Don't take away my music...

Rare are the mornings when I wake up without a tune in my head. It might be a song I played the night before; it might be something I heard on the radio the previous day; it might be something completely random. The point is that music plays a huge part in my life. 

 I spend plenty of my days humming or singing something - and the great joy of my love of music is that it’s not restricted to one genre. A random trawl around my iPod throws up Alice Cooper, Tony Christie, Robert Plant, Meat Loaf, the Specials, the Clash, the Ramones, Albert Hammond, Bruce Springsteen, Green Day, Stonesour, Leonard Cohen, the Killers, Janis Joplin, Rammstein, loads of Motown, the Scissor Sisters, Motorhead, Dr Feelgood, Rupert Holmes....you get the idea. And there’s plenty of classical, as well.

 There’s not much I don’t like, with the possible exception of Coldplay. Yet this week’s musical adventures might, on the face of it, look absurd. The highlight of my TV viewing of the 2011 Glastonbury Festival was Biffy Clyro, the Scottish band who meld intense and interesting sounds into high-energy rock; on Tuesday, Mrs W and I joined 10,000 other music fans of a certain age to see Neil Diamond at Birmingham’s NEC; today, I visited the Home of Metal exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, a celebration of the heavy metal music born in the factories of Birmingham and the Black Country.

 Neil Diamond? Biffy Clyro? Heavy Metal? Oh, come on.....yet I don’t think there’s a problem here. I was brought up in the mid-70s listening to Mr Diamond’s music on the record player in our living room and once you get music into your life at an early age (I’m talking mid-teens here) I think it stays with you for ever. And if you listen again to some of his classic early music such as Cherry, Cherry and Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show (and look at some of the classics he wrote for other people), you’ll see that great emotional music is great emotional music, whatever the genre.

 It certainly gave me a sense of the power of music to move us. It made me realise that whatever music I was going to like, it would be music that wanted to make me get up and shout, sing, dance, smile.....feel better about life and about myself.

 The Home of Metal exhibition spotlights the great West Midlands bands such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, who could hardly be described as making you feel better about yourself but who made music that could not be ignored. I’ve been among crowds of people pogo-ing to Paranoid or air-guitaring the closing notes of Stairway to Heaven. I can’t remember who it was who said ‘If that song doesn’t move you, you’re already dead,” but that’s what the best music does, whether it be Neil Diamond, Led Zeppelin or the Specials.

 The list of music I want played when I’m lowered into my grave changes by the day but I know I will want something. I’m glad that my parents introduced me to music at an early age - and I’m not embarrassed that it was through the voice of Neil Diamond.

 * The Home of Metal exhibition is at the BMAG until September 25 2011. 

• Here are a couple of links to the music mentioned above: 
• Neil Diamond: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmP43qsAXvk&feature=related
• Led Zeppelin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9TGj2jrJk8

What I did on my holidays....

When you're a magazine editor, you get to cover the big events in your sphere. The editor of Golf World goes to all the major championships; the editor of Rugby World visits the Six Nations Championships and World Cup. Even the editor of What's Brewing has to report on CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival.

 Me? As editor of British Naturism magazine, I have the great pleasure of four days in Cornwall reporting on Nudefest.

 Nudefest is the big summer event staged by British Naturism (the organisation of which the magazine is a key marketing tool). Every year, in the second week of June, hundreds of BN members arrive at the normally-textile Newperran Holiday Park between Newquay and Perranporth and turn it into a naturist haven. This year was the fifth staging of the event and for the first time, it expanded from four days to a week.

 There were visits to the Newquay Zoo and nearby Blue Reef aquarium, which BN members could enjoy without clothes after the attractions had closed to visitors for the day; there was an amazing visit to Adrenalin Quarry, the zipwire ride near Liskeard where members could ride at 40mph (in the nude, remember) above a lake; there were archery and petanque tournaments, fitness classes, seminars and workshops on how to campaign for naturism and how to put across to the media the case for naturism; there was even a non-denominational Christian service on the Sunday morning to close the event, at which your blogger read from the Bible.

 In the evenings, there was entertainment including a good old-fashioned singalong around the piano and the highlight of the closing night on Saturday, the nude disco. (If you’ve never been to a nude disco and seen 50 naked people conga-ing across the dancefloor, I recommend you try it; you’ll never again see a clothed disco in the same light.)

 The weather? Oh, the weather was dreadful. Howling gales, pouring rain, glowering stormclouds, only brief glimpses of the sun which is supposed to be the raison d’etre of naturism.

 Yet we naturists are fun-loving and determined souls. A lot of outdoor events were moved into a marquee or the on-site pub (not the archery, though!) and the smiles and laughter that took hold during the evenings more than made up for the lack of daytime sunbathing opportunities.

