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It's very difficult for me to be sincere

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  April already - and only my second gig of the year! Every week, I make an effort to at least partially listen to all the new entries in the album chart. This generally plays a strong role in reinforcing my musical stereotypes, but every so often someone unknown surprises me by producing something I actually quite like - which I almost always then immediately forget about. However, Orla Gartland has managed it twice in the past four years so I at least remember her name - and so when came she up on the list of work freebies playing close to home at the Kentish Town Forum, I thought I'd pop along to see how her music translated into a live performance. And so I rocked up on a lovely sunny evening at what I thought was quite an early arrival to find the standing area already full, the seated area pretty busy and the first support act already on stage - and making some most peculiar noises. TWST (not her real name, apparently) does kinda shrieky singing over dancey backing tracks - i...
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There's no need for anger, there's no need for blame

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Starting my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 19/12/65 : Farewell, Angelina -  Joan Baez Finally, we get to meet Ms Baez! Considering how much we've had to endure Bob Dylan and others from that era, it seems bizarre that she's somehow eluded us for all this time. Part of it's just luck because she had four top ten albums in '64 and '65 and I'm only just getting round to one of them - but I also suspect that her gender probably didn't always help her get the recognition she might have deserved. Either way, I'm looking forward to it! Yeah, this is pretty much up my street. Her voice is lovely (if a bit too vibrato at times for my liking) and the songs are all at least perfectly pleasant. Sometimes the arrangements are maybe a bit too simple, but I actually preferred that to some of the overly fiddliness that Joni MItchell often gives us. I particularly liked the title track and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" which were both lovely vers...
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Regular pickle’s just one pickle?

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Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #12 :    The Penguin From the Riddler-enforced floods that washed away half of Gotham in The Batman has risen one of the most complicated, corrupt and compelling villains that the fictional city has ever seen. And without the caped crusader in sight. Lauren LeFranc’s spin-off series stands firm as a viscous and vastly entertaining crime show that sees Colin Farrell’s besuited Oz go to war with Sofia Falcone (a beguiling Cristin Milioti), having recently taken the crime boss mantle from her deceased father. It’s also a fascinating dual character study as we learn more about Oz’s self-made and ruthless charmer and Sofia’s evolution from Arkham Asylum survivor to respected criminal leader. Through their stories we see Gotham in a new light, without the series leaning too heavily on Batman lore. I watched The Batman  and had some nice things to say about it - but I had a whole load more bad things to say about it. ...
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Of course you can say it backwards, which is Suoicodilaipxecitsiligarfilacrepus

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Starting my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 26/12/65 : Mary Poppins -  Original Soundtrack Only our second visit with Ms Andrews, but given that she's had The Sound Of Music and now this, she's not doing too badly, is she?  Yeah, this is a pretty decent album which includes all the bangers you know and love. The tracks featuring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke (both still with us at 89 and 99 - and looking very good for it, particularly Dick) are probably the best known, but the songs by the Banks family members are also well done with Glynis Johns (who only died last year, aged 100) and David Tomlinson doing a fine job. I'd particularly forgotten how good "A Man Has Dreams" was, where Mr Banks is complaining to Bert about his kids and Bert totally agrees with him, whilst also pointing out how he's being an arse because childhood flies by so quickly. All in all, it's a fine collection of songs which I enjoyed - but it's a bit bizarre how much ...
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Our first decade completed

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And with that, we complete our first decade!  It's fair to say that each previous trip to the 50s had lowered my expectations to new depths, so there was a definite "let's get it out the way" feeling at the start of the year - so how did things pan out? Well, I guess there was less Elvis and Frank than there might have been - just the one album from The King (although I did reject one) and two from Ol' Blue Eyes. We actually only saw 21 albums all year (up from fifteen in '58) - other artists with two visits were Cliff Richard, Duane Eddy and Russ Conway, with instrumental and comedy albums also being surprisingly popular this year.  But looking at the year-end list, soundtracks definitely won the year.  South Pacific  took the #1 spot in the year-end list and  given it was #1 all year, that's no surprise -  and Gigi was #2, which is where it was in the charts for 29 weeks of the year, so again that isn't exactly unexpected. And, of the 23 weeks remai...
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The hardest thing I've ever done is keep believing

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Continuing my trip back through the 1959 album charts. 18/01/59 : Swing Softly -  Johnny Mathis Skipping over six weeks, this is our fourth visit with Mr Mathis and whilst I haven't always loved the musical content, there's no denying the man had a lovely voice and as an African-American in the 50s, he must have had to work so hard for his success - I'm looking forward to seeing what we've got here. Yeah, this is pretty decent - it is, as the title suggests, somewhere between swinging and crooning and he really does have a lovely voice, over some nicely minimal but effective arrangements. "Like Someone In Love" is particularly gorgeous and the breath control he shows on it is very impressive. I was less convinced by the somewhat strange version of "I'm Getting Married In The Morning" but generally these are decent tracks done very well - I enjoyed this. We're at #10 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of a huge one week run, ...
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It's always fair weather when hep cats get together

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Continuing my trip back through the 1959 album charts. 15/03/59 : Como's Golden Records -  Perry Como I assume this is a compilation and so should really be ignored, but the normal rules have gone out the window this year. Having said that, I'm kinda intrigued to see how good the best of Perry actually is... Well, I couldn't find this particular best-of on Amazon because of all of his other best-ofs on there, but it was easy enough to recreate it and do you know, it's really not bad at all. Yes, it's dated but that's not exactly surprising because of some the recordings go back to the 40s and the songs are generally older - "When You Were Sweet Sixteen" was actually written in 1898! Generally, the musical arrangements are decent enough and he's got a nice voice - there are some tracks on here I'd go as far as to say I liked because who could really argue with "Catch A Falling Star" (#1 in the US), "Papa Loves Mambo" and ...
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