The Management Mythbuster

My new book is on the presses! Witty, poignant, uplifting - it's none of these!

My new book, Half the World Away is rolling off the presses as I type these words - its sure to be a blockbuster! Dan Brown won't know what's hit him. Not only is it supposed to be funny, its also got a killer soundtrack - every chapter title is a classic.  So here is the first part of the chaptography - stay tuned for more ...

First the book’s title, Half the World Away is a lovely song by Oasis one of the top British bands of the nineties. Led by the erratic Gallagher brothers, Oasis emerged from Manchester not twenty miles from where I grew up and I shared a Concorde flight with them back in the mid-nineties.    

In the Beginning is the first track from the Moody Blues 1969 album On Threshold of a Dream. The album reached number one in the UK and number twenty in the U.S. The Moody Blues were the first band I ever saw live in Stafford, England and remain a favourite.  A sound start I think.    

Celluloid Heroes is a great Kinks track, at 7 minutes 21 seconds it is long by Kinks standards. The story Ray Davies tells captures the sadness that lies just below the surface in LA.

California Girls by the Beach Boys is an obvious choice. Does any group or song better capture the image of Southern California?

San Francisco by Scott McKenzie is another no-brainer. The song represents the time when San Francisco acquired its reputation as one of the most tolerant and laid back cities in the world. Much has changed but this unique city still retains some elements of that calm.

Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me is one of Elton John’s classics.  A sad song, sung beautifully.

Leaving New York by REM is from the group’s 2004 album Around the Sun. The title suggests my preferred state while in the Big Apple--leaving!

Coming next ELO, Bob Seger, Guns 'n Roses and much much more...

Beats to Blog By

Regular readers will know that music provides the soundtrack to my life.  My new book, Half The World Away, which will be published soon uses song titles as chapter titles, so  Sweet Child of Mine marks my entry to fatherhood, Cold Hard Bitch is not about Hilary Clinton (though It could be) and You're So Vain is not about me, though it could be! 

Anyway the last couple of weeks have seen me digging up some new, well relatively new, music that has made at least one of my playlists.  First up is a band with a great name, The Airborne Toxic Event, I love the track Sometime Around Midnight - very Coldplay-like guitar and great lyrics about a girl dumping a boy (some things never change).  The Toxic's as I call them are American but I'll forgive them that. 

Next listen to a Wire to Wire from Anglo-Swedish outfit, Razorlight. Its a beautiful, almost haunting, piano-driven ballad with a great first two lines:

"What is love but the strangest of feelings?
A sin you swallow for the rest of your life?"

A little older (from 2007) is Panic At The Disco (is it me or are band names getting better) with the song Nine In The Afternoon which has a nice almost symphonic bit in the middle (I think that's a technical term, don't you?).  Wikipedia informed me that the song was ranked number 76 on Chile's Top 100 Songs of 2008 - what more can one say?

Check the out...

Rock Goes Green; Content Free Comedy

The Axson week was bookended by entertainment.  Monday saw the whole clan head north to the "Q" in Cleveland for an evening of vintage rock from AC/DC.  Despite being in their fifties, the music is stuck at 17 and focuses exclusively on areas below the waist.  Nearly every song is about sex, hell or something black.  Many combine all three!

These guys know how to put on a show - loud, lewd but cartoonish enough to allow the many teens in the crowd to avoid being fully corrupted. I mean how seriously can you take a 53 year old guitarist dressed as a schoolboy?

Of course the real money was bing made at the merchandise stands as the essential $35-$50 t-shirts were being hoovered up by the masses.  However the best example of AC/DC branded gear was definitely the eco-friendly tote bag especially designed so you can haul your six-pack and patchouli oil home without destroying the planet.  Is this what rock has come to?  Mick Jagger must be turning in his grave, oops he's not here yet!

Still the show was excellent and everyone in our family from 14 to 47 was rocking-out to Highway to Hell.

Last night saw the adult Axson's head back to Cleveland in a snowstorm to sample comedy about "nothing" courtesy of Jerry Seinfeld, who incidentally is the same age as Angus Young and does not dress as a schoolboy.  Much like his eponymous television show his stand up is largely about nothing - riffs on cell phones, marriage, and fatherhood marked Jerry as a humourous but not very original comedian.  He's got nothing of the edginess of Robin Williams for example, but he does offer an entertaining enough show.  But its no doubt who won the week - You Shook Me All Night Long accurately sums up the vibe at the Q last Monday!

Time for the new "punk rock;" anything but Mariah Carey, please!

I mistakenly channel-surfed onto the American Music Awards Show on Sunday night during an endless timeout in the football game (how can anyone justify a sixty minute game lasting three and a half hours, and Americans think cricket is stupid!).  I hate awards shows, the self-congratulatory pats on the back, the hollow thank-you's and the crocodile tears all send me to the edge of reason.  Still I hung around for a few minutes as some, probably famous, presenter started talking (singing would be the wrong word in this context don't you think?) the praises of Mariah Carey, someone who has barely breached my consciousness and who I lump in with all the other "divas."

