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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 28/08/26 : Jenius - Paul Heaton  We've met Mr Heaton once with The Housemartins, three times with The Beautiful South, twice with Jacqui Abbott and now twice solo - I suspect he's the front man we've met in the most different guises across the years. And I'll be amazed if this isn't well written tunes with intelligent lyrics... Yup - that's exactly where we are. I particularly liked "Favourite Kind Of Idiot", "I Want The Job" (which is a beautiful love song) and "A Son A Father" (which is nicely spiky), but they're all pretty decent with more variety than I was expecting (although I'm not sure we need 15 tracks) and they'd certainly benefit from multiple listens. He's a proper national treasure that Paul Heaton and that should be more widely recognised - this is well worth a look if you've not seen it. I'm pleased to say we're at #1 with a new e...

  My first festival day of the year! I missed all the BST Festival days this year (due to a very poorly timed holiday), there was obviously no Glastonbury to fail to get tickets for and my free tickets to see Jorja Smith at All Points East went mysteriously astray, so my final chance to pop along to a festival this year was the rescheduled Lido Festival (which is like APE, but smaller and (allegedly) more carefully curated). I can't say I'm a huge fan of Maribou State who were the headliners, but I felt the need to pop along to something this year and so I toddled off to Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets on a Bank Holiday Monday with somewhat uncertain weather prospects... The train journey in was interesting because there was a group of "young people" on the train who were, shall we say, in "high spirits" - and boy were they making a LOT of noise. Amusingly, you could tell that people disapproved of such behaviour, but at the same time they were all in such a ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 23/05/71 : The Good Book - Melanie Two women in a row - is that even allowed in '71?!? This is our first visit with Melanie and, whilst I am vaguely aware of her, I don't know the slightest thing about her so I'm intrigued to see what we've got here. Hmmm - it's kinda campfire folk and I'm really not sure whether I like it or not. On first listen it sounds a bit too rough and ready for my liking (although I did like "Chords Of Fame") but I can see I might well get into it if I gave it a chance. Her voice reminded me of Joan Baez, but it's got more of an edge to it than Joan does - Marianne Faithful is another singer I was reminded of. It was certainly an interesting listen though and different from anything else from a woman this year. I'd say Leonard Cohen is probably the closest touchpoint we've seen, although this isn't as musically accomplished - which may or may not be your thi...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 30/05/71 : Something Else - Shirley Bassey Our fourth visit with Shirley and this is another one which I suspect is an album of covers, but I can't check it and if we're going to let Tom through, then it's only fair to let a Welsh lass have a go as well. It opens with "(Where Do I Begin) Love Story" which we've already met once this year and I've also spotted it on a few albums that I've rejected, so I checked on secondhandsongs.com to see how many times it's been covered. And it lists 533 (!) versions all told, but incredibly over 100 of these were done in '71 including versions by Henry Mancini, James Last and Mantovani - I suspect Shirley's is one of the better versions, but I'm certainly not going to listen to them all to find out. The rest of the album is very much Shirley doing her thing - most of the songs are of a slower tempo but present her with the opportunity to open up...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 06/06/71 : Tom Jones Sings She's A Lady - Tom Jones Our seventh visit with Mr Jones and I have a sneaking suspicion it's probably an album of covers, but I can't prove it and I quite like the title track, so he just about gets away with it - and how could I resist that album cover? The title (and opening) track is quite an interesting one because it's got quite a Motown sound to it, but (to my surprise, given how often tracks were passed round back then) it seems like none of the classic Motown bands have done a version - I reckon The Four Tops or The Temptations would have knocked it out of the park. Google AI did it's usual great job by telling me that people often confuse it with "Three Times A Lady" (they sound sooo similar) and also horrified me by telling me that Ali Campbell & Shaggy have done a version - and yes, it's just as bad as you'd expect.  Back to the album, the rest of it ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 13/06/71 : Aqualung - Jethro Tull Our second visit with JT and last time my verdict was "just odd" - which feels like something that will fit in nicely in '71, so let's see... Well, it is quite odd indeed. There's all sorts of stuff in here with rock, prog and folk contributing the main elements but you can never tell which one is going to take the forefront - but whatever's going on, you can tell these guys know their way round their instruments. Yes, there's too much flute on it but that's what you get with Ian Anderson and there's more than enough other stuff to make up for it. And,  for some unclear reason, I quite enjoyed it - I've absolutely no idea why this happened though, except that maybe it was a lot rockier than I was expecting. We're at #19 in the charts this week on their twelfth week of an impressive twenty week run, with it having peaked at #4 in its second week. The top...