How wonderful - wonderful our love will be

Starting my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

12/12/65 : Almost There - Andy Williams


Our third visit with Mr Williams and I've liked his delivery but found whole albums of it to be too much - it's hard to imagine that things are going to massively change here.

Well, after some internet detective work to track down that its also known as Dear Heart, I am able to confirm that's kinda the case. However, things are actually worse here because it's all very slow easy-listening nonsense - there's nothing like "Music To Watch Girls By" on here and it actually makes his voice seem very average. And that's a super cheesy album cover!

We're at #6 in the charts this week on his 26th week of an impressive 46 week run, with it having peaked at #4 in its 13th-15th and 19th weeks. The top five this week were The Sound Of Music, The Beatles' Rubber Soul, Mary Poppins, The Beatles' Help! and Joan Baez and there's one new entry in the chart for The Walker Brothers (#16). It's also worth pointing out that in a pleasing contrast to '59, we have four named women in the chart and two musical soundtracks where Julie Andrews has the key role.

Wikipedia tells us this is his mere sixteenth album and amusingly spends most of its time telling us that this was his last album before he started doing anything decent (eg "Music To Watch GIrls By") and it was his first album to do anything in the UK. And that's about it really - the critics were nice enough about it in a "same old, same old" kinda way and it did OK commercially in the US as well.

"Customers also listened to" Percy Faith, Johnny Mathis, Perry Como and Burl Ives - some names from the dim and distant past there. And this feels very much like the dim and distant past - it's not unlistenable, but it's really not great.

05/12/65 - (Not very) interesting
19/12/65 - A fine album

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm not wishing I was back in the USA, coz I come from Morecambe and the skies are grey

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/11/24 : Earth To Grace - Massive Wagons I will listen to the new entry at #1, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm writing a whole entry on it - so instead we have this which I know absolutely nothing about. But it has to be better than the abomination at #1. Well, it's something you don't hear too much of these days - I guess "hard rock" is probably as good a description as any. It’s not going to win any awards for musical complexity but it’s quite catchy - I was r eminded of Gary Moore in his heavier days that teenage me used to like. It also certainly doesn't take itself too seriously - "Free And Easy" tells us "I don't shoot guns, it's not healthy - I drive a Ford C-Max I got off my dad and it's filthy" and "Rabbit Hole" offers up an amusingly sceptical take on conspiracy theories and then abruptly ends "Auf wiedersehen, adios - this song fucking ...
Read more

Time is the fruit of patience

Image
Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 27/05/90 : Passion And Warfare : Steve Vai I know that Steve Vai is a highly respected guitarist, but I've got no more clue about him than that.  I also don't have a great history with albums from highly respected guitarists, so I'd have to say my confidence isn't sky high going in to this one (and nothing would have convinced me to buy it - 7/32). Ohmigod, this is rubbish.  The guitar playing is indeed of a very high quality, but man cannot live on guitar playing alone and everything else about it is just pretentious bombast.  "The Audience Is Listening" deserves a specific mention for being particularly rubbish, with a teacher introducing "young Steve Vai" to the class to play a lovely tune and then providing an increasingly histrionic running commentary on how much she doesn't like it.  I can imagine he's very impressive live, but such virtuosity often doesn't translate onto an alb...
Read more

And she'll tease you, she'll unease you

Image
  A first for me! Cheap tickets often pop up to various All Points East events through work, but it often coincides with holiday time - and the one time I did make an effort to go a train strike prevented me from making out into the wilds of East London. Until now when, for no obvious reason, I went to a day when I had no great interest in the headlining act. It's based in Victoria Park in Hackney and it's a BIG site. The set-up is similar to Reading Festival with two main stages which alternate between acts, involving a lot of audience migration across the site. The distance between the stages might even be bigger than at Reading, but there's also a sizeable tented stage about halfway between so you can always stop off if you're feeling tired - and I did, on several occasions! Also, unlike both Reading and BST Hyde Park, there is a lot of shaded area on site which was also much used throughout the day whilst a LOT of music was being enjoyed, because I saw... Liana Flor...
Read more