scaryblog

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 07/04/63 : Jazz Samba - Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd Rolling Stone gave us a few jazz albums, but we've met remarkably few of them in the charts so it will be interesting to see what this is like. But I'm not expecting to actually like it though... I guess it's jazzy samba - or maybe samba-y jazz. It's not as challenging as I feared, so I can't say I hated it - but it all felt very musical wallpaper-ish and drifted by without really making the slightest impression on me. I guess "why?" would be my lasting impression of the whole thing - which can't really be considered a recommendation. We're at #16 in the charts this week on their last week of a three week run - it managed four runs across the year given them seven weeks on the chart in total, with it having peaked at #15 in its very first week. The top five this week were  Cliff Richard , Buddy Holly, The Beatles ,   All Star Festival (which...

Continuing my trip up Empire's  top 20 TV shows of 2025 #18 :     The Bear After the extended table-setting of Season 3, people started to wonder if The Bear had gone off the boil (insert other tortured food metaphors here). Thankfully in Season 4, the unwavering quality of writing, performance and filmmaker was bolstered by slightly more propulsive storytelling, and some more upbeat moments this time around; Carmy, at long last, is no longer trapped in the fridge (literally or metaphorically). There are some masterful episodes here – the Ayo Edebiri-penned ‘Worms’, in which her Sydney leaves the kitchen to look after a friend’s daughter, is a beautiful little slice of life; and ‘Bears’, the near-feature-length wedding episode, threatens to be another piece of near-unbearably tense familial arguing, until it blossoms into a great big warm hug. Hopefully this return to form continues into Season 5, with Carmy seemingly <spoiler alert>. After The Bear took the top spo...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 14/04/63 : A Bobby Vee Recording Session - Bobby Vee Our second visit with young Bobby this year (and he's not finished with us yet) - last time I liked it, but that was a best-of so, it will be interesting to see what we have here. Yeah, it's pretty similar to last time except that I don't know any of the tracks. It's all very Buddy Holly-ish, so was already sounding a bit dated compared to some of the stuff we've heard from the year but it's done well enough. And at twelve songs in 25 minutes, he's really not hanging about - he looks super young on the album cover though! We're at #15 in the charts this week with a re-entry on a single week's visit, but he managed a nine week run earlier in the year, peaking at #10. The top five this week were  Cliff Richard ,  Buddy Holly,  The Beatles ,  West Side Story  and  Elvis Presley  with the highest new entry being one Bobby Vee (#20). Wikipedia tel...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 21/04/63 : That Was The Week That Was - Various Artists Some comedy for a change - it will be interesting to see how dated this has become. Well, a lot of it is political and quite a bit of it is class based, so those aspects have certainly dated - but my overall feeling was one of confusion because there was so much of it I just didn't understand how it was supposed to be funny. The general vibe is one of clever wittyness, but there was almost a complete absence of laughs on my part - it wasn't so much that the jokes weren't landing, but that I just didn't recognise where the jokes were supposed to be. So, all in all, this was a most peculiar experience - it was nice to recognise Roy Kinnear and Willie Rushton's voices though.  We're at #17 in the chart this week on the last week of a nine week run, with it having peaked at #11 in its third week. The top five this week were  Cliff Richard ,  The Beatles , B...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 28/04/63 : Richard Chamberlain Sings -  Richard Chamberlain I can't say I was expecting to see him - this is going to be super cheesy, isn't it? Yeah, this was definitely one bought by the grannies - it's very much looking backwards in time rather than attempting to do anything radical. He's got a decent voice though so it's all perfectly listenable, even if a whole album of it is a bit too much. We are also served up yet another Everly Brothers cover - I really should have been counting them because we've seen quite a few this year. We're at #16 in the charts this week on the last week of an eight week run, with it having peaked at #8 in its third week. The top five this week were  Cliff  (just finishing a mere fourteen week run at the top),  The Beatles ,  Buddy Holly,  Frank Ifield  and the All Star Festival album (how refreshing to see something different in the top five for a change!) and the...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 26/05/63 : Half A Sixpence - Tommy Steele Skipping over another week (and once again you absolutely know who was #1) brings us to a pretty highly regarded musical which gets revived on a reasonably regular basis - but I've never seen it, so I'm interested to see what we've got here. Yeah - it's alright without, I think, ever quite being great. It give strong vibes of  wanting to be "My Fair Lady" - it doesn't quite make it, but it certainly gives it a good go. It has s trong "big musical" numbers which work well on the album, so I imagine they're doubly impressive on stage - "Flash Bang Wallop" is the stand-out, but there were quite a few others that I imagine got rousing rounds of applause. It's also v ery much a star vehicle for Tommy - it's surprisingly hard to find out any of the other people on the album. However, there are definitely some women on there and Wikiped...