Summery season summary

I didn't go to any football matches in May, but this week I went to watch Cymru's women's team play Czechia in their final group game qualifier for the Women's World Cup. It was my final game of the season. Cymru won 3-1 to make sure I wrapped up my season on a high.

I feel like I had a good season, even though 47 matches is a few less than I've managed in recent seasons. Even with the slightly reduced number of games I completed four and a bit of the six goals I set myself for the season.

My 9 new grounds this season means I hit a new milestone of 150 football grounds. That was one of my season goals. 

My season's map of all the 27 grounds I went to has one significant outlier. 

Yep, it was my trip to Malaga. (Read my match report.) Going to a game in Spain with my friend, Jim, was another ambition for the season that I'm happy I ticked off.

Two of the other new grounds were watching Shrewsbury playing away, at Swindon and Oldham respectively. At the start of the season I listed six possible Shrewsbury away games to go to. Swindon was on the list, Oldham was not. I didn't make it to any of my other targets on the list, a mix of other commitments and crap scheduling. 

Shrewsbury had a pretty dire season, saved by a new manager bounce when Gavin Cowan came in as manager and won 5 games in a row. I didn't see any of those wins. In fact, I only saw one win in the six matches I went to.

Cardiff Draconians had a good season, finishing sixth in their first season in the second tier. Barry Town also did well, finishing third and winning the MG Cup. I couldn't go to the final because I was at a bucket list Thousand Yard Stare gig. I went to the Welsh Cup final though, and saw Caernarfon lift the trophy for the first time in their history. 

The Dracs helped me to another one of my season goals - ticking off all the grounds in the Cymru South. I managed that early in the season, with a trip to Carmarthen Town in August. My final domestic game of the season was a play off match for Poole Town - this took me up to 10 Poole Town games, which was another target for me this season.

One goal I missed was another game in Scotland. My trip up there at the end of October didn't work out football-wise, but I had the fantastic consolation of watching a rugby international at Murrayfield instead. 

I'm currently thinking up some new goals for next year during a brief break from football. (I'm boycotting the ghastly World Cup!) However, pre-season friendlies and the qualifying rounds for UEFA competitions start soon so I don't have long to wait. 

Bucket list gig: Thousand Yard Stare

I discovered Thousand Yard Stare in about 1992 when I bought a copy of Vox magazine that came with a free cassette that included one of their songs, Wideshire. When I moved to Cardiff in 1994 I found their album Mappamundi in a sale in HMV. I played that cassette to death in my room in uni digs. 

Mappamundi was their 'difficult second album'. The band split up almost immediately after releasing it and the 'shoegaze' scene they were part of declined rapidly. Over the next couple of years I collected most of their back catalogue. But I resigned myself to never seeing them live. 

Then about 10 years ago the band reunited and cut a new record. I had lost track of what they were up to and didn't realise until a couple of years ago, so I had another back catalogue to collect!

This tour was meant to happen last May but got postponed due to one of the band having health issues. It got rescheduled for the last day in February, which means it was my first gig in 2026.

I'd not been to the Louisiana before. It's a (lovely) pub with a gig room upstairs. A couple of years ago I met an online friend called Dave at a football match. Dave is also a gig-goer. He lives in Bristol and advised me to get close to the front at the venue. He wasn't wrong - it's a long room with no slope to the floor and a low stage. I ended up about 3 rows back and got a great view.

It's a standing only venue and Cathy found that hard so she headed back downstairs where there was a comfy sofa she could curl up on. She says the staff were all very kind when she said she wasn't feeling well. 

It might have been for the best that she went downstairs because the gig got a bit "moshy", no mean feat considering most of the people there were in my age bracket. Me, I felt 19 again, listening to songs I thought I'd never hear live.

And wow, they were good. They played a couple of post-reformation songs, but they knew what we wanted to hear and belted out the classics like Comeuppance ("our only hit"), Buttermouth, Wideshire, 0-0 (aet) and Version of Me. 

