It is, as Jane Austen might have it, a truth universally acknowledged that a man must have a hobby and one of mine is the collection and use of interesting phrases. One of my favourite expressions in the English language as I hear it spoken in dear old London town is, ‘Swings and Roundabouts,’ and although some of my colleagues disagree with me about the meaning, from what I’ve heard it seems to be used by people to indicate that sometimes good things happen and sometimes bad things happen; often in quick succession. However, I must admit that I’m not sure which is supposed to be the good thing: I mean swings are fun for kids and roundabouts certainly ease traffic congestion in urban areas… If anyone has any answers, please let me know.

Anyway, as you may or may not be aware, last week I merrily blogged about my parents’ visit and how great it was and how happy it made me. Unfortunately, I learned the following day, that my journalist friend Olaf, who had been trying to contact me, was in London with none other than U2! And I could have met them! But I didn’t! Ouch, ouch and thirty seven times ouch! When I learned this I was, to say the least, disappointed.

They say that you should never meet your heroes because you’ll only be disappointed. They may be right, but I’d rather find that out for myself, thanks very much.There are only three people in this world I dream of meeting (and I don’t mean that metaphorically- I have literally had about a dozen dreams in which I’ve met one of them). They are Paul McCartney, David Bowie and Bono – and although to you, dear reader, that might make me sound like some cow-eyed teenage girl at her first disco, well frankly, I DO NOT CARE! The fact that one of these dreams could have come true and didn’t was, and is, hard to take. So let’s call that the swing.

The roundabout came a few days later, when, and I have to be really careful here in case, by some bizarre twist of fate, U2’s lawyers are reading this, an anonymous person emailed me five tracks from their new album, No Line on the Horizon. The tracks arrived in my inbox last Saturday morning and were loaded into my trusty iPod before I walked out into the unseasonal sunshine. My word, they are good!

If you hate U2, stop reading now, because to a large extent, The Ballymun Beatles are the Marmite of modern music; you either love them or hate them. I’m an unashamed fan and they’ve been such a part of my life for the last twenty years that they could release a record solely consisting of them breaking wind into a bucket and I’d probably buy it.The title track has a great hook and lots of intriguing, Brian Eno-flavoured keyboard drones going on in the background. ‘Magnificent,’ is aptly-titled, while,’ Moment of Surrender,’ and,’ White as Snow,’ are great ballads: the former a seven-minute epic and the latter sounding so much like an old-fashioned western that I can’t stop imagining parts of it being sung by the late Johnny Cash . My favourite track at the moment is Fez – Being Born which sounds like a cross between the brooding atmospherics of Zooropa and the sublime Berlin triptych of albums Bowie recorded with Eno in the late 70s.

The album proper comes out on 2nd of March and you might just see this cow-eyed boy in the midnight queue outside HMV. A man has to have a hobby after all……

Mike

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 2:19 pm and is filed under The English Studio news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.