The Year In Review,Music

The year in music could be summed up in one word......Eighties,of the 13 concerts I saw in the past 12 months all but 4 of those bands were 80's acts.
B4 I delve into my music review I did log an easy 10 miler this afternoon to keep me on pace for another 50 mile week to wrap up the year,I lost yesterday due to the Market Frankford El being shut down around 3.30pm,that meant taking a bus home which obviously took twice as long and by the time I got home I knew I'd have precious little in the way of daylight to run in so I bagged it,it means having to do an easy 9 miler tomorrow evening and not getting a rest day b4 Saturdays 5x1,000m repeats but I'm no stranger to an easy 10 miler b4 repeats so I should be ok as long as I pace myself accordingly.

So music,the other great all conquering passion of my life,I tend to average 10 gigs a year,sometimes more(13 this year),sometimes less(8 last year) but you can always count on yours truly getting his gig on throughout the year,gigs this year were:The Church,Flogging Molly,Dropkick Murphys,U2,Berlin,OMD,Human League,Duran Duran,Howard Jones,Noel Gallagher,Pete Murphy,The Cure and Beady Eye.
For all those great gigs there were at least 2 dozen more I missed which always makes my end of year "Hits" and "Misses" mix tapes for "Our Kid" back home a delight to compile,maybe in the new year I'll list this years mixes,they are if I say so myself pretty damn good!!!

The Church performed three albums in their entirety including "Starfish" the album that introduced us to the Aussie wonders,Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys gave me my fix of Celtic punk in and around St Paddy's Day
U2 always put on a great show,Berlin was the rebirth of "everything 80's" for me,OMD was a trip back down memory lane I hadn't seen Berlin in 24 years and 25 years since I'd seen OMD.
Human League were a band I first saw in 1980,I've seen Duran Duran 10 times in the last 30 years,Howard Jones was the first time I'd seen him headline after seeing him open for Human League & Culture Club on the "Rewind Tour" in 98.
As a huge Oasis fan seeing Noel Gallagher was a no brainer,I loved Bauhaus so seeing Pete Murphy was too good to pass up,The Cure.....need I say more? and having seen Noel Gallagher I had to see Liam and the rest of Oasis who now form Beady Eye

Best show??? tough one to call U2 were simply awesome,Terri Nunn really did "Take My Breath Away"OMD were amazing,Duran Duran were as good now as they were in their heyday,Pete Murphy was a goth God and The Cure Robert Smith could've read the Yellow Pages and I've been hanging on every syllable.
It wasn't just in concerts the 80's ruled the roost I began to upgrade my cd collection to replace old classic vinyl w/ cds and also in my reading the 80's dominated,the last three of the eleven books I read were the autobiographies of Gary Kemp,Tony Hadley and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet w/ the Midge Ure autobiography on tap for early in the new year.

.....And of course my year in music review would be incomplete w/out mentioning the love of my life Florence Welch and her band Florence & The Machine,I predict BIG things for the "foxy lady" from Camberwell in 2012