of "heaven and hell", which was recorded in 2007. He is 65 years old in the clip. It is simply not enough to say that he sounds good taking his age into consideration. He sounds freaking awesome and way better than how 99,99 % of all rock singers would do than they are 25 years old compared to his 65 years of age in the clip. By the way, the clip is from the Heaven and Hell live at Radio City Music Hall, which was released just recently on Blu Ray. BUY IT, THIS IS AS GOOD AS HEAVY METAL WILL EVER BE !!

The 2nd clip is from his early solo days, where he performs "Man on the silver mountian", which of course is a song from his tenure in Rainbow. I was never a big Rainbow fan, in fact I am not really a fan of any of the bands Richie Blackmore has been in, so I actually prefer this up tempo version of this famous Rainbow song.

Heaven and hell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teuLHnlo_iM&feature=related

Man on the silver mountain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOyFE-1LAI0

1. Steve Perry

And finally we have reached the top and it is time to hand out the third and obviously final wild card. Steve Perry is the most famous singer of the most famous AOR group of all time, Journey. This group has had some incredibly talented singers in the line up over the years such as Steve Augeri, Jeff Scott Soto, who was a tour replacement for Augeri and finally Youtube sensation, Arnel Pinada. Heck when the bands' drummer can sing as well as Deen Castronovo does here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dzl0wShYo4&feature=related

while playing drums, it is easy to conclude that Journey is the band with the awesome leadsingers. However, None of the above mentioned singers are even close to being in the same league as the lead singer of the "classic" Journey line up, Steve Perry, the man who tops my top 10 list of the best rock singers of all time.

Steve Perry sounds incredible on all albums, better than any other rock singer. Amazingly, there is something even better sounding than Steve Perry on the classic Journey albums... That is Steve Perry live. Good singers sound great on albums, very good singers sound great on albums and very good live and the cream of the crop sounds phenomenal on album and even better live. Steve Perry fits the latter group of singers.

Some short comments to the clips, which both come from the Houston concert during the Escape tour in 1981. Not too long ago, this concert was released on DVD and calling this DVD good is a massive understatement. The picture quality is decent and the PCM sound channel sounds absoulutely amazing, espcially taking into consideration that the concert took place 30 years ago. I have DVDs recorded 20-25 years later with much worse sound quality than this one (The youtube clips do not show just how good the DVD sounds on a half decent stereo like mine).

The concert itself... WOW. To be honest, I do not think that I have seen a better sounding live performance by a rock band than this one. I have always considered Neil Schon to be among the very finest guitarists of all time, Steve Smith is an absoulute beast on the drums (you are usually not a bad drummer, when Neil Peart calls you a fantastic drummer) and of course you have the over the top lead singer in Steve Perry. Individually they are all fantastic musicians and they play together as an extremely tight unit.
So yes, if you ask me, Journey's 1981 Houston concert is as good as it gets for live performances.... And yes, I have seen footage of Queen's 1985 performance at the Live Aid event.

The two clips show two different sides of Steve Perrys talent. The first one is the rocking show opener, the title track from the Escape album and the 2nd clip is a medley of Lights and Stay awhile, where you really notice his Sam Cooke / Smokey Robinson inspiration. Especially the latter clip is beyond awesome, he is so much better at singing soul inspirered rock music than the grossly overrated Rod Stewart.

Escape
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpclWbXh6UI&feature=related

Lights / Stay awhile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmni4vIJRLQ&feature=related

Tired of the usual suspects....An alternative look at great guitar solos

2010-11-07T07:15:00.000-08:00

Over the years, I have seen several lists/ polls concerning the best guitar solos of all time. Obviously, there is no clear, universal answer to the big question of naming the best guitar solo of all time. Everyone is free to have a say in this matter, so I decided it was about time, that I tried to put my thoughts on the topic into words.

First of all, when you look at the polls conducted, there are always a number of solos that are repeatably listed close to the very top. I call them "The usual suspects". But does this mean I think they should be listed this high in the polls ? Please see below

"The usual suspects"

Led Zeppelin - Stairway to heaven

When you want to dig deeper into the world of rock music history, both the band Led Zeppelin and the song "Stairway to heaven", will soon come to your attention. I was in my early teens, when I first heard the song and the band Led Zeppelin. I think the band is good, not great, but I have never really understood the big fuzz about the song "Stairway to heaven". I think it is an OK song but it quickly gets a bit annoying. The solo is certainly not bad, but I can easily find loads of guitar solos I like as least as much as this one. To sum it up, if you ask me: Stairway to heaven = Overrated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcL---4xQYA

Van Halen - Eruption

OK, I REALLY love this one. Eruption differs from the songs here, since Eruption is basically one long solo. When it came out in the 70's, the world had not quite heard anything like it before and here more than 30 years later, it is still incredible. A timeless piece of art.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w31nem4x98w

Pink Floyd - Comfortably numb

Again not much to say. Fantastic solo that I will rate among the cream of the crop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB1cNkC71vE

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free bird

Free bird is always mentioned among the best rock songs of all time and deservedly so. The solo is long but not a second too long. Just a joy to listen to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np0solnL1XY

Eagles - Hotel California - Solo by Don Felder (and Joe Walsh)

I am a big Eagles fan and must have heard the song "Hotel California" a million times. Like so many others, I love the solo, which brings a great end to a legendary song. The Don Felder / Joe Walsh harmonies on this epic track are just awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piW9MHpfCu4

Other guitarists, who have various pieces of work in these top something lists of all time great guitar solos, include Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. I certainly respect both of them, since there is no question that they have had a huge influence on so many guitar players, that I rate highly. However, As Neil Peart brilliantly wrote in his book "Traveling music": "Clapton may supposed to be great, but does this mean that I should like his work" ?

Another example of my opinion about guitar solos differing from so many others, may be the fact that Kirk Hammett from Metallica has several solos included in these polls, and I have seen the solo from "One" included in several top 10s. There are so many great heavy metal guitarists and there is even a very good one in Metallica, James Hedfield, the rhythm guitar player, and I can name a number of heavy metal guitarists I rate higher than Kirk Hammett.

The alternative top 5

To go a bit against the grain, I have decided to make an alternative list of my favorite guitar solos. It is pretty much impossible to narrow the list down to only 5 solos, so it goes without saying that several of my favorite guitar parts had to be excluded here. In this connection, I really tried to be alternative, so I have not just picked another Eddie Van Halen solo like "Hot for teacher" or "Tuesday´s gone" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, but instead taken a closer look at other guitar players.

ZZ Top - Rough boy - Solo by Billy Gibbons

I cannot remember seeing any Billy Gibbons solos higher than the top 50 in the above mentioned polls, which makes it a "no-brainer" to pick the solo from "Rough boy" to my alternative top 5. Billy Gibbons is one of my favorite guitarists and there are so many of his solos that could be included here. But still, the "Rough boy" solo is so incredible that I will most certainly rank it among the very best of all time.

I would take Billy Gibbons over Clapton, Beck, Page any day....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYfMKHPSAk8

Bob Seger - Like a rock - Solo by Rick Vito

I do not think that I have even seen this awesome solo included in discussions about the greatest guitar solo of all time. Do not ask me why.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keIvA2wSPZc

Megadeth - Hangar 18 - Solos mainly by Marty Friedman

I recently read about a book, which looked at the best heavy metal guitarist of all time. To my amazement, the book came to the conclusion that the all time best heavy metal guitar player was... Dave Mustaine ? Do not get me wrong, I think Dave Mustaine is a great rhythm guitarist and he has written some of the best guitar riffs of all time, but still ? Megadeth used to have one of my favorite guitar players in the lineup, Marty Friedman. I consider the first three Megadeth albums, Marty appeared on, to be among the very best heavy metal ever produced, so it is a difficult task to name only one of the phenomenal solos from that era. However, I have chosen to include the amazing solo from "Hangar 18" from the legendary "Rust in peace" album.

Marty Friedman better than Kirk Hammett (and Dave Mustaine) ? No contest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtsD2tBPZgo

Accept - Bound to fail - Solo by Wolf Hoffmann

Man ! What a song and some guitar works through the entire song by Wolf Hoffmann, right from the intro to the end solo. I could easily see this solo being used in connection with sporting events, especially when teams enter the arena... On the other hand, perhaps not, since the title "Bound to fail" does not go so well with sports..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0TC_EdncRU

Mercyful Fate - Is that you Mellisa ? - End solo by Michael Denner

In my opinion, Mercyful Fate is the only Danish musical act to have made any kind of positive contribution to rock music history. The track "Is that you Mellisa" from their great comeback album "In the shadows" has a very "creepy" solo towards the end. This meant in the best possible way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOPbnR1b-14

Tom Petty - Running down a dream - Mike Campbell

A somewhat long (for Mike Campbell standards) solo but nonetheless an awesome piece of guitar work. Mike Campbell represents the breed of guitarists, I really like. Technically they can play with the best of them, but they are more interested in taking part in a good song than letting their guitar ego stand in the way of creating a good tune. Someone described Mike Campbell as a guitarist, who has never wasted a note and this description fits perfectly with well both with Mr. Campbell and most other guitarists I really admire, for example the late, great Criss Oliva from Savatage and the former Queensryche axe man, Chris DeGarmo. Especially Chriss Oliva deserves praise. He was perhaps my favorite heavy metal guitarist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1D3a5eDJIs

To end this blog post, which must be about time, since the top 5 has already turned into a top 6, let me just say the following:

LONG GUITAR SOLO DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL GOOD GUITAR SOLO

NFL 2010 - Early random thoughts

2010-03-08T07:32:00.000-08:00

I wrote the below mentioned text prior to the beginning of free agency, just after the Saints had won the Super Bowl. Somehow I forgot to post it. Anyway, I have decided to put in on my blog anyway, even though it is a bit outdated.

- The Bills should seriously target Chad Pennington in free agency. Name him the starter, but still, draft Sam Bradford if you get the chance to do so. Accuracy is really the key word for a good QB, just look at Drew Brees, who won the Super Bowl for the Saints. I have come away highly impressed, when I have seen Sam Bradford play and that is some words for a diehard Longhorns fan.

- Please do not use the first round pick on Anthony Davis. To me he seems to have all the psychical tools to succeed on the next level, but based on the reports I have seen, he could be a bit of an under achiever and not a hard worker, and we do not need another Mike Williams.

- Trade Donte Whitner if anyone is interesting in giving the Bills a 3rd round draft pick or better. He is not more than an average safety and it still sad to think the Bills could have taken Ngata or Cutler with the pick back in 2006. Whiter is not better than the other safeties currently on the roster, and the extra draft pick could help the team a lot more than the very average play from Donte Whiter.

