My brother sent me some pictures of a couple of signed albums he had found in our parents loft yesterday, this made me think it would be a good subject to talk about. The pictures were of two signed Level 42 albums I had been given at a concert way back in 1989.

I like to think I have a very wide range of musical tastes, some would probably say it’s awful but I like a lot of different types of music. I can’t stand really heavy rock where they just shout and scream all the time, that’s just annoying noise. Two bands that really stick out for me are Level 42 and Huey Lewis and the News; I have probably listened to their songs more than most over the years. Many of you may never of heard of them, but tracks like ‘The Power of Love’, ‘Hip to be Square’ and ‘Back in Time’ are some of my favourites.  This is mainly down to my parents who are big fans so would always play their albums.

I was lucky enough to see both of them live at Wembley Arena in 1989 when I was 9 years old. I can remember exactly where we sat for both concerts. For the Huey Lewis concert we were towards the back but still had great seats and I can remember some parts extremely vividly, like my mum shouting out for them to sing ‘Back in Time‘ (hmm I think that was it). The song ‘The Power of Love” which was on the Soundtrack for ‘Back to the Future’ has to be one of my all time favourite songs. This also started my interest into American Football, Huey Lewis was from San Francisco and always made reference to and had the San Francisco 49ers on stage at one concert. So because of this and England’s love with the sport in the late 80’s I became a fan of Joe Montana and the NFL.

Level 42 have also produced some of my favourite songs, tracks like ‘Lessons in Love’, ‘The Chinese Way’ and ‘Something about You’. So going to see them live was brilliant, we were sat on the floor seats so I couldn’t see very well so I remember being passed along the line to the middle aisle and being kept an eye on be the masses while I partied away, for a 9 year to be dancing around at Wembley Arena was pretty cool. At the end of that concert we stayed around as someone we knew worked on the tour and had arranged for us to meet the band, this was obviously pretty special. Unfortunately they had to leave quickly but they did take the time to sign two albums for me and these are what Joe found this week.

I will hopefully talk more about the singers, bands and songs that I like and hopefully use this as a start for some reaction from yourselves into what you like and don’t like.

Many thanks for reading.

@66SamThompson