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

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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...
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Back when no one could tell us apart and I'd turn down the music to parallel park

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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 21/08/26 : Lost Weekend - Phoebe Bridgers  Our second visit with Ms Bridgers and last time I said I liked the general sound, but sometimes found it a bit ethereal - I'll be very surprised if things are any different here. Yeah - that's exactly where we are. It's a well put together offering with a lot of interesting noises on it, but sometimes she just tries a bit too hard to be not quite there. Maybe given a load more listens it would be a grower, but I'm afraid that's just not going to happen - I'm also not entirely sure who's loving this so much (apart from the critics - they're obviously going to go crazy for it). But plenty are loving it because we're at #1 with a new entry in the charts this week - our tenth consecutive new entry at the top and six of them have been from women. The rest of the top five is new entry heavy as well with Katseye, The Script and Jungle all being new, with ...
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Durrrrr duh-duh-duh durrr

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 04/07/71 : Love Story Original Soundtrack - Francis Lai This one is close to being rejected but it seems to be mostly original tracks so let's give it a go - I'm expecting a load of wishy-washy instrumentals (so obviously I can't wait) Hmmm - well, they are instrumentals (apart from some odd wailing on one of them) but they're not actually not all that wishy-washy. That doesn't mean they're great but they do have the odd catchy bit in them - you'd recognise the main "Theme From Love Story" motif and I have to admit it's a well put together couple of bars. And Francis obviously realised that, because he used it a LOT throughout the album - it's clearly used in three of the tracks (often repeated multiple times played on different instruments) and there are variations of it in two or three others. A lot of the other tracks use repetition as well, so this album basically makes a lot of not...
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I'm on top of the world, filled with greatness

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 11/07/71 : Osibisa -  Osibisa Our first ever mention for Osibisa and I must confess I've never heard of them, which is a shocking state of affairs because they've been going since '69 and have released 16 studio (and, amusingly, 25 compilation) albums - let me remedy my ignorance immediately! This is an interesting one - it wouldn't surprise me if it's the earliest "African" album we've seen. I use quotes because they were all based in London and half of them were actually Caribbean, but it has a strong African vibe to the whole thing. I can't say I loved it but it pootled along nicely and does feature some very  fine guitar playing, so it was pleasant enough - unlike the creatures on the album cover. We're at a surprisingly high #11 on the last week of a seven week run with this being as high as it got, which makes me wonder why it dropped out of the chart in the following week. The top fi...
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La-la-la la-di-da

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 18/07/71 : Symphonies For The Seventies - Waldo De Los Rios Yes, there's an argument this should be ignored because it's an album of "covers" but it's just too intriguing to pass by... Well, it sounded intriguing in theory because it's modern reworkings of classical music - but in practice, it was really pretty close to musical wallpaper. But it was pretty well done musical wallpaper which at least had a bit of oomph to it, so it left more of an impression than it might otherwise have done. I'm also intrigued because I didn't know any of the tracks - I suspect I'd either have been more or less impressed with it if I had known them, but we'll never know which. We're at #11 in the charts this week on his thirteenth week of a fourteen week run with it having peaked at #6 in its second, third, fourth and sixth weeks - how very peculiar! The top five this week were  Simon & Garfunkel , P...
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All the daggers in direction of an unfamiliar bloke who's worming through the punters in an old Ben Sherman coat

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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 14/08/26 : A Love Letter To A Broken Town - The Reytons  Our second visit with The Reytons - last time I quite liked them but thought they were maybe a bit too similar to The Arctic Monkeys. So let's see if they're still in that general vicinity... Yeah, it's still pretty AM-ish, but it's definitely early AM so that's the best place to be - and it also brings Sam Fender to mind, which isn't anything to be sniffed at. I quite liked it on first listen and seems like it would be a grower - but it definitely feels like they'd be a great band live (complete with an absolutely devoted set of fans) We're at #1 in the charts with a new entry this week - their second #1 and their fourth top five album. The rest of top five are Michael Jackson,  Olivia Rodrigo , Ariana Grande and Flo (a new entry) - so let's start our relatively lengthy rundown of the new entries there. Flo (#5) That 90s female-lead...
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Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 25/07/71 : The Yes Album - Yes It feels like '71 wouldn't be complete without a bit more Yes - I'd love to tell you which visit this is, but unfortunately searching the blog for their name returns quite a few false positives, so I'm just going to guess it's our third visit. And I'm expecting it to be well done, but not particularly enjoyable. Hmmm. It is well done in terms of musicianship, but it seems to suffer from ELP syndrome in that everyone has to be given a go to do their particular thing which means you get all sorts of weird sections when you're not expecting them (a Spanish flamenco-style guitar instrumental, anyone?) and consequently it doesn't really hang together as an album. However, I would say none of it is particularly unenjoyable and some of the Jon Anderson focussed stuff is pretty decent, but it's not something I'll be rushing back to. We're at a relatively high #18 in...
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