scaryblog

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 07/02/71 : T. Rex - T. Rex Our second visit with T. Rex, with the last one having been surprisingly enjoyable. It ruled the charts at the end of the year, so I guess this is its predecessor, so I'm expecting it to sound similar, but probably not quite as good. Yeah, that's very much where we are - you can hear them trying to work out that classic T. Rex sound from their folky Tyrannosaurus Rex roots, but they're certainly not quite there yet. It's a musical curiosity, but not one that's particularly enjoyable I'm afraid - it just sounds odd. I'm not loving that album cover either... We're at #7 in the charts this week on their fifth week of a nine week run - it then took two weeks off and came back for another eight weeks (which seems peculiar) but this was as high as it ever got. The top five this week were  George Harrison ,  Simon & Garfunkel , Andy Williams,  Elton John  and Motown Chartbust...

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #6 :     Severance It had been three long years since we last walked the sterile halls of Lumon Industries, but one frantic sprint through said corridors along with Adam Scott’s Mark S, and it was like we’d never left. Building on the first season’s ‘Macrodat Uprising’ (archly recapped in animated form by Keanu Reeves), Season 2 brought us the inspired Miss Huang (“Why are you a child?”), the Data-Refiners’ first ‘ORTBO’, the goat-loving madness of Mammalians Nurturable, an unforgettable character ‘death’, and the bizarre yet dramatic scene of Mark’s Innie arguing metaphysics with his Outie via camcorder. Puzzle box shows have an unenviable task in needing to pull back the curtain just enough to reveal gradually more of the larger picture, while not quite enough to puncture the mystery. Dan Erickson’s follow-up season manages just that, judging its prestige with dead-eyed accuracy. In Episode 7’s ‘Chikhai Bardo’, we are fi...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 14/02/71 : Air Conditioning - Curved Air On the previously unknown band front, we've had two albums from Atomic Rooster this year and now we've got our second from Curved Air so I'm learning loads this year - and I liked the last one from this lot, so let's see what we've got here. Yeah, I didn't mind this one either - it's all well played and certainly improved by a female vocal presence. In some places I was reminded of Siouxsie Sioux's singing style which gave it a goth-prog air, but then in other places it's very classical with orchestral strings - it's certainly an intriguing mix. It's almost certainly not for everyone and I can't say it's one I'll be rushing back to, but overall I thought it was an enjoyable and intriguing visit. We're at #9 in the charts this week on twelfth week of a 21 week run with it having peaked at #8 in its ninth week - somewhat oddly it yoyo...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 21/02/71 : Blows Against The Empire - Paul Kantner And  Jefferson Starship We met Jefferson Airplace once before (nearly six years ago now!) and I was surprised how much I liked (at least some of) it, so let's see whether this (which I assume is somehow related) can repeat that trick. Hmmm. No. This is just a big ol' mess, I'm afraid. It's some kind of weird folk/rock/prog hybrid which somehow manages to take the worst bits of each of them. No, no, no - NO! We're at #12 in the charts this week on their third week of a six week run, with this being as high as it ever got. The top five this week were  George Harrison ,  Elton John , Simon & Garfunkel  (and the top three would stay the same for three consecutive weeks), Andy Williams and Led Zeppelin , with the highest new entry being Yes (#16). Wikipedia tells us this is the first album to use "Starship" after five "Airplane" albums, but ...

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #7 :     Pluribus You kind of want to hate Vince Gilligan, don’t you? Not content with creating two of the best TV shows ever made with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, the man has somehow managed to go three for three with this audaciously weird post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Conceived, in part, as a showcase for Rhea Seehorn’s prodigious acting talents (she criminally failed to scoop a single Emmy for her phenomenal turn in BCS), this quirky tale sees humanity afflicted with an alien virus that combines everyone’s consciousness into a single, blissfully happy hive mind. Everyone, that is, except 13 survivors, scattered across the globe, including curmudgeonly romantasy author Carol Sturka, who finds herself faced with a global collective hell bent on… making her happy? It’s an absolutely wild premise but it’s Gilligan’s deliberate, often oblique style of storytelling that makes it so captivating. Seehorn is, as you’d expect,...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 28/02/71 : Emerson, Lake & Palmer -  Emerson, Lake & Palmer Our fourth visit with ELP and our third this year - it looks like the prog kings are going to be declared kings of the prog year, so I think we know what we're going to be getting here. Hmmm - yes, it's very prog indeed. There's certainly no doubting the skills involved - Emerson in particular shines on the keyboards playing a lot of notes very quickly in many places on the album (Palmer also does an awful lot of drumming on "Tank", but we don't need to talk about that). But - does that make it great? Or even likeable? I didn't mind "Lucky Man" but apart from that I'm really not so sure - and I think that's probably all I have to say on the matter at this time, your honour. We're at #11 in the charts this week on their fourteenth week of a very decent 26 week run, with #4 being as high as it got in its second week...