2016 Lemons later...

A lemon. Having travelled all the way from Athens, Greece, it finally came to rest under one of the seats of Manchester's Etihad Stadium, having seen its favourite band, The Stone Roses live...
Several years ago, I was warned by a fellow blogger, to avoid writing a "Year In Review" post at the end of the year. So I'll try not to do that. (And I hope that she'll probably be reading this from somewhere in Poland). I won't mention every gig I went to in 2016, but I will instead stop at some key moments that happened this year which I have been waiting for for several years. (As Bruce would say, they've been a lot time coming). These were the "lemons" that I was expecting 2016 to give me on my very first post of the year.
Well, obviously, I finally saw The Stone Roses live this year. And not just anywhere, but in Manchester. And they played the full first album, including, most importantly for me "This Is The One". But what other key moments were there for me in 2016? Bruce? Well, it was only the 12th (and 13th) time that I saw him live. But... I didn't know if I could make it, if I would be able to see him this year. However, I was really looking forward to hear the full River album live, having already heard the full Born To Run in Padova and the full Born In The U.S.A. twice in Milano and in Paris. So, when Bruce announced that after the end of the US tour he would stop playing the full River I was somewhat disappointed. Now what would I get? Another one (or two) of the "Greatest Hits" shows? Was that worth waiting for? My question was answered when Bruce came up on the San Siro stage on the evening of the 3rd of July starting once again with "Land Of Hope And Dreams" exactly as he had done 3 years before in the same stadium. Because once he comes up on stage, no matter what he's playing (even "Pony Boy" I guess), you forget all your doubts, enjoy the show, and wonder why on earth did you ever doubt that you were going to have a good time (again). And he did play most of The River (at least on the first night). Now one of the reasons I was looking forward to a complete performance of The River was that I would be guaranteed to hear one of my favourite songs, "Sherry Darling", which up until then I had experienced only once, in Udine in 2009 (my last concert with Clarence). Bruce did not disappoint me and he played it both nights and I got to hear it for the 2nd and 3rd time. The 2nd time I got to sing along with it at the top of my lungs with no people pushing me. The 3rd time though, i got to dance to it with my girlfriend. So, thanks Bruce!

Another key moment was when I realized I was going to hear "Drive All Night" for only the second time, after my first time in Torino in 2009. And whereas back then, it was just a sign request (albeit a very clever one) we weren't sure if he was going to play it. This year in Milano, there was no warning. The lights were already off and suddenly the piano intro was heard, courtesy of Professor Roy Bittan as a chill went through all over my body. Which left only one thing... "Point Blank"... for the first time ever. I knew when it was supposed to come in the setlist. And the lights went off. And then there was silence for several seconds. And then there was Roy Bittan's piano and I knew that was it.
Yes, there were a lot of important moments for me in 2016, which I realize that was not a very good year for music. But these few ones from Manchester and Milano were the most important for me. I guess that paraphrasing The Stone Roses you could say that "these were the ones I was waiting for"...

Party like it's 1989 - The Stone Roses in Manchester

It was back in November of last year that the streets of Manchester were suddenly filled with posters of lemons. Immediately we went on Stone Roses alert! True enough, the next day two gigs in Manchester were announced for the 17th and 18th of June. Tickets would go on sale on November 6, 9AM GMT. From Stone Roses alert we went to ticket stress mode. On that day, a few minutes before 11AM Greek time I had two computers and several browsers open on two different sites. My initial plan was to go for the 18th of June gig, but when the box office opened it was complete chaos and total mayhem. The sites would put me in a queue and when I got at the "front" of this virtual queue I got put on the back of a new one or was told that tickets were not available. At one point one of the sites crashed. I was switching between the 17th and 18th of June gigs in a desperate attempt to find something. Meanwhile two further gigs were added; one on the 19th and then another on the 15th. And finally I was allocated two seats on the 17th! Whew! The hard part was over. All we had to do now was wait for June...
...And June finally came and the dream was about to come true. In the afternoon of June 17th we took the tram from Manchester city centre to Etihad campus (and got souvenir tram tickets labeled "The Stone Roses").
As usual, we went first to the merchandize stand, to get ourserves sorted.

Then, we slowly went on our way to our gate, which involved walking around the stadium. We then passed through security which was a big tighter than usual, but that's understandable, right?
We found our way to our seats, high up, but at least covered in case it rained. And as we were watching the stadium starting to fill up and were waiting for Buzzcocks, the first support act, we had time to appreciate the fact that one of the songs played through the speakers was "Hallelujah" by The Happy Mondays, the other big act of the Madchester era.

