some twenty or so years ago i, look you see, needed to do some work or if you like verk with a chap from another land. he had come specifically for this to be done. from what i recall he was not particularly good at it, not at all to be sure.
his shortcomings in profession are not, however, the dominant memory i have of him. nor is it the particularly bad, even by 90s standards haircut he sported. no, rather it was a conversation about music, the vibes. not sure of the full details, but when i asked why he didn't have an album (mindful of this being the days when the only way to own such was to buy it) he with some resignation said that one day i will find out that when you have kids all sorts of priorities change.
which is how come this look and listen to Liam Gallagher's "debut" solo album, As You Were, is coming at you the day after the day of its release, rather than from the day of release.
plans had been in place for me to go and purchase this recording on its day of release ever since it was announced as being 6 October 2017. my memory is somewhat wonky, but i think the announcement i speak of came in March or maybe April.
this plan was then jettisoned when parenting came to the fore. William took ill, to be sure, with something seemingly similar to tonsillitis rather than actual tonsillitis as such. which meant i was at home with him instead of at HMV, administering care, attention and medicine.
no debate and no problem there, for it is the world of a parent. at the least, hopefully, a proper one i suppose. one day delay isn't all that much in the scheme of things. my plight is hardly that of those who, for instance, have recently discovered the flights they booked and paid for in good faith are not actually taking to the sky.
yeah, that's me at around 9:30am on this early October Saturday morning, walking from a relatively affordable (free) parking area in the direction of HMV. something of a dark, overcast day, then.
would i not worry that Liam would be disappointed or angry that i elected to look after family rather than go and purchase his album as soon as i could? doubtful. to be honest everything about Liam Gallagher doesn't strike me as being all that arsed about what anyone else does. going on the linear notes of As You Were, though, he himself, in his wisdom, would most decidedly declare family - in particular those members of it you are directly responsible for - more important than any other concern.
a bit of a diversion, then. on my way to HMV i called in at WH Smith, no less, for that is where a post office is located. i had a requirement to send a shiny parcel, to be sure, to another corner of the world. or curve, i suppose, but let us not get bogged down with all that "the earth is flat" business occupying so many at the moment. whilst there i noted that the new annual off of The Viz was out. no, didn't buy it. WH Smith sell it for full price, whereas other stores tend to mark it down. i will get it as and when i see it at a lower cost. and why not, since as it is a "best of" editions from a couple of years ago i shall already have some 80% of the material in it.
to HMV then, and to the ostensible primary purpose of being in town on such a cold and overcast morning, the purchase of Liam Gallagher's solo album. i had hopes, if not quite aspirations, that maybe HMV would be doing what they did with the Kasabian album earlier in the year, which was bundle the record with a 7" single.
alas no, it was just buy the standard edition of the album for £9.99, or the "deluxe" variation for £12.99. i think they were supposed to be selling it on vinyl too, but i could not see it. not that i would have purchased it in that format.
quite strange that they were not hawking a 7" with this, for a 7" vinyl single is very much Liam Gallagher. my adventures in Manchester earlier in the year did, of course, allow me to see a one sided 7" of Wall Of Glass in a branch of HMV there. it was priced at either the exact price of the "deluxe" version of As You Were, or maybe £1 north. i cannot recall. but either kind of suggests the rather excessive pricing in place for it.
so which version of the CD did i purchase? here, have a look, if you can somewhat bear putting up with yet another image of me, looking as awful as i ever do.
but of course the "deluxe" edition, offering as it did three extra tracks. three tunes for £3 is about what i would pay for a 12" or CD single, so that all seems fair. actually, will take them as being the b-sides for the three "digital download" singles i bought for 99p a pop, with them being Wall Of Glass, Chinatown and For What It's Worth. yes i know a 4th single, Greedy Soul was "digitally" released but it was about a week before the album was due so i skipped it.
no, i haven't actually discussed the music on the record have i? well, it is all the experience, this blog is. the joy and excitement of going off and actually buying music in a physical form. something that a diminishing number seem to do, but anyway i do.
my expectations for the album were, on the basis of the three tracks listed, pretty good. the first single, Wall Of Glass, was a no nonsense, immediate rock classic. Chinatown was not bad and has kind of grown on me, whilst For What It's Worth was and is very good indeed.
oh dear, Dan Brown is back, is he? must be about 5 or 6 years since Inferno, what i read, came out. dreadful book and i believe the film what they done of it was even worse. i suspect, maybe even fear, that i will end up reading this one, Origin or whatever, and shall regret it. here is hoping that i am wrong with at least 50% of that.
not today with the above. i rarely, if ever, buy a hardback. this is not so much an economic matter (although it is partially) as much as it is an ease of read thing. paperbacks are a pleasure to sit and read; hardbacks are just plain cumbersome. as nice as they look on a shelf.
yeah, that's me on further strolls, then, with once again a distinct lack of light from the sky making all seem quite dark. you may be pleased to know that the above is, so far as i am aware, the last image of me or if you like moi to grace this blog. and yes, quite right - isn't it funny how the darker an image of me is the better i look?
