It’s official! After the birthday BBQ at the Butchers Arms and family celebrations on the day, the blog has been handed over to its rightful owner. No more silly posts, only serious music stuff for the truly committed.

But things are never as easy as you hope for. Life offers plenty of distractions (aka excuses) and unexpected twists and turns. Kevin had been planning to update his ancient laptop for some time, so having a blog to maintain was a very convenient trigger for actually visiting a shop and making the leap (for some getting new gadgets is an enjoyable experience, for others – a torment).

So far so good, but imagine the annoyance when shortly after he got back home someone nicked his bike from the garage! The perfect crime of opportunity: someone dumped the bike they were cycling on outside the neighbour’s house and went of on Kevin’s bike…

Understandably, the pleasures of blogging had to be pushed down the priority list. But no more! As we were walking into work this week (4 miles each way, I think I’m done for now, thank you very much…), Kevin was sharing his thoughts and ideas for the blog, features and regulars, some to do with the tapes we tease him about so much (a NEW tape came through the post this week. Long live the tape!).

And so without further ado, this is the last you hear from me. I am now sending Kevin login details and I leave him and you to enjoy the music.

Thanks again for making this happen, Birthday bloggers!

Joanna

Shaun and Kev are both from the North West, but it’s another thing they share that will keep their friendship going forever: their unconditional love for the mighty Zep.

Kev!!! My wordsmith brother in arms! (didn’t take me long to mention a Dire Straits track) 40 is the new 40 my man, and let’s not forget that Jimmy Page surmounted that barrier in a heroin-flecked hedonistic haze back in 1983, and he’s still going strong! Though I am not condoning the abuse of hard drugs, I AM pointing out that we are younger than we think we are, and have a few riffs residing within us yet to be scooped out of the cranium, so get the guitar out!

Once we are together (not often enough) it usually takes on average, less than 12 minutes for one of us to mention the mighty Zep, before we’re off on some ludicrously fanciful discussion. From there we tend to take in all points, from philosophical to pharmacological, before repairing to a decent “no football on the telly” boozer for a couple of foamers.

From pie quests in New Zealand and the endless ennui of immovable buses in the Grand Canyon all the way to long pointless rambles circumnavigating the BT tower, direction has never been our strong point, though its never mattered, cos we always have massive amounts of sh*t to talk!

I am gutted I can’t be there to get drunk with you dear boy, but at least we had The Who to keep us going till the next time. I hope you get so bladdered you look like a Fremont Crazy. LOTS OF LOVE KEV! Shaun.

Even if there’s no certainty as to Sarah’s favourite band, there is no doubt about her preferred colour. Green. Green Day? Or a day on a green lawn, on the side line of an under 9 or under 11 football match. The rock-football mum, absolutely the best!

In the spirit of Nick Hornby I thought we should celebrate your birthday with “the collective boys” favourite compilation CD top 10:

1. Back in black: AC/DC
2. Georgie the Belfast boy: Don Fardon
3. Hey Joe: Jimi Hendrix
4. Thors Hammer: Tyr
5. Ace of Spades: Motorhead
6. Mickey: Spear of Destiny
7. Immigrants Song: Led Zep
8. She Sells Sanctuary: The Cult
9. A Hard Days Night: The Beatles
10. The Ladies Bras: Johnny Trunk et al

Gareth promises to make you the perfect CD when back from boy sitting in the Lakes!

Hope you have a fantastic party – looking forward to celebrating with a few beers.

This picture is in memory of our childhood. We will have to explain to the “spotify generation” what we were doing on Thursday evenings close to the telly while hissing “shut up” at our parents…

All our love – Sarah, Gareth, George and Joe x

According to Jenny, she’s Irish, but I’m pretty sure Fritwell, Oxfordshire, ain’t in Eire. She loves reading books and is the only person I know who is a match for Kevin in music trivia pub quizzes.

Kev’s a lifelong fan of the guitar,

Jimmy Page, Slash, maybe even Johnny Marr?

Led Zeppelin and Neil Young,

In his bedroom he’ll strum.

Rock on Kev! 40’s no barrier!