The presenter went on to inform me (and a few million other channel surfers no doubt) that Mariah was now the biggest selling solo artist of all time, with more number ones and more weeks at the top of the charts than any other artist.  Who did she displace for this honour?  None other than the King himself!

How can this be? Does this mark the final decline of civilization?  Quick, name a single Mariah Carey song? See, you're just like me - you can't. Where's her Hound Dog or Heartbreak Hotel or even Teddy Bear?  Diva's remind me of disco, a sad aberration in the spectrum of music history.  The time must be ripe for a new genre.  After all, the economic malaise of the seventies gave us punk, the recession of the early-nineties sparked grunge, now we need a new outlet - maybe something like "nerd-rock."  It's got to be better than the overproduced, syrupy love songs wailed out by stiletto wearing, leg-bearing females of a certain age. The only diva worth her salt is Tina after all...so come on you garage-dwelling teens, put down the game controller and knock out a few tunes.

Great bands you haven't heard of - Part 3 - Roomful of Walters

Well today marks my birthday entry - 47 and counting (down surely).  I get to celebrate in Prague which is a cool city and so here is my final entry in the three bands I like but you've never heard of are actually American, which I am sure is shocking to those of you familiar with my trans-Atlantic bias.  Roomful of Walters fall into that very American genre of Christian rock although it took me some time to work that out.  The Walters hail from Wichita and were locally quite successful during the 90's.  I don't think they exist any more.  I found in a roundabout way.  Their bass guitarist, Kurt Starks, moonlighted as an accountant for Koch Industries (the largest privately held company in the world) and I was consulting to the the finance team and Kurt was assigned to the project team.

He gave me a copy of their CD Sleepy Head and I was blown away.  These guys were good.  One track, Jeffrey Dahmer Went to Heaven had a real impact, the lyric posed a real challenge to one's beliefs and the Dahmer link was relevant to me as my house is no more than half a mile from the home in which Dahmer grew up (and where he committed his first murder before moving onto Milwaukee) which will tell you what type of neighborhood I live in!

Anyway if you can find the CD listen to it along with the follow up El Grande - these guys should have been stars...

Great bands you haven't heard of - Part 1 - Any Trouble

Music forms the soundtrack of my life as I'm sure it does for many people.  For my next three posts I'm going to focus on three bands who few people have heard of, yet they created some of the most enduring music of my life. 

First up is Any Trouble, a post-punk English band formed in Crewe, England (that's where they build Rolls Royce's) in the late-70's. Three of the original members attended my high school and my wife once slept in the lead guitarists bed (he was not in it at the time, his sister was one of her school friends). Led Elvis Costello lookalike/soundalike, Clive Gregson, Any Trouble were a critically praised band who sold few records.  They were on the Sons of Stiff Tour in 1980 (along with such greats as Tenpole Tidor, King Carasco and the Crowns and a cool Bob Marley ripoff, The Equators) and I saw them live as a freshman at Leeds University that year and again at The Venue in London a few years later.

Tracks like Girls are Always Right, Playing Bogart, a live cover of Abba's Name of the Game, Second Choice and Nice Girls are mini-classics in an Elvis Costello or Squeeze way.  Check them out on iTunes.  They even released a decent single in 2007 called the
That Sound.  They should have been stars...

Next time we go prog-rock from the 70's with Barclay James Harvest...stay tuned.

Any film that starts in Macclesfield must be good!

Forget Get Smart and Johnny English, if you want to see a good film rent "Control" directed by Anton Corbjin which tells the story of Ian Curtis, the English Jim Morrison, who fronted the seminal post-punk band Joy Division only to die young (don't they all?) in 1980 at the age of 24 when he committed suicide.

Curtis grew up in Macclesfield, England known as the Silk Town courtesy of its textile heritage and only nine miles from my own home town of Congleton and about twenty miles from Manchester and forty from Liverpool (Beatlesville).  Curtis grew up in the grey seventies (the film is in black and white but that makes no difference) as did I. There the similarities end - Curtis could write and sing - I can't. He was also possessed by demons that I can only imagine.  He went to same grammar school as my Dad - that's definitely all they had in common and was treated in the same hospital that my Mum died in - again all they had in common.Of course, being the movies they create the fictitious Macclesfield District General Hospital as a stand in for Macclesfield Royal Infirmary but I know the truth.

He wrote some great songs, the best of which was Love Will Tear Us Apart which was released only a month before he ended it all.  The lyrics reflect the impending break-up of his marriage and eerily foreshadow his suicide.  It must be the best song ever to only reach #13 in the UK charts.

Watch the film it's brilliant even though I'm not in it.

Back to the 70's - ouch my back hurts...

