Posts

Sneaking in before the end of the summer

Image
  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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Poor little hairy kids out on their own

Image
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Something in the way he moves

Image
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Talkin' about that little lady

Image
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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Feeling like a dead duck, spitting out pieces of his broken luck

Image
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

The army had my father and my mother was having me

Image
Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 20/06/71 : Songs For Beginners - Graham Nash Having recently had our first visit with Stephen Stills, we get to see what Graham Nash was getting up to at the time - I'm guessing it's not going to be wildly different. Yeah, we're not wildly different - but, on first listen at least, this just has a bit more oomph and variety to it. It felt to be somewhere between John Lennon and Simon & Garfunkel with some pretty decent tracks on it - it 's probably not as musically accomplished as a lot of the albums we're heard this year, but he's put the effort into making decent tracks with interesting lyrics. And who can argue with that as an approach -  it feels that it would be a grower given multiple listens (which hasn't necessarily been the case for a lot of the "better" albums we've heard). All in all, I really quite liked it. We're at #13 in the charts this week on the start of a seven we...
Post a Comment
Read more

John the Wood went out one day to view the scene from a different angle

Image
Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 27/06/71 : Angel Delight - Fairport Convention Our first visit with FC but I'm at least aware of their general sound and I find it admirable rather than enjoyable - they just take the folky warbling a bit too far for my liking. But maybe a full album will cure me of that (spoiler alert - it won't). Yeah, that's still where we are. They're obviously good on their instruments and the singing is impressive with some very decent harmonies - but I just don't enjoy it. It's funny because I suspect someone like Kate Rusby could take any one of these songs and create a version I'd love without really doing all that much to it, but FC is just too warbly-folky for me. Having said that, the closest we've come to this sort of thing so far this year is Lindisfarne and this is a million percent better than that. We're at #8 in the charts this week with a new entry, which is surprisingly high given they only m...
Post a Comment
Read more