Keep on Strumming Kev and Happy 40^th to you

Jenny xx

Mike is not a professional kayaker (it doesn’t look like a real word), but who knows what he would decide given the choice? Mike and Kev ended up as accidental gig buddies. All thanks to Rob, who couldn’t go, but is over it now. No, really, he is, read for yourselves.

Another real newbie to the blog here!

A couple of months ago I went along to the Year 4 dads’ Butcher’s Arms session. Whilst there, Kev had asked if I’d been or were going to any gigs soon.  So happened that I was off to B’ham to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse (taking Morgan, my son, to his first ever gig). Rob was going too, but not Kev. Long story short: Rob couldn’t go so Kev ended up coming along too.

An amazing night as old Neil worked his way through the Crazy Horse back catalogue, with a wall of noise and fantastic guitar work. Morgan loves the acoustic stuff, so adored Heart of Gold and a great version of Blowin in the wind, as well as one or two timeless classics, such as Powderfinger and Cortez. He wasn’t so enamoured with the end of Walk Like A Giant, ten-minutes of feedback, abstract walls of sound, waste paper blowing over the stage, Mr Young huddled together between giant fake speakers with Crazy Horse.

Most of us starting to think- will it never end, but “Ah!”, I thought. I know one person who will be hoping for at least another 10 minutes more… And he didn’t let me down in the post gig review on the way home, picking it as one of his 2 top moments, along with the extended F****in up banter between Young and the band. I expected nothing less. Neil Young – pure bourbon!!! (as opposed to Cliff’s Kaliber).

Cheers Kevin, have a great birthday – 1973 – what a vintage. Sorry I can’t be there.

Ever since their first musical meeting, Simon took it upon himself to get Kevin to acknowledge that thinking The Who are the greatest band of all is as OK as being a fan of Led Zeppelin. Can you guess if he’s been successful? Yeah, you guess  right! Doesn’t hurt to try again!

A list, Mr Wood?* A favourite Oxford gig list? Mmmm…….Ida Maria in a pub of 40 people, Happy Mondays and feeling young and fit**, Chantelle MacGregor out Hendrixing Hendrix……all good, but please open your mind, park the need for heavy riffs in your impressively tidy garage, and inhale the magic of Half Man Half Biscuit. A John Peel seal of approval must count for something?***

How can you not be tempted with song titles: Joy Division Oven Gloves or Something’s Rotten In The Back Of Iceland

Is it just me? No! There were other balding men of a certain age bouncing and sweating gently with joy at the Zodiac on a summer May’s evening. I could extol further but I’ve been  given a clear bore alert and advised that I’m supposed to be wishing you a jolly happy birthday. So, we must celebrate and drink until you’re convinced of the superiority of Keith Moon. Or until we fall asleep.

Have a good one old boy.

Simon

*should that be A-list Mr Wood?

**relative to the audience

*** ‘when I die I want them to be buried with me’

Emily first met Kev stalking the OUP salad bar with Shaun (her future husband) in hot pursuit of mince-meat. She was the first person to accuse Kev of being the fridge thief in the ELT kitchen, stealing random pieces of fruit (half an avocado, a piece of fruit and nut) resulting in the commonly used suffix of greeting “SCAV”, for example, musicalblogscav.

… This was my favourite wind-up phrase to sling at Kev over a few drinks of a Fritag, BC (before children) that is. As the Ant put it “ridicule is nothing to be scared of” and so it was with you dear salad-muncher. Most Friday nights at 5 o’clock on the dot, Kev, Shaun and me would leave the pillars of decency (OUP), find a suitable watering-hole and wile away the night talking existential crisis and, of course, music. Much of the music talk would involve a large dose of 80s nostalgia – the 80s being our musical common ground.

It went something like this, “remember  Kev ‘Eee, haa, Eee, haa’, arms erect, cross, uncross, big stride forward. Brilliant Prince Charming vid. Or, the Midge, walking in the cold night air in his Del-Boy camel jacket “the feeling is gone only you and I, aaaggghhhh Vienna”. Don’t forget Frankie, my first LP which I know you appreciated “I, yi, yi, yaahaaa”. What else? Oh yeah, much fond talk of the likes of A-Ha, Toyah Wilcox and Kajagoogoo (snigger) and anything else we could remember taping form the charts. Thanks Kev for all those musical reminisces. Keep-on perforating your eardrums.

