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Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts 07/09/86 :  Dancing On The Ceiling - Lionel Richie Our second visit with the only Lionel we've met so far and this is a peculiar one - I know and like the title track, but I feel absolutely no inclination to listen to the album. I'm just expecting a whole load of American blandness - but maybe I'll be proved happily wrong. I wouldn't call it bland actually - it's just very, very smooth. It's not really my thing, but there's nothing wrong with it and he's got a nice voice. I knew the title track and "Say You, Say Me" but I wouldn't remember any of the others if you played them to me now - a nd that's all I've got to say about it really! We're at #2 in the charts this week on his fourth week of an impressive 53 week run, with this being as high as it got with Now 7 keeping it in second place for three weeks. The rest of the top five were Now 7 (obviously),  Five Star ,  Paul Si...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2023 #28 :     May December Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman potent in Todd Haynes’ drama, with Portman as an actor spending time with Moore’s married sex offender as research for playing her in a film. I know this had a lot of awards buzz, but there would have been no chance of me watching it otherwise - although I quite liked  Carol , I've not generally got on with Todd Haynes's films and I can't say the subject matter particularly drew me in. And all I can say is that I really tried, but eventually I just accepted that life's too short to watch yet another film I really wasn't enjoying. It's all looks very nice and it's, of course, well acted - but all the characters seem to be both unhappy and unpleasant and I just thought "why am I doing this to myself?" (and I'm running out of time this year). I did check the plot on Wikipedia (apparently it's a "black comedy" - sp...

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts 14/09/86 :  Crash - The Human League This year feels to have provided a few albums which were the last throw of the dice for early 80s stars and this has to be another one - I feel this is either going to be surprisingly good or completely dreadful, but can't tell which is more likely. Well, it's not completely dreadful but it's closer to that than surprisingly good - it's all pretty average. The  singing isn't great, but I'm not sure anyone comes to Human League for vocal abilities -  I did remember "Human", but apart from that and "Love On The Run" which I quite liked there was nothing I recognised or am going to remember, I'm afraid. Bizarrely, it  starts with the expected Human League feel first up, but there's a surprising number of tracks that have more of a Five Star vibe to them, which I really wasn't expecting.  Overall, I'd say it's just a bit of a mess - it...

  What goes from   Bad Bunny   to   Talking Heads ? I celebrated my 1000th post on 12 December 2022 and now, 687 days later, we get to 2000 - compared with 963 days for the first 1000, I'm accelerating rapidly! Once again, the main focus has been music with another 757 posts (bringing us to a grand total of 1517 on music) which I reckon cover approximately 2250 albums and 60 singles. The main source of albums was the charts covering SIXTEEN different years randomly picked between '56 and '24 and it's fair to say the quality has been very variable. From a position of low expectation, ' 05  is probably the year I enjoyed the most - we met some really decent albums in that year (and  Black Eyed Peas  which I still shudder at the memory of). Conversely, I had high expectations for ' 90 which turned out to be very disappointing indeed - and I can also assure you that ' 77 was most definitely not the classic year for music that everyone would have you...

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts 21/09/86 :  True Stories - Talking Heads I think I've heard this before, but certainly not often and not for a long time so I don't remember it - I'm expecting to enjoy it though. Yeah, I didn't mind it at all - a whole album of their art-school pop is almost too much, but I think they introduce just enough variety in there to save it. I recognised  "Love For Sale", "Wild Wild Life" (which is my favourite track) and "City Of Dreams"  from their best-of album (which is imaginatively titled Sand In The Vaseline) and I liked "Dream Operator" as well. I also know that "Radio Head" was used as inspiration by a certain band when their record company asked them to change their name (no points for guessing who, I'm afraid).  We're at #7 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a nine week run - it feels like it deserved better than that to me. The top ...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 25/10/24 - Tension II - Kylie Minogue I've got a lot of time for Kylie - her and I go way back to when I used to watch Neighbours twice a day at university (and I'm not sure either of us expected us to be still together 35 years later). I'm not convinced by the whole "Tension II" thing though - it feels like they were slightly surprised by the success of Tension and just wanted some more of that, thank you very much. Well - there's more here to talk about than I was expecting and no mistake. Especially since, as I expected, this is pretty much a repeat of Tension because it's a d ecent set of disco tunes  - but... ...for a lot of the time, it just doesn’t sound like Kylie. It's not like it sounds like Johnny Cash, but it just doesn't sound like Kylie - and surely the point to a Kylie album is that it should sound like her? Having said that, " Kiss Bang Bang" is pretty much the sa...

Continuing my journey across the output of The Bard Of Barking... Mermaid Avenue (with Wilco) (1998) This album involves Billy and Wilco setting some of Woody Guthrie's lyrics to music and there's a lot of love out there for this - but when I listened to it, I just found it a bit boring and stompy. I'm hoping a second listen will show me I was quite wrong to dismiss it so. 1. Walt Whitman's Niece Well - I hate to say it, but it's a bit boring and stompy. 2. California Stars Well, this is more like it - it has a nice drawl to it. 3. Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key I know this one because he often plays it live - and I like it. I'd forgotten that Natalie Merchant (who may well be the next artist I do an album walkthrough for) sings backing vocals on it though. 4. Ships And Birds And she's front and centre on this one - it's another nice little melody. 5. Hoodoo Voodoo We're back to boring and stompy, I'm afraid. 6. She Came Along To Me I didn'...

