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Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts. 28/07/68 : The Dock Of The Bay   - Otis Redding Well, this involved a lot more deliberation than I was expecting, I can tell you!  Firstly, I thought I'd already listened to it, but I was getting confused by the single which took the year as the most streamed track in the UK.  Then I looked at the album on Wikipedia and it says it's a posthumous release consisting of singles, B sides and album tracks - which would generally get it rejected.  But then I saw that three of the tracks were previously unreleased, so I wavered - but was still minded to reject it.  And FINALLY, I saw that if I didn't listen to this then I was getting another Andy Williams album - so that was my mind made up in an instant! Well that's a bit of a surprise - the whole album has much more of a James Brown feel to it than I was expecting.  It's fine, but I don't think anyone's gonna say you've got to listen to it and calling ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts. 04/08/68 : Honey  - Andy Williams I like Andy's voice and some of his tracks (particularly "Music To Watch Girls By") but this is totally the kind of album that the rules were set up to avoid - it's looks to be a set of 60s cabaret staples covers.  But things have had to be somewhat relaxed for 1968 (otherwise I suspect we'd run out of albums in some weeks) so here we are - I'm expecting to like some of the tracks, but to find the whole thing a bit of a drag. I actually didn't know quite a few of the tracks, but it doesn't really matter because they're all pretty much delivered in the same style - he could sing the phonebook and it would sound the same.  The one exception is "Up Up And Away" which is super cheesy but in a kinda cool way - the rest of it I can mostly take or leave, but he ABSOLUTELY murders "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" (I'd even take Engelbert's ver...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 26/05/23 :   Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent  - Lewis Capaldi  I liked our last visit with Lewis (although I can't claim that I have ever bothered going back there) and I'd be very surprised if this was massively different... ...and I can certainly keep my surprised face in the locker for another day.  It's all well done stuff - possibly a little obsessed with love found and love lost, but he's got a good voice and he's got a nice line in lyrics ("Pointless" in particular is just lovely).  I don't really think there's a lot more to say about it - if you like Lewis, then you'll like this. And we're at #1 with a new entry this week - I expect it will be hanging about for a bit  (and his previous album is at #17 on a 210 week run).  The rest of the top five this week are  Ed , Sleep Token (a new entry), Def Leppard and The Royal Philharmonic (another new entry - and a strange co...

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts. 11/08/68 : Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake  - The Small Faces I know we've met a Faces album, but I had to check whether we'd met their diminutive relations yet - but no, this is our first visit.  I'm expecting some 60s sounding Rod - even though I've no idea whether he was in the group at the time. Which, of course, he wasn't because Rod was never in The Small Faces - but it still sounds like it's him singing on some of the tracks, so you can understand why he was recruited into Faces.  The album is very much a game of two halves - the first sounds very English and reminded me of The Kinks and you can really see their influence on Blur and other similar sounding groups from the Britpop era.  It also includes "Lazy Sunday" which is an enjoyably bonkers song - there's all sorts in there.   And then there's the second side.  Well, yes - that's an interesting one.  The songs are all in a simila...

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts. 18/08/68 : Come The Day  - The Seekers Given my only experience of The Seekers was our previous visit , I'm very much expecting this to sound similar. Yeah - it's very similar without the mid-track chats!  It's mostly cover versions, although there a few originals on there - the title track (which is one of the better songs on the album) and a couple written with Paul Simon.  There are three songs on here which we've already seen this year - we've already heard them do "Georgy Girl" and "The Last Thing On My Mind" and "California Dreamin'" are both better than José's efforts.  Overall, the songs are perfectly fine and she's got a nice voice, but I find it somewhat baffling how popular they were - I imagine that you could have popped down any working men's club around this time and there'd be a group churning this stuff out in the corner in their sleep. We've...

