Take, Take, Take it to the Bridge

Well so far today the Villa news is that we've "had dialogue" with Man Citeh over loaning Wayne Bridge to the end of the season. Needs must I suppose and one thing is for sure, we need a left back, its one of the priority positions that need filling and Wayne Bridge is a decent player, he's better than Warnock, much better but for me Bridge represents all that is wrong with football, he's the mercenaries mercenary. His move from Southampton was a good one, moving from a lesser team to one of the big boys, is always good and his wages went through the roof, no problem with that. Then Chelsea buy his International rival for the left back berth Cashley Cole, almost straight away Cole replaces Bridge, reducing Wayne to a bit part player and as a result he also rarely appears for England. I can understand that he needed to see his contract out at this point after all, Cole gets injured, he's straight back in there, my problem with Bridge is that when that contract ran out, he chose to sign another one. No one offered him the money he was on, so he stayed at Chelsea for the money, knowing he'd rarely get a look in. That to me summed up what is wrong with British football, the players only care about their pay packets these days, that is the extent of their ambitions. When Bridge did move, he moved to Man Citeh (probably the only other team that would pay him as much) and since he now finds himself frozen out there, he's not even handed in a transfer request to them either. I'm sure there's an ABBA song dedicated to players like this. If his short term loan works for us I'll be happy and support him in the shirt but for me he's always represented what I consider to be what is wrong with the game these days.

Musically today I think I'll tell you about an album that came out about a month ago now by an old mate of mine, Dave Jackson. Dave in his time has been in a few bands from his early beginnings in 051to his first flirtations with success in the later incarnations of The Room, then came Benny Profane (where yours truly drunkenly pretended to work for the band) and after their demise came The Dead Cowboys. Now Dave has set out on his own, releasing a solo album (with John Head of Shack and Tim O'Shea providing the instrumentation / arrangements / production).

Dave was always a big fan of country music, this album proceeds most defiantly down that path with the Johnny Cash meets Nick Cave vibe in full effect. Every song is a narrative telling its own noirish story. Jerked to Jesus and 3AM are old Benny Profane songs rejigged musically (they never made it to vinyl the first time around). On a couple of songs the band are backed by a gospel choir (live, they sing on all the songs). Standout tracks for me are Red Car (see below), the aforementioned Jerked to Jesus (a sorry tale of an 19th century scientist exposed as a fraud, who ran away to America only to be hanged there for his activities as a firebrand preacher / snake oil salesman - A true story!) and the title song Cathedral Mountain. As an aside Cathedral Mountain is also the inspiration for a full length movie, Violet City currently in production screenwritten by Dave. If dark narrative and country with a hint of gospel is your thing, this might be worth checking out. Me I think its good and well worth a listen.


 Dave Jackson - Red Car by Higuera Records

Dave, John and Tim are also performing the album at De Bees in Winsford on 20th Jan, if you're in the area it might be worth checking out. Might try and make it across there myself with my camera to se if I can improve on this:-

Taken at the album launch a couple of weeks ago.