As a Scot the hype surrounding the Ashes pretty much goes over my head, but even I know that all-out for 260 isn't very good.

By way of recompense I give you Bill Bryson's take on cricket, which sounds pretty accurate to me;

After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind) I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry. It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavours look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game.

It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players - more if they are moderately restless. It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning.

Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it to centre field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt toward the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to to handle radio-active isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle forty feet with mattress's strapped to his legs, he is under no formal compunction to run; he may stand there all day, and, as a rule, does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and every one retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege. Now imagine all this going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue. There you have cricket.

The mystery of cricket is not that Australians play it well, but that they play it at all. It has always seemed to me a game much too restrained for the rough-and-tumble Australian temperament. Australians much prefer games in which brawny men in scanty clothing bloody each other's noses. I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished over night and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other.

And the thing is, it would be a much better game for it.

In the most recent mailout from a major high street CD retailer (so that narrows it down...) I note that among the crop of upcoming reissues from The Beatles, Wings, Bob Dylan and the usual suspects, are remastered editions of albums from Mel & Kim and Five Star.

Does this strike anyone else as strange or is it just me? I had both of these acts down as ephemeral of-the-moment pop acts with no significant lasting fanbase... but maybe I'm just wrong. Who are the labels expecting to buy these?

KDA

Inspired by Adam and Joe's podcast from the other week, where they invited listeners to suggest possible movie remakes, it got me thinking that while it's commonplace for movies to be re-made, you rarely, if ever, hear of an album (classic or otherwise) being remade... (though there are many attempts to recapture past glories).

So, here's the challenge - what album would you like to hear re-made, and by which contemporary artist/band.

I'll start the ball rolling with "Rubber Soul", to be recorded by Teenage Fanclub...

Inspired by the bookshop thread... When I lived in California for a couple of years, I spent a fortune on used CD's - Many of the US chains have used CD and DVD sections which were full of bargains. My favourite, Rasputin Music in Newark, was about the size of a small-ish supermarket, and roughly 1/3 of the floor area was given up to the Used product. Over the space of 2 years I aquired roughly 250 CD's of various quality levels... but when you were paying between 50c and $3.99 a shot, you didn't care too much. Plus, if you REALLY hated it, you could sell it back (albeit at a loss).

My question is though.. why is this not more common in the UK? I know some of the smaller shops have Used sections, but I'm not aware of any of the larger chains having any Used product. Is there some kind of regulation regarding this, or is it just a reluctance on behalf of the industry to allow this? I guess the royalties are only paid once...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7683665.stm

In a stunning left-field turn, Oasis have decided to feature a Stones cover ("We Love You") as part of their Electric Proms set. With a 50-piece gospel choir. Now, at least it's not another mauling of a Beatles tune (their cover of "I Am the Walrus" being a prime example), but surely they could have put the boat out a little more in their choice of song?

Got me thinking about other cover version cliches which are getting tiresome;

* Any indie band playing "I Wanna Be Your Dog" as an encore

* Any band playing "ironic" cover versions of pop tunes

Any more?

Don't recall if I've seen this topic or not, but interested to hear of others first experiences of live music.

As a callow youth I had a liking for music of the metal/rock/progressive persuasion, but it took a few tries before I actually made it to a gig myself. Pre-fame and record contract, Marillion (who I'd heard on a local radio station) played at a pub in the next town to mine. I managed to persuade my Dad to take me over there so I could stand outside (as I was only 14) and listen to their set. We lasted about 3 songs (which with them could have been nearly an hour) before he dragged me home, fed up with hanging around.

Anyway... shortly afterwards Genesis announced a tour of the UK which took in a couple of night at Ingliston, near Edinburgh. Parental permission was sought and eventually obtained, on the proviso I went with my older cousin. Tickets were £7.50, which at the time seemed like a HUGE amount of money for a ticket, but piggy bank was raided and I came up with the cash.

I'll never forget the experience of walking into the venue. For those who've never been there (lucky you!), it's basically a big metal shed, more normally used for showing prize cattle and sheep at the annual Highland Show. I'd never been in such a big crowd, and when I turned to face the stage I was amazed to see that the PA stacks were enormous... about the size of a small house on either side of the stage.

The gig itself blew me away... it was so loud, the lights were so bright. I'd never seen anything like it - the vari-lights they used were cutting edge then, and added a great visual edge to what, lets face it, weren't the most attractive bunch of musicians, even in 1982.