- Will Reggie Bush stay with the Saints? Prior to the Super Bowl I was 100 % sure that the former 2nd overall pick up, would be gone, but a Super Bowl can change things dramatically. Still, it will be highly problematic for the Saints to pay him his $ 8 mill. Salary, since the other players, who have outperformed the former Heismann trophy winner in New Orleans will demand to be paid just as much as Reggie is paid. A solution could be to ask Reggie Bush to take a pay cut and perhaps offer him an extension, but why would Reggie Bush accept that, when he should have no problems finding a job elsewhere. It is close to being a 50/50 decision whether he stays with the Saints or not. My best guess is that he will play for either the Saints, Patriots, Redskins or The Seahawks.

- Where will Ladanian Tomlinson play in 2010 ? Right now it appears to be unrealistic that he stays in San Diego. A good guess could be a franchise in trouble with selling season tickets. Detroit? Or it could be a team like Houston that is close to being a true contender in the AFC and may see the future hall of famer as the final needed ingredient that can make the team a bit more completive. However, I will not be particularly surprised if LT struggles to find employment in the NFL. This could very well be the end for LT. We have seen it in the last few years that a veteran running back suddenly hits the wall and is no where near being as good as he was in the past. So with the ways the careers of Marshall Faulk, Eddie George and Shaun Alexander ended, this could really be the end of the road for Ladanian Tomlinson. If that is the case, I will miss him greatly. An overall nice and likeable guy and what a phenomenal football player.

- Staying on the subject of RBs, who may have had their best football years behind them, the questions is where will Brian Westbrook play in 2010 ?I doubt it will be the Eagles and I will not be surprised, if we have seen Brian Westbrook for the last time in the NFL. Once again a shame. He has been awesome and I am sure Donavan McNabb will miss him as well.

- Who will have the better season? Vince Young or Matt Leinart, the two QBs who battled it out in the best football game I have ever seen, The 2005 Rose Bowl, The national Championship game. I say Vince Young. It may not always be pretty and textbook QB play, but he just wins a lot of games.

- Will Brett Favre play in 2010? I hope he makes his mind up quickly, because I am sick and tired of the retirement drama, we have seen from him for a long time now. The Vikings must sure hope that he is willing to return. If the returns they are once again in a good position to win the NFC north and even progress deep into the post season. However, If Brett finally calls it a day for good; I seriously doubt that the Vikings will be able to win the division. In fact they could even finish last in the division taking the regressing rush defence into consideration and they generally rely too much on Adrian Peterson, who was not as impressive in 2009 as in previous seasons. Perhaps this Vikings doomsday scenario is just wishful thinking from my side, because I cannot stand the team.

- Where will Julius Peppers play in 2010? It does not sound like he wants to stay with the Panthers and the Panthers do not appear to make a serious effort to keep him in Charlotte, NC. Could teams like the Lions, Bears, Patriots or the Seahawks be possibilities. My best guess will be the Bears, since they do not have a first round pick in the draft and could use the money on a defensive difference maker. After all, it is must be play offs or bust for Lowie Smith.

- Where will Carlos Danby play in 2010? My best guess will be another 3-4 team like the Cleveland Browns or perhaps the Miami Dolphins. I doubt the Bills will go after him.

Heaven, hell or.... Houston? The “pre everything” look at the 2010 NFL season

2010-02-19T07:25:00.000-08:00

The saints won the Super Bowl last week and that concluded the 2009 season. So in other words, we are only a little more than a week into the incredibly long off season, but that will not stop me from looking ahead to September when the 2010 season will officially kick off.
First of all, I will list my division predictions for the 2010 season. Obviously, it is ridiculesly early to make such predictions, but on the other hand, these predictions cannot be worse than the ones I made for the 2009 season and they were made, when the season officially started. As you can see from an earlier blog post, I only listed down my 2009 predictions for the AFC. Somehow I completely forgot to say anything about the NFC on my blog, though I had listed them in my head. My AFC predictions were not particularly impressive, but I have to be honest and confess that my NFC predictions were much worse. I was right that the Saints would win the NFC south and very wrong about pretty much everything else. I was convinced that the Bears would win the NFC North and I was of the opinion that the Vikings were over hyped. It did not exactly go like that....

In the NFC west, I counted on the Seahawks to bounce back in 2009 and win the division. Once again, I was way off target.

It was not much better in the ultra completive NFC East. I was sure that the Giants would win here. In fact before the 2009 season started, I predicted a Giants-Steelers Super Bowl. Both teams failed to make the play offs. Nuff said....

AFC East

New York Jets

New England Patriots

Miami Dolphins

Buffalo Bills

This is the division that interest me the most, because the mighty Buffalo Bills play here. Unfortunately I doubt that 2010 will be a much better Bills season than the ones we have seen the last several years. I am not a Dolphins fan but I will I try to be objective and look at their team without prejudices. When doing that, I come to the conclusion that they do not look to be much better than the Bills and that must be alarming for the annoying team from South Florida.

Have the Patriots dominance finally come to a close? It could be, though it could also just be wishful thinking. Fact is that the Patriots did not look as strong in 2009 compared to earlier seasons and their performances in the play offs were embarrassing, especially for Patriots standards. Their defence looks like a far cry from the defence that won them their Super Bowls and even though he is still a very good WR, Randy Moss just looked better a few seasons ago. However, we should never underestimate Bill Billichick and we should not be surprised if the Patriots win the division and progress deep into the play offs.

The New York Jets were surprisingly good in 2009, where they stunned just about everyone by making it all the way to the Conference final. That alone should be enough to make them early favourites to win the AFC East, but when you look at the team, I have to say that the future for the Jets looks good. They have an excellent defence, a very good running game and a young QB that has a lot of potential and could be good down the road.

AFC West

San Diego Chargers

Kansas City Chiefs

Denver Broncos

Oakland Raiders

I think that the 2010 Chargers will still be too good (and the opposition too weak) to not win the AFC West. That said, as I mentioned already when I previewed the 2009 season, I think 2009 should have been the year where the Chargers mounted a serious title push. The Chargers will lose some key players here in the off season and over all, I cannot see that they can be better in 2010.

The brilliant play by the former Longhorn running back Jamal Charles must spire some optimism in Kansas City ahead of the 2010 season. Their defence is still work in progress and there are also major question marks concerning the O-line, but hey, I do not have high thoughts about the AFC West, so you do not have to be all that good to finish 2nd in the division.

Prior to the 2009 season, I did think higly about the Denver Broncos, but just like everyone else I was stunned to see them start the season 6-0. Were the Broncos for real? No they showed in 2nd half the season that they were not so good after all. They finished the season poorly, and I cannot see why there should be much optimism ahead of 2010, when your starting QB is Kyle Orton and your head coach is Josh McDaniels, who I am not a big fan of. At least not as a head coach.

I had fairly high hopes for the 2009 Raiders. In retrospect I can only ask myself why, because they were once again is extremely bad. Jamarcus Russel is a top candidate for “The worst player ever to be picked first over all in an NFL draft” award but unfortunately the other Raiders draft picks from recent years do also not look too good.

AFC North

Baltimore Ravens

Pittsburgh Steelers

Cleveland Browns

Cincinnati Bengals

Boy do I have problems making my mind up about the AFC North in 2010. I have no clear answer as to who will win the division and who will finish last. I admit it looks odd that I have put the Bengals as number four, a team that went 6-0 in the division in 2009 and won the division. However, I think they have issues on the offensive side of the ball, where it was a major concern to see Carson Palmer struggle to find the brilliant form from previous seasons. The defence should be good again in 2010, but at the same time, it has to be mentioned that the Bengals won several close games in 2010 and I doubt that they can repeat that again in 2010.

The 2009 Browns looked for most of the season to be one of the worst teams ever in the NFL but late in the season, they really picked up their game lead by the surprising strong play by running back Jerome Harrison and they managed to win the last four games. When I have to look ahead to 2010, I really take how a team finished the last into consideration, so I make the somewhat bold statement and say that the Browns will not finish last in the 2010 version of the AFC North.

No team surprised me in such a negative way in 2009 as the Pittsburgh Steelers. My favourites to win the Super Bowl started the season well, but completely fell apart during the season. They lost 7 games in a row, which is incredibly bad and it is even worse when some of the teams they lost to include the Chiefs, Browns and the Raiders. Still the Steelers have an excellent defence and maybe they learned a thing or two from the disappointing 2009 season.

I have predicted the Ravens to win the AFC North in 2010. However, I am far from convinced that this will actually happen, since I am still not that sold on Joe Flaco with the lack of quality receivers at his disposal. The Ravens running game was in excellent in 2009 and it has to continue so in 2010, though it is tall order to ask Ray Rice to play as good in 2010 as he did the season before. If they release Willis McGhee, they will have to find a quality back up to Ray Rice or else they will be in trouble. Though, Ed Reed has hinted that he may retire, the defence should still be excellent in 2010.

AFC South

Houston Texans

Indianapolis Colts

Tennessee Titans

Jacksonville Jaguars

It is not a typing error.... I have predicted the Colts to finish behind the Texans. Perhaps I have the Super Bowl defeat too fresh in my memory, but I think that this loss could have a significant meaning to the team, which had more wins than any other team in the last decade. I think this could very well be the end of an era, though you would be absolutely stupid to under estimate Peyton Manning and Bills Polian. The Texans were not exactly good in the last decade. They did not reach the postseason once, but they showed a lot of promise in 2009 and I think that they are a young team on the rise. Their offence was very explosive in 2009 but it could be even better in 2010, where the running game could improve.

When the betting odds were released the other day, I took my hype of the Texans to the extreme and put my money on Houston to win the Vince Lombardi trophy. With my recent lacklustre ability to predict anything in the NFL, Texans fans should probably hate me and Colts fans should sent me a good bottle of Zinfandel wine, because I may just have jinxed the 2010 Houston Texans.....

Though a Vince Young lead team just win games, I doubt that the Titans can make the play offs in 2010. I am in particular concerned about the defence, which was very bad at times in 2009 and key players are ageing and were just better players a few seasons ago. However, The Titans looked very good in the 2nd half of the 2009 season and they can take that optimism with them into the 2010 season.

In 2009 The Jaguars were better than I had expected them to be. However, I simply cannot see them being better than the three other teams in the AFC South, which I think is certainly the best division in the AFC and one of the best overall in the NFL.

NFC East

Dallas Cowboys

New York Giants

Philadelphia Eagles

Washington Redskins

Just like it has been the case for the last several years, NFC East is an extremely tough division. That said, I believe that the Cowboys are one step ahead of the competition and I will be somewhat surprised if the men from Dallas do not win the division. Though the Eagles still look good on paper, I think some of the key players like Donavan McNabb may have their best football behind them and as it looks now, they will have to cope without the brilliant Brian Westbrook. Still, I will not be surprised if the Eagles will finish as runner up to the Cowboys and will finish ahead of the Giants. 2009 was a weird season for the Giants. They looked awesome early in the season, but just like the AFC part of my early 2009 Super Bowl prediction (Pittsburgh Steelers) their season ended in embarrassment. The Giants have to improve dramatically in 2010, if Tom Coughlin wants to coach the Giants in 2011.

