Chris Stanley's Bazaar

With it being Christmas Day tomorrow, and with the two years we’ve all had, nostalgia might well be the key ingredient gracing the dinner table in people’s houses. Christmas is a time for creating memories, good or bad, and you can guarantee that whatever the weather there will be smiles, tears, arguments and people going over the top about that Nando’s gift set which will be next seen in the window of the local Blue Cross . After having a lovely memory of Christmas 1990 published in Museum Of Jerseys , it dusted off a few memories of the next few Yuletides, and so I thought I’d put all my nineties Christmases together to see if there was a thread - a Christmas ribbon, if you will. If you won’t, well, sod you - you’re the one reading when you ought to be wrapping. Enjoy! 1991 - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves Action Figures I think I grew up in the Golden Age of action figures. At the age of ten I had caught the tail-end of Star Wars merchandising, which was such a big money-spinner ...

Life is full of curiosities, and it’s inevitable that you’ll come across the odd coincidence here and there. I guess it’s a small one that within days of one Prince passing , it’s the anniversary of the death of a much more colourful one. Today marks five short years since Prince Rogers Nelson was found dead at his Paisley Park home, in circumstances that seem ill-fitting with both his lyrical themes and his beliefs. Personally, at the time, Prince’s death was far more of a rider to that of David Bowie . I liked some Prince stuff, but in the same way that I enjoyed, say, Belinda Carlisle . I hadn’t grown up with Prince in the same way that I’d grown up with Bowie, and neither had he been a touchstone in any aspect of my musical education. Nobody at school was a Prince nut; nobody at university walked about in a purple knee length frock coat and ruffles . You didn’t even hear ‘ 1999 ’ played at the student disco. Not that that’s an excuse; you didn’t hear Gay Dad either, but I bought...

A few weeks ago, I paid three pounds for a concert ticket. Depending on what year it is, this could be an enormous extravagance or a huge bargain, but in the middle of 2020 I think we can broadly agree that it’s a waste of time. However, this was no investment. The ticket isn’t likely to be worth more than what I paid for it in years to come, but I wanted it anyway. When it arrived, professionally clamped between two slices of cardboard and sealed in a plastic wallet, my heart felt a little shaft of sunlight, which took me back to 7th May 2001. I’m going to tell you what this ticket stub means to me. In 2001, I was a student at the University of Leicester . I was in my second year, and truth to tell, it wasn’t going all that well. I was doing an English degree, something which I wasn’t sure was really for me. With no options in the first year of the course, I was inevitably stuck with Shakespeare and minute line readings of The Good Soldier , when I wanted to be explaining to pink-chee...

When Prince passed away in 2016 it was a sad end to what had been an interesting life. The details of what killed him aren’t clear , but for the man who created the purring come-on of ‘ Gett Off ’ to be discovered collapsed in a lift is ignominious to say the least. It took me a long time to get around to Prince. I’m not particularly enthusiastic about funk, and his cavortings always seemed faintly ridiculous for a man of his physical stature. But even though his imperial period had long since passed by the time I recognised he was a genius, it was still a huge ambition of mine to see him live. There was opportunity, should I have been arsed enough, to see him during his O2 residency in 2007, but I guess I thought he’d go on forever, like an icon does. But then David Bowie died , England lost to Iceland and Brexit happened. 2016 was a shitshow , and it took Prince Rogers Nelson away on a purple ebb tide. For the last year I’ve overdosed on music. I’ve been doing a lot of ed...