as someone prone to clutching at the way things were, i suppose this was all quite reminiscent. outside of Frankie Goes To Hollywood releases, which i would have taken the bus after school to get on the precise day of release, in my youth vibes purchases happened on a Saturday morning.
home, then, to my elevated shed and my vibes machine, or if you like stag, or if you prefer stereo. time, a day late, to give this As You Were recording off of Liam Gallagher a spin.
what's that behind the Liam Gallagher record? the double CD version of the soundtrack for The Man Who Fell To Earth. HMV had it in their sale section for a perfectly reasonable £3.99, so i grabbed it. earlier this year my (considerably) better half got me the (not banned in London version) uber set of The Man Who Fell To Earth Blu Ray & DVD what came with a brief CD of the soundtrack , but this is the full blow thing. actually, i think the version i got earlier in the year has tracks on it not included in this 2 CD set, but that is a post for another time.
and yes, that is a HMV bag in the background, what i bought for 5p. i do every time, despite having a perfectly good bag with me that i could place the records bought in. sorry, but i cannot help it. getting a bag off of HMV for all the stuff what you got off of HMV just feels like it is meant to be a quintessential part of the experience.
right, so how is As You Were by Liam Gallagher as an album? very good. i mean, i am just on a 2nd play of it as i write this, but the fact that it prompted a 2nd play straight away is surely some prompting of quality.
just how to describe it. i want to use a word like restrained, but that does not feel right. nor does reserved. mellow does not feel like a particularly good fit either. it could well be that comfortable is the best word to use here.
in terms of tone the bombastic, in your face rock nature of the lead single Wall Of Glass is inherently misleading. there are rock moments across the record, but for the most part they are not of a similar sledgehammer nature. well, that said, one of the harder rock numbers, I Get By, is one of my highlights at the moment.
oh, make no mistake and do not be misled by my choice of words like "restraint" and "reserved". lyrically there is an absolute abundance of moments here where the message is "Liam Gallagher is f*****g great, says Liam Gallagher", as there should be. there is precious little point, or sense, in being a rock star if you are not going to be all confidence and full of yourself. overbearingly so for the tastes of many, but it's them what agree with your sentiment that you are directing it at.
weirdly, for someone with an ego and an abrasive extrovert nature of Liam he has been oddly lower (by his standards) on confidence when it came to this, his first solo record. in the aftermath of Oasis his instinct was to form a new band, Beady Eye, and famously declare that their record would be "one million times better than Oasis". he has that classical northern lad thing, really. as much as he fancies himself i think he'd really rather prefer the comforts and solidarity that comes with being in a gang, or if you like band, that out on a limb on his own.
as a body of people we, the world, have had exposure and experience of Liam Gallagher for about 23 years now. how strange that some of the fans buying / downloading / streaming this record will not have been born in the halcyon first few of those 23 years; the veritable height of Oasis.
other than that brave new generation discovering him, then, i am not sure there is much chance of him winning over new fans no matter what he did. people who have, and bless them for their opinion, spent the last two decades thinking Liam Gallagher is a "loudmouthed lippy Manc w****r" are not going to hear As You Were and all of a sudden change their mind.
got Paper Crown on again now. top tune this is, on a top album. recently Liam did a "track by track" thing for the record for some publication, maybe NME, and seemed to describe each song as "beautiful". that's not a bad way to call it at all.
do i feel the extra £3 in coins of money was worth it for the "deluxe" edition of As You Were? yes. in a world of diminishing physical music sales i am not sure why labels push out two versions of a record when buyers will only get one, but anyway. Doesn't Have To Be That Way is distorted, quasi psychedelic rock, All My People / All Mankind is Donovanesque hippy folk, and I Never Wanna Be Like You is a splendid enough acoustic number. and yes, possibly a dig at a certain former member of Oasis.
to touch on the inevitable, yes, there are moments in the lyrics on this record where you can go "he is having a dig at Noel here". i resisted doing this as much as i could. the two of them quite publicly do not get along so well these days, of course. whatever, lads, i am just enjoying what music comes my way for what it is not what it is meant to represent.
ultimately As You Were does what the precise nature of the name implies. it's a great, no nonsense rock album released by - whether you like him or like it or not - one of the greatest rock and roll stars of the last twenty years, if not as point of fact one of the all time greats. whilst i know he would prefer to be in a band, it's great to have him back around doing what he does best, man.
and so a limited number of day of releases remain for the year. in mid November there's a new Morrissey record, which HMV sound upset about the cover of, and then i believe U2 will release Songs Of Experience on December 1. indeed i do know that Noel Gallagher's 3rd solo / High Flying Birds album, Who Built The Moon, is out at the end of November. this isn't an autopilot purchase for me, i've not heard any tracks off it and to be honest i am not all that much of a fan of the previous two records.
plus, you never know, this year might at last be the year where my dream happens and Christmas With The Stone Roses by The Stone Roses gets a release. unlikely, but maybe.
thanks for reading, and indeed for tolerating the pictures of me what popped up here.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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