Stephen, the singer, introduced my absolute favourite track, What's Your Level? as "a song I wrote in response to people calling me a 'wordy twat'". They played it quite early in the set, and that's when it first got a bit moshy and sweaty. 

He is also the only singer I know who snacks on apples during a gig.

Stephen is heavily involved at Bristol Manor Farm FC (scene of my first football match after lockdown!) and had hung up some flags behind the stage. Some of the Farmy Army had come along to enjoy the show. Cue lots of banter as he kept scolding them to behave.

He also said that he didn't listen to the bands' second album until a few years back, because the band were splitting up as it was released and the reviews were negative. I was able to shake his hand at the end and tell him that I played that album until the cassette died and how much I loved finally seeing them live.

So that was my bucket list gig. Massive thanks to Dave for the advice, the great chats about gigs and football, and also sending me some of his photos to use in this blogpost!

In praise of the physical format

This blog post is a response to an innocent question from Connor a while back that got me thinking. Here's the Q:

Now, a bit of an odd question: Why do you still buy CDs? Do you not have any music streaming services?

And here are some reasons.

Tangible items are nice to have. I've mentioned this before when comparing cardboard baseball cards with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and I was reminded of it recently when I bought a new box-set CD retrospective released by 90s shoegazer band Thousand Yard Stare.

The set contains four CDs and a book, all housed in a sturdy slipcase. It's a thing of beauty.

(I was one of the first people to buy it and got a free bonus 7" single as well!)

(Some) physical format items retain their value as well. We recently cashed in some old console games, which have become a bit collectible. If you just download a game, then it's not as easy to sell on. 

(I also find it frustrating when I can't just turn on a console and play a game any more. I found the PlayStation particularly bad for this. There were so many administrative steps before I could start playing, I actually gave up.  The same dynamic happens with music. I don't want to have to log in to anything to play music.)

Generally, I don't like the idea of streaming services deciding what I can access. If you rely on Disney Plus for watching Star Wars you can't see the original versions of Star Wars before they got monkeyed around with (and, in the case of Return of the Jedi, ruined!). But while you can't watch them, I can, because I still have the DVD box set released 20 years ago.

Similarly, Disney insisted on several cuts to Bluey episodes and for a long time didn't have the episode 'Dad Baby' available. This reflects the strong small-c conservative, easily offended, quick to complain American market. Which is why you can't see a male cartoon dog pretending to be pregnant or ponies at a fete do a poo like ponies do. (Seriously.)

Why should I surrender control over what I can watch to a corporation? I'm aware that my online activity is feeding the algorithm because the machines are listening. But I want to retain control over my playlist as much as possible. 

And that's before we get to the one line modern horror story: What happens if the wi-fi goes down? 

(Well, I'd have something still to watch.)

Even if the wi-fi stays on, streaming services don't hold content forever and they can drop stuff without warning. In effect, while you aren't limited to the content you own, you are limited by the content they own. We end up paying for another person's library and they decide what's in it.

As an example, this year Cathy and I have started watching the show Manifest. The problem was Netflix only had the first, second and fourth seasons available. The third season was on another streaming service. What to do? We opted to buy the series on DVD. (And then, after we bought the physical format that Netflix reached a deal with the other streamer. However, at this rate, we will have finished the fourth and final series before season 3 arrives on Netflix.)

I realise this sounds like a regressive rant by an irritable Gen X old man who is reluctant to surrender control and autonomy. But I don't care. I'm going to keep buying CDs and other physical format items and, in the long run, I think I'll be proven wise to do so. There's safety in being a late adopter. 

Lastly, I'm Generation X. I remember the 20th century. I lived a pre-Internet life. Nostalgia is the weapon pointed at me most often. Having the physical artefact is a reminder of back when I was more innocent and less cynical. And is that a bad thing?

10 albums

There's a thing on Facebook at the moment. People posting the 10 albums they feel are most influential on them. You're supposed to just post the pictures with no commentary, but most people can't resist a bit of commentary.

I thought it would make an interesting blog post, though. Which 10 albums would I pick? I've had a go, and included a couple of recent ones that will be influencing me for a while to come. 

