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Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts. 09/07/61 : $1,000,000.00 Worth Of Twang -  Duane Eddy  Quite ridiculously, I'm skipping over yet another Sinatra compilation album to take us to the only album in the chart this week that I haven't met or ignored - I'm aware of Duane Eddy from his use by The Art Of Noise and 2ManyDJs, but I can't say I'm expecting to find a whole album of him particularly interesting. Oh no - not only is it not particularly interesting, it's actively annoying.  I'll just take $10.00 worth of twang please Duane.  I can appreciate the skill involved and I can believe it was a fresh new sound at the time, but it's not for me.  It's a very odd album title as well - why did he feel the need to include the cents? We're all the way down at #19 in the charts this week on his fifteenth week of an eighteen week run, with it having peaked at #5 in his eighth week.  The top five this week were  South Pacific ,  Elvis ,...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2023   #31 : Silo  In a year of gritty sci-fi epics that promised lots and delivered little (hello Bodies), this bestselling novel adaptation was a rare treat. Moody, tense, gripping, this 10-part tale of a post-apocalyptic underground community was so watchable it even managed to kill off its lead character in the first couple of episodes and keep you hooked. Of course, it helped that Hollywood star Rebecca Ferguson was waiting in the wings … This is one I've already written up for my Empire list so I'm only including it here for completion because I'm like that.  For those too lazy to click through, it's good! #30 - Well worth a watch

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2023   #30 : Black Mirror  Paapa Essiedu as a disco-singing demon. Salma Hayek Pinault as a hilariously awful version of herself. Josh Hartnett as a creepy, wife-stealing astronaut. All the big names came out for the sixth run of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology series – causing many an existential crisis with its dark themes of humanity and technology. We also had a model-turned-werewolf and kinky Scottish “true” crime. But it was Beyond the Sea – in which Hartnett starred opposite Aaron Paul – that lingered in the mind the most, as we saw two astronauts deal with family, grief and the tech that could create holograms of them back on Earth … I really liked the early episodes of Black Mirror but haven't really kept up with it since it moved to Netflix, although the ones I've seen there have still been pretty good.  So I'm quite happy to catch up with this. For those of you that haven't seen any of the s...

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts. 16/07/61 : Nice N' Easy - Frank Sinatra Well, it's been over two months since we last saw either Elvis or Frank, so it was probably about time one of them popped up.  Frank's back for his third appearance of the year (plus one best-of that I gave a swerve) - from the title I'm expecting this to be croonin' Frank rather than swingin' Frank, but let's see. It's all perfectly fine (which is damning it with faint praise because it's way better than a lot of stuff we've heard this year), but there are no classic Frank numbers on here so it all just drifts by pleasantly rather than sticking in there.  And in a year of much Frank, he needs to do a bit more to stand out from his own crowd, I'm afraid. We're at #16 in the chart this week on his final week of a 27 week run, with it having peaked at #4 in the charts (for four weeks).  The top five this week were   South Pacific ,   George ,  Elv...

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts. 23/07/61 : My Fair Lady -  Original Broadway Cast  Yes - finally!  I love the film and listen to the album reasonably frequently because the bangers bang hard - and there are a lot of them!  I'll be surprised if I think there's a better album than this in '61 so I'm totally looking forward to revisiting it.  It's also an amusing coincidence that The Music Man's leading man is Professor Harold Hill and here it's Professor Henry Higgins. Yup - it's always a pleasure to revisit this although it was quite interesting listening to this version because I normally pick the film soundtrack which has Marni Nixon singing the Eliza Doolittle part whereas here it's Julie Andrews - as you'd expect Julie does an excellent job but it's just slightly different from versions I'm used to.  The hit rate here really is very high - I'd say that 50% of the tracks are pretty much classics.  If I had to...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2023 #38 :    Strange Way Of Life Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke sizzle in Almodóvar’s queer cowboy yarn, a dusty lusty tale of long-lost lovers bound by a bloody fate. Our third film from Pedro  Almodóvar and so far they've generally been style over substance, with just enough interesting elements to make them worthy of consideration - but I can't say my expectations are particularly high for this.  Particularly when I go to play it and see it's 31 minutes long - how peculiar! Even given my low expectations and the short running time, there's really amazingly little substance here in terms of plot - you could summarise the whole film in three sentences.  Sheriff Jake (Ethan Hawke) and Silva (Pedro Pascal) had a gay old time time down in Mexco and 25 years later, Silva rides into Jake's town - but why?  Well, I'm not going to tell you obviously, but I assure you it's not tricky to work it out. It is ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts. 30/07/61 : The Ray Conniff Hi-fi Companion -  Ray Conniff  This album has been floating around the lower reaches of the chart for a couple of months and I'm absolutely intrigued by the title and the artist because I've never heard of him.  So I've no idea what we're going to get here - and it's not like the album title gives me any clues. Hmmm - it's an interesting one.  It's a recognisable but hard to describe sound - they're all easy-listening-ish arrangements of vintage tracks (well, the one's I recognised anyway) but that feels like a harsh description.  You can tell there's been a reasonable amount of skill gone into it - they're very much the sort of thing that ambient artists used to sample in the 00s.  All of which doesn't really go anyway to describing it to you - let's just say I imagine you won't have listened to an album like this before.  I'd be lying if I sai...

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts. 06/08/61 : The Music Man -  Original London Cast  Another early 60s musical that I've never heard of - I may scoff but some of them have actually done OK for themselves this year, so let's go in with an open mind. Yeah, I didn't mind this at all - the songs gave you a basic idea of the plot and they're all in the classic musical style of something like  Anything Goes  with a smattering of solo numbers shared amongst the cast and some fine chorus numbers.  Two things I could have done without were the bizarre opening number which is more of a poem than anything else and the annoying kid with the lisp - but the presence of "76 Trombones" provides adequate compensation.  It's also worth pointing out that it's only through musicals that we're getting to see any women this year and they're normally given a reasonable amount to do and often play the only sensible characters involved. We're at...