The Redskins ? I think they have too many questions marks and they appear to be a couple of years away from competing for the division title, but it will certainly be interesting to see, what Mike Shannahan can do with this team. Unfortunately I think they will use their first round draft pick on Sam Bradford, the player I want to be the Bills starting QB for the next several years.

NFC North

Green bay Packers

Minnesota Vikings

Chicago Bears

Detroit Lions

I think the NFC North could turn out to be one of the strongest divisions in the 2010 season. Let me start from the bottom. I have predicted the Lions to finish last, but I will not be surprised if they finish better than this. Even though they lost 14 games in 2009, they played a lot better in 2009 than in 2008 and when you watched the games, they were often very much in the game until late in the 3rd quarter. A good draft, like the one, they had in 2009 and perhaps some additions in free agency and the Lions could be a big surprise in 2010 and the years ahead.

As mentioned earlier, the Bears did not live up to my pre season hype in 2009. If Brett Favre returns to the Vikings in 2010, they could be a contender in the NFC again but the Packers are the team I expect to win the division.

NFC South

New Orleans Saints

Carolina Panthers

Atlanta Falcons

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The saints seem to be at least one step ahead of the competition here. The defending Super Bowl Champs will again have a highly explosive offence and they will continue to better defensively. With the Super Bowl win fresh in my memory, it will be hard to bet against the Saints in 2010.

Carolina will have to figure out what they do with the QB position. It was the an astonishing bad decision to give “over the hill” QB Jake Delhomme the big contract extension last off season and the Panthers must seriously consider, if it perhaps makes more sense to name Matt Moore the starter. The Falcons could just as well be ahead of the Panthers. It is very close between these two teams.

The Bucs are in serious rebuilding mode and they are far behind the other teams in this division. It is just important for the Bucs that they make some good personnel decisions, especially in the draft. Then in a couple of seasons, they may be a force to be reckoned with.

NFC West

Arizona Cardinals

San Francisco 49ers

Seattle Seahawks

St. Louis Rams

The weakest division in the NFL. I doubt that Arizona will have too many problems winning the divisions comfortably, even though I think it is highly unlikely that Matt Leinart will play even close to the level of Kurt Warner, and the Cardinals will lose key player Carlos Dansby in free agency. This says so much about the three other teams. In my opinion it seems like the 49ers are pretty much stuck in neutral, the NFC answer to the Buffalo Bills. They have some great players, but they just seem to go nowhere fast.

I am looking forward to seeing Pete Carroll in Seattle and how the Seahawks will perform under him. However, there are so many issues with this team, issues so high in number and of such serious character that they cannot all be addressed in this off season. Just how bad the team is, was showed in the way the team finished the 2009 season.

If you need more proof the NFC West is by far the weakest division in the NFL, just look at the Rams. I think it says it all, when it can easily be concluded that the Seahawks are in much better shape than the Rams. The Rams will again have one of the three first picks in the 2011 NFL draft. No surprise at all, they already have the first over all pick in the 2010 draft.

Super Bowl prediction

Houston Texans over the Green Bay Packers.

Magical music clips vol. 1

2010-01-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

Over the last year, I have been separated for long periods of time from my CD collection. I am not a person, who can easily live without music, so during these periods away from my normal home, I have been forced to search for my daily doses of music from other sources than my normal home stereo.

The obvious way to listen to music is of course the old school method of listening to the radio. Nothing fancy to say about that, though I still find the national radio stations, except talk radio P1, in Denmark a bit dull. That said, I still enjoy listening to “brødrene” with Alex Nyborg Madsen, where you can listen to loads of great stuff from newer artists, who have sort of managed to fly under the radar, particularly in Denmark combined with other great stuff from especially within the singer/songwriter genre. Furthermore, I enjoy listening to listen to Eldorado on P4, where the ever young Jørgen De Mylius shares his great enthusiasm for popular music history with us, the listeners.

Youtube

However, Modern technology has given the music starving man new ways of getting the daily music fix in emergency situations (in other words, when you are away from home). The internet and especially free online music / movie web sites such as Youtube have changed the way the masses view music. Just like it is the case with other ways of listening to music, there are advantages and disadvantages with the way of experiencing music through websites such as youtube.

The major disadvantage here is the poor audio quality. I am still extremely old fashioned, also when it comes to listening to the muisc, so I will always prefer to listen to a normal home stereo set up with a good, solid CD player, an integrated amplifier and solid speakers, simply because music as an art form deserves to be played in decent audio quality. Though, I will obviously not stand in the way of the people, who mainly listen to music online, which you get the impression from reading comments from Youtube that several people actually do, I fear that this modern way of listening to music will have a long term, damaging effect on the distribution of well recorded music in high sound quality.

By this I mean that it appears to be a long lasting trend that most people choose convenience and design over the old fashioned hifi set up and thereby care less about sound quality compared to how your sound system looks in the living room. An extremely negative side effect of this trend could be the continuation of the loudness war and the not particular dynamic recordings of popular music these days. Rock songs mastered at a far too high volume sound like crap, also on a decent stereo system and not just played on the lo-fi setup bought in the local supermarket.

Please, please, start mastering music productions at a much lower volume again, and let us instead use the volume button on the amplifier to adjust the total volume. Then we can get the fine, dynamic sound back again....

Anyway, back to Youtube and other free, online web music resources. Obviously, I would not spend time on Youtube, if there was not something fantastic to watch there. What I find extremely interesting on Youtube are the music clips from old TV programs or concerts that have been broadcasted on television sometime long ago and I have not seen in years. In addition to this, I find it highly fascinating to find clips of older artists, who were in their prime long before I was even born. It is amazing to have easy access to old clips of artists such as Hank Williams and Eddie Cochran. Since most TV stations prefer to spend the time allocated to music programs on crap (lack of) talent shows, we do not really have the opportunities to watch such old fascinating music clips of the real artists anymore, if it was not for Youtube. So that alone is reason enough for me to embrace this website and spend countless hours there, especially when I am away from my CD collection.

So all in all, I recommend to spend your Youtube time on fantastic music clips from various TV shows and concerts instead of just listening to the original songs that have been uploaded, and where the audio quality is extremely bad compared to your own CDs. Buy CDs or LPs instead, because the good music deserves to played in good sound quality.

As just mentioned earlier, I find it extremely interesting to find old concert clips and other bits from the history of popular music. After all you cannot dig into the history of music by just reading books. You will need to also listen to songs as well. By watching some of the clips, I find it overwhelming how some of these concerts clips had a huge impact on my life as an avid lover of music and to some extend my life in general. To quote the in Denmark ridicously underrated Clint Black “Ain’t it funny how a melody, can bring back memories, take you to another place in time, completely change your state of mind”.

So without further due, here are some of my favourite Youtube clips, I have watched over the last period of time. This is not at all a ranking of my favourite music, and I am sure that I will post more clips as time goes by. After all, these blog posts can have a sort of “bookmark” function.

David Bowie, Ian Hunter, Marc Ronson etc.
All the young dudes live from the Freddy Mercury tribute concert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRIWI8kTbjM

When I was growing up, we only had access to the public TV station (two from I was 13 years old). There was no cable network in our house hold and we did not have a satellite dish. Therefore it was huge for me, when there was a music show on TV and therefore I had tuned in (and even taped) the tribute concert to the at the at the time, just deceased Queen vocalist, Freddie Mercury. At the time, or now for that matter, I would not call myself a fan of Queen. I had bought a couple of Queen live albums and had some of the newer albums on a copied tape, but I was not that impressed with the band. I liked some of the songs and rated them highly as a live act (In my opinion they sound much better live than on album), but overall their songs were just not on par with other music acts I liked.

It is fairly natural that a music act receives much more attention, if a band member dies. However, I cannot think of anyone outside of Nirvana that became more popular after a band member died than Queen. In my opinion the band was suddenly viewed much more favourable than they deserved. All of a sudden they were mentioned as being as important as for example the Led Zeppelin by certain people.

In my opinion some of the most narrow minded music fans are the die hard fans of Queen. This was especially evident when Brian May and Roger Taylor joined forces with Paul Rodgers and went on tour under the name “Queen with Paul Rodgers”. Several fans of Queen did not even know who Paul Rodgers was but criticed him as being a poor “replacement” for Freddie Mercury. First of all Paul Rodgers is a phenomal, legendary singer, who has much more of a blues and soul feeling to his singing than Freddie Mercury. It was called Queen and Paul Rodgers for a reason. This was as much a Paul Rodgers thing and they also performed Free and Bad Company songs (songs I by the way like better than the Queen material). I heard some Queen fans disliking Paul Rodgers take on old Queen songs. Fair enough, these fans are entitled to their opinions. I will on the other hand say that the remaining members of Queen lack the great loose swing to Bad Company classics such as Feel like making love. And how would Freddie Mercury sound trying to sing All right now and Can’t get enough? Impossible to answer, but it has to be said that I found Freddie Mercury and Queens’s performance of Hello Mary Lou and Tutti Frutti from their Wembley concert in 1986 unimpressive.

The Freddie Mercury tribute concert was a huge event at the time. Perhaps the biggest get together of music super stars since Live Aid. The first part of the concert was build up by performances from some of the most popular rock acts at the time, where they focused on their own material. Seen from a pure performance point of view, Guns’n’roses were in my opinion by far the best performers from the first part of the concert, but I did not really do anything for me, because I have never been a fan of that band.

The second part of the concert, the focus had switched to super star singers giving their versions of Queen Songs backed by the remaining members of Queen. Even though, super stars such as Robert Plant, Roger Daltery, George Michael, Axl Rose, James Hedfield, Annie Lenox etc. delivered their takes on old Queen Songs, it was a performance that absolutely nothing to do with Queen that stood out the most for me and made the biggest impression on me.

At the time, I had already heard the song “All the young dudes”, the original version by Mott the hoople. However, It was like listening to a brand new song, when it was performed at the concert. It just sounded so awesome that the Queen songs sounded pretty flat in comparison. It may seem unfair that I have used so much space describing how I think Queen must be one of the most overrated bands ever and use so few words on the actual clip that I have chosen. On the other hand, this clip of “All the Young Dudes” is so great that it speaks for it self, and I enjoy it so much more than listening to songs like “We are the champions, “Bohemian rhapsody” and “We will rock you” that are just as over played and annoying as “Smoke on the Water” and “Born to be wild”. Just my opinion....

