scaryblog

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 14/07/63 : All Star Festival - Various Artists This is definitely an album that would be ignored under normal circumstances but it's actually an interesting one - you only have to look at the names on the album cover to know something is going on here. OK, maybe not it's not all that interesting musically - except that it is, because of the weird mix of stuff going on. We've got Nana Mouskouri warbling in Greek, Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf rambling in French, Luis Alberto del Parana wittering in Spanish and Caterina Valente doing whatever she does in Italian - all very random. The bizarreness isn't confined to foreign languages though because we've also got Anne Shelton doing an incredibly dated version of "Greensleeves". Having said that, I did enjoy Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong's "Lazy River" because there's some serious charisma on display and Mahalia Jackson's "No...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 05/06/26 : The Boys Of Dungeon Lane - Paul McCartney  Our third visit with Paul on his own, but who knows how many times we've met him with Linda, Wings or The Beatles? I think we're up to fourteen altogether, but who really cares - so far, if he's not with his Beatle-y mates then it's very much best avoided. However, I have heard that this is bearable so I'm going in with more hope than I would normally... Well, that'll teach me, eh?!? They say it's the hope that kills you, but the bloody awful music doesn't help either. I can see that his fans will love some of the reminiscing going on but it's not for me, I'm afraid. We're at #1 in the charts with a new entry this week, with the rest of the top five being the Michael Jackson best-of, Boards Of Canada (a new entry),  Drake  (who is listening to this?) and  Olivia Dean . So what's going on with the new entries this week? Boards ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 21/07/63 : Lonely And Blue - Roy Orbison No weeks missed out this time and it's our third visit with Roy and I've generally found him bearable, but rarely hitting the heights that he managed a few times throughout his career - I fully expect that to continue here. Well, it opens with "Only The Lonely" so it contains at least one height - but it is just the one height. The rest of it is all decent enough though provided you like that Orbison wail - and I have to admit I enjoyed it a lot more here than I was expecting to, so this was a pleasant enough listen for me. But it's not one I have an awful lot to say about. We're at #20 again in the charts this week on the last week of an eight week run, with #14 in its second week being as high as it got. The top five this week were  The Beatles , The Shadows , Cliff Richard and best-ofs from Buddy Holly and Cliff Richard (what a depressing top five!) and the hig...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 28/07/63 : Sinatra-Basie/Frank Sinatra & Count Basie The writing was on the wall and it finally happened - I had to skip over not one, but two weeks because we'd already covered everything in the charts. The Beatles were, of course, #1 for both weeks and the only other fact of "interest" is that George Mitchell and his minstrels are still hanging around the lower reaches of the chart, nearly THREE YEARS after it was originally released. And so we have to thank Frank for chucking out so many albums that we at least have something to listen to - this is our sixteenth visit with the man, bringing him to second equal in our all-time list along with The Rolling Stones. It's possible that the influence of Mr Basie will result in something new here, but somehow I doubt it... It would be incorrect to describe this as something new, but it's certainly on the better half of the swinging side of Sinatra - its not qu...

Third gig in a week! I first met Rilo Kiley on a very wet Sunday morning in 2004 at Glastonbury's Other Stage - there can't have been more than one hundred people in the crowd, but the band were VERY happy to be there and managed to impart a little Californian sunshine to an otherwise somewhat miserable situation. The following year the weather was even more miserable (Google "2005 Glastonbury") but they were at least playing under cover in the John Peel tent - and I never quite got round to seeing them live again before they split in 2010, so I assumed that was the end of that... ...but then last year, they announced they were getting back on the road and playing some dates in the US and a few dates in Europe, including one at the Roundhouse (which is one of my favourite London venues). And I heard about all this the day after the tickets sold out in no time, so I assumed that was the end of that... ...but then they kindly decided (just for me?) to add an extra date ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 18/08/63 : Bobby Vee's Golden Greats - Bobby Vee I've definitely heard of Bobby Vee because I know he did "Rubber Ball" which is properly cheesy (but in a good way), but I know nothing about him (I believe he's American, but that could be wrong) although I'm surprised to see this is our first ever mention for the lad. Well, he also did "Take Good Care Of My Baby" and "Run To Him" both of which I like, but all the tracks are pretty decent and there's a (relatively) reasonable amount of variety across the album. Yes, it 's still all very Buddy Holly-ish (and there's nothing wrong with that, although I'm not sure we needed his version of "Everyday") but we do at least get slower and faster Buddy style tracks. Overall, I'd say this is one the better offerings from the year - I enjoyed it. We're at rock bottom #20 in the charts this week on his last week of ...