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts. 13/08/61 : Seven Brides For Seven Brothers -  Original Soundtrack  I seem to recall this was one of my mum's favourites - I think I watched the film once but struggled to get past the fact that kidnapping multiple women is central to the plot and generally viewed as perfectly acceptable - I guess they just did things differently back then.  The songs are supposed to be pretty good though and it's got Howard Keel on it, so I'm looking forward to listening to it. Hmmm - it's OK,  but nothing more than that for me at first listen.  There are actually less songs on here than I was expecting because there's an awful lot of random instrumental filler (which I assume relates to dance sequences in the film, but they're not exactly essential here) and the vocal style is very warbly-operatic, as things often were back then.  The album was also nearly an hour long, which has been pretty much unheard of this year! ...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 24/05/24 :  Hit Me Hard And Soft -  Billie Eilish Our third visit with Ms Eilish and my impression so far has been "what am I missing?" - I liked her Barbie single but I'll be surprised if this convinces me of her genius. Hmmm - it's all very pleasant and there are some interesting enough noises on it which are all well constructed, but there's not enough variety across the album to convince me of genius.  "L'Amour De Ma Vie" and "Blue" did stand out for me - the rest of it is all perfectly fine but, on first listen at least, not particularly noteworthy.  At this point, though, I do have to bring in my guest reviewer of the week - Isobel (14) who is much more of the target market for this kind of thing and she assures me that I am (as is often the case) completely wrong.  And, under normal circumstances, that would be that - but... ...I'm making more of an effort these days to ...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2023   #27 : Only Murders In The Building  Meryl Streep! Paul Rudd! The most charming trio of leads on TV! As Selena Gomez, Martin Short and Steve Martin returned for the gloriously daft third series of this comic crime caper, the ante was very much upped for the calibre of guest star. Streep stole every scene she was in, Rudd’s supremely game turn as an excruciatingly awful Hollywood star was a riotous pleasure and Tina Fey’s evil true-crime podcast host was as brilliant as ever. A consistent delight. I was introduced to this by The Guardian in 2021 and it quickly became a favourite for me and my eldest, so this is another season that I watched as it came out - one of an impressive six on the list this year, he says modestly! And actually, I don't really need to say much more about it than The Guardian has already said - it is indeed "gloriously daft",  this season's  "ante was  very much upped fo...

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts. 20/08/61 : Tony -  Anthony Newley And our second visit with Mr Newley - multiple visits are very much the thing this year, aren't they?  I'm expecting more of his cheeky-chappy act we saw on this - I believe it was very popular at the time but I'm not sure it's going to have time-travelled particularly well. Actually, he's not quite so cheeky-chappy because it's all very night-club cabaret - you can almost imagine couples sat at tables in their best outfits listening to him whilst smoking.  It's very much of the time but it does feel very dated now and a whole album of it is just too much for me.   His voice is quite interesting because it's very expressive and he's got good control, but he doesn't always quite hit the note.   I also wasn't expecting it to open with "Yes! We Have No Bananas" - a song that everyone knows at least one line of, but I'm not sure I've ever a...

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts. 27/08/61 : Beyond The Fringe -  Beyond The Fringe Before we get to this, I have to report on another album I can't track down - String Along With Nat King Cole, which is quite the curious one because it's on Spotify but for some unclear reason it wouldn't let me listen to it.  So we come to our second comedy album of the year which is one I'm quite surprised I've never listened to - I imagine I will laugh at some of it, but other bits will be so dated that I won't have the faintest clue what it's on about. Actually, there was an awful lot that I didn't have a clue about - it felt like it was probably quite scathing about targets that I vaguely recognise from my youth (elderly vicars, 60s politicians, people who'd lived through the war), but I wasn't entirely sure.  I also suspected that it was quite visual in places, which unsurprisingly didn't really come across on the album.  I did, how...

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts. 03/09/61 : The Student Prince/The Vagabond King -  John Hanson We have met The Student Prince before with Mario Lanze and it was a very peculiar affair indeed - I struggle to imagine this is going to be any less curious. It is indeed curious, because John Hanson is a singer and the first two tracks are both instrumentals.  But when he gets going, he's got a nice enough voice but it's all very firmly routed in the 50s.  Seventeen tracks in 40 minutes is impressive though - he doesn't hang around! We're at #9 in the charts this week on his second week of a six week run, with this being as high as it got.  The top five this week were  South Pacific ,  George Mitchell ,  Elvis , Barber/Bilk and The Sound Of Music (Original Broadway Cast) - and it's important I tell you it's the Broadway version, because the London cast version is at #6.  There was one new entry for Stop The World I Want To Get Of...

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.   2006 : Naïve  - The Kooks This has surprised me - they're not exactly a band many remember with excessive adoration and it's not even their best song ("She Moves In Her Own Way", obviously), so I'm intrigued as to how it's managed to take the year (and experience suggests I'm going to be no closer to understanding it after I've finished either). I didn't remember the video and it's actually quite an interesting one because it made me realise that I had no clue what the song was about - and doubly interesting because it goes absolutely no way to clearing up the mystery.  Apart from that, it's pretty dull.  Wikipedia tells us it got to #5 in the UK, was the 19th best selling song of the year and reached #15 in New Zealand - all of which doesn't really explain anything.  It does also give us an amusing random fact - it was actress Jodie Comer's favourite song as...