Music from the assembled throngs

We're standing on the eve of a veritable week-long feast of some of the very biggest and most respected (past and present) purveyors of that finest of art forms: song,

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But all I find myself thinking about are two verbs that are woven into the fabric of our industrial region: assembly and manufacture!

Before the tenuity (yes my favourite word of 2012) begins, I'd better outline just who and what we have to be so excited about in the coming week . . .

Well for starters, there's the miniscule matter of Take That and their two sold out nights at Villa Park on Monday and Tuesday. My guess is a rough total of 90,000+ tickets in Brum alone on a tour that stops off at eight stadia and runs for twenty-eight nights.

While Take That woo the masses in Aston on Monday night, there's a bit of a shindig happening just down the road at the NIA. It's only Roger Waters from Pink Floyd performing that seminal album that made teaching my contemporaries and I an absolute nightmare in 1979. "Hey, teacher! Leave them kids alone!" Waters and band will play The Wall. One word: genius.

In addition, there's a certain Mr Neil Diamond, Paul Simon, one half of my all time favourite duo, Lou Reed at the Civic Hall, Cyndi Lauper at The Symphony Hall then Erasure and Simple Minds in a forest near you.

Nothing doing then huh? Hang on. Where did the assembly and manufacture references go?

I've not thus far shied away from airing my views where manufactured bands and singers are concerned, nor shall I in future. But the visitation of Take That and Neil Diamond (go on Penney find the link!) to our area in the same week has chimed somewhere in an uncomfortable corner of my psyche and made me ponder things at a slightly tilted angle.

You see, Neil Diamond wrote that classic I'm A Believer for one of the very first bands to be labelled as 'manufactured', they being The Monkees.

I liked The Monkees and, despite their dubious beginnings, they were chemically very sound indeed. They definitely came across as a bunch of talented chaps – whether their talent were for music or drama, it certainly was talent.

Likewise, Take That. For all the disco-Manilow-covering-pop-pap they seemed to promise at the off I do admit that, since Mr Barlow's skills were allowed to shine through, they have indeed shone very brightly.

So how am I to live with the U-turn I seem to have just taken? Well easy really: I'll use a different word.

Where I used to say 'manufactured', now see 'assembled', because I reckon that's actually a more accurate term for the formation of The Monkees, Take That and no doubt a bunch of other bands that I'm too ignorant to realise were 'put together'.

I guess what I'm saying is that there really isn't a great deal wrong with 'assembling' a bunch of musicians together. If they are talented musicians, they will prove their worth and get their just desserts.

If not, well perhaps we should just turn the sound off and admire their good looks. . .