F-B-F.org -

All of them rate below the launch of MTV on this cultural seismic scale.Few, however, would argue with The King getting a number three rating for his first session at the Sun Studios in Memphis on 5 July 1954.Elvis was reportedly nervous, too, and tried to be a Dean Martin-type crooner right up to the last track of day, when he suddenly broke into an obscure black blues number called “That’s All Right”, gyrations and all, and the musical world was never the same again.Bob Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival on 25 July 1965 apparently had a similar effect – it comes in at number four. (The songs were “All My Loving”, “Till There Was You”, “She Loves You”, “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” – for those who urgently need to know).Interestingly, the day that John met Paul at a church fete in Liverpool (6 July 1957), impressing the then Quarryman with his Eddie Cochran interpretations, ranks only 12th – which seems to be putting the cart before the horse.Judging from the rest of the top 20, very little else has happened in Britain. But the particular event featured is the Fab Four’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in the US on 9 February 1964. Now the US magazine Entertainment Weekly has gone for the mother of all lists, purporting to chart “The 100 Greatest Moments in Rock”.

With true transatlantic swagger, its humble editors have taken it upon themselves to inform the waiting world of the crucial events that moulded the genre into its present form.
It will come as little surprise that British acts and achievements generally figure only in the shadow of American “Moments”, and no other countries appears in the top 50, which was published this week.The number one slot, in fairness, does go to The Beatles. POPULAR MUSIC fans enjoy making lists. This mildly obsessive tendency, popularised in Nick Hornby’s tribute to male sadness, High Fidelity, occupies adherents for untold hours as they compile their top five love songs or best tracks featuring the zither. “If Bayern had won, we’d have printed them and flown out to Germany.”As the evening ended, hand-held radios blared out, for those outside the 17,000-seater Manchester Arena, the words of the manager, Alex Ferguson, that this was the proudest day of his life He seemed to be speaking for an entire city.. Amiable spivs moved among them selling “Champions of Europe” T-shirts on which the ink bearing the score – Man Utd 2, Bayern Munich 1 – was still damp.”I had my printer on standby,” said one enterprising character who had come up from Southend with 250 flags and 1,000 T-shirts. Rather they were smiling, and as they pulled away many beat out the rhythm of a football chant on their horns.Some had even been prevailed upon, in the jam, to buy a smaller flag, which streamed from their window or sun-roof as they left.This was their team, and their home town, the laughter of the motorists seemed to say.

Egged on by their peers sitting atop the junction’s traffic lights, they darted like matadors in front of the cars, draping the flags across the windscreens of the vehicles so that their drivers, unable to see, had to slow down or stop. Only when the cloth was raised could the cars continue on their way.The striking thing about the drivers as they sped off was that, almost to a man and a woman, they were not scowling as a delayed city centre motorist usually does. And there was something of old-fashioned civic pride in the air.Earlier, next to a pub called The Trafford, diagonally opposite Sir Matt Busby Way, the more exuberant fans jigged dangerously in the road, weaving in and out of the traffic that was pouring out of the city centre to escape the growing grid-lock.The highway dancers carried in both hands massive flags, newly emblazoned with the catalogue of their team’s treble triumph. When the people produced their cameras, the footballers got out their videos to film the crowd It was a family affair.

The booze that was sprayed around with shrieks of celebration was beer rather than champagne.The revellers toasted one another as much as they did they team. Young girls kissed complete strangers – so long as they were wearing the right T-shirt.When the crowd applauded the United bus, the players clapped them back. Dads carried toddlers in miniature United strips on their shoulders. Elderly matrons, who looked as though they would be more at home in a concert by the Halle, applauded with exact decorum.The ticker-tape that showered down from the offices was made from the office shredder. And, where the route number should have been, instead it said “2-1″ – the team’s score against Bayern Munich.The nearer they got to the centre the slower they went, so dense were the crowds. More than half a million people turned out to greet their heroes, who held aloft from the top of the double-decker the three silver trophies that marked the club’s unprecedented treble triumph, taking the Premiership, the FA Cup and now becoming champions of Europe.By the time the bus reached Deansgate it had taken them almost three hours to cover the seven-mile journey, and the street was so packed that eight police horse riders had gently to prize apart the throng to allow the vehicle through.But it was not just the seasoned fans who turned out Office workers in their pinstripes were among the throng. Cultural commentators even may have pontificated about how the victorious progress of the team was, like the death of Diana (I am not making this up), a Shared National Experience.
But in the end the team belongs to a place And Manchester United were coming home.

Last night the squad made a triumphal progress through the city “Excursion” it said on the front of their open-top bus. Opinion polls may have shown that 86 per cent of the country’s football fans wanted them to win in Barcelona. EVERYONE IN Manchester seemed to be celebrating last night. But there’s certainly a fear among small sixth forms.”The Department for Education said: “This is not about the closure of school sixth forms.