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts 28/09/86 :  Break Every Rule - Tina Turner Our third visit with Tina - I never used to be a fan back in the day and it's fair to say that our visits have done absolutely nothing to convince me otherwise, so my expectations are not high for this. Yeah - none of it's hateful and I did do some toe-tapping, but it's all very samey and I can't imagine why anyone needed it in their lives. But I'm happy if they did - they weren't hurting anyone. She's got very scary hair on the album cover though - I'm not sure it needed to be quite that big. We're at #6 in the charts this week on her third week of an incredible 48 week run, with #2 in her debut week being as high as it got - interestingly it only spent its first five weeks in the top 20, but it hung around the lower reaches of the chart for a very long time. The top five this week were  Paul Simon  (starting a run of five weeks at the top),  Five Star ,...

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews... The Duchess (of Malfi) : Trafalgar Theatre Having seen Matt Smith earlier in the year in this  and failing to get tickets to see David Tennant in Hamlet, I decided to continue the Doctor Who theme by going to see Jodie Whittaker in my third visit to the Trafalgar Theatre this year. I actually wasn't a fan of her Doctor, but I've heard she's a great stage actress and this is one of those classic plays (albeit an updated version) which it won't hurt me to watch, even if I suspect I probably wasn't going to understand it. On entering the theatre, it doesn't give you a lot of a clue as to what's coming up - and what comes up is certainly a game of two halves! The first half basically introduces the characters - The Duchess (Jodie) is recently widowed and her two brothers would very much like it to stay that way so they can control her and their family's status. So obviously she scandalously marries her...

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts 05/10/86 :  Somewhere In Time - Iron Maiden Our fifth visit with the Maiden and once again, I'm sure I'll be impressed by the skill without enjoying it in the slightest. I'm slightly more predisposed towards them than usual though following the recent death of Paul di'Anno, their original vocalist - he's not on this album though (or on any of the ones I've met so far). Well, I didn't hate it I guess - but I don't appreciate their love of long tracks. The shortest track is just under five minutes and three of them run over seven minutes - with "Alexander The Great" sounding like an only slightly compressed history lesson at 8:35. It's all pretty much what you'd expect though - if you're a fan then you'll probably love it, but if not there's nothing here to convert you. But you knew that already, didn't you? We're at #3 with a new entry in the chart this week (Iron ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts 12/10/86 :  Word Up! - Cameo This will be an interesting one because I love the title track with it bringing back memories of the (incredibly unimpressive) student bar at Bath Uni, but I have concerns the rest of the album may be dreadful. Here's hoping, eh? And, obviously, the title track is up first which doesn't exactly allay my fears. And well - hmm, what to say about the rest of it? It's not dreadful, but it's surprisingly dated in a 70s soul/disco kinda style which wasn't at all what I was expecting. I think bemusement was my biggest reaction - who exactly wanted or needed this in their lives in '86? Most peculiar indeed - and who would have guessed that from the album cover? We're at #7 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a staggering 24 week run - and it came back for another ten weeks a couple of months later. The top five this week were  Paul Simon ,  A-ha  (a new entry),  F...

Continuing my trip up   Empire's top 20 films of 2023 #9 :     Rye Lane When London gets romanticised, it always tends to be the same bits of the capital. Snooze. Raine Allen-Miller’s debut feature brings some Before Sunset vibes south of the river and reinvents the British romcom in the process. Over a day and night spent around Peckham and Brixton – shot with real wide-eyed love by Allen Miller, who moved to Brixton aged 12 – weepy sadsack Dom (David Jonsson) and peppy, impetuous Yas (Vivian Oparah) meet-cute in a gender neutral bog and wander around comparing love-scars before planning a caper to get Yas’s copy of A Tribe Called Quest album The Low End Theory back from an ex. On the way, there’s a cameo from a certain member of Brit romcom royalty which is delicious in more ways than one, and a soundtrack which bangs very, very hard. Dazzlingly inventive and with wit and energy to burn, Rye Lane is smart, sharp and very funny. This is the highest film on Empire's list ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts 19/10/86 :  Revenge -  Eurythmics The first one of the year I owned, but I seem to recall I bought it several years later out of Our Price's bargain bin - it was one that got plenty of listens before it got stolen though, so I'll be pleased to catch up with it again. Yeah - that was a nice trip down memory lane. I particularly liked "Thorn In My Side" and "When Tomorrow Comes" with "The Miracle Of Love" providing a nice change of pace. All in all, I think this works pretty well as an album but I obviously rarely listened to it until the end because I didn't remember the last two tracks at all! We're at #5 in the chart this week on their sixteenth week of an impressive 51 week run, with it peaking at #3 in its first, second, eleventh and thirteenth weeks. The rest of the top five were  Paul Simon , A-ha ,  Five Star  and  Madonna  with the highest new entries being the impressive 80s one-...