scaryblog

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts. 27/03/94 : Far Beyond Driven -  Pantera This is our first visit with Pantera, although they've had a few mentions in the "customers also listened to" sections for albums I really didn't like, so let's just say my expectations are not high. Oh yes, this is very much not my cup of tea - whereas I was pleasantly surprised by how bearable Megadeth was earlier in the year, that's very much not the case here. Let's just say I'm sure they were making the sounds they wanted to make, there's a reasonable amount of skill involved in doing so and plenty of people were happy with the results. But it's REALLY not for me - it was a loooong 56 minutes, although I actually didn't mind the last track, "Planet Caravan" (and yes, I was amused to find out it's a Black Sabbath cover - they have to do someone else's material for me to tolerate it). We're at a surprisingly high #3 with ...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2024 #14 : Lost Boys And Fairies  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house while watching this wondrous drama about a gay couple’s journey to adopting a child. It was a total pleasure to spend time with Gabriel (Sion Daniel Young) and Andy (Fra Fee) and their friends in the Cardiff drag community, and you rooted for them the whole time they navigated the turbulent adoption process. Then <spoiler alert>. It was beautiful, with the added bonus of fabulous drag performances in every episode. I'd never even heard of this, so I was surprised it was so high.  And - know what? This was really good. If you've not seen it, then I've massively improved things for you by removing text from the The Guardian's review because this goes places you wouldn't expect from the basic concept. Nominally it's about " a gay couple’s journey to adopting a child"  and,  I believe, does a good job of conveying what ...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 28/11/25 : One More Time - Aerosmith/Yungblud I wasn't aware Aerosmith were still going (they've got to be pretty old now, surely?) but Yungblud doesn't seem like the worst fit with the boys - even if it's not exactly something I feel I've been waiting for. Well, the good news is that if I didn't like it (go on, guess...) then there's only five tracks and nineteen minutes of it to endure. Wtf's going on here - call that an album?!? (it transpires they don't - apparently it's an EP). And actually, I wouldn't say I don't like it but, from my general position of not giving a single fuck about Aerosmith, I really can't begin to state how fewer fucks I give about this. And whilst it has Yungblud's name on it, I'd be hard pushed to say where he fitted in to the mix - the whole thing seems utterly, utterly pointless. And so, obviously, we're at #1 with a new entry in the...

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts. 03/04/94 : Give Out But Don't Give Up -  Primal Scream Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I really liked Screamadelica so I bought this when it came out (twelve for the year) - and it's fair to say I was somewhat disappointed. I think I listened to it the once and then never again - maybe it will have matured like a fine wine, but somewhat I doubt it. Actually, to be fair, it was way better than I remembered. For an album I remember as being "fuzzy", it's got a pretty clear sound to it and I wouldn't go as far as saying any of the tracks are dreadful (although the 8:29 of "Struttin'" is certainly excessive - and I still quite like "Rocks". However, what it isn't, in any way, is essential - being mostly a poor Rolling Stones knock-off. And so, after the special thing that is Screamadelica, it's a massive, massive disappointment which I STILL can't forgive them for. We're at ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts. 10/04/94 : Brother Sister -  The Brand New Heavies Only our fourth mention ever for The Brand New Heavies - and two of them have come in the "people also listened to" section for Jamiroquai albums, so I'm expecting this to be perfectly fine but not really my sort of thing. And I've just been informed that we owned this one, taking us to eleven for the year. Ah - that good old acid jazz sound! I remembered "Dream On Dreamer" (but had forgotten how decent it was) and "Midnight At The Oasis" (which I always thought was a pretty silly song, but didn't know at the time it was a cover - obviously I now know it was originally done by Maria Maldaur in '73). And the rest of the album isn't a million miles away from that - yes, some of the tracks went on a bit too long, as did the album as a whole, but I actually found this way more enjoyable than Jamiroquai because of a) the female vocalist ...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2024 #13 : Mr Bates Vs The Post Office  This year, the head of ITV said that Mr Bates vs the Post Office had such limited international appeal that it left the channel with a million pound loss. But finances be damned, because you’re unlikely to ever find a show able to leave such a large footprint. Despite diligent reporting, the Post Office scandal never managed to catch fire in the public eye. Mr Bates vs the Post Office changed that, taking an unmanageably complex issue and turning it into the David and Goliath story it always was. Nothing less than a testament to the power of television drama. Skipping over Ripley (#12 here, #11 in Empire's list) brings us to this which you might possibly have heard of. I was actually previously aware of the scandal (Private Eye did a good job of reporting it and I used to read it quite often back in the day) and it seemed like nothing was going to shift the needle on it - until ...