 There were more people at this year’s Nudefest than ever before, plenty of whom were enjoying their first organised naturist experience. It would be great to see them at our big winter event, a weekend in November at the Alton Towers theme park in Staffordshire (no, we don’t use the outside rides; we just take over the giant indoor water park and one of the two hotels).

 If you’re interested in joining British Naturism as a result of reading this blog post, email me at martinwarrillow169@btinternet.com, or to get more information about British Naturism and its’ activities, go to www.british-naturism.org.uk.

Loyalty? What's that?

It could be the biggest story in West Midlands football for nearly 30 years. The first manager to leave Birmingham City for Aston Villa in the history of either club and the first to take the cross-city journey to Small Heath since Ron Saunders in 1982.
 A stunner, indeed, with Alex McLeish's resignation from St Andrew's via email sneaked out on a Sunday teatime while an anxious nation waited for the clouds to clear above the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix.
 As I write, it hasn't been confirmed but there seems no other route for Villa to take than appoint McLeish, having been rejected by everyone from Carlo Ancelotti to Mark Hughes. Big Eck, meanwhile, must surely know what he's doing - I can't believe he fancies battling Steve McClaren for the task of hauling Nottingham Forest back into the top flight.
 If the Scotsman does make the move, it will turn him into a hate figure across much of Birmingham while Villa's fans, having forced the club into a climbdown over McClaren, will hardly be breaking out the champagne.
 Loyalty to the club McLeish took down, of course, will have disappeared out of the window at the expense of a vastly-improved salary and overweening ambition. So let's not talk about him; let's talk about real loyalty to a football club.
 In all of Sunday's fuss, it may have escaped your notice that Rushden & Diamonds have been expelled from Blue Square Premier (aka Conference National, aka the division below League Two) for non-payment of debts.
 Non-league fans may have their own views about a club born of a merger between two small village teams and funded by the late millionaire Max Griggs, but that's not the issue here. Their demise saves Southport from relegation and allows me to introduce you to a father-and-son duo of Southport fans who left Lancashire many years ago and now live in.......Southampton.
 I met them when Southport came to Tamworth towards the end of last season. For obvious reasons, they  can't get to home games but went to every one of Southport's away games south of the River Trent in 2010-11, most of which were defeats. The thought of relegation into the regional Blue Square North, the thought of having those games taken away from them next season, had them distraught when we met. I can only imagine their delight at having it given back to them at the expense of a club whose finances have been questionable, to say the least, for several seasons.
 The likes of McLeish, Hughes, Ancelotti wouldn't have the first idea about loyalty at that level. But I'm really looking forward to seeing those Southport fans visit Tamworth next season. Let's hope the fixture list doesn't line it up for a Tuesday night in January.

The joy of sport

If you believe my father, I was born reading the sports pages of The Birmingham Post. It's probably not true (although given that I was born in the middle of March, with rugby union and football seasons reaching their climax, it might be..) but it's certainly true to say that almost five decades later, there are few sports I don't enjoy watching.
 I generally don't get motorsport, although a neighbour in my home town of Kidderminster did convince me for a few years about the delights of Cradley Heath speedway. However, watching men I can't see going seemingly endlessly round and round the same piece of track at very high speeds, relying largely on the skills of engineering experts rather than their own talents, doesn't do it for me.
 Apart from that, though, pretty much anything involving balls of all shapes and sizes, bats, rackets, sticks, hurleys, pucks, reins, saddles and various assorted shapes and sizes of field (grass or otherwise) will get my rapt attention.
 Take the stack of DVDs and recordings surrounding my television at the moment. American college football; American professional football; the Champions League final; the GAA All-Ireland football final; the Aviva Premiership rugby union final; the Epsom Derby.
 I wouldn't claim an encyclopaedic knowledge of the ins and outs of all these sports, but I think I know enough to enjoy them, to express an opinion and to try to introduce others to their delights. Generally, I find that the things I love about sport in the round translate well to every sport.
 Maybe it's because I was never much good at sport myself. I blame my knees, as well as a nasty collision between my nose and a hockey stick during a mixed-sex match at school (My, that girl could hit a ball....). It was the late Ron Pickering, athletics coach and BBC commentator at the time when the Beeb ruled the sporting airwaves, who told me when he visited our school one day: "Those that can, do; those that can't, teach."
 To which should be added: "Those that can't teach, write about it, talk about it, express views of varying relevance and validity...."
 With a nod in the direction of my other interests, including real ale, as well as an occasional look at my professional life as a magazine editor, that is what this blog will do.