8

Morning. If it is morning when you're reading this. Hope you're feeling alright. On January 1st 2010 I published my first post here at Bagging Area. Today, 3441 posts and 9727 comments later, the blog turns 8. Thank you to all of you who read it, thanks especially to those who comment, and here's to a few more. I never really set a deadline or expiry date when starting out. I'll keep going as long as there is something to write about I  suppose. Like this...

Songs with 8 in the title aren't numerous. This is a 1985 R.E.M. song about a passenger train running through the southern states. The chorus goes ''and the train conductor says 'take a break driver 8, driver 8 take a break, we can reach our destination but we're still a ways away''. In 2008 Michael Stipe introduced Driver 8 live by saying 'this is a song that represents great hope and great promise, a song that represents the dream of the United States of America'. So it's about that too.

Driver 8

This is from 1990's still stunning 90 album this is a song that pays tribute to a drum machine. An attention grabbing intro followed by rave synths and beats with a great breakdown section.

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In the days when football teams were numbered 1-11 number 8 was always a central midfielder- not the flash captain figure of the number 7 shirt and not the centre forward of number 9 but in between, a gutsy, hard tackling midfielder, someone who did the simple things well and chipped in with the odd goal. In the 90s Paul Ince and Nicky Butt were the number 8 shirt wearers at United. In the 80s the shirt belonged to Gordon Strachan and Remi Moses (and for a season apiece Ashley Grimes and Ray Wilkins). In the picture below Remi is to the left of Diego Maradona in a European Cup Winners Cup second leg at Old Trafford, one of the greatest games I've attended. Diego barely got a look-in all night. The first leg had finished 2-0 to Barcelona. The return leg was won 3-0 by United, with goals from Bryan Robson and Frank Stapleton, but the end to end performance of Remi was behind it. In the next round he marked and tackled Michel Platini of Juventus out of the game. Injury forced him to retire in 1988, aged just 28.