The Who – Baba o’riley / Won't get fooled again – Live from the Concert for New York City – 2001

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG_uDDEnzC4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjA_RtsBfAo&feature=related

It is difficult to find a more deserving audience to an all star concert event than the brave men and women of the New York police and fire departments after the horrific events on 11 September 2001. I watched two of the tribute concerts held in the aftermath of this terrible day. I remember the “Tribute to heroes” concert, where mega starts performed in a studio without an audience. Very moving indeed and fine performances from several mega stars.

The other concert I watched was the Concert for New City held in Madison Square Garden, where the majority of the audience was members of the police and fire departments in New York City. A stellar line up with performers such as Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, David Bowie, Paul McCartney. Elton John, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones (or at least Mick Jagger with Keith Richard) on display should give you some great performances. Well yes, some of them were very good, but at the concert The Who completely stole the show and gave a performance that made the other acts look like amateurs.

I still remember watching the concert on TV and being moved to tears by just how cruel the world could be, how much I admired the work done by the fire fighters and police officers - and just how phenomenal and inspired the Who sounded. Many people refer to Queens’ performance at Live Aid as the most impressive performance from these massive TV concert events. For me, there is no question. The performance that touched and impressed me the most was the Who at the concert for NYC.

I have included both “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t get fooled again as the clips”, but you MUST also see the other songs by the Who from the event (Who are you and Behind blue eyes). Pete Townsend is spot on when he says at the end of their performance that they could never follow what the audience members did – But no musical act could have done a better job and given a more inspired performance than the Who did at that day. I am still moved when I watch the clips.

Neil Young – Walkin’ to New Orleans

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hND47L5qlQk

Staying with the sad topic of disasters, the Hurricane Katrina and its devastating effect it had in the South, New Orleans in particular, leads me to the next couple of great music moments. First I have added Neil Young’s version of the Fats Domino classic, Walking to New Orleans. It was performed at the “Shelter for the storm” concert and it was included on the Goin’ Home – Fats Domino tribute album.

Neil Young’s version of this phenomenal Fats Domino is in my opinion one of the best cover versions of all time. It is different than the original, but Mr. Young still shows the song the greatest respect. His version gives a whole new meaning to the song. Neil sounds very determined and angry and thereby hits the emotion of most people, who were so sad about this disaster and the incredibly poor help, the authorities showed in the aftermath of this hurricane.

I was as touched as anyone, when it was announced that the great Fats Domino was reported missing following the impact of the hurricane, but it was fantastic to hear that he survived this terrible disaster and could return to the city he loved so much.

Fats Domino - I'm ready
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSJscwCIMuA

Having included a cover version of a great Fats Domino classic, I have to also include an old clip of the legend, Fats Domino, himself. Luckily youtube is loaded with great Fats Domino clips. Fats Domino is an artist I have loved listening to all my life and he will be a big part of my music life until I die. I have chosen a clip, where he is performing the classic “I’m ready” I think the clip is from sometime in the eighties, though I am not sure. If it has been released as a DVD, I need to get it.

Chuck Berry (with Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street band) Johnny B. Goode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlPVoMHRtyg

When I think of rock’n’roll, the first name that comes to my mind is Chuck Berry. Not only has he recorded some of the best rock’n’roll songs in history but he has also influenced so many other musicians. John Lennon perhaps said it best, if rock’n’roll needed to be called something else, it should be Chuck Berry. Music trends will come and go, but rock’n’roll in its purest form will always be around, and no one has meant more to rock’n’roll than Chuck Berry.

Therefore, it was obvious that Chuck Berry had to be among the performers at the opening concert for the rock’n’ hall of fame museum in Cleveland in the mid nineties. I remember it like Yesterday when I watched the concert on TV. There were many great performances that day but a Chuck Berry in sparkling form, backed by a very competent backing band, was impossible for any other act to top. I would probably have passed out, if I was in the audience that day. Man, when he’s starting to do the duck walk, the place goes nuts.... If you do not know what rock’n’roll is, watch this clip, and you will know.

Chuck Berry – Let it rock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjC7MQ3bNE0

Chuck Berry is amazing and he has written so many fantastic songs, so I can easily include one more of his evergreens here.

I have chosen Let it rock, recorded live in London in the early seventies. This version is slower and longer than the phenomenal original, but man it is still great. Chuck Berry is the shit.

Wilson Pickett – In the midnight hour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUdESu3c4-Y

Many know Wilson Picketts music from the movie “The commitments”. I have never watched the film and do not intend to so ever. I simply do not get it; Why would you rather hear someone copying Wilson Pickett, when you can listen to the real thing, and Wilson Pickett is so awesome? Did I say awesome? Yes I did and this clip, I have chosen will show why. As far as I understand, this live version of “In the midnight hour” is from somewhere in Africa in the sixties or seventies.

Furthermore, this clip also shows just how fantastic soul / r’n’b can be what it is played on “real” instruments by great musicians instead today, where most r’n’b music on the charts is full of lame sound samples and machine drums. I cannot think of another genre of music that has dropped so much in terms of overall quality as soul / r’n’b today compared to the great songs from the 60s and 70s.

OK, this sums up the first edition of great music clips. Stay tuned for more great music.....

What a guy - (Weird NFL head coach thoughts on a Sunday morning...)

2009-10-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

It is Sunday morning here in Denmark. Later today, my beloved Buffalo Bills will play a very important game against the Cleveland Browns. Not important in the way that a win or loss will impact the teams' play off hopes. The team's ambition of playing in the post season appears to be as unrealistic, as the next Queensryche album will be better than "Operation mindcrime", "Empire" and "Promised land"... combined... The reason why today's game between two of the very worst teams of the 2009 NFL season is considered important is the head coach implications it has (or at least should have).

Obviously, Eric Mangini will stay as the head coach of the Browns, even if they play poorly and manage to lose to the Bills, since he was just hired earlier this year. I thought it was a horrible decision to hire Eric Mangini as a head coach but that is another story.

However, Dick Jauron should have been fired as head coach of the Bills by now (see earlier post). Ralph Wilson and the rest of the front office made the decision that coach Jauron should be given another chance but he must lead the Bills to the play offs or else he will be kicked out of town. As I said earlier, it is completely impossible right now to imagine that the Bills will be able to turn the season around and make a serious push for a play off berth. Therefore, I think that the front office has to think seriously about the long term implications for the franchise, if they continue to let Dick Jauron coach the team. The fans' dissatisfaction with the team has now reached a boiling point, just look at the different Buffalo Bills message boards on the Internet. There are several fans, who hope that the team loses the game today just to make it impossible for the front office to keep the faith in coach Jauron. If they keep Dick Jauron, then I wish the front office good luck trying to sell season tickets for the 2010 season.

I will never sink to such a low point. I am a die hard Bills fan and we will never want the opponent to win against Buffalo. Though having said that, I will be extremely disappointed, perhaps even angry, if it turns out that the Browns will get their first win of the season against the Bills but Dick Jauron will keep his job. There is no way that Dick Jauron will turn this team around and a loss in a home game against one of the worst teams in NFL has to be the final straw. Dick Jauron has no future in Western New York.

If the Bills make the right decision and say buh bye to coach Jauron here in the middle of the season, I would be very surprised if they did not promote long time special teams coordinator Bobby April to head coach on interim basis. The Bills have recently chosen the strategy of hiring from within, both on the front office level but also within the coaching area. I would not mind seeing Bobby April as head coach on interim basis. He has done very well as a special teams coordinator and it could be interesting to see him as a head coach.

Staying on the interesting subject of NFL head coaches but switching the focus a bit further west to the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit, I have recently paid more attention to the situation with the Detroit Lions, a franchise who amazingly has done much worse than the Bills in the last several years. I have always had a soft spot for the Detroit Lions due to the fact that I love the city's rich music history, both the several fantastic Motown acts, the great scene for interesting indie acts and of course the fact that Bob Seger is from the area and his status as a Michigan icon. Furthermore, the city appears to be the very opposite of flashy places like Los Angels and Miami and that is very appealing to me...

After their disastrous 2008 season, the first team ever to go 0-16, the front office made the obvious and easy decision to give head coach Rod Marinelli the boot. To replace Rod Marinelli, the Lions hired long time defensive coordinator for the Titans, Jim Schwartz. From early on, I thought Jim Schwartz seemed to be a great guy and more importantly, someone who could finally be the man to bring the Lions out of their endless misery. When I watched video clips of press conferences and interview, I was hugely impressed by what he had to say. I agreed with his visions, from improving through the draft to thoughts about the defensive game plan and more importantly his management views. From watching these video clips on the Internet and more in depth interviews on the NFL Network, I am of the opinion that his personality is the complete opposite of dictator like head coaches such as the the Bills opponent today, Eric Mangini and the one, Jim Schwartz replaced as the Lions' head coach, Rod Marinelli. In particular I was impressed with his actions during the game, something that was put on display when he was wired for sound during the Lions-Redskins game recently. That is the kind of coach I want.

However, Being a man who embraces more modern approaches to personnel management compared to the above mentioned head coaches, does not mean that Jim Schwartz is not a hard working man. From an early age, he was praised by Bill Belichick for his work ethic and reports from Tennessee say that his normal working week as defensive coordinator for the Titans was around 100 hours, the same as the head coach, who spends a considerable amount of these hours on press and PR obligations. These hard efforts by coach Schwartz seemed to pay off, since the Titans defence year after year has been very good to excellent and that is some achievement to maintain such a success level on a long term basis. Furthermore, I consider Jeff Fischer to be one of the most talented head coaches in the NFL and you do not work for him that long, if you do not perform at the highest level. Therefore, I am bit surprised that Jim Schwartz was not given more opportunities to be a head coach before now.

After studying Jim Schwartz very intensively, I must say that I have become more and more impressed with the guy. He seems to be a man, who is soft spoken and very likable but certainly also a guy, who has his own opinions and who is not afraid to go against the grain and not always choose the political correct way of doing things. Very much his own man and not scared to admit it. Something I like a lot.

He was a top student at the well respected Georgetown University but still played football and was so motivated to get into coaching that he took all the odd jobs in a football organization just to be closer to the important members of the coaching staff and learn from them.

In addition to this, I learned some other facts about the man ,Jim Schwartz, that kicked my approval rating of this guy into maximum overdrive.. Just read...

- When you have at one time in your life looked as cool as the photo in attached link, There is a very good chance that you are geek (Meant in the best possible way). (Typical, I had found a much cooler photo of the Jim Schwartz, but now I cannot find it anymore. On that photo he had some cool classes that made him look even more geeky than the one in the attached image...

http://www.mlive.com/lions/index.ssf/2009/07/confident_comfortable_jim_schw.html

- According to his peers, the photo does not lie. He is a geek, again meant as something very positive. For example, he is considered a football stat jerk. Can someone honestly say anything bad about that ?

