scaryblog

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 28/06/81 : JuJu - Siouxsie & The Banshees The women are staging a mini-revival after a fallow period with this being the fifth album  in the last nine with significant female input. And this is our first ever visit with Siouxsie & Friends - they've been mentioned a few times in year-end write-ups as having produced decent albums that we've never met, so it's nice to finally get a chance to write about them. I don't think I've ever listened to one of their albums but I like their general sound and believe this is supposed to be good, so I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, I like this - although I appreciate it won't be for everyone. It's got, to no-one's surprise, a goth/indie sound but it's got much better playing and production than you might expect - and Siouxsie as an added bonus on top. It also gives strong "I bet they were great live" vibes - I can imagine plenty of moment...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 06/10/26 : Perfecth - Queens Of The Stone Age Our fourth visit with QOTSA and it's fair to say I've not been overly impressed so far - and I've got very little reason to expect things are going to improve here. Actually, it's definitely an improvement - it has strong Bowie and Nirvana vibes to it, with enough variety to be interesting (and lack of variety has been a common complaint on our previous visits). I can't say I loved it on first listen, but it certainly feels like another listen would be tolerable and it might even go up in my estimation as a result.  We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week (their second chart topper) and the rest of the top five are Olivia Rodrigo , Michael Jackson, The Snuts (a new entry) and  Fontaines D.C. . And we've got quite a few other new entries to consider this week. The Snuts (#4) The Snuts are one of my favourite bog standard indie bands - they don...

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #12 : Dying For Sex A story about cancer, coitus and, well, lots of other words beginning with “c”, Dying For Sex summons heart and humour from the most morbid of situations. Michelle Williams stars as Molly, based on real-life writer and broadcaster Molly Kochan, whose podcast of the same name detailed her sexual awakening while being treated for cancer. The show begins with Molly leaving her overbearing husband (Jay Duplass) and moving in with Nikki (Jenny Slate), a scatty actor and fiercely loyal pal. What ensues is a deeply moving, tender, and sometimes raucously funny journey of self discovery that spotlights and celebrates sex in its many forms. Williams shines in a performance that requires her to rapidly pivot from deep-rooted vulnerability to BDSM-charged conviction. However Slate is right up there with her, as Nikki becomes a more grounded carer with struggles of her own. Emotional and erotic storytelling at its best...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 05/07/81 : Present Arms - UB40 This was my thirteenth birthday and I can assure you I didn't spend it listening to this album. I am however expecting it to be tolerable, unlike plenty of their later efforts. Yeah, it's at least tolerable with some nice bouncy reggae toons, although the lyrical content isn't always quite so upbeat. Easily the best track for me is "One In Ten" - they may have had three #1 singles later in their career (amongst SIXTEEN top ten singles in total) but this outshines them all because it sounds like they actually care about something. I think I'd go as far as saying as I actually like it - I wouldn't go that far for the album (I'm not really a reggae kinda guy) but I will say I'll be very surprised if I ever meet a better UB40 album. We're at #5 in the charts this week on their sixth week of a decent 26 week run, with it having peaked at #2 in its second week (anot...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 12/07/81 : Anthem - Toyah This is our first ever mention of Toyah the band, with Toyah the singer having had two mentions - both of which have her alongside her husband, Robert Fripp. One is for doing an amusing cover of " Summer Of '69 " along with Chesney Hawke (while dressed as dinosaurs) and the other for when I saw them live at Glasto (and they were considerably better than expected). It's not clear she even knew the man at this point in time (they married in '86), but she was definitely already amusingly barmy - I'm quite looking forward to listening to this. Yeah, it is pretty barmy but it's also better than I was expecting. The backing tracks are pretty well done (if not exactly going to change the world) and show more variety than I was expecting. But  I can see why the vocal eccentricity scared me off back in the day because she's just giving a bit too much uberBjorkness for my liking - ...

Some Northern parkrun tourism. 07/02/26 : Woodhouse Moor  Another one for me and my eldest, but it was only tourism for one of us - because the other one lived there at the time. Yup, Woodhouse Moor is in the mighty Leeds, making this the most Northerly parkrun either of us have ever done - a mere 283km away (amusingly, my next most Northern event is Letchworth). Woodhouse Moor is right in the middle of student accommodation land and so it is also the most populous parkrun either of us have ever done - there were people EVERYWHERE! And because my eldest was in her house and I was in a hotel, we had to arrange a place to meet, which could have been tricky. But fortunately my sartorial elegance always makes me easy to spot - I just stood in the middle of the park and waited! But it was a chilly wait because Leeds in February is not tropical - however, in a change from the last few days up there, it was at least dry (in the air, if not on the ground). The course starts in the middle o...