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Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 10/01/65 : Spotlight On The George Mitchell Minstrels -  The George Mitchell Minstrels Just when you think things can't get any worse after Cliff's panto nonsense - that's exactly what they go and do, giving us our third visit with this lot. I couldn't find this as an album, but five of the tracks are on YouTube and they're more than enough to give me a feel for the album because they're all dreadful music-hall style medleys - you can almost hear the jazz hands going on in the background. I did not like this. We're at #11 in the charts this week on their sixth week of a seven week run, with #6 being as high as it got in its third and fourth weeks - there's really no accounting for taste, is there? The top five this week were  The Beatles ,  The Bachelors ,  Val Doonican ,  The Beatles   and   The Rolling Stones  and there were three new entries in the chart for Keely Smith (#16),  Carous...

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 17/01/65 : Aladdin And His Wonderful Lamp -  Cliff Richard And The Shadows Our sixth visit with Cliff and Wikipedia tells me this a pantomine cast album - WTAF?!? Well, this is a peculiar one - it's about three or four different albums rolled into one. There are the Cliff tracks where, having endured some of his earlier efforts where he didn't seem to know who he wanted to be, it's actually nice to hear that cheesy Cliff sound coming through and I actually liked "I Could Easily Fall". There are also the Shadows tracks, which aren't terrible but are generally better if they decide against singing. And then there are the Norrie Paramor tracks, which are either tracks with random singers and super cheesy lyrics or  utterly unnecessary instrumental numbers.  Additionally, across all these sub-albums there's an Aladdin theme which pops up randomly from time to time (depending upon whether they remembered to...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2020 #12 : Queen & Slim Of all the films released in 2020, Queen & Slim was perhaps the 2020-est. Following two young African Americans who meet on a Tinder date and get plunged into a nightmare when a cop car pulls them over, Melina Matsoukas' film tackled police brutality and mass protest in scenes that echoed out in real life as the year progressed. But despite its bleak subject matter and the righteous anger fuelling it, Queen & Slim again and again finds beauty amidst the horror which features too much in the Black experience, whether it's the stunning visuals captured by cinematographer Tat Radcliffe, or the tender romance that unfurls between Jodie Turner-Smith's Queen and Daniel Kaluuya's Slim – a pair who, on their first date, wish they'd swiped left on each other. A road movie with an important destination, it gets there in style. This is a film I've had on my list to watch for some time ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 24/01/65 : Roustabout -  Elvis Presley There really is no escape from the lad - this being his eighteenth appearance (I'll soon have to start using numbers) and it's another movie soundtrack, so it's unlikely to be great. It's not great, but it bounces along nicely and probably works perfectly well as a movie soundtrack with a paper-thin plot linking them together somehow. And with eleven tracks in twenty minutes it doesn't stay around long enough to get tiresome - some might view it as a bit of a rip-off, but I'm sure the fans were happy enough being ripped off. I have to admit I quite liked "One Track Heart" but I struggle to imagine the album gets too many listens these days. We're at #12 in the charts this week on his last of a four week run, with three weeks at this position being as high as it got. The top five this week were  The Beatles ,  The Rolling Stones ,  Val Doonican ,  The Kinks...

  An old favourite at a new venue. I first became aware of Throwing Muses way back in '87 and between '91 and '96 they released four great albums - The Real Ramona, Red Heaven, University and Limbo, all of which I still check out from time to time. After that, their lead singer Kristin Hersh embarked on a solo career but they've still found time to release an album every five years or so, supported by some gigs over here which I've generally made an effort to catch. And often, a most unusual thing happens at these gigs... ...I have a friend to talk to! We never do anything mad like book the tickets together or anything, but Mr Billing has made a lot more of an effort to attend these things over the years than I (he reckons he's seen either them or her live about thirty times - this was only my fifth visit) and so, if I manage to remember to get a ticket, there's a strong chance he'll be there. It's fair to say we don't see a lot of each other giv...