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts. 25/08/68 : Fleetwood Mac  - Fleetwood Mac Oh great - having held up their subsequent album as an example of what I don't want from a blues album, I get to meet this a mere 3 days later/weeks earlier.  It is supposed to be better, so I've not completely written it off mentally but I can't say I'm exactly welcoming it with open arms.  Especially since it's really hard to track down because all the usual streaming services offer up their 1975 album which helpfully has the same name (and sounds much up my street as well) - so I had to resort to YouTube. And yeah, it's in the same vein as Mr Wonderful but it is definitely an improvement - there's better guitar playing and singing on it and the sound quality is also a considerable step up.  It's still not my thing, but there's a lot more variety and it was much less of an endurance exercise - and I can imagine that seeing them play it live at the time...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2022 #31 :  Crimes Of The Future As he did with 90s hit Crash, David Cronenberg’s horror sensation creates a bizarre new society of sicko sybarites where pain is the ultimate pleasure and “surgery is the new sex” I've heard of this and believe it had a pretty mixed reception - I'm expecting it to be extremely odd and I'm not expecting to like it. Hmmm - yup, it's a " bizarre new society of sicko sybarites" and no mistake.  Basically, pain has been banished (somehow) so people have to search it out by doing bizarre things to their bodies using bizarre machines.  And, at the same time, there some kind of mystery involved which some people try to solve or maybe not solve.   Oh yes, and there's a kid that can eat plastic involved as well.  And some people making some purple bars which people eat. To be absolutely honest, for a lot of the film I wasn't at all sure what was going on, but the mystery ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts. 01/09/68 : Bare Wires  - John Mayall Bluesbreakers I've heard of John and I'm guessing this will be blues-y (the clue's in the name!) - but recent experience has shown that blues-y covers a whole world of sounds, so who knows what we're getting here!  And, interestingly, we're having to go to YouTube to get it because it's not available in any of the usual locations. And well - it is indeed blues-y, but a different kind of blues-y again.  This feels very English blues, with tinges of folk and country in there - I can't say I liked it, but unlike Fleetwood Mac's effort I didn't get bored with it and there's obviously a decent amount of skill in there.  I'd like to describe it better to you, but I'm afraid it's just beyond my powers of description - it was an interesting listen though.  And, once again, it's an "interesting" album cover! We're at #9 in the charts t...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2022 .   #17 : Mo Given comedian Mo Amer’s previous TV role – as the larger-than-life sidekick in HBO sitcom Ramy – it would be easy to assume that his shtick was all about big, brash laughs that trade on his on-screen charisma. But his semi-autobiographical sitcom, about a Palestinian refugee in the US, proved Amer to be a writer and performer of far more depth. Storylines involving opioid addiction, the painful battle for citizenship in the face of ineffectual bureaucracy and lovelorn attempts to reconcile romance and religion added up to a warm, distinctive watch – whose success owed no small debt to Amer’s charisma. Another first for us - this is one I've never even heard of.  Or him - so I'm really coming to this blind.  The Guardian talks about it warmly enough though - their comedy recommendations have generally turned out to be lovely or baffling, but let's hold out some hope for this one, shall ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts. 08/09/68 : The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown  - The  Crazy World Of Arthur Brown "Arthur - I can call you Arthur, right?" "No man - I only answer to The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown" "OK, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown - what do you want to call your album?" "Man - I've had the ker-aze-iest idea.  It's gonna blow your mind!" I am aware of TCWOAB, but only because of their reasonably well-known single "Fire" - I'm expecting the rest of the album to sound like it but madder - and worse. And well, it does - but rather like The Moody Blues, it's quite an enjoyable mad and bad.  A lot of it also sounds remarkably like stuff that David Bowie was doing 5-10 years later so it's certainly worth checking out from a musical completist point of view.  No, I'm never going to listen to it again but we're certainly on an intriguing run of albums after a very poor start to...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2022 #32 :  Corsage Vicky Krieps puts in a star turn as lonely, patronised Elizabeth of Austria in Marie Kreutzer’s austere drama that functions as a cry of anger from the pedestal-prison of an empress. I'd heard of this film because I saw in on several year-end lists - but before then I had no clue it existed and I have absolutely no idea what to expect from it! So, Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary (portrayed by Vicky Krieps) is a woman who has everything and can in theory do anything - but she has trouble deciding what to do and when she does, there is always someone there to disapprove or just flat out say "No!".  She's very much a woman in a gilded cage and however she tries to escape it (including, at one point, jumping out of a window) she is thwarted. A lot of this is down to her husband, Franz-Joseph ( Florian Teichtmeister) who is, I think we can safely say, at times, an utter shit. ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts. 15/09/68 : Mr Wonderful  - Fleetwood Mac Unsurprisingly, I have heard of Fleetwood Mac - but I also know that late 60s FM were very different from all the other types of FM (and please don't ask me how many types of FM there have been).  I believe this is blues-y but don't really know what that means - let's find out, shall we? Woah.  It's not blues-y - it's blues with a capital B.  It's interesting to compare this with this previous entry which was blues-rock, but this very much goes back to the source - much more so than I was expecting from a band that was 100% British at this point of time.  It's certainly not my area of expertise - it sounds like it's done well enough if you like that sort of thing, but I found the whole album grew tiresome very quickly. It's also incongruous for me to even associate this sound with the name Fleetwood Mac, particularly so when you see that "Albatross...

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts. 22/09/68 : In Search Of The Lost Chord  - The Moody Blues I am aware of The Moody Blues, but only from "Nights In White Satin" - and, even then, mostly from the Elkie Brooks version (which we've previously met ).  So I'm approaching this with a sense of cautious optimism (but not without some trepidation). Well, I wasn't expecting it to start with some narrated psychedelic nonsense, I can tell you.  And whilst it does mostly calm down after that, I'd struggle to say it exactly settles down - there's all sorts of stuff in there.  Some of it is quite Beatles-ish, some Mamas&Papas-ish, some Simon&Garfunkel-ish - it's all very late 60s though!  It is, however, completely bonkers and very dated, but I have to say I found it considerably more enjoyable than I was expecting - possibly I'm just deliriously happy because we haven't had a soundtrack or live album for a few days now!  I also l...