I got obsessed with Midnight Oil in my teens and into my early twenties. I bought their entire back catalogue of albums and singles and anything I could get my hands on. I connected with them the first time I heard Beds are Burning playing on the Radio 1 breakfast show on the bus to school. Diesel and Dust was the peak of their success. I think what I liked most about them is that their songs were actually about stuff that mattered.

In school I got into rock. The next two albums were very big for me when I was 14.

Yeah, yeah, mock me all you want. But tell me Animal isn't a great 80s rock song. And New Jersey is stadium rock at its finest. 

I can't tell you how many times I listened to this next album in my first year at university.

I was also massively into the Eagles, round about the same time. Desperado was always my favourite Eagles album, and the one I would come back to again and again.

Then along came Cathy. She changed my life. So did this album that she introduced me too. It is one of the few albums ever produced where every track is solid. No duff filler to be seen.

Because I loved Midnight Oil, I bought a random protest single they recorded with a few other bands, including the Tragically Hip. That's how I got into the Tragically Hip. Fully Completely is another perfect album. I recite a section of At the Hundredth Meridian as my 'calm mantra'. 

Hot Fuss probably isn't the best Killers album. It has the best first five tracks though, starting with Jenny was a Friend of Mine and working up to All These Things That I've Done. Yes, there are other albums with great songs on. I love The Man off their most recent release. But Hot Fuss is where it all began and those first five tracks in particular are better than entire albums produced by lesser bands. 

This album is absolute gold even though it's only a couple of years old. We played it relentlessly on a summer holiday in Dorset so I associate it with hot long summer days, beaches and the sea. It is driving music, and relaxing music, and meal prep music, and background music, and foreground music, and everybody sings along music.

And onto the tenth album, and the most recent. Doom Days is Bastille's third album. OK, it doesn't have Pompeii on it, but it is a really solid listen throughout and their most musically accomplished complete album. We have played it a lot recently and I can't see me growing tired of it any time soon.

So, there you go. 10 albums. 

Five bands you've probably never heard of

The Tragically Hip

Their album Fully Completely is one of my all-time favourites. Killer riffs, dark snarley vocals, heavy drum lines. And they're Canadian. But I would never have got into The Hip if they hadn't collaborated on a campaign record with several other bands and I hadn't been into...

Midnight Oil

...who joined the Hip on the single 'Land'. I can't remember exactly when I started listening to Diesel and Dust repeatedly, but it was round about the time homework started getting serious and I spent a lot more time in my room with a beat-up cassette deck. (I didn't do any work, I just listened to tapes, but as long as I stayed in my room no one asked me if I'd done all my homework. And people wonder how I flunked Economics A-Level.)

I wore my tape of Diesel and Dust out in the end. Even now I know the album word for word. Their other stuff is good too. They're Australian, which is close enough to New Zealand to justify my next choice of bands you've never heard of...

The Mutton Birds

Actually only on this list because I bought a single ridiculously cheap and heard their song Dominion Road. But, man, what a song. It's amazing how hearing one song by a band can get you into them. I guess that's why bands put tracks on free tapes on the front of magazines like Vox...

Thousand Yard Stare

...what do you mean you don't remeber Vox? OK, it folded a while ago, but I still have the Vox Box free cassette which included a track from TYS. That's the original TYS, not the American band now using the name. This lot were from some incredibly dull town like Staines or somewhere, and they all had un-rock-and-roll names like Giles.

After a string of singles, they only did two full studio albums, but they're cracking. Over the years I've managed to collect just about everything they ever did in one form or another...

Dr Hook

...which would be impossible to do with Dr Hook as they've released about 25 albums over the years.

True story: we went to a signing by former Dr Hook singer Dennis Locorriere a couple of years ago and took along an old Dr Hook vinyl greatest hits album for him to sign. We got chatting to him and he put us on the guest list for his show that evening, where he was his own support act, performing an entire solo acoustic show before taking a short break, then reappearing with a full electric backing band and rocking the place out. Of all the gigs I've been to, that was probably the one which impressed me the most.