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 31/01/65 : Moonlight And Roses -  Jim Reeves I've never listened to a Jim Reeves album - I'm not expected to like it, but at the same time, I'm not entirely sure what it's going to sound like. So maybe I should just be a bit more open-minded, eh? You know what? It's awfully dated, but he's got a nice voice and the songs are all well done so I can much more easily understandable the appeal of this than something like Val Doonican - for all those who wanted to hark back to the good old days and avoid the racket them Beatles and Stones were making, I imagine this hit the spot nicely.  I have to admit I liked "Moon River" (we've had a few versions of that over the years) and "It's Only A Paper Moon" - they just glided past nicely. None of this is essential, but it's certainly not offensive. We're at #12 in the charts this week on his 23rd week of a 25 week run, with it having ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 07/02/65 : Lucky 13 Shades Of Val Doonican -  Val Doonican OK - it's been in the top five for so long now that I felt I should really make another effort to find it. And, weirdly enough, searching for it on YouTube (which I'd done before) came straight back with it - so I guess I get to listen to Val doing a load of shite Irish songs after all. Or maybe it will be a pleasant surprise. To no-one's surprise, it's not a pleasant surprise - but I guess it could be a lot worse (and it's not all Irish either!). It's got some most peculiar track titles - "Quit Kickin' My Dog Around" (complete with some terrible barking), "The Agricultural Irish Girl" (this is pretty bad too), "Carlos Dominguez" and the farmyard animal pairing of "Delaney's Donkey" (which is enjoyably terrible) and "Paddy McGinty's Goat" (which could be the same song just with different l...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2020 #13 : 1917 Much was made of the sheer technical achievement of Sam Mendes' World War I movie, presented as one extended take through the Boschian hellscape of the frontlines. And it is an astonishing feat – seamlessly stitched together, Roger Deakins' camerawork fluidly taking in every assault and eerie landscape. But 1917 is an emotional, visceral experience too, George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman putting in excellent, empathetic performances as the soldiers dispatched across No Man's Land to stop thousands of British soldiers walking into a devastating ambush. A frequently harrowing, heart-stoppingly tense cinematic odyssey – and filmmaking at its most immersive. This is a film I thought I'd already written up, but when I went to include the link to it for #12 in the list, I found that no such write-up exists. Which makes it the rarest of things - a film I actually chose to watch without some list telling m...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 23/05/25 : I'm The Problem - Morgan Wallen  We've yet to meet Morgan but I know two things about him - 1. he's highly regarded and 2. this album isn't so highly regarded. So who knows what I'm going to think about this? Oh joy - 37 tracks in a smidgen under 2 hours!!! I can't say that filled me with joy - no-one needs more than twenty tracks on an album so why not just make it two albums to give people like me a break?!? He's got a nice voice though and obviously knows his way round a country track - I liked the title track, "What I Want" (with Tate McRae) and "Number 3 and Number 7" (with Eric Church). And the rest of the album is all perfectly competent, but you get the impression he can knock this sort of thing out in his sleep - just make sure you get some lost love, whiskey and feeling sorry for yourself in there and it's job done. And having to listen to 37 tracks when ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 14/02/65 : Wayne Fontana And The Mindbenders -  Wayne Fontana And The Mindbenders Before we get to Wayne, we have to discuss an album that I wasn't sure I should ignore or not - Keely Smith Sings The John Lennon/Paul McCartney Songbook. A lot of the female solo singer albums this year have been all or mostly cover versions, so it nearly got included on that front - but because they were all Beatles numbers, I just didn't feel it quite deserved it. She's got a nice voice though and the songs are all done in a jazz cabaret style, which certainly makes them a bit different - and  it may yet get a write-up  if we run out of albums in the next couple of weeks. So we move on to Wayne and his Mindbenders who  I don't believe I've ever heard of  - it's possible I'll recognise a single off the (obviously debut) album, but currently I have no idea what to expect from this and I can't say their name is exactly ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 21/02/65 : A Girl Called Dusty -  Dusty Springfield Our third visit with Dusty, but the second this year and it's another debut album - I have high hopes for this one. Oh yes, she had a lovely voice. As is often the case for debut albums, it's all cover versions but she's picked a good selection with "Mockingbird", "Only 24 Hours From Tulsa", "Anyone Who Had A Heart", "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" and "Wishin' And Hopin'" all done particularly well - but there's really no duds on there. I think there's a good argument that her version of "Anyone Who Had A Heart" is the definitive version because of the emotion she conveys - and it's been covered by an awful lot of people since the original version by Dionne Warwick. And her version of " Will You Love Me Tomorrow" is also great, but doesn't quite pip the original version by  The S...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #10 :    True Detective: Night Country HBO’s anthology crime series returned in spectacular fashion with Night Country, which transported us to the cold, endless night of Ennis, Alaska, in a new season created by Mexican writer-director Issa López. Jodie Foster is as brilliant as ever as Liz Danvers, a grouchy, stubborn, somewhat chaotic police chief, tasked with finding out what happened to a whole team of researchers that were discovered dead, frozen in the icy wasteland, with hints at a somewhat supernatural cause. Kali Reis is an excellent foil-slash-teammate as Trooper Evangeline Navarro, who has a personal stake in the case, and confronts her own issues and past as they solve it. With a totally immersive sense of time and place, fascinating central mystery, prescient story threads on Indigenous issues and an ending you won’t see coming, Night Country is True Detective at its very best. This is another one I've...