Simon RushworthIt’s time for the rushonrock team to look back on the highs and lows of a pretty remarkable rock year and first up it’s Self Made Man. He forgot to mention that being offered the chance to blog here every week was 2008’s high point but we’ll forgive him that minor oversight in the spirit of festive cheer.
Top 20 Albums
1 Live in Gdansk David Gilmour
2 Live From Nowhere in Particular Joe Bonamassa
3 Black Ice AC/DC
4 Gift of Screws Lindsey Buckingham
5 Good To Be Bad Whitesnake
6 Snakes And Arrows Live Rush
7 Day And Age The Killers
8 Accelerate REM
9 Only By The Night Kings of Leon
10 Runnin’ Wild Airbourne
11 The Cosmos Rocks Paul Rodgers and Queen
12 Folklore And Superstition Black Stone Cherry
13 I Loved You Big Linda
14 Saturday Nights, Sunday Mornings Counting Crows
15 Silver Spoons and Broken Bones Stone Gods
16 Viva La Vida Coldplay
17 Pacific Ocean Blue (reissue) Dennis Wilson
18 Dig Out Your Soul Oasis
19 In The Midst of Beauty Michael Schenker Group
20 Songs From the Sparkle Lounge Def Leppard
Top Five Gigs
1 The Scorpions Carling Academy, Newcastle
2 Paul Rodgers and Queen Newcastle Arena
3 REM Old Trafford Cricket Ground
4 Airbourne Carling Academy, Newcastle
5 Whitesnake/Def Leppard Newcastle Arena
Top Five Rock Highs
1 Planet Rock being saved
2 The launch of Rock Radio North East
3 Hearing that Classic Rock now outsells NME
4 Discovering that the Scorpions look and sound just as they did 25 years ago.
5 Paul Rodgers’ voice
Worst Five Rock Lows
1 Failing to get a ticket for Neil Young’s Manchester gig
2 AC/DC snubbing Newcastle
3 Joe Bonamassa’s cancelled Sage concert
4 Computer crashing and losing my entire iTunes library
5 David Coverdale’s declining voice (but still a great frontman)
Top Five Hopes For 2009
1 Fleetwood Mac tour the UK
2 The Answer’s new album is just as good as their debut album
3 Led Zeppelin release a DVD of their O2 gig
4 Michael Schenker stays on the wagon
5 I get a ticket for AC/DC at Hampden Park
