scaryblog

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 09/10/26 : Songs From The Wedding Cake - Blossoms  Our FIFTH visit with Blossoms - the lads have done surprisingly well over the years. And I've generally liked their stuff, although I have found some of them slightly confounding - there's nothing wrong with some slight confoundment though, is there? Yeah, I'm still a bit confounded. I called one of their previous albums indie-folk-disco, but this is more indie-funk-disco - I get the impression them Blossoms lads just like to make nice sounds and they don't really care too much what kinda stuff gets thrown into the mix in order to do so. And I have to agree they are nice sounds and I got a general good mood vibe from it - but I'm also not sure I really remember much more about it or care enough to revisit it to remind myself. We're at #1 in the charts with a new entry this week (their fifth #1) and the rest of the top five are The Beatles (you weren...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 08/11/81 : Tonight I'm Yours - Rod Stewart Our 13th visit with Rod (putting him at fifth in the list on his own, two behind Bob Dylan) and whilst I've generally been surprisingly nice about him when we've met, I have a suspicion that he might be trying too hard to keep up with the times on this one - check out that album cover! Actually, I reckon he gets away with it because whilst he tries a bit of a new-wave thing on a couple of tracks (and I can grudgingly accept that it works pretty well on "Young Turks"), he balances it with his usual ballads and (soft) rockier numbers. So whilst it's not exactly keeping him down with the kids, it's offering something a bit different without being in danger of scaring off any existing fans. Which, I guess, is how he's still going.  As an aside,  he does a good version of "How Long" which everyone knows, but no-one remembers was originally done by Ace...

Back to where it all began for the second parkrun write-up! 10/10/26 : St Albans  Back in early 2024, I'd just completed Couch to 5k and was able to finish the distance without walking too often or being in too much danger of collapsing at the end, but I didn't really know what I was going to do next or even if I was going to keep running. One suggestion that came up frequently from the other members of the household was to try parkrun - I wasn't entirely sure it would be quite my thing, but eventually big old brave me screwed up the courage to attend one just to see what it was like. What's the worst that could happen? (believe me, I came up with quite a few scenarios in answer to this). And so, on May 11 2024, I trotted down to Verulamium Park in the centre of the city to attend my first ever event - and I've got absolutely no idea why I attended this one because it's not actually the closest to our house. It could be that the closest one has a somewhat hilly ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 15/11/81 : Shaky - Shakin' Stevens Well, I spoke too soon about hoping the run of quality would continue, didn't it? I'm being a bit harsh there because I suspect this is going to be fine for what it is, but it'll be intriguing to listen to it and try to understand why he was quite popular - it always makes me laugh that my youngest sister was absolutely crazy about him around this time. Nope - still got absolutely no idea. It's all old style rock and roll which I've got no problems with but it would certainly be pushing things to say I liked it. I remembered "You Drive Me Crazy" and "Green Door" and the rest of it is very much in the same vein - it's something you can imagine someone in the pub knocking out as a bit of a laugh, but it's quite bizarre how it was just something that people tapped into. And this wasn't a "people quite liked it" thing - "Green Door...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2025 #8 :     28 Years Later It’s fitting that, 23 years after Danny Boyle and Alex Garland adrenalised the zombie genre anew in 28 Days Later, their return sees them hit the ground running. This long-awaited threequel, itself the beginning of a new trilogy, is a wild work from two of Britain’s best, creatively energised as they synthesise decades of national tumult into a pulse-pounding survival story. Or at least, the first half of 28 Years Later is that film, depicting youngster Spike’s (outstanding newcomer Alfie Williams) first trip to the infected UK mainland with his sharp-shooting dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). But it’s the unexpectedly soulful second half that proves to be Years’ secret weapon, delivering depths of emotion as Spike and his mum Isla (Jodie Comer) embark on their own odyssey. Energetic filmmaking, narrative daring, and intriguing world-building make for a stellar return to 28. Bring on next chapte...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 22/11/81 : Architecture And Morality - OMD I think I listened to this a very long time ago and quite enjoyed it - but then never listened to it again, so let's see what a gap of 40+ years has done for me. Interestingly, this is the third acronymical artist of the year (even though the album cover tells us they're really Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, but I'm not going to type that again), giving us a hit rate of 50% so far - they're doing as well as the women! It starts with "The New Stone Age" which is a very un-OMD sounding track but soon gets into the mellow-ish groove with "She's Leaving" (which I really liked), "Souvenir", "Joan Of Arc" and "Joan Of Arc (Maid Of Orleans)". It's not an immediate grabber but it's got some nice subtle hooks in there and I suspect it would really get into your head given half a chance (which it never got from me). We...