- He said in an interview, that he did not really like any female authors. Obviously, the press took it a bit too far, because what he really meant was that he does not read fiction by female writers and generally, he reads more much non-fiction than fiction. My kind of guy...

- He likes heavy metal and rock'n'roll. At first, when I read it, before I knew much about him, I thought it was just a publicity stunt, like all the times when some politician claims to big a fan of a band but when asked, he cannot mention any of their songs. However, This is far from the case here. He really does like heavy metal.

In fact he has appeared on a heavy metal radio show, where he proved that he was for real when he claimed to be a heavy metal fan. Apparently his knowledge level of his music genre was extremely impressive. To top it off, he even mentioned his 5 favorite heavy metal albums on the spot. They were

1. Queensryche - Operation mind crime
2. Judas Priest - British steel
3. AC/DC - Back in black
4. Metallica - Master of puppets
5. Motley Crue - Dr. Feelgood

I am certainly not a fan of Motley Crue, but how about the other albums in the top 5 ? Awesome choices or what ? My list would perhaps look a little different but certainly not much. On the other hand, so many great metal albums were released in the eighties and it is not an easy task just to narrow it down to 5. Since Jim Schwartz named his top 5 on the spot on the radio, I will try to do the same. In other words, I will name them without checking my CD collection first.

In quick random order, my top 5 of metal albums from the eighties would be

Savatage - Hall of the mountain king
Iron Maiden - Somewhere in time
Metallica - Master of puppets
AC/DC - Back in black
Mercyful fate - Don't break the oath

If I were to write the list tomorrow, I would perhaps include Heading for tomorrow by Gamma Ray, Peace sells by Megadeth, Operation Mindcrime by Queensryche, Abigail by King Diamond etc, but again too many great heavy metal albums were released in the 80s, so you have to make at least a top 10 to get a good overview. I do not consider AC/DC to be a heavy metal band, but since Jim Schwartz added Back in black to his top 5, I will do the same. The album is one of best pieces of music of all time.

Had it not been for his inclusion of Dr. Feelgood on the list, I would have asked Jim Schwartz to marry me.... (Just kidding).

The Detroit Lions will not make the play offs this year. I predict them to be one of the teams with the lowest number of wins this season but compared to teams like the Oakland Raiders they are heading in the right direction and in the not too distant future, they will be a team you have to take seriously. The firing of GM Matt Milen, some excellent draft picks in the last couple of years and most importantly the hiring of Jim Schwartz will bring some joy to the city of Detroit. A city that really deserve better times, especially considering the crisis in the automotive industry and the effects of the financial crisis in general. I will not be surprised if Jim Schwartz manages to turn the franchise around, just like Marv Levy did when he became the Bills head coach in the mid eighties.

To sum it all up; I wish Jim Schwartz was the head coach for the Buffalo Bills instead of Dick Jauron.

NFL prediction time - AFC

2009-09-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

NFL prediction time - AFC

Finally, the time has arrived and the 2009 NFL season is a reality and not just something I was impatiently waiting for. It is a bit embarasing considering the long off season that I have not been able to post my NFL predictions before now and the season was officially kicked off a couple of days ago, where the defending champions, The Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Tennesee Titans. To my excuse, the wheater that Thursday was absolutely fantastic and this combined with the fact that I had still more than a week left of my vacation meant that I took a fantastic day trip to the Norhern part of Denmark. That was awesome, but hey that is a different story.

Anyway before the season gets too well under way, I better list my list my season predictions. I will not list any individual player records such as most rushing yards, most TDs, most sacks etc, since I do not really care about such stats. Football is a team sport and there is no “I” in team. You win and lose as a team, and all that that really matters in football are the Ws and Ls. So here we go, it is time for my predictions in the NFL, with some comments to each division.

AFC East

New England Patriots
Miami Dolphins
New York Jets
Buffalo Bills

As a Bills fan, this is obviously the division that interests me the most. However, I Predict a bad season for my beloved Bills and the turm oil that filled the off season will continue into the season, where I think the Bills will be one of the wortst teams in the NFL. To make it short, the Buffalo Bills are one big mess right now, but I will comment on them in another post shortly.

The Patriots will have Tom Brady back and should win the division without too many problems, even though the health and general play from the NFL MVP from the 2007 season will be under the microscope, after he missed basically the entire 2008 season. The surprising 2008 AFC East division winners, The Miami Dolphins, will fight against the Jets for the 2nd spot in the division. I give the Dolphins a slight edge, mainly due the fact that Chad Pennington just wins a lot of games, when he is healthy and I am not too sure about the QB play from the Jets, with rookie Mark Sanchez under center. At the end of the day, this discussion about the 2nd place in the AFC East is somewhat pointless, since I seriously doubt that 2nd place in this division will be enough to be granted one of the two play off wild cards.

AFC West

San Diego Chargers
Oakland Raiders
Denver Broncos
Kansas City Chiefs

One of top my favorites for the winner of the Lombardi Trophy this season are the San Diego Chargers. Though, there are questions marks about this team as well, especially concerning the health and off field problems involving, when healthy, one of best defensive players in the NFL Shawne Merriman, they are loaded with good players on basicially all postitions.

However, there is also a good chance that this HAS to be this season, where they will win the Super Bowl, because of the contract status of several of their star players. QB Phillip Rivers was deservedly awarded a gigantic contract this off season, but LT Marcus McNeill, WR Vincent Jackson, WR Chris Chambers, OLB Shawne Merriman and RB Darren Sproles will be free agents after the 2009 season and star TE Antonio Gates, who is a free agent after the 2010 season, could push for a new contract already in the very near future. So yeah, Chargers GM A.J. Smith will have some decisions to make this year.

If he can stay healthy, I would give Marcus McNeill a new contract, which will be one of the biggest contracts to a LT in the NFL, something like 7 years, 90 million dollars. Next, I would put the franchise tag on Vincent Jackson, since I would like him to deliver at a high level for one more season, before handing him a contract averaging $8-9 million / year. I would let Shawne Merriman test free agency considering his health and legal problems. Unless he has a monster 2009 season, I would also let Chris Champers leave San Diego (where I would love the Bills to pick him up, so he can play with his close friend, Lee Evans). I would do what it takes to keep Antonio Gates, which will most likely be giving him a new contract some during the 2009 season. A contract that will make him the best paid tight end in the league, because he is simply too good to let go. I would probably opt to let Darren Sproles go and test free agency and perhaps replace him with a 2010 draft choice, but at the same time it is extremely important to monitor the situation with future hall of famer, LaDanian Tomlinson. LaDanian has now reached the critical age for a RB, the big thirty, and his production has already started to decrease the last couple of seasons, though he has still never rushed for less than 1,100 yards in a season. I fear that he has only a couple of years left in the tank as an NFL player

So all in all, the Chargers will have some important player personel decisions make, because with the salary cap system in place (hopefully also in the coming years), it will be impossible to give all the mentioned players market value contracts.

Where I rank the Chargers as one of the top teams in the NFL, I have no hessitation of ranking the other 3 teams in the AFC West among the very worst in 2009. It is certainly something new to mention the Broncos among the lowest ranked teams in the league, but on the other hand I cannot rember a team that has had a more turbelent off season than the Broncos. The weird Buffalo Bills off season is nothing compared to the off season for the Dever Broncos. It all started with the shocking firing of legendary head coach Mike Shanahan. Though, it is strange to think about the Broncos without Shanahan, I was not completely opposed to firing him, because it seemed that he had just been the head coach too long and probably had too much power. The poor ending to the 2008 season and impression that Shanahan was not open minded to new ideas meant that I actually thought that it was a good idea to let him go.

However, Choosing Josh McDaniels to replace the legendary Mike Shanahan seems to be a dissasterous choice and if the Broncos had the possibility to turn back time, and I sure that they would have hired someone else instead. It is completely beyond any logical sense to even consider replacing your young Pro Bowl QB Jay Cutler with the potential “one year wonder” Matt Cassel. It is just something you do not do. McDaniels’ incredibly poor handling of this serious affair meant that the Broncos were more or less forced to trade Cutler to the Chicago Bears. Instead they now have Kyle Orton under center. Anyone who has just paid very little attention to the NFL the last few years will notice the enourmos difference in terms of quality between Cutler and Orton.

Next up was the dissastours draft, where they traded their 2010 first round draft pick (which could easily now be a top 5 pick) to the Seahawks, so the Broncos could take CB Alphonso Smith in the 2nd round of the 2009 draft. The Broncos decided to switch to a 3-4 defensive scheme but it appears that they do not have the right personnel in place and they did not do much to find the right players for this chance via the draft, which I believe would have been the right way to go. In addition to this, star WR Brandon Marshall is as always unhappy, even more so than usual and there has been speculation that he could be traded.

The Oakland Raiders are again one big mess. It is sad to see how the once great and extremely sucessful Al Davis has turned this franchise into what it is now. The Raiders have drafted poorly for so many years in a row now and as I have written in an earlier blog post, good drafting is the way to build a successful team. Having selected Robert Gallery 2nd over all in 2004 (he has developed into a very good guard, but it is not clever to spend such a high pick on a guard and they had projected him to be their left tackle for several years), Fabian Washington 23th overall in 2005, Michaell Huff 7th overall in 2006 and Jamarcus Russel with the first overall pick in 2007 is just extremely bad drafting. It is too early to say anything about the 2008 and 2009 draft choices, but I and several “draft experts” thought both picks from the two first rounds from this years’ draft were very big reaches. So in other words, this is what poor decisions on draft day will do for for your franchise.... Obviously handing out ridicolsly big contracts to a very average players like Tommy Kelly does not help.

I would not be surprised to see the Raiders having success running the ball, since their offensive line has had success with their zone blocking scheme, but on the other hand, the defence is so incredibly bad that the Raiders will fall behind in most games and will have to start thowing the ball earlier than first anticipated to try to score points in a hurry. With Jamarcus Russel as QB and a very average group of WRs this strategy looks doomed from the beginning.

The Kansas City chiefs are (again) in rebuilding mode. The have traded the best TE of all time, Tony Conzales to the Falcons. The new regime in Missuiri decided to install a new 3-4 defensive scheme, though I do not think that the Chiefs have the right players for the scheme. Furthermore, I think they made a huge mistake by aquaring QB Matt Cassell via a trade and even worse, awarding him with a big, fat contract without having seen him play as a Kansas City Chief. Though, it is just my opinion, I think that the success Matt Cassel had in New England last season was more a result of being in a incredibly well run offensive system and Kansas City is certainly not compareable to New England, so I think we will see a Matt Cassell, who will struggle immensly in Missuiri.

AFC North

Pittsburgh Steelers
Cincinatti Bengals
Baltimore Ravens
Cleveland Browns

I predict that the Steelers will once again be the team to beat, not just in the AFC North but the entire NFL. The Steelers have not lost a lot of key players in the off season and htey still have that brutal defence that will win them several games. The offence could be better, in particular the running game, where there is room for improvement, but overall I predict that the team to win at least 12 games in the regular season and go deep into the play offs.