A bonus was that, because they were playing the "Six of the Best" reunion with Peter Gabriel a week or so after the gig, they played a TON of older material... all the old prog classics (Suppers Ready, Musical Box, Firth of Fifth and so on) which sat uneasily among the Phil Collins era material - though thankfully this was before they REALLY jumped the shark with the "Invisible Touch" material.

Highlight of the show (aside from the really old stuff) was the medley of "In The Cage"/"The Cinema Show"/"Slippermen" followed by "Afterglow" at the climax of which the place filled with dry ice and all the vari-lites on stage turned pink(!) and pointed at the crowd (There's a great picture of this inside the gatefold of the "Three Sides Live" album). For a kid whose only experiences of bands before this had been on "Top of the Pops" or "Rock Goes to College", this was really something magical.

And then it was over.... my ears were ringing, my throat was sore, but I know this was the start of something big. I've been to hundreds of gigs in the intervening 26 years, and seen many that were better than this, but it still has a special place in the old memory banks.

Come on then - let's hear yours.

PS - Slight clarification on the "First gig" designation; the year before I saw Glen Campbell (in Vegas baby!) but I maintain that was a cabaret performance, not a gig. And anyway, it wasn't rock :-)

I've enjoyed the podcast feature where visiting 'slebs and Word contributors break the ice by talking about their parents musical tastes and how that shaped their own tastes. So, how about the Word readers?

My own experience;

Dad; Big Band Jazz

Mum; Broadway Musicals

I must have been the only 5 year old in Britain who knew about Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Johnny Dankworth and their ilk... in lieu of bedtime stories, Dad would sometimes bring the old Dansette into my bedroom, along with a couple of jazz LP's - we'd then listen to excerpts, with my Dad pointing out the features of the arrangements, the instruments in the band and the role they played... to this day I've got an ear for picking out the details of an arrangement, and will sometimes remember string lines and horns backing on rock/pop tracks better than I can the actual lyrics.

As my younger sister got a little older we made the leap to stereo, she joined in out bedtime music appreciation sessions, and that was when the Musical OST LP's came into play... West Side Story, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, and many more. This stuff is just ingrained in my memory now, and sadly I can even tell whether I'm listening to the Original Broadway Cast version or the Movie OST version of a particular show. With all the musical palaver going on it's a wonder I'm straight ;-)

Has it affected my tastes?... probably - despite a teenage flirtation with Metal, I've always been big on melody and song structures - not always in the traditional sense, but as I get older I find I come back more and more to "classic" songwriters, even at the poppier end of the scale... as long as it's a well put together song.

All right... over to you.

OK, as a follow on from the Birthday No.1 posts, how about Birthday Supergroups. Using

http://www.everyhit.com/dates/thisdate.php

I find that also sharing my birth date (12th May) are a number of musicians and songwriters, from which I can assemble this supergroup;

Songs - Burt Bacharach
Vocals - Ian Dury
Keyboards/vocals - Steve Winwood
Guitar - Billy Duffy

Oh, and Keith Moon on drums, McCartney on bass, just because I can (not because they were born on that date!)

OK, provocative title, but I read the article below with interest

http://www.slate.com/id/2179093/

Does audio quality matter to you? Or would you be happy listening to your music on pretty much anything? I fall into the latter category - Or to put it another way, given a finite amount of money, and effectively the choice between;

a) A super high-end audiophile setup, plus a few albums/CDs to go with it.

or at the other end

b) A mini system from Dixons plus a ton of CDs

I'd go for the latter every time.

This is partly prompted by an old colleague of mine who used to boast about his super hifi system and all the fancy components/cables that went into it. When I eventually was invited to his place for dinner with some other colleagues, I was disappointed to find out that while he indeed had a VERY nice sounding system, he only had about a dozen CDs to play on it. One of which was "Bat Out of Hell". Which frankly I though was a bit of a waste... seemed he was more interested in the quality of the reproduction than what was actually being reproduced.

Anyone have an opinion on this?

BF

Saw the peerless Tommy Emmanuel (Aussie solo acoustic guitar maestro) last night in Glasgow, and was struck by the people that felt the need to clap along with him (invariably out of time) any time something approaching a 4/4 rhythm was heard from the stage. Now, there's a time and a place for this... and at a solo acoustic guitar gig isn't it.

Got me thinking about what's appropriate audience participation and what's not... if he'd been actively soliciting us to clap or sing along then fair enough but he plainly wasn't.

I'm sure we've all had the guy (or girl) behind us at a gig who insists on singing along to every song... if I've paid good money for a gig I want to hear the artist singing it, not some tone-deaf muppet in the row behind me.

Anyone else get annoyed by this, or is it just me?

Cheers

BabyFrank