Music and Mayhem

A couple of weeks back I went to see Blondie at the O2 Academy in Liverpool. It was the second time I’ve seen Blondie live and they were great. They belted out all the classics interspersed with tracks from the new album. It was the last gig of their UK tour and you could tell from the start they were going to make it a night to remember.

Blondie have been together for 37 years now and still know how to throw a party. Debbie Harry still has an amazing stage presence and she was clearly enjoying herself in Liverpool. The songs from the new Album, “Panic of Girls” were very well received but the old favourites including Union City Blue, Atomic, One Way or Another and Rapture drove the crowd wild. The set also included an excellent cover of The Beastie Boys’ You’ve Gotta Fight for your Right to Party. I think it’s obligatory when playing in Liverpool to do a cover of a Beatles classic and they belted out a cracking version of Please Please Me. My only complaint about the gig was the ridiculous temperature in the venue. It was hotter than Hell in there and the sweat was literally dripping from the ceiling. Debbie even commented on it saying it felt like a hot summer in New York City.

We stayed the night in Liverpool at the Premier Inn at the Albert Dock and the next day we went to Tate Liverpool and The Beatles Experience. We had a cracking couple of days.

Blondie set list (I think it's right):
Union City Blue
Dreaming
Atomic
D-Day
Hanging On The Telephone
Call Me
Love Doesn’t Frighten Me
Maria
Girlie Girlie
What I Heard
Sunday Girl
China Shoes
Wipe Off My Sweat
Horizontal Twist
Mother
Rapture/Fight For Your Right To Party
One Way Or Another

Please Please Me
Rip Her To Shreds
Heart Of Glass

On an entirely different note a lot of people thought I would have been on here blogging about the riots but I just didn’t know what to say. The whole sorry affair was and is very depressing. I could rant about the evils of the corrupt capitalist system and the root causes of crime and antisocial behaviour. I could cry about the members of society who have been left behind and abandoned. The only thing I’m certain of is the clear evidence that poverty and crime go hand in hand. I know that some of the looters were employed and educated but the vast majority come from some of the most economically deprived areas of our country.

We are now in a situation where in many ways we aren’t really citizens of a nation state anymore we are just consumers in a global market. Those who don’t have enough money to play a role in the market are either ignored or ridiculed.

If any good can come from these inexcusable riots it’ll be that society opens its eyes and realises it can no longer ignore the consequences of inter-generational unemployment and benefit reliance. We need to invest huge sums of money to fix the problems but there isn’t any money to spend. Maybe if we made the huge corporations who make Billions of pounds in the UK but don’t pay full taxes cough up some cash we could at least take some steps in the right direction.