There are always some surprises in the NFL and this year I somehow predict big things for the Cincinatti Bengals. The defence was not at all bad in 2008 and I cannot see why it should not be at least as good in 2009, where I think the rookie linebacker Ray Maualuga will have a good year and another ex. USC linebacker, Keith Rivers, should contribute more in 2009, since he only played in 7 games in 2008 due to a season ending injury.

I think that the Baltimore Ravens will have a down year in 2009. I seriously doubt that QB Joe Flaco can dublicate his very good rookie season and the receivers on the roster are certainly not scary. Offensively they will have to rely too heavily on their running game and the Steelers will as always be incredibly good at stopping the run and as said I have high hopes for the Bengals in 2009, so no play offs for the Ravens in 2009.

Cleveland Browns will seriously struggle in 2009. Defensively, they are among the very worst in the NFL, both against the pass and in particar against the run. Offensively they will struggle to run the ball effectively, perhaps even more so than in 2008 considering the age and general decline of Jamel Lewis’ carrerer. Since they will have problems running the ball, it is essential that they will have a solid air attack, but I doubt that this will be the case, since they have traded Kellen Winslow Jr. Furthermore, Braylon Edwards had a surprisingly weak 2008 season after his superb 2007 season. He will have to rebound in a big way, if the Browns want to avoid having a top 4 pick in the 2010 NFL draft. Speaking of Braylon Edwards, it will be intersting to see how the Browns will handle his contract situation. He will be a free agent after the 2009 season, but considering his dissapointing 2008 season, his injury problems and his to some extend “troubled” attitude, I cannot see the Browns handing him a big contract extension during the regular season. He will most likely be given the franchise tag after the 2009 season, because he is also way too good to just let go.

AFC South

Indianapolis Colts
Tennessee Titans
Houston Texans
Jacksonville Jaguars

The AFC South is one of the strongest divisions in the NFL. I think the Colts, lead by the always reliable QB Peyton Manning, will win the divison and as they still have the best over all team. Their defence will once again be a question mark. It seems to me, that they are sort of “hot or cold”, nothing in between. Often they are just plain bad and other times, they are among the best in the league. If Bob Sanders can just play a few more games in 2009 than in previous seasons, they will do enough to win the division and be among the favorites to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl.

The Tennesse Titans were surprisingly good in 2008 and even though they have lost Albert Haynesworth, one of most dominating defensive tackles in recent years, they should still be in contention for a wild card spot in the conference. Their offensive line is still among the very best in the league and that should once again mean that they will have loads of rushing yards, especially considering the fact that the other teams in the division often have problems stopping the run. However, they will have to throw the ball more effectively, if they want to challange the Colts for the divison title in 2009.

The Houston Texans are mentioned by many as this years’ Arizona Cardinals, meaning that they can be the surprise team in the NFL. I do just not see that happening, since the defence is still way too soft, both against the pass and the run. Offensively they look extremely good, though they perhaps rely too much on the phenomonel play of WR Andre Johnson. If he will miss games in 2009, like he for example did in 2007, the Texans will have serious problems.

I am fairly confident that the Jacksonville Jaguars will finish last in the AFC South. Offensively, I consider David Gerrard to be among the worst starting QBs in the league and he is certainly not helped by the group of WRs. Of course if Torry Holt, the off season signing, can find the form from previous seasons when he was with the Rams, the Jaguars should not be as bad as I have predicted, but taking into account that Torry Holt is now 33 years old and he is no longer in a system he knows so well, I do not predict so big things in Jacksonville for this future hall of famer.

Defensively, the Jacksonville Jaguars are not as bad as for example the Texans. On the other hand they are not as dominating as they were a few seasons ago. So I think that the 2009 season will be the last season where Jack Del Rio is the head coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

That was it. I will revert with my predection for the NFC shortly. First I will just write how the division will end and then add some comments later.

NFL draft – The best time of the year…. You bet…

2009-04-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

NFL, NCAA Football American football, in America just football... call it what you will, but everything connected to this wonderful sport fascinates me greatly. The football season only lasts from early September to the Super Bowl in early February, but I follow the sports very closely 365 days a year and there is no way that I consider this period around April as a quiet time in the NFL. In fact the only time of the year, where I find it hard to find any interesting news associated with the sport is in the last few weeks before training camp starts.

In this coming weekend, the premier off season NFL event takes place in New York City, the annual NFL draft. As a football nerd combined with the fact that I am extremely interested in the strategic running of sports franchises, I will not miss this event for the world. So here Saturday and Sunday, I will be as antisocial as humanly possible and spend the majority of the weekend either listening to internet radio, watching the streaming of the event from Radio City Music Hall on my computer or read some of my 300+ pages of draft prospects, position rankings, value charts etc. To mark this happy event, I will here just like I do with the Super Bowl eat some solid homemade American food and drink a few high quality American beers from the several superb American micro breweries.

Earlier in my life, or to be precise from the time I was 12-13 years old until a couple of years ago, I spent countless hours playing computer games, especially games within the sports management genre, such as Champions Ship Manger (later Football manager). I stopped playing these computer games, because I find it much more interesting to spend time analysing the strategic planning that is connected with running an NFL franchise, mainly because this is connected with real life and not just a computer game. In my opinion the long term strategic planning and the long term consequences of bad or good decisions made at the front office level have a much bigger impact in the NFL than for example the English football Premier League. This shows in both leagues, when you look at teams who are successful in the two different leagues. In the Premier League money rules and the winner of the league will always be found among the four richest clubs Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea or Liverpool.

In contrast to the Premier League, the NFL is a closed, private league with a set of common rules that apply for all 32 teams. I am a very big fan of the organization of the league, for example the system where players are drafted by the different teams, and players are traded for draft picks or other players instead of these gigantic transfer sums paid in European football today. Another, in my opinion very successful step, to make the NFL even more competitive, was the introduction of the salary cap several years ago. The short and very basic explanation of the salary cap is that all 32 teams are not allowed to spend more money on player salaries than a fixed amount, these days app. 127 million annually, on the final 53 man roster, though the complexity of the player contracts combined with how a contract counts against the salary cap as well as the different rules applying for the creation of the player roster make this much more complicated than it sounds. As a consequence of this, you have spend the money on player salaries wisely, so the players with the big, fat contracts should be the ones, who make a major, positive difference on the field. As an example of this, the Washington Redskins better get good production from their big off season acquisition, Defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth, who signed a 7 year, 100 million dollar deal, 41 million dollars guaranteed. This contract obviously eats loads of salary cap space the coming seasons, so if he performs poorly and the Redskins will have to cut him in the not too distant future, they will take a gigantic salary cap hit that will set the franchise back several years.

The NFL draft system works the way that the team, which finished the last season with the worst winning record will have the first pick in each of the 7 rounds. In the long run, this should and has also meant that more teams can be become successful, unlike the Premier League where money, to a long extend, can buy you a championship, and it is the same 3 or 4 teams, who fight for the league title every season This is not possible in the NFL, where you have to be under the salary cap.

The contracts given to players drafted by the NFL teams decrease gradually more or less with the pick they are selected by in the draft. For example the first over all draft pick get the biggest contract, the 2nd overall pick get the 2nd biggest contract etc, all the way down to the last pick of the 7TH round, also called Mr. Irrelevant. Since each contract is negotiated individually between the team, the player and the agent representing the player, it can be that the contract given to the player selected 11th overall is bigger than the contract given to the player selected 10th overall, but in most cases it is so that, the higher the player is drafted, the bigger contract he gets.

In my opinion the contracts given to the players, who get drafted, have reached a ridiculously high level, which should not be given to a player who has not proven him self in the league yet. Last year, Jake Long, the offensive tackle from the University of Michigan was selected by the Miami Dolphins as the first player in the draft. He received a 5 year, 57.75 million dollar contract from The Miami Dolphins and was thereby the highest paid offensive tackle in the league, even though he had not played one single game as a professional. Obviously, Jake Long with his monster contract will occupy much of the salary cap space the Dolphins can allocate, so he has to be good player in the professional league, which he luckily for Miami also seems to be. However, Not all teams are so clever - or lucky as the Dolphins, and often a player is drafted very high in the first round but he turns out to be a complete bust in professional league. If a player selected in the Top 3 turns out to be a bust, it will set the franchise back several years, not just because of salary cap implications, but also because the public humiliation of the franchise can lead to a long term losing streak, like the Lions and Cardinals have battled against for several years.

MY NFL draft study

I have said for several years that the teams, which manage to be successful in the NFL over a long time span, like the Steelers, Patriots and Colts are the ones, who make the best decisions on the front office level. Perhaps the biggest decisions made at this strategic level are the ones concerning both coaching and player personnel. Without having made a serious study of the different NFL teams, my initial impression is that the most successful teams in the salary cap era are the ones, who built the team via the draft and not the teams such as the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys that spend so much money on high paid free agents. In other words, the successful teams in the league are the ones, who manage to find good, quality players in the draft and focus on keeping these players for several years, so they will not test free agency. In order to have a more clear view of how the teams have drafted, I have decided to make a study of the first round of the NFL drafts from 1997 to 2006. Since it takes at least three years for a player to develop, it would be premature to include players drafted after 2006.

Furthermore, my study should also give a better impression of which player positions in the draft, which eventually becomes successful in the league. Is it for example so that corner backs picked in the first round turn out to be more successful than for example outside line backers?? In this connection, it is also interesting to focus on the positions each team has a tendency to spend a first round draft pick on and of course how successful this team has been in the last 10-11 years.

In my study I will also try to put focus on the different colleges, where the different players are picked from. I have a feeling that generally corner backs from Ohio State picked in the first round of the draft become very good pro players and defensive line men from Florida state the exact opposite. And is there a tendency that certain NFL teams generally pick players from specific colleges and do these players turn out to be successful in the NFL. I hope my study can give some kind of answer to this.

In order to get a better answer to such extremely important questions in life, I have until further decided that I will use the following criteria for the players in my study of the 1 round of the NFL draft since 1997: The year the player was drafted, with which pick in the first round the player was taken, Team that drafted the player, The players name, the players college, the players position, years with the team that drafted the player, total years in the NFL and finally the most difficult one, was the pick successful or not.

Obviously, my judgement of each pick is the big one here and the one that is by far the most time consuming. I do realize that there are so many factors that influence whether a pick is successful or not and my study cannot take all these factors into consideration. For example, it is very common that a players’ career is cut short by injuries, which may mean that I will label the player a bust and thereby also criticize the team, who drafted the player, though in most cases no one can predict that injuries will ruin a players’ tenure in the NFL.

