I've been too long on my ownsome now

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 include it, I guess). It's also surprisingly long at 50 minutes - I wasn't aware they could make them that long at that time. I have to admit that none of it is as bad as I feared, but it all feels very random - some judicious pruning could have produced a much better album. For the avoidance of doubt though I should state that it still wouldn't have been great.

We're at #13 in the charts this week on their fourth week of a five week run, with three consecutive weeks at this position being as high as it ever got. The top five this week were The Beatles, Val Doonican, The Bachelors, The Beatles and The Kinks and we had one new entry in the chart for The Rolling Stones (#9). 

Wikipedia tells us it's Cliff's twelfth album and that's about it - I feel there has to be a story as to how Cliff and The Shadows came to record a pantomime album but it's not giving me any clues (and neither is the rest of the internet). Obviously, we don't need to learn anything more about Cliff, so let's go down an Aladdin based rabbit hole. It's one of the best known tales from One Thousand And One Nights, but actually wasn't part of the original text - it was added by Antoine Galland when he translated it into English (you knew that, right?). It was first dramatised in 1788 at Theatre Royal and has been a popular subject for pantomime for over 200 years - and will be playing at the Alban Arena this year with the exciting news that Bob Golding is back (this is BIG news on the St Albans panto circuit!).

Back to Cliff, I really don't understand what they thought they were doing here - but the results could have been far worse and it was surprisingly nice to hear Cliff sounding like Cliff!

10/01/65 - Absolutely dreadful
24/01/65 - The gravy train rolls on

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

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

Who are ya?!?

Image
A point each for the name, the song and the artist. 1. Her boyfriend’s a dick – he brings a gun to school 2. He took me to the future in the flux thing and I saw everything 3. He lives on the second floor 4. She told my baby we'd danced 'til three, then she looked at me 5. He tempted her with his treacle tart and his tasty wholemeal bread (2 names) 6. He’s stepping through the door 7. His girlfriend's pregnant too - he’s about to be a father 8. She’s gotta be strong to fight them, so she’s taken lots of vitamins 9. She came from Miami, F.L.A - hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A. 10. Her smile is like a breath of spring, her voice is soft like summer rain 11. He’s darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there 12. He was jamming good with Weird and Gilly 13. Two American kids doin' the best they can (2 names) 14. I just act like I don’t remember and she just acts like she don’t care 15. She got a double wide and she rode a plane 16. You could have heard a...
Read more