Sacred Hour.

I think Magnum would be in my top five of number of times I have seen a band, not always by choice. I first came across them supporting BOC, and I thought they were really old men then, I was only around 14 so everyone was, I enjoyed them they did the type of music I liked, well I thought I liked. Over the coming years they supported more bands than Budgie (and that takes some doing) and after a couple of times of watching the same set I was kind of getting bored with them.  I went with my brother and a friend to see the Tygers of Pan Tang at the city hall in support of the Spellbound album, a radical departure for them, a new singer and some wunderkind called Jon Sykes allegedly some kind of modern guitar god (erm not quite but he was on the way) well he at least had the ego! A band called Alcatraz opened (they had an album out on RCA called Radio 4, I only remember this because It was going to be one of my first official writing jobs outside of my circle of friends, before they got dropped, I would have to wait another six months before I was offered a paying job for writing lyrics!

They finished and then it was announced that Magnum would be on in ten minutes, an inward groan, I really was sick of the same set list, we agreed to give them two songs and then head off to the bar, imagine my surprise when they opened with two new songs from their yet to be released new album Chase the Dragon, they had  my attention, now I will admit here and now in my eyes this is their perfect album, I like them and virtually all of their albums but this was the pinnacle for me, my brother and friend buggered off to the bar, I stayed and watched and listened to their majestic brand of pomp and circumstance!

They still looked (really) old, but the new songs were simply superb, the Tygers struggled even with their vim and vigour, they simply were a pub band after what I had just seen. The album still wasn’t released for at least 8 months and I still got to see them at least 5 times, I had started to travel to see bands, I had a taste for them, most of the gig is in the north east that I attended were also were attended by my wife and she and a friend were close friends to the band especially Bob Catley, where a group of them manged to run out of petrol delivering baby clothes to him and his wife, the reason I mention this is simply because I probably went to dozens of gigs and she was there and I never knew, well at Judas Priest I did when she walked down aisle, oh matron the screens, but I digress.

Another half a dozen shows and I didn’t care as long as they did songs from Chase the Dragon, alas it wasn’t to last, they released the Eleventh Hour album and although I liked it, I was working away from home more and consequently starting seeing more bands (I know what a slut) they released On a Storyteller’s Night and it was a glorious return to form (but not a patch on you know what) and I caught a couple of shows, none of the band seemed to have aged at all since that first show in 1978 but they still looked bloody ancient! They then moved on to a major label and had Roger Taylor produce a couple of albums, I liked them but I didn’t actively seek them out, move on a few more years and they were back to an independent label and I hadn’t seen them in about six years and I hated the album (it has grown on me) I caught a show on the tour and didn’t enjoy it at all loved the classics but I had simply been away too long.

By this time, me and wife were partners in crime and money was tight, gigs were curtailed to the odd occasion as opposed to being a matter of life and death! It would be a further 12 years before we got to see them in the flesh again (Bob hadn’t changed one bit Tony had) , I wasn’t not looking forward to them, but I wasn’t jumping for joy I had seen them well into double figures and didn’t think I would get a kick out of them, boy was I wrong, and who were the young guys on stage with Bob? Damn it’s the band, energetic and exciting with great new songs, I loved them and yes they did do a couple of classics, I was a pig in heaven, after that I got the albums and went to see them every year, loving the fact that every year they were doing new classic albums, my only complaint there was nobody to reign in Tony Clarkin, a great song writer but some of the songs did not need to be that long, still classic material, but come on just because you can fit 88 minutes onto a cd doesn’t mean that you have to! I have to admit the last time we saw them in 2017 I was disappointed that they did over  an hour’s worth of a new album that was released on the day of the gig, good songs but deep cuts that are complex, they need time to seep into the blood stream, not like the bad old days, like the good old fashioned romps that they used to do, still great songs but yeah they need a little time to digest, it all went wrong from there as people left or were sacked, ever decreasing circles too much touring, with too much new material, I kind of get that you still want to feel relevant, but it’s a fine line and they were cutting their own nose to spite everything else.

Although we were going to see them this year Co-vid got out ahead of them and the tour like so many others were cancelled and so no more gigs this year, hopefully Tony has been working away like a beaver he is after all a great song writer, and he looks younger than me now……WTF!

So there you have it I knew I could do it why the title (spoiler alert) the blog kind of follows what Bob would always say when introducing the title, it takes me about an hour to type these up and check then check some more so it is kind of like a “Sacred Hour”  enjoy and watch the skies for incoming we are near the end game for this phase of the blog, well kind of, I know I have kind of given the name game away but I kind of can, so until the next time stay safe and until then …………Toodles!