As I went home on Monday night as drunk as drunk could be

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

07/01/68 : A Drop Of The Hard Stuff - The Dubliners

Well - nobody expected that!  The Irish guys come out of nowhere to secure the honour of multiple appearances with the last two weeks of the year.  I'm going to be amazed if it's not incredibly similar to last week's offering.

And yeah, it is indeed pretty similar.  I was surprised to recognise "Seven Drunken Nights" because it shares its roots with Kate Rusby's "Our Goodman" - they're similar but very different so it's interesting to compare them if you're aware of either of them.  "The Limerick Rake" is also an impressive a capella number - overall, I think I preferred this album to the last one because it just felt more skilful.  And also, I didn't get so tired of this one because there's more variety, so it definitely wins.  Which, to be fair, probably isn't that surprising  - the first album in a series is generally always the best.

We're at #20 in the charts this week on the 36th week of a 41 week run, with it having peaked at #5 for four consecutive weeks.  The top five this week were Val Doonican, Sgt Pepper, The Rolling Stones, TSOM and Jimi Hendrix and there are no new entries or women in the chart this week - giving us a final total of 11 named and 8 featured, which isn't a great total but it's way better than we saw in '73.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album but it does tell me that the title "is both an allusion to hard liquor, particularly Irish whiskey, and to the musical difficulty of the fourteen songs chosen for the album" and "most of the songs concern rogues and drinking"!.  It also tells me, surprisingly, that one of the tracks was written by, heaven forbid, an Englishman - "The Travelling People" was written by Ewan MacColl (aka Kirsty's dad!).  And, unsurprisingly, like its successor, this album also got to #1 in Ireland!

"Customers also listened to" The Clancy Brothers, The Wolfetones, The Freemen and Silly Wizard (still my favourite!) - I can't tell you anything about any of them, but I'm sure they're all great.  But I didn't mind this at all - it felt like a much better showcase of their skills than the follow-up.

And with that, we're done with 1968 - except for the obligatory write-up of the year!

1968 - And we're done!
14/01/68 - Undoubtedly skilful

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