Today's post begins in the form of a well-directed rant. Tomorrow evening sees the return of BBC Sports Personality of the Year, a rather exciting return seeing as this has probably been the greatest year for British sport since, well, ever, or certainly in my humble 21 years. As a kid it used to be one of my favourite programmes and I'd spend hours scrutinizing the year's lists and trying to work out who was the most worthy of the award (I was a pretty boring child). I was over the moon when Flintoff won in 2005, and the sight of him receiving it, absolutely knackered at half 4 in the morning in Pakistan, was one which will stay with me for a while.
However... 2006 saw Zara Phillips win and while I'm still undecided on the whole 'she obviously only won because she's a royal' line, it was an incredibly boring year. Does anyone really want to see a stupidly posh woman on a horse accepting what's meant to be Britain's most prestigious sporting award? Then came 2009, and Ryan Giggs won purely because he was nearing the end of his career and a hell of a lot of people in England support Man United. His 2009 was, by his standards, distinctly average, and then it turned out he was a massive massive cheating arsehole and no one even bothered to strip him of the award.
This year, choosing a winner is painfully impossible and therefore shouldn't be done. My nod might just about go to Wiggins but there's also the Olympic gold-medal winning poster girl, a wheelchair racer who won a stupid amount of golds (and has been blessed with classy nickname The Weirwolf), and lest we not forget a tennis player who got to the final of Wimbledon, won the US Open and also Olympic gold.
So basically it's now become kind of pointless, is hosted by three stupidly annoying people in the shape of Gary Lineker, Sue Barker and Clare effing Balding, and I urge everyone not to vote or, if you so choose, not to even watch. It's dead to me, which leads me on beautifully to band of the week Dead Sons (wow).
I first came across Dead Sons when I heard their song 'Shotgun Woman' on a CD given out by Jon McClure (the Reverend) at a Reverend and the Makers gig last summer. Dead Sons rose to prominence when they supported Arctic Monkeys at Don Valley a couple of summers ago, and since then they've developed a decent Yorkshire fan base. They call themselves desert rock, a refreshing genre which we don't hear too much about any more (the only other desert rock band I really like are led by the coolest ginger man in the world). They formed in 2010 alongside fellow Sheffielders The Backhanded Compliments and contain 2 ex-members of one of Yorkshire's finest, Milburn. At first listen they might sound like a ridiculous copycat of Arctic Monkeys but the desert rock aspect means the guitars are far darker and to be frank there should really be more music like this out there so I don't really see it as that much of an issue.
Fun Fact of the day- for some reason which Wikipedia hasn't had the decency to clarify, 'Shotgun Woman' reached number two in the Turkish music charts and the band have a supposedly substantial following in the land of kebabs. I've put the aforementioned single at the bottom along with 'Hangman', a cracking track released for Bonfire night. They're also releasing an album early next year.
Finally, not quite Yorkshire- based, but my housemate insisted I popped The Courteeners new single in as well and it's quality. The rise and rise of Liam Fray and co. looks set to continue.
Cheers for reading,
Max
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