 

So Buzzcocks came up on stage and treated us to several songs dating as far back as the 70's not forgetting their trademark "Ever Fallen In Love". Even I am not old enough to remember this, I first heard it circa 1987 in its cover by The Fine Young Cannibals.

The next act were Coral. Coral had been playing support for Paul Weller when I saw him at the O2 Arena back in 2009. However due to some closed lines at the tube I had arrived late and missed them, so I finally got to see them now, 7 years later...

Public Enemy seemed a strange choice for a support act, but maybe not so if you take into account how much Ian Brown was into hip-hop. This was actually one of the factors causing friction between him and John Squire who was probably more into Led Zeppelin as evidenced from the second album... And still you have to appreciate the fact that this gig gave us a chance to see live not just one great hip hop act from the 80's but the greatest hip-hop act ever.
Their set started with a warm up from their offshoot PE2.0 who even gave us a Prince tribute .

Then the main act came on with "all the hits". Yes, it's fair to say that. You see, I was expecting "Fight The Power" and "Don't Believe The Hype" but I never thought they would play "Shut 'Em Down", from the 90's my second favourite Public Enemy single (after "Fight The Power"). We also got DJ Lord showing us his ablilities when mixing "Seven Nation Army" with Nirvana. Finally Flavor Flav finished the set telling us to "f**k racicm" but more importantly "f**k separatism".

And now, what the world is waiting for... The Stone Roses!

And we all knew how they were going to start. "I Wanna Be Adored" is the perfect opening song, followed by "Elephant Stone" and "Sally Cinnamon" and and and... By that time I knew I was living a dream come true and I could not believe it. They played b-sides, they played standalone singles, they played 3 songs from the second album (including "Love Spreads" but not "Ten Storey"), they even played their new one "All For One" which may not be a great song but it's a fitting singalong anthem for such an occasion, but most importantly they played the first album in full. They even played "Don't Stop", the backwards song! What more could I have asked for? You know at every gig you go you think at the end "Ah, but they didn't play this and this" and I myself could think of a couple of songs like "Going Down" (my favourite b-side and "Ten Storey Love Song" (which is first album material placed in the second one), but since they played the complete first album, and especially "This Is The One", I was more than happy, I felt complete. Even if I walked out of the stadium after "This Is The One" I would be content. During that song I shouted out to the couple who were in front of us "This is not This Is The One, this is The Greatest Song Ever Written". God knows what they thought...

The set ended appropriately enough with "I Am The Resurrection". It started with the first song on the album and ended with the last one.

 They did not play their second newie "Beautiful Thing" which is far superior to "All For One", but it was played through the speakers while we were exiting the stadium. And when we got out we noticed that it had actually rained. Of course we would not have noticed anything since we were under cover but we did not notice the crowd inside the arena noticing.

Well, that was that. After 27 years I had finally seen The Stone Roses live.
I forgive you boys... but don't leave town!

SETLIST:

01. I Wanna Be Adored
02. Elephant Stone
03. Sally Cinnamon
04. Mersey Paradise
05. (Song for My) Sugar Spun Sister
06. Bye Bye Badman
07. Where Angels Play
08. Shoot You Down
09. Begging You
10. Waterfall
11. Don't Stop
12. Elizabeth My Dear
13. Fools Gold
14. All for One
15. Love Spreads
16. Made of Stone
17. She Bangs the Drums
18. Breaking into Heaven
19. This Is the One
20. I Am the Resurrection

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Second Coming

As I mentioned on my previous post, the summer of 1990 had started on a positive note. Having bought my 12 inch copy of "One Love", a song which featured on most of my summer mix tapes of that year, the future looked bright: We could look forward to more brilliant music from The Stone Roses in the months and years to come. Unfortunately, this was not to be. We had to wait until 1994 for new material to come out. This was in the form of the "Love Spreads" single. I remember seeing the video on MTV Europe and confusing its intro with the one from Beck's "Loser" which was also playing on MTV in the same period. It did not exactly sound like The Stone Roses but it was a good song anyway. As it turned out it was a typical example of the second album which under John Squire's influence sounded more like Led Zeppelin than like The Stone Roses. (What's funny is that because of this, "Second Coming" would probably appeal to classic rock fans who normally would not touch anything "indie" or alternative with a ten foot pole... or a selfie stick nowadays!). Anyway, I bought the single but not the album at that time and this had to do with the way I was handling my limited budget for buying records back in the 90's. I would buy the singles first, because these would be deleted after a while and as for the albums, well, these would always be available so I could buy them later. This of course meant that I delayed in buying some albums that I wanted to buy for several years, but this is not exactly what happened with Second Coming.

