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The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews... Oklahoma! : Wyndham Theatre Our annual Kids week family trip to the theatre - so I'm sitting in the posh(ish) seats and in a new (for me) theatre as well.  I've never seen any version of Oklahoma!, but I feel I'm going to be safe with a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, aren't I? Well, this is all a bit odd as we enter the theatre!  All the lights are on - not just the house lights, but all the spots as well so it's really bright, almost uncomfortably so.  And the theatre, which I assume generally looks lovely, is all covered in plywood and guns which, whilst I assume is an appropriate look, isn't the loveliest decor I can imagine. So, given the lack of curtain and the stage lights being on, we're not overly surprised when the cast just wanders on to the stage and starts chatting and singing - but it is a bit of a surprise that the house lights don't go down.  And up they stay for most of the perf...

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts. 18/04/99 : Forgiven, Not Forgotten  - The Corrs For me, this album is entirely forgotten (and never owned - 16/37), but I have a sneaky suspicion that pretty soon they won't be forgiven for it... Awww - it's not that bad but they'll go back to being forgotten very soon, I can assure you.  The tracks bounce along nicely enough and I even remember that I'd heard "Runaway" before, but they do play up the Oirishness a bit too much with the fiddle and tin whistle making regular appearance.  The vocals are surprisingly Abba-esque at times (Shania Twain would be another touchpoint) and the drums much higher in the mix than I was expecting, but apart from that there's nothing here to startle the pigeons - they well may be starting to nod off by the end of it (it feels a lot longer than 48 minutes). We're at #3 in the charts on their 53rd week of an 82 week run - but that's not even half the story!  Thi...

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews... The Crucible : Gielgud Theatre My first trip out in nearly 2 months - but I'm be making up for things over the coming month. And there's a very interesting scene that greets me as I enter the theatre - a curtain of water.  It's impressive both for being the full height of the stage and also falling into a very well defined area - the front row of seats were occupied and really not that far away from where the water was landing.  It was started up again between each act and worked well in terms of obscuring any scene shifting going on behind it and also being transformed by effective lighting - I've seen a surprising amount of rain on stage this year, but I've not seen a water curtain and it worked pretty well. And when the curtain comes down, we're in church with some nice singing - I don't know a lot about this play but I do know that religion features pretty heavily.  After the singing finishes, ther...

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts. 25/04/99 : Rides  - Reef I obviously like "Place Your Hands" (because everyone does, don't they?) but I can't say my expectations are sky-high for this - I'll be happy enough if they can manage a load of tracks that aren't quite as good as that.  And no, I never owned it (16/36) Yeah, that's pretty much where we are.  There's a definite Primal Scream rocky phase feel to it - it's all absolutely harmless but not exactly great and incredibly nondescript at first listen.  And at 53 minutes is way too long - if you like "Place Your Hands" you probably won't hate this, but that's as far as you're likely to get, I'm afraid.  I'm also very unsure what they were trying to say with the album cover. This week we're at #3 with a new entry on the start of a ten week run and the rest of the top five were  ABBA , Catatonia ,  The Corrs  and  Fatboy Slim  - quite a nice varie...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2022 #24 :  Fire Of Love Romantic portrait of passionate, doomed volcanologists embraces the mythology around Maurice and Katia Krafft, the scientists who died in the 1991 Mount Unzen disaster. Unsurprisingly, I've never heard of this - I'm expecting a charming tale of two oddballs with some absolutely stunning footage.  It seems a bit weird that someone's decided to make a film about them 21 years after they've died - but hey, let's give it a go. The first thing to say is that they weren't oddballs - they were full-on lunatics!  But in a cool "volcanoes are all we really care about" kinda way - they met at university, got married, decided they weren't going to have kids and spent their lives visiting active volcanoes.  As you do!  And basically the film "just" follows them around showing us footage from their archive. It does indeed have stunning footage - volcanos are just prett...