Another example of how my study and the data from the study can be misleading will be the evaluation of the late Sean Taylor, picked by the Washington Redskins in 2004. In my study, it will show that he only had a short NFL career, but obviously he is far from being a bust, in fact he was a phenomenal player, who only had a short carrier in the NFL, because he was so tragically murdered a few years ago. R.I.P. Sean Taylor.

In my study, I rate certain positions to be of more importance than others, just like the NFL team does. There is a reason why you rarely see kickers or punters picked in the first round. A good example of how the playing position can influence my valuation of the pick is Donte Whither, the safety who was picked by the Buffalo Bills with the 8th pick of the draft in 2006. Though, he is not a bad player, he is no where near being as good as the best safeties such Ed Reed, Troy Polamalu and Bob Sanders. When you spend such a high draft pick on a safety like the Bills did with Donte Whitner, I expect him to become a major difference maker and since Donte Whitner has not turned to be this kind of player, I label him a draft bust.

Of course, it may be that I find something more interesting to write about and I will skip this draft study…. Yeah right…It is more realistic that the next Slayer release will be a UB40 influenced reggae album than something can be more interesting than a study of the importance of the NFL draft.

I wish you all a great NFL draft weekend.

Blog - No posts - An explanation / excuse - Your pick

2009-04-22T03:57:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I have not posted as much on my blog lately as I intended do, when I created the blog last year. One of the reasons for this long break was the fact that I wanted to post something about the world surrounding me before I would post about the “usual” subjects such as Football and music. I had planned to write something about the current financial crisis, credit crunch or whatever you want to call the tough economic reality, the entire world is suffering from.

However, I have struggled to make up my mind about this terrible situation, in particular with regards to possible solutions to end this very unfortunate situation. When I thought I was finally able to put my opinion down on paper, new developments happened and I had to somehow modify my views.

Having said all that, I am willing to give a guarantee that some time soon, I will write my onion of the current economic climate and what must be done and not be done to stop this mess.

My inability to write something the economic crisis meant that I switched my focus to a much more familiar topic: music. I started writing about the music from the year 2008 and before I knew it, I had written much more than I had planned. Events in my personnel life, in particular the car crash, where I was extremely lucky and escaped without major injuries, meant that the writing was put on hold for a long, long time. When I had put this incident and all the extra work connected with this behind me, I struggled to find the interest to finish the Music in 2008 writing project. It just did not seem interesting anymore, and each time I tried to add to the pieces I had already written, I gave up quickly, since it was not as much fun as I wanted it to be. However, I intend to finish it sometime after the NFL draft.

With this short (re)introduction post, I will start posting more regularly on my blog again. Since I have postponed the planned pieces about the credit crunch and the Music year 2008, I will instead switch my focus to a much more familiar subject; football.

Dick Jauron has to go

2008-12-28T12:26:00.000-08:00

With 4 minutes left of the last Buffalo Bills game of the season, I have finally had enough of Dick Jauron. Though he is certainly a likable guy, he is not good enough to be a head coach in the NFL. His game management is so bad that it is down right embarrassing and so many times, we have seen him get out coached by his coaching colleagues.

I will be hugely disappointed if he returns to the Bills for the 2009 season.

I will write an in depth "state of the Buffalo Bills" in a few days, when we know whether Dick Jauron is still the head coach for the Bills or not.

Neil Peart - A great drummer... and author !!

2008-12-25T08:39:00.000-08:00

I have known the Canadian rock band “Rush” for several years, though I have only started to listen to them extensively during the last couple of years. This Canadian band first got my attention, when I bought 2nd hand issues of hard rock and heavy metal magazines such as Metal Hammer, Kerrang and Metalized, where their albums and live shows always received very favourable reviews, even though, as it was correctly pointed out in the magazines, the band was not necessarily a hard rock band and had even less to do with heavy metal. I bought my first Rush album, a double best of CD in 1999. Though, I liked it a lot, and I bought “Different stages”, the triple live CD, shortly after, which I also though was awesome, it took some time before I decided to dig deeper into the Rush vault. During a one year period, I purchased all Rush studio albums from and including "2112" to the latest release "Snakes and Arrows" and just recently, I have bought all their remaining albums, excluding the "Rush in Rio" and "R30" live albums, which I already had on DVD.

Why did it take so long time for me to start buying the studio albums, when I liked the compilation albums I bought several years ago so much? A quick look at the number of CDs on my shelves indicates that exploring new music is perhaps my biggest hobby. Then again, the term “new music” is probably not the correct way to describe the strategy I have used, when I spent so much money on CDs. Instead of buying new music by new artists, I have instead focused on finding treasures from the history of popular music and I have really enjoyed the CDs I have bought by such diverse artists as Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, Bob Seger, Hal Ketchum, Alison Krauss and so many more. This combined with the fact that Rush have released so many studio albums, made it seem like a massive task to start spending both money and time on the Rush studio albums. However, I can say that all the money I spent on the music from this, great power trio, was money very well spent. I have had enormous joy listening to the fantastic music made by these three great Canadians.

What I find particularly fascinating with this band is the way their music has evolved over the years. Though their style of music has changed, the over all quality of the music is still extremely high. Even though, I am not really a fan of the term “progressive music” (I think the term has been so overused that several bands just make long, boring songs because they simply do not have the ability to compose good music and then it is called progressive because it has long, technically difficult but fairly annoying solos), I will call Rushs’ artistic approach progressive. Unlike so many other classic rock bands, where it seems like they just release new material because their contracts with the record companies tell them to or they have to release a new album to have an excuse to go on tour (though they then rarely play material from the new album in concert), Rush seem very interested in creating new music and it appears to be a focus point for them not just to release “Moving pictures” part two. It is extremely evident from interviews with the band that they are still very inspired musicians and it is just great to see all three members of the band appearing to still be extraordinary passionate about music as an art form and listen to young, new but not neccarily commercial successful artists, even though all three band members are in their mid-fifties and could easily just to retrieve to their homes and live happily ever after. In this connection, I really applaud the fact that Rush have decided to include so much new material in their concerts. Sure, there is no way I would like to miss out on Tom Sawyer, The spirit of radio and the first of part 2112 ,if I were to attend a Rush concert, but I think it is great that they include so many new songs in the set list instead of having 10-12 standards that simply have to be played like the Rolling Stones, Metallic and perhaps AC/DC have. In my opinion their set lists for concert have become much too predicatble over the years.

Though I really like all three members of the band as musicians, I have to admit that I admire the drummer Neil Peart the most. Neil is without any kind of question my favourite rock drummer. He has a very creative style of playing that I do not think that you see too often in rock bands. Without being a drummer nerd, I think that Mr. Peart draws inspiration from several kinds of music and drumming styles, and his drumming is in constant development and he has the strong ambition to become a better drummer. This drive for perfection fits very well with the “progressive” approach to do things, which is also evident with the other members of the band and that is why it is still interesting to listen to new Rush material, which is more than you can say of new material from so many other veteran rock bands.

BOOKS

In addition to his fantastic abilities as a drummer, I am also a big fan as Neil Peart as the writer of the bands’ lyrics. Once again, the best way to describe his work with lyrics is progressive. Over the years he has written about a wide range of subjects, some times inspired by events from his personal life, some times inspired by books he has read and often by his own observations from the world, we live in. Having said this, I feel closer to the more personal lyrics from the last few albums than the science fiction themed lyrics from some of the albums form the 70’s.

In order to find out more about the band, particularly the working relationship within the band and how they have managed to evolve musically over the years, especially considering the fact that they have had no band member line up changes since the 2nd album, I decided to buy the band biography “Chemistry” by British author Jon Collins. This book tells the story about the band with focus on their music and events that have influenced their music, such as reasons for recording a specific album in England, why they chose to switch producer and sound engineers at given times etc. In other words, it puts focus on their music as a craft and very little focus on the members’ personnel lives, just the way I like it (this fits the overall band concept as well… just listen to the lyrics of the song “Limelight”).

I really like the way this book is structured. Every chapter is built up around each studio album and tells the story about the recording process, the background for their choice as producer and sound engineer and other factors, which influenced the outcome of the album. Each chapter is concluded with the authors’ in depth review of the particular album. Furthermore, the book also includes a “who is who” in the world of Rush, with mini biographies of several people, who in one way or the other have played a role in the history of the band. All this means that the book works well as an encyclopaedia of the band, though it is certainly also very readable as a book you read from one end to the other. I can highly recommend this book to anyone, who wants to learn more about this band. Great stuff.

After having read the book “Chemistry” and my love affair with the bands’ great music continued to blossom, I decided it was time to start reading the books authored by Neil Peart. My initial motivation for reading his books was to gain more information about the man from a very reliable source and thereby get a better understanding of the song lyrics written by this extremely private person, Neil Peart.

The first book I bought was “Ghost rider”, Travels on the healing road. As the title suggests, this book deals with the horrible events that occurred during a one year period for this incredibly talented drummer and especially how he dealt with the loses. During that brief period of time, Neil’s only child, his daughter Selena died in a car accident, his wife died of cancer (though Neil states it was a broken heart), his best friend was arrested and sentenced to a spell in prison and his dog died.

After these tragic events, Neil Peart decided that only way to survive was to travel on his beloved BMW motorcycle. Over the next year and a half, he travelled an insane amount of miles on his BMW in North America, Belize and Mexico. For most parts the book is written as a travel journal but personal letters to friends and family members are also included. It is very interesting to read about his observations and experiences through this extremely long journey and how his view of the world and life in general is starting to change as he is away from his daily duties and commitments. In this connection, it is fascinating to read, how at the start of the journey he cannot even listen to music and is very far away from being able to pick up his drumsticks and play. At his wifes funeral, he gives the message to Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee, that they should consider him retired. Slowly, as times goes on, he rediscovers his life long love for music as an art form.

Luckily, as anybody with the slightest knowledge about Rush will know, the book has some kind of happy ending, as he falls in love with a Californian photographer, Carrie, marries her, and moves to Santa Monica to start a new life with her ,without forgetting about the past.

Overall, I find “Ghost rider, Travels on the healing road” a great read and not only a book for fans of the band “Rush”, though I think you have to be Rush fan to see how some of his observations from his travelling are reflected in part of the lyrics from the Rush comeback album “Vapor trails”. In reviews of this book, I have read that some readers find his extreme focus on details somewhat annoying and when I read the book I did ask myself “How can this description and explanation of the food he ordered at some obscure restaurant in Utah be important” but at the end of the book, you realize that all these small pieces add something to the whole story and it is completely impossible to come to some kind of understanding of such a complicated grieving process without this extremely compressive telling of the daily life after these tragic loses.