So let's go back in 1995 when the second single from the album came out: "Ten Storey Love Song". This sounded exactly like The Stone Roses, this was in fact what I had been waiting for since the summer of 1990. I was delighted.

In late 1995 (in fact on the same day as "Wonderwall" by Oasis as I read somewhere), the third single came out: "Begging You". I bought it without hearing it first. Well after all, I had all the other Stone Roses singles, and these were after all The Stone Roses so it could not be bad could it?. It did not have any b-sides just a few remixes. And by the time I put the needle on the record (or more precisely the laser beam on the CD since it was a CD single) the Roses were no more. They had split up. And to add insult to injury, the song was horrible. Just a constant "begging you begging you begging you" and not much else seemed to be happening. By the time I reached the 4th remix (which was the last song on the single anyway) I had had enough. "Put a sock in it Ian, I'm begging you to stop" I thought. And that was it. When the CD finished I took it out of the player, put it back in its digipak case which I then placed on the shelf... from where I never took it down again for the next 20 years! I was through with The Roses. And due to this traumatic experience I never bought the second album...

...Well I did, in 2001 along with "The Complete Stone Roses" when my interest in the band was re-awakened by the 10th anniversary edition of the first album. But still I refused to listen to it. I just put it on the shelf, probably somewhere closer to "Begging You".

And so the years passed until I finally got tickets to see them in Manchester this year. "I should really listen to the second album before going to Manchester" I thought. So I took it down from the shelf, opened the booklet... and almost placed in back on the shelf when I saw the duration of the first song: 11 minutes and 18 seconds. "This is going to be another nightmare" I thought. "Breaking Into Heaven" however is one of the best songs on Second Coming and one of the few they are more likely to play live from that album. "Driving South" is not really memorable but then comes the masterpiece (imho): "Ten Storey Love Song". I would probably not have paid much attention to "Daybreak" which comes next, but it is segued with "Ten Storey Love Song" so it forces you to listen to it more closely. But it's the following track that is a little gem: "Your Star Will Shine", followed by "Straight To The Man" and "Begging You" (and do you really want my opinion on that one again? Still it sounded better after 20 years. But only a little bit). Things slow down on "Tightrope" and continue to be slow on "Good Times" which surprisingly picks up after a while. They slow down again fo "Tears" (which is a very nice song actually) but the real surprise is the next one. "How Do You Sleep", its title bringing to mind John Lennon's song of the same name, is my favourite song on the album (after "Ten Storey..." of course) and makes you wonder what these guys could have achieved if they had stayed together. And finally the album closes with the well known "Love Spreads". Closes? Well, not exactly. "Love Spreads" is followed by 77 tracks of silence, each lasting 4 seconds (the minimum duration a CD track can have) and then, if you have left your CD player running all this time your senses are attacked by what is known as "The Foz", which is funny, but it is also quite good (in an.. ahem "funny" sort of way). This is followed by 9 more silent 4-second tracks, bringing the total to 99, the maximum number of tracks a CD can have.
And there you have it: An album review that is more than 20 years too late. Not a bad album, actually it's quite good, certainly better than the average Britpop album (are you paying attention there at the back, Noel?), but not good enough for The Stone Roses. Let's wait to see what their 3rd one (if there ever is one) will sound like. You never know. After all, if we all join hands we'll make a wall...

