While perhaps my music tastes may not be to everyone’s liking, I do have a great passion for cover singles. My views are quite clear cut. If you really must you need to follow some simple rules. Under no circumstances, simply ‘re-produce’ the song. Revisit the song (as a friend recently put it to me) and put your own signature, style onto the track, in affect make it your own. In my humble opinion certain songs are far too sacred to be covered. Material by Michael Jackson, The Beatles and Elvis. To my disappointment yesterday morning, I watched wannabe rock band, Freefaller, and their disastrous attempt at Basket Case by Green Day. Now, this is a modern day classic, yet this mediocre boy band have completely wrecked the song, by literally shouting all over it. How can you tell a band are in trouble, when they have their name on a banner, on stage throughout the video. True artists, will let the music sell itself.

England qualified for the World Cup last night. Though their performance against Austria left much to be desired. Switching back to 4-4-2, the Three Lions looked like the away team for big patches of the game, particularly the second half. Yet, were able to hand on to the slender, one nil lead and go into the Poland game on Wednesday, with hope of a win to top the group. From the other qualifiers, Ghana and Ivory Coast have qualified and I look forward to seeing these teams in Germany next year. Although something tells me that Essien will perhaps be a (if not the only) star player in an very average Ghanaian team, compared with his world class team mates at Stamford Bridge. If we get a good draw in the group stage, I’m sure we can progress beyond the quarter final stage. England must make the semi-finals, considering the talent in the squad and the promise of 2006. The World Cup reminds me that this blog took the first few steps in June 2002, when I briefly mentioned some of the events taking place in Korea and Japan. This time around, expect more personal analysis, more photos, and links to other blogs, sharing in the World Cup dream.

Talking of football, finally got around to uploading my photographs from the Community Shield from August. They can be found on the photos page. Give me a few weeks and I will update and upgrade my entire photo gallery.