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be - it's better. Music provides the soundtrack to my life so my assorted iPods, iPhones and even quaint technology like a cassette deck and turntable are essential elements for a nearly sane existence. After a couple of months in the modern world, the last two weeks have taken me back in time. Only yesterday while the dog the "shuffle" feature offered up the following, in order - Roxanne (The Police), Marlene off the Wall (Suzanne Vega), Oops Upside Your Head (The Gap Band), Jane (Starship) and Teenage Kicks (The Undertones) - eclectic but evocative of the times don't you think.

Last week while wandering the streets of Prague which are they caught in some historic time warp, shuffle offered up Stevie Nicks followed by Kate Bush and my mind started to ponder the coincidence. I always thought of Kate as the English Stevie, they both had the big hair, Goth thing going and were blessed with the most amazing voices. All this nostalgia started a week ago, en route to Prague I stopped off at friends in England and was entertained at the local PTA 70's and 80's fancy dress disco. This was quite a sight. Forty and fifty-something parents crammed into a small village hall dressed as if transported back to anywhere from 1972 to 1985. Lots of glitter, big hair, (and that's just the men) safety pins and leather. I boogied on down with assorted Roller Girls, punks, greasers, rockers and a couple of Jerry Garcia clones. Don't believe me? Well see the evidence below - that's me with a couple of Debbie Gibson clones whose names I won't disclose to protect their lucky husbands.

Of course with us all now being repsectable upright (metaphorically speaking!) members of the community, beer and cider were replaced by numerous bottles of red wine and even one or two designated drivers. This did nothing to stop us rowing to the aforementioned Gap Band although our age showed as we attempted to get back up off the floor. If only our kids could have seen us, the last vestiges of any respect would have dissipated as we air-guitared to Smoke on the Water and stomped to Adam and the Ants. Of course there was a price to pay; while the hangover the next morning was no worse than in years gone by recovery was not aided by having to play football with the kids before Sunday lunch - not a recommended cure I can assure you!

Music Wars - another transatlantic divide

While looking back at 1977 for my previous post on Elvis' demise I came across two lists of the best songs of 77 - one British and one American. They nicely illustrate the Atlantic divide....

The Brits were rocking to:

1. Pretty Vacant - Sex Pistols
2. Watchin' The Detectives - Elvis Costello
3. Sex & Drugs & Rock 'N' Roll - Ian Dury
4. God Save the Queen - Sex Pistols
5. Sheena Is A Punk Rocker - The Ramones
6. Heroes - David Bowie
7. 2 4 6 8 Motorway - Tom Robinson Band
8. Waiting in Vain - Bob Marley & The Wailers
9. Do anything you wanna do - The Rods
10. Alison - Elvis Costello

While America was being put to sleep by:

1. Tonight's The Night, Rod Stewart
2. I Just Want To Be Your Everything, Andy Gibb
3. Best Of My Love, Emotions
4. Love Theme From "A Star Is Born", Barbra Streisand
5. Angel In Your Arms, Hot
6. I Like Dreamin', Kenny Nolan
7. Don't Leave Me This Way, Thelma Houston
8. (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher And Higher, Rita Coolidge
9. Undercover Angel, Alan O'Day
10. Torn Between Two Lovers, Mary MacGregor

No comparsion really is there? America in '77 was caught in the grip of disco while we Brits were dealing with economic decline, seemingly endless strikes and a national malaise as the first post-war generation reached maturity in a country that looked more like the loser than the victor. The result punk rock.

Of course I am making sure my children are appropriately educated and it was heartening to hear my 12 year old son singing along enthusiasticaly to Stairway to Heaven in the car today - he knows all the words and even accompanies the Jimmy Page guitar solos - is that cool or what? While not punk it is classic and British...

That's Entertainment

August 16, 1977 - Elvis dies; August 17, 2007 - High School Musical 2 premieres on the Disney Channel. We've come a long way in the last thirty years. Entertainment has become so evolved that the hit shows of today seem to feature relatively talent-free amateurs seeking fame and fortune through that most 21st century innovation the talent show. Together with the game show and the reality show, talent shows seem to account for about 90 percent of the primetime schedule and must offer any alien who tunes in a interesting perspective on our relative state of evolution.

Thirty years ago while Elvis was falling off the toilet I was a wide-eyed fifteen year old roaming the streets of Moscow on a school trip. Believe it or not we were allowed to roam the streets and explore the subway system unchaperoned. The only requirement was we had to be in school uniform; so you had the strange sight of 15-20 teenage boys walking through the Kremlin singing Rule Britannia while wearing our best green blazers. The expression on the guards faces was one of utter bewilderment. We actually learned of Elvis's passing from the one English language paper published in Russia - The Morning Star - which took some delight in briefly reporting the death of this decadent symbol of Western moral decline. Perhaps they were right...after all other events of '77 included:

Gary Gilmore becoming first person executed in United States since 1967.

Star Wars hits the cinemas; Apple Computer opened for business

The worst air disaster in history as two jumbo jets collide at Los Rodeos airport

A power-cut blacks out New York City. Widespread looting and vandalism occur (some things never change)