Back in May I wrote about taking my son to town on a Saturday to buy the latest Blondie album the day after its release (“Album shopping on a Saturday afternoon”). Yesterday I went a step further, taking my daughter to town after school so that we could buy the new Liam Gallagher album “As you were” on the day it came out rather than a day later. It was the middle part of a Liam Gallagher hat trick round here. I heard him perform live on the Chris Evans show on Radio 2 in the morning and saw him on The Graham Norton Show on BBC1 after 11pm. I got my hands on a copy of the CD around 6pm.

As Chris Evans said on his Breakfast Show, more than once, the album “dropped” at midnight. This is a new use of the word for me. There might have been people downloading and streaming “As you were” as soon as the clock struck 12 but I’m not sure if any record shops stayed open to meet the needs of impatient fans. I have been looking forward to the release, as I wrote in this piece in July. Chris Evans was effusive in his praise for the album yesterday, having heard it on Thursday in a suitable setting, alone in his car, driving around on a sunny afternoon. I have only heard it so far on the not-very-loud CD player in the kitchen, either side of our family dinner of fish and chips, and won’t get a chance to play it alone in the car till Monday. I’m looking forward to it. It sounds great. For what it’s worth, I’m a fan.