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts. 02/05/99 : Equally Cursed And Blessed  - Catatonia The third one in a row I owned (16/35) - I seem to recall quite liking it but I've not revisited it in many a year (whereas I do listen to International Velvet, their previous album, every so often).  So bring it on - I'm looking forward to remembering what it's like. It opens with "Dead From The Wait Down" which is fine track indeed, but you do worry that the success of their previous album has wiped them out.  And "Londinium" doesn't exactly dispel this notion - "London never sleeps - it just sucks the life out of me" .  The rest of it does pick up a bit, but there's a palpable feeling of overall ennui with fame and recognition - they're not deliberately trying to be awkward, but they really don't want to go through all that again thank you.  It's a nice enough little indie album, but I can't help but feel most fan...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2022 .   #37 : Black Bird The creepiest character of the year rubbed up against the most charming in this tense prison thriller. Taron Egerton played suave con Jimmy Keene, who was deemed so affable by the FBI that he was offered a reduced sentence to head into a maximum security psychiatric unit and try to extract a confession by Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) for the killing of multiple girls. Though it sounded far-fetched, the two-handers were horrifying, affecting – and made all the more disturbing by the fact that it is based on a true story. I've heard this is good and I've got a bit of a soft spot for Taron Egerton - after all, he is the voice of Moomintroll (which is well worth a watch if you've not seen it).  And I guess he does a reasonable job in Rocketman as well - I do hope I'm going to get to write about that some day.  So I'm looking forward to this... Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton) is indee...

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts. 09/05/99 : Head Music  - Suede The second one in a row I owned (15/34) and this was another one I rarely listened to - I believe I quite liked it, but didn't enjoy it as much as either of their first two albums (neither of which we've met yet), so rarely revisited it.  I seem to recall it's a bit more rocky than their earlier stuff, but I could be entirely wrong on that... Nope - it's not really any rockier overall but it does have its moments.  There's more variety in terms of musical style than on either of their first two albums so maybe that's what I was thinking of - part of me admires their ambition, but I do think the album fails to gel as a result.   It’s mostly all fine but very little of it stands out - I would say "Electricity" and "Head Music" are the highpoints for me, but "The Elephant Man" and "Crack In The Union Jack" must have taken about two minutes t...

Continuing my trip across the output of Athens' finest... Fables Of The Reconstruction (1985) Their third album takes a bit of swerve into, well I'm not entirely sure what but it's never held the appeal of the other three albums out of the first four that I consider to be the "early R.E.M." period (although there's an argument it's five - we'll come back to this).  As I remember it, as a whole it's just a bit too much of a downer - it has some higher points, but as a whole it doesn't feel like they're really making too much effort.  It will be interesting to see whether my opinion changes when I revisit... Side one - "A Side" 1. Feeling Gravity's Pull An interesting enough track but unlike the previous two albums, we don't have a grabber to open the album - shame on them! 2. Maps & Legends Another interesting rather than great track - it's got a reasonable chorus though. 3. Driver 8 This is the first great track on...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 25/08/23 :  Unreal Unearth - Hozier   I don't hate Hozier, but I can't help but feel the guy is a very lucky pub singer - one decent song and he suddenly finds himself a global star.  I don't blame the lad - why wouldn't he run with it?  But he ain't that great - is he? Well, I've listened to this and well - no, he ain't.  I mean, it's all perfectly listenable and if he was playing the King Will down the road I'd certainly give him some applause and I might even buy him a pint.  I also admire his use of the Irish language - but does this album deserve to be #1?  No - it does not.  A load of the songs scream "tortured poet" - but I can't help but feel that everyone who cares understands exactly how sensitive the lad is and the rest of us just don't give a monkeys.  I don't really know what else to say - I'm just a bit perplexed by the whole thing.  As I am by the alb...

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts. 16/05/99 : Remedy  - Basement Jaxx I owned this (14/33) but rarely listened to it and even more rarely all the way through - I seem to recall there are some nice sounds on it, but it's a bit repetitive. Well, "Rendez-vu" is a fine opener and "Red Alert" and "Bingo Bango" also jump out as strong tracks.  I also liked "Don't Give Up" for some late album weirdness - it was nicely different from the rest.  All the rest of it wasn't bad but, yeah,  a whole album of it was a bit too much for me I'm afraid - in my (very) old clubbing days, one track would have been well received, two would have resulted in a move towards the bar and any more than that would have been just too much. We're at #4 with a new entry this week at the beginning of a 26 week run, which feels slightly generous and then it managed another 30 weeks across another three runs, which feels very generous indeed ...

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.   1994 : Juicy  - The Notorious B.I.G. Not a track I recognise from the title, but I suspect I've heard it - maybe even written about it (having checked, I've written up Ready To Die , which includes this track but I didn't mention it once).  I've no idea why it might have taken the year, I suspect I'm not going to love it and I'll be surprised if there are too many cover versions but let's see, shall we? The video is 4:12 of nonsense nostalgia,  ambition and "success"  - and the main thing I took away from it that there's no way Mr B.I.G. had a reel-to-reel tape player when he was younger (he was born four years after me).  It's all remarkably average for me, I'm afraid and I'm a bit surprised he got away with the lyric "t ime to get paid, blow up like the World Trade". Wikipedia has remarkably little on the song other than telling me "t he son...