Love-ya, Emily xxxx

If I say that Si Moss is the gentlest giant in town, and you’re not sure what I mean, then all you need to do is look at the picture. He looks so cute with his colourful friends! Hang on – are you playing with Jack’s toys again???

I’ve never contributed  to a music blog before, but I’ll pretend I know what I’m doing by starting off with a suitably bookish quote in a vain attempt to make it look I know what I’m doing. Even though I don’t.

Tony Wilson once said “…Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented…Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does…”.

Would Kev agree with this? Probably not. Even Kev has a discrete jazz section tucked away in the depths of his record collection. I’d wager that most musical genres are represented in there somewhere (and for these purposes I’m not including the Vanilla Ice CDs that Steve Brown has tried to fob off onto Kev).

I can’t speak for Kev’s formative years but there’s no reason to doubt his mum’s testimony that he dedicated most of the early 80’s perfecting Shakin Stevens’ dance moves. I know this because I’ve seen Kev on the dancefloor. Kev and I met in 1991 at Leicester University. I was a young, tall, handsome Welshman (some might say dashing and suave) and Kev was from Lancashire. What Kev had that most of us did not was an already impressive record collection. It was pretty obvious that here was a guy that had spent most of the previous decade listening to and taping the best of John Peel’s and Tommy Vance’s radio shows. It is a little known fact that, to this day, Kev possesses the largest collection of cassette tapes south of Nuneaton.

I’d like to say that Kev and I spent our student days attending legendary gig after legendary gig but I think we were usually too skint. We missed Alice in Chains touring the “Dirt” album in 1994 because we viewed the £12 admission fee to Nottingham’s Rock City as extortionate. It’s important to also note that, in those days, Kev had a penchant for locking himself in toilets (usually partially clothed) after about 4 pints of medium strength cider. That pretty much ate into any spare time we had for getting to gigs.

If you ask Kev whether he saw Kyuss play at the Leicester Charlotte (a venue slightly smaller than Kev’s garage), he’ll say “no”. But I’m pretty sure he saw Rolf Harris play at the student’s union. Kev also missed Tori Amos playing an intimate gig at a hall of residence. But he more than made up for this by getting to see the Proclaimers. Legend has it that Kev was on the door for that gig and for the subsequent few years he had “Proclaimers’ Bouncer” on his c.v.

By the mid 1990’s, Kev had become adept at missing renowned performances by now celebrated bands. I’ll partly take the blame for him missing the Flaming Lips and Radiohead at Reading ’94 (I’d written both off as ‘cobblers’) but Kev has to take full responsibility for missing Jeff Buckley’s performance in favour of watching a band called ‘senser’ (ever heard of senser? Exactly).

Missed gigs aside, Kev should be applauded for playing a pivotal role in the current so-called vinyl revival. Years of digging around in crates at record fairs and unearthing exciting new (but usually exciting old) bands and albums and dedicating hour upon hour of studiously trawling the record shops of the western hemisphere have paid dividends. But with a great record collection comes great responsibility and even Kev has his weaknesses: he still thinks Lou Reed’s ‘Metal Machine Music’ has its merits (64 minutes of white noise, anyone?) and that Neil Young’s ‘Arc’ is worth a listen (35 minutes of feedback and ‘voice fragments’ anyone?) But for every Metal Machine Music and Arc, there are probably another 50 albums that Kev could recommend that will undoubtedly improve the quality of your life (again, I’m not including anything that Steve Brown has ever bought for him).

Kev recommended a film to me a couple of years ago in which Jack White says that he doesn’t trust anyone who doesn’t like Led Zeppelin. Too right. But Mr White could equally have said “You can trust people who dance like Shakin Stevens (if they like Led Zeppelin)” but that probably wouldn’t have made such a good quote.