My 27 year love affair with The Stone Roses

I first noticed The Stone Roses when "What The World Is Waiting For" entered the UK charts. Yes, that's right, this was the original A-side of the single. But then some people turned it over and thus the world discovered "Fool's Gold" which was probably what the world was waiting for, something that did not sound like anything else we've heard before, from an indie band anyway. And we were stunned by the visuals when MTV Europe kept on playing it in 1989-90. My thoughts? It was "nice one, certainly one of the best of the Madchester era" of which my first experience was "Wrote For Luck" by The Happy Mondays (followed by "Hallelujah" and "Step On" of course). Indie bands you could dance to. But The Stone Roses were more than that as I was soon to discover thanks to the greed of their record companies, current and former. What happened? Well, after "Fool's Gold" huge success their company started re-releasing their previous singles. "Elephant Stone" was re-released and went in the top 20 and while it was still in the top 20 "Made Of Stone" was re-released and both singles were suddenly in the top 20 at the same time. And that's when I really took notice. "Made Of Stone" was awesome. "This song is featured in a movie, isn't it?" asked one of my fellow students. It wasn't, but it sounded like it was. So I went and bought both. Could they have written more brilliant songs? Yes they could, and I realized that when "Sally Cinnamon" was re-released by their previous record company to capitalize on their success. A re-release that sparked their famous court case when the band went and vandalized the company's offices. But "Sally Cinnamon" was probably one of their best songs ever! I bought that and then "She Bangs The Drums" followed by the American 12 inch of "Fool's Gold" on yellow vinyl to complete my collection. "You're missing one though" said one of my friends. Yes, "I Wanna Be Adored" proved a little bit more difficult to track down but once again I managed to find the American 12 inch. And just before I left for Greece for my summer holidays "One Love" came out and this was my latest addition and the one that made me think that yes, the summer of 1990 is going to be a great summer and the following years are going to be even better with more brilliant music coming from The Stone Roses...
And that's where I was wrong. The band went into a period of inactivity while caught up in another court case trying to get out of their contract and there was nothing from them. Meanwhile we would sit with my other fellow students to listen to the album and one of them concluded that "This Is The One" was probably the best song in there. A few months later my roommate came up to me and said "You like The Stone Roses? Well, you should listen to Waterfall, now that's a good song". Funnily enough, a month later "Waterfall" was released as a single in a remix that did not change the structure of the song, just added a drum loop to it. That was in 1991 I think and then a year later there was a remix of "I Am The Resurrection" in a shorter version again with a different drum loop. And then nothing. No second album.
Until late 1994 when "Love Spreads" came out. The second album did materialize then but before we knew what was going on, the band had split up.
I came back to the first album in 2001 though when along with the newly released "Remixes" album, I picked up the 10th Anniversary Edition of the first one which featured the non-album singles of that era plus some videos and more interactive material. 

Once again, I confirmed to myself that "This Is The One" was their best song, but I had the chance to rediscover others that would be my favourites, more importantly "Shoot You Down". And since at that time I was working in a record shop I finally bought "Second Coming". Why was I so late to pick that one up? Well, that's a whole different topic for discussion for my next blog post. Finally I bought "The Complete Stone Roses" to complete my collection. You see, there have been several compilations issued over the years but "The Complete Stone Roses" features all the singles (even their very first one "So Young" which I had found back in 1996), their b-sides, basically everything that was not featured in an album from their first era. So if you want to have everything by The Stone Roses you only need to buy 3 albums: The standard version of "The Stone Roses", "Second Coming" and "The Complete Stone Roses". That's it. Of course some people will mention "Garage Flower" a collection of demos from 1985 I think which the band did not want released, but you'll need that only if you are a completist.

But I would once again come back to the first album in 2009 when its 20th Anniversary Edition came out. Well, I had the 10th Anniversary edition why would I need the 20th one? Well, it was a box featuring 3 CD's (The album , the Extras-singles and B-sides, and some demos), 3 vinyl albums (The album and the extras), a live DVD plus a USB stick in the shape of a lemon that featured most of the above and more. I think it was the USB stick that did it for me and made me buy it. I remember I was abroad following Bruce Springsteen on his Italian tour of that year and when I came home I found the box waiting for me.

When I sat down and listened to the whole package in one go in the new year I said to myself "Now this is a band I would have liked to see live". This would probably seem like a wild dream, but with band reunions being in fashion it was a possibility. Confirmation of which came one year later when The Stone Roses announced they were coming back. However because of the Bruce Springsteen concerts I attended around Europe in these couple of years I wasn't able to see them in 2012 and 2013 when they played live (although I picked up this NME SPECIAL SERIES magazine from a newsagents during one of my visits to London in that period. I knew it would come in handy one day).

In the autumn of 2013 "Made Of Stone" the film documenting their reunion was shown at the Athens International Festival of that year. I watched it with my girlfriend and we made a promise to each other that the next time they would go on tour we would go and see them. We had to wait until November of 2015 when suddenly posters with lemons started appearing in Manchester...