Adelaide United fans sure to savour grand final experience

 

 

Well done to Adelaide United for reaching the grand final of the A-League where they will take on Western Sydney Wanderers at Adelaide Oval on Sunday afternoon. The Reds have managed to turn around a season that looked to be heading nowhere fast in the early stages of the campaign. I have been watching with detached interest as they have cruised ever closer to their quest. What a shame Australian sport is obsessed with the play-off/finals concept otherwise the prize would be theirs already under a first-past-the-post favoured by most of the rest of the sporting world. But now Adelaide have a showpiece decider likely to draw a bumper crowd to Adelaide Oval which has been commandeered for the game in place of the Reds’ normal home base of Hindmarsh Stadium. This puts me in a predicament. I don’t really see myself as a diehard Adelaide United fanatic so do I go along to the match in the guise of the sort of fan that I normally disown — a bandwagon-jumper. Or do I sit a discreet distance away and watch the action unfold in the pub of my choice? It’s a tricky one. You can’t manufacture passion. Though the A-League has been running for just over a decade, I have never affiliated myself with any team, even though I have been to plenty of Adelaide United games. Blackburn Rovers FC and Lancashire CCC are my birthright. I can never remember life without them. Their respective ups and downs on the football and cricket fields have a profound bearing on my state of mind. I find it hard to instil similar fervour to a relatively recently created football club in the guise of Adelaide United. But on the other hand the round ball code needs all the friends it can get in Australia, so maybe I should go along to swell the numbers. But wait… there is another problem. The shape of the ground. Plonking a basically rectangular football pitch in the middle of a cricket/Australian Rules oval just doesn’t work from the spectators’ point of view. The action is too far away from the fans and the players can seem as tiny and distant as virtual Subbuteo figures. However, no doubt a healthy influx of visiting supporters championing the cause of Western Sydney Wanderers will add spice to what is sure to be a lively atmosphere. So there’s plenty to ponder as I size up whether to join the queues for tickets. It may be that the lure of the occasion will win me over and I shall have to be a ‘plastic’ fan for an afternoon. Whatever eventuates, it should be a great occasion…

Invasion of the dinosaurs as Black Sabbath and The Stranglers ride into town

Two bands from back in the darkness of time will be taking to the stage in Adelaide this week. It was too much to resist to take a peek at Black Sabbath on Sunday at the Entertainment Centre and The Stranglers at Thebarton Theatre next Friday night. Both combos are as old as the hills but at least they should know how to put on a show after being around for so long. Black Sabbath, born in the depths of gloomiest Birmingham in the late Sixties, are widely credited as being the inventors of heavy metal. Indeed they were so far ahead of their time that the term didn’t even exist when their eponymous first album hit the airwaves back in 1970. I remember listening to the songs for the first time all those years ago and finding some of the music genuinely scary. It would have made a suitable backdrop to any horror movie. Even the album cover hinted at some of the dark ditties awaiting on the Vertigo vinyl. It featured a female in a black robe with a seemingly green face in front of an eerie autumnal English countryside setting. The opening track was ushered in by thunder and church bells before the thud of bass and some raw but piercing guitar took over. Then came the voice of Ozzy Osbourne. Hearing the tracks again this week, I had forgotten how fierce Ozzy’s rant is. It’s as sharp as broken glass. The man may have become a caricature of himself over recent years thanks to reality TV but if his vocals are spat out with such vigour on Sunday on top of the thick-as-treacle sound layering of bassist Geezer Butler and guitar honcho Tony Iommi, it should be some ride. I never saw Black Sabbath in my youth, as I explored the weird and wonderful sounds of the Seventies. But they were acknowledged as rock heavyweights alongside probably Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin in that genre. I saw Deep Purple at Manchester Free Trade Hall as a young teen in 1971 and they delivered. But Plant, Page and co left me underwhelmed at Preston Guild Hall in 1973. I wonder which way the evergreen survivors of Black Sabbath will go on the coming Sabbath. The reviews of the shows already undertaken across the USA suggest that Adelaide fans are in for a treat. As the Seventies progressed, so dawned the age of punk. As the previously cult movement went overground in 1976 and 1977 it gave the chance for some bands to ride into the spotlight on its coat flaps who otherwise might not have made it. The Stranglers were one such outfit. They didn’t look like stereotype punks, they were older than most of their peers and their first album, Rattus Norvegicus, contained swirling keyboards courtesy of Dave Greenfield and thumping bass via Jean-Jacques Burnel plus long songs with tongue-in-cheek smutty, sleazy and sexist lyrics. But The Stranglers didn’t care. They had one of the components of the punk spirit that some music observers forget was part of it – a sense of humour. And as well as rambling album tracks they put out killer singles. In the long-gone days of the Lodestar, the legendary nightclub that appeared like a mirage in the black of night in the middle of the rural spread of the Ribble Valley, one track certain to have the dancefloor exploding into a mass of pogo craziness was No More Heroes. Classic Stranglers. The band progressed into middle age and beyond, with ever changing personnel, consistently doing their own thing and making their own rules. Burnel has been there since the word go. However, the other well-known face of the original band, Hugh Cornwell, opted out some time ago. Again, reviews of recent concerts in the UK suggest that the old men are in a good groove on stage. I hope so because the only time that I previously saw them was at Newcastle’s Mayfair in the early Eighties and they were mediocre at best. In fact, the gig could have been filed under “Bands I nearly walked out on.” However that was the era when the band were buried in their alien conspiracy theories centred on their fifth album ‘The Gospel According to the Meninblack.’ That was too weird even for me, so after all this time, I guess they deserve another chance. Whatever happens at the two dates in Adelaide, it will be an opportunity to see how two stalwart bands have survived the ravages of years gone by. Even people-watching amid the respective audiences could be an amusing pastime. As musicians grow older, their followings seemingly increase. At least that is what these two bands will be hoping this week.