Recently, I bought my 2nd Neil Peart book, “Travelling music”. This book is written after “Ghost rider”, where Neil Peart has adapted to his new life in Southern California, though he has not lost his appetite for travelling. Just like Ghost rider, this book is some kind of traveling journal with his observations from travelling in North America. Unlike the journey he described in Ghostrider, the travelling Neil does this time is for a much shorter time period and it is this time done by car, from his home in California to the Sound Bend national park in South West Texas and back.

Obviously, the circumstances in Neils’ life this time, are much different from the time, he went on his travels described in Ghost Rider. As a consequence of this, grieve is no longer such a central issue in his life, though he does express his fond memories of late wife and daughter. Where he struggled to appreciate music in Ghostrider, music plays a key role in Travelling music. Basically, this book as about the music he listens to on his journey to Texas and back. Through telling about music and the journey he is on, we come to learn so much more about this extremely private person and again come to a better understanding of the song lyrics, he has written during his time in Rush. Both on his actual journey and in his writing, Neil Peart takes several detours and there by, the reader learns more about his childhood, his pre Rush musical career and the time he spent in London prior getting married and joining Rush. Just like with the book “Ghostrider”, it is interesting for a Rush nerd to see that some of phrases from the book end up as part of the song lyrics on the “Snakes and arrows” album, which was released much later than the book.

There is no question that Neil Peart is very passionate music fan and is a fellow music nerd, I can relate to his stories about how fantastic it is to listen to music and it is often strange details in the music that make you relate to this specific piece of music in a certain way. Just like me, Neil Peart has a very diverse taste in music, so in this book he explains with great passion about his love for the music by so different artists such as Frank Sinatra, Massive Attack, Jeff Buckley and Linkin Park. Though, I do not necessarily share the love for the same music as he does, his great writing about this music makes me tempted to give his favourite artists another listen.

Overall. Travelling music is very enjoyable read, which I can recommend to any music lover, not just Rush fans.

Though, I obviously do not have Neil Pearts musical talents, I do share his love for music and I have many of the same opinions as him, both as a traveller and as a citizen of the world. Even down to his love for the Macallan…. Cheers….

Photo update

2008-12-04T12:20:00.001-08:00

Finally, a photo has found its way to my blog.

This is the author of this blog and a very good friend reading the paper.

AC/DC - Concert - My dream set list

2008-11-08T05:58:00.000-08:00

I have been a huge fan of the rock band AC/DC for several years. Generally, I prefer the Bon Scott era, though I think Brian Johnson is a great replacement, when it is obviously impossible to have Bon in the band today.

Lately, I have annoyed several family members, friends and colleagues about how awesome the latest AC/DC CD is - on several levels. First of all, most of the songs are just great and are very enjoyable to listen to. Sure, the album could be cut short by a couple of songs, which are not quite on par with stunners such as Rock'n'roll train and Big Jack, but in my opinion it is the best AC/DC album in several years. After the first few times listening to the album, I was of the opinion that Black Ice was the best AC/DC album since For those about to rock, which I think is often overlooked, when discussing great AC/DC albums. However, After having listened to the new album intensively since I bought it, I now think it is even better than For those about to rock and is their best album since Back in black.

The over all production is also very good and so much better than more or less all other rock productions today. Luckily the band and the producer Brendan O'Brien have unsurprisingly decided to stick to the traditional no-nonsense production, with all instruments clear in the mix, though the great, big, fat guitar sound is still very much in the foreground. Like with most other modern rock productions, you are reminded when listening to the album that the "loudness war" is still going on, though it is certainly not as bad as for example the lastest Metallica album.

Finally it is just great to see these grandpa aged men being at the top of their game and proving that musical trends can come and go, but great rock'n'roll music is completely timeless. I love this album now but it is also an album I will listen to with great joy in ten years time.

Even though, I have used more less every opportunity lately to talk about the Black Ice album, there is a topic I have talked even more about; The fact that a close friend and I will attend an AC/DC concert in April next year at the O2 Arena in London. I have never seen AC/DC live in concert before and I am absolutely delighted that we somehow succeeded in getting tickets to this concert. The concerts in London were like all other European shows on the tour sold out in minutes.

The band have already started their US Tour. I have not seen the set lists from any of the concerts from this tour yet, since I will try to attend the concert in London without knowing what to expect (Though, I do believe at some point before the concert, the temptation to see what I have in store might be too strong, and I will search the web for a set list from the current tour).

I have thought about which songs I would like to hear the most, when I go to watch the show next year. Overall, there are so many great songs that the band have not played on the last several tours and would be awesome to hear in concert. Then there are songs from the new album I would love to hear performed, like the Big Jack, Rock'n' roll and Anything goes. And then there are all the classics. Even though Highway to hell, Back in black, You shook me all night long, For those about to rock and Hells bell have been played so many times before, there is no way I would like to miss out on these evergreens.

Then on the other hand, there are songs that I have seen and heard on the concert DVDs and live albums so many times, that I could accept not to hear them in London, as it would mean that other songs would be played instead. These great songs, I will be ready to have sacrificed for other material include The Jack, Whole lotta Rosie and T.N.T.

Judging from set lists from previous tours, I expect the set list for the Black ice tour to consist of between 17 and 22 songs, perhaps closer to 17 than 22 given the age of the band members.

To be somewhere in the middle, I have opted to include 20 songs in my "dream set list" for the AC/DC concert. In completely random picked order, the set list looks as follows:

- It's a long way to the top, if you wanna rock'n'roll
- Hell ain't a bad place to be
- If you want blood, you got it
- Shoot to thrill
- Let there be rock
- Hells bells
- Sin city
- For those about to rock
- Rock'n' roll train
- Big Jack
- Anything goes
- Highway to hell
- You shook me all night long
- Back in black
- Down payment blues
- Riff raff
- Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
- That's the way I wanna rock'n'roll
- Rock'n' roll damnation
- Who made who

As you can see from the set list, I would love to hear some songs from the Powerage album. It is such a fantastic album, which I think has been a bit too overlooked on previous tours.

Finally, AC/DC have recorded so many fantastic songs so at the end of the day, I am sure that I will not be disappointed about the songs, they play.

For those about to rock.......

2008 U.S. Presidential election

2008-11-02T08:08:00.000-08:00

In a few days, we will know you the next president of The United States of America will be. Like so many other non-US citizens, I take great interest in the election. I have followed this whole process from the first rumours circulated about who would try to win the presidential nomination for each party to the intense battle between John McCain and Barack Obama.

Like most of the non-US citizens, who follow this election, I have my opinion about who I think should be the next president. However, I have noticed specifically during this election campaign that celebreties, who are not American citizens, have taken a very active role in the election campaign for the Democratic Party. I saw Elton John performing at a benefit show for Hillary Clinton and particually John Cleese campaigning very actively for Barrack Obama.

I seriously do not like persons, who are not able to vote in the election, but still are trying to influence others, who are able to vote, regardless of which party the non-US citizen campaigns for. How would a Dannish citizen like it, if a Frenshman all of a sudden started to tell Danish citizens who they should vote for in the next election in Denmark ? I would not like it all. Therefore, I do believe it is double standard if foreigners take a too active role in the US presidential election.

Happy birthday Mr. Wilson

2008-10-30T12:57:00.000-07:00

Last week the owner of the Buffalo Bills, Ralph Wilson, celebrated his 90th birthday. I hope he had a great day and spent it with his family and close friends.

I have tremendous respect for Ralph Wilson. This is not just because of the fact that I am a huge Buffalo Bills fan, but also the fantastic work he has done by playing a key part in the creation of the NFL, as we know it today; The best professional sports league in the world.

He has been probably the most outspoken owner, when it came to supporting the revenue sharing among the NFL franchises. I remember a few years ago, when Mr Wilson and the owner of the Bengals were the only owners voting against the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and Ralph Wilson said he simply did not understand the CBA. Once again, several people poked fun at Ralph Wilson and stated that he was overprotective of the small market teams. Some people in the media even dared to to suggest that he was getting senile. Today, it is a very realistic possibility that the NFL owners decide to opt out the CBA, showing that perhaps Ralph Wilson was the smarter one after all.

As mentioned, I and all other Buffalo Bills fans are forever grateful for Mr. Willsons’ decision to keep the Bills in Buffalo for so many years, especially the size of the market and the economic problems in Western New York taken into account. However, I cannot help but think about the future of the Buffalo Bills considering the age of Ralph Wilson and the fact that he has said so many times that the Bills will be sold after his death. His family will not inherit the team. The legendary, Hall of fame, Buffalo Bills QB Jim Kelly has stated earlier that there are plans in place to keep the Bills in Buffalo after Mr. Wilson passes on. However, No detailed plans have been revealed yet.

In this connection, I am unsure if there even is a local business man, who can afford to buy the Buffalo Bills. Western New York is not exactly Dallas or New York City, where you have loads of oil billionaires or real estate tycoons.

What I fear the most is that the team will be sold to a business man, who will eventually move the team to a bigger market, for example LA or perhaps Toronto. In my opinion it would be unbearable to see my beloved team moved to Southern California, just because it may make economically sense. It has been a constant topic over the last several years that the 2nd biggest TV market in North America has been without an NFL team since the mid nineties.

However, I seriously doubt that the people of LA would embrace an NFL team the same way the people of Buffalo, Western New York and even Southern Ontario have taken the Buffalo Bills into their hearts. If it was so fantastic to have an NFL team in LA, why would the Raiders and the Rams even consider moving away and instead play their home games in Oakland and St. Louis ??

On the other hand, I do fear for the long term stability of the franchise, even if the team is sold to a buyer, who wants to keep the team in Buffalo. The economic climate in Western New York has made it very difficult to sell the luxury boxes and club seats at Ralph Wilson stadium. Taking the global financial crisis into account, it is a bit difficult to see, why this should change in the future.

Furthermore, There are questions about how a potential new owner will finance buying the Buffalo Bills (According to Forbes Magazine valued at $ 821 mill.) and how it will affect the general running of the franchise. Will it result in a dramatic increase in ticket prices, a bit like the ticket prices for the Bills games to be played in Toronto, so the average Western New Yorker would struggle paying for a Bills game ticket ?

Luckily, these worries can be put on hold for at least a while, since Ralph Wilson is alive and well and the Bills have good chance of reaching the post season for the first time since THAT game almost 9 years ago in Tennessee with the lousy ending...

May god bless Ralph Wilson - and the NFL team he owns and loves.

Welcome

2008-10-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Thank you for visiting my blog.

As the title of blog says, I will focus on my views and opinions, premarily commenting on my hobbies, which are music, sports and the world surrounding me.

Until further, I will write my posts in English, though I may write something in Danish, if it is a subject solely of interest for danes.

I do realize that my blog is a disaster in terms of design and setup, and it will be a text heavy blog with very few photos (I do not even own a digital camara !!). However, I may try to improve the design at some point, but as of right now, my focus is on posting my thoughts.