scaryblog

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2024 #45 :     Wicked The Wizard of Oz musical prequel is brought to the big screen with sugar-rush energy by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande-Butera. Skipping over Evil Does Not Exist (#47) which is an "enigmatic eco-parable" from Japan (I have to be in the mood for "enigmatic")  brings us to another musical - this time, based on an actual musical! The rest of the family have all seen the musical at least once but it never appealed to me - but a family trip to the lovely Odyssey cinema roped me in to watch this, which is the first half of the story in film form.  I have to say I'd have been fine without going to see it - but I also didn't massively fight against it, so at least part of me was happy enough to experience it.  Film versions of musicals are tricky to do - when they work, they work well but when they don't they're a bit "what's the point?"  Additionally, those of yo...

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 16/09/79 : In Through The Out Door -  Led Zeppelin Our SIXTH visit with Led Zep (they only made nine albums) and it's been a very mixed bag, so who knows what we're going to get here... Hmmm - it's a peculiar one. There's an argument it's not really an album because it doesn't have actual songs on it - most of the tracks are just extended riffs with a few random words thrown in for good measure, with the one obvious exception to this being "Hot Dog", which is a weird country/rock and roll thing which wasn't very Led Zep at all. However, the extended riffs are all pretty good extended riffs with some impressive musicianship on display and I particularly liked "All Of My Love". So if you're in the mood for some late 70s rock noodling (which I rarely am) this feels like it would hit the spot nicely - but you probably already know that if you're the sort of person who'd listen...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2024 #47 Emilia Pérez Jacques Audiard’s gangster trans musical about a Mexican cartel leader who hires a lawyer to arrange his transition is carried along by its cheesy Broadway energy. Skipping over Love Lies Bleeding (#49) because we've already seen it and Monster (#48) because The Guardian describes it as "deliberately dense" which I just can't face, brings us to, somewhat surprisingly, our third visit with a Jacques Audiard film. The first one was good and the second one was somewhat pointless, so who knows what we're going to get here?  Well, actually I've got quite a good idea because there's been a LOT written about it, particularly about how the Mexicans weren't all that impressed with how it depicted their country and how its Oscars campaign was somewhat  derailed by some earlier comments made by  Karla Sofía Gascón. So I'm intrigued to see what it's like - but I'm not e...

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 23/09/79 : Discovery -  Electric Light Orchestra Our third visit with Jeff Lynne et al and the results have been mixed so far with their 1983 offering being surprisingly bland and their 1977 offering being surprisingly enjoyable - maybe this will surprisingly somewhere in between. Hmmm - it's very ELO, with them also trying out some different stuff like disco or ballads. I guess if you're a fan of theirs, then you're going to be happy with it but it didn't really click with me. I was surprised to recognise "Don't Bring Me Down" because I don't think I ever knew it was them but apparently it's their biggest hit in the US and their second biggest hit - after? Anyone? No, not "Mr Blue Sky", but "Xanadu" which got to #1 in '80. I was also surprised when I was playing this in the car that the lovely Mrs Reed sang along with "The Diary Of Horace Wimp" - I never had ...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 20/06/25 : Don't Tell The Dog - James Marriott  Not a name I know, but it makes me think of James Herriott - will it be farmyard noises? Probably not... Yeah, I quite liked this - it's got a decent sound to it.  I read he likes Foals and you can definitely hear that on this but I was also reminded of Howard Jones and RHCP in places - I'm interested to see how much James contributes because there's some very decent keyboard and guitar skills on display here. I'm quite surprised it got to #1 but I guess it's all about the fans and he must have enough of them - either that or everyone just loved the dog on the album cover. We're at #1 with a new entry in the charts this week and the rest of the top five are the Oasis best-of (up from #14 in the charts last week, with 615 weeks on the chart),  Sabrina , Ed Sheeran and Pulp (who were very good live ). So what other new entries do we have this week? The ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 30/09/79 : Rock'n'Roll Juvenile -  Cliff Richard There's really no escaping Cliff, is there?!? This is our sixth visit with him, but do you know - I'm actually expecting this to be bearable. Not great mind (or rock'n'roll or juvenile), but bearable - don't let me down, Cliff! Yeah - it's definitely bearable with Cliff being in "not exactly cool, but not totally unhip" mode. There's no obvious musical theme to the album with him trying out pop, rock, funk and soul and "Sci-Fi" is kinda prog-disco, which is most peculiar, but none of the tracks are awful. And even I have to admit "Carrie" and "We Don't Talk Any More" are actually pretty decent, although it's weird the latter is the last track on the album. We're at #4 in the charts this week on his fourth week of a fourteen week run, with this being as high as it got in its second, third and fourt...

The journey continues... MTV Unplugged (1993) This is an odd one because it's a completely unnecessary cash-in, but it's a completely unnecessary cash-in with the knowledge of everyone involved so that's fine, right? Weirdly, I think it might well be, because I was certainly happy with it. 1. These Are Days A perfectly fine version, but not really adding anything to the album version. 2. Eat For Two Whereas this is slowed down, has added cello and I think I prefer Natalie's slightly more trained/restrained voice on this version than on the original version. 3.  Candy Everybody Wants Nothing wrong with this version, but it's hardly essential. 4. I'm Not The Man This is such a depressing song - I guess it acts as a change of pace, but I'd have been fine without it. 5. Don't Talk This is a much better change of pace, slowed down compared with the initial version - I liked it. 6. Hey Jack Kerouac Not massively different from the original version, but I think...

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 07/10/79 : The Raven -  The Stranglers Another mini week of three days to allow them to change over accounting processes, but at least this one gives us an album there's a chance I'll like - this is our third visit with The Stranglers and they've been surprisingly bearable so far. Yeah, it's bearable - but it's also certainly peculiar. It feels like it should be given the dreaded "post punk" label, but more in a literal "what they did after punk" meaning. There's very much a rebellious spirit to it, but it pushes musical boundaries in ways I certainly wasn't expecting and there's also a decent amount of skill involved.  I was also surprised to recognise "Duchess", but only from My Life Story's cover version - even though The Stranglers' version was released as a single that got to #14 at the time (apparently the video was banned because they dressed up as choirbo...

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 10/10/79 : Oceans Of Fantasy -  Boney M A peculiar "week" this week because it's only four days before the previous week - this was because we've got a one-off special week with two charts in it because they used to count sales a week after they happened but they updated it to "real time", so they had to add an extra chart in to switch between the two methods. And we celebrate this milestone with an album I'm pretty certain I'm going to hate - it's also not available on Amazon for some reason so we have to resort to YouTube. Hmmm - hate is probably a bit too much, but I'd struggle to say I enjoyed it. It's actually got a surprisingly clear sound on it and it's mostly a very classic disco sound, but there's just way too much repetition within each song, let alone within the album - so it all just gets very tiresome and I certainly didn't need 55 minutes of it. I was, howeve...

A trip to the mothership! Work have introduced a new scheme whereby you can apply for free tickets to gigs - and it's quite the intellectual exercise, I can tell you! They're not guaranteed - so you don't want to use them for a gig you're desperate to go to, you have to apply several months in advance - so you don't want to use them for a gig you might get a last minute free offer for and you only get four tickets in a year - so you don't want to use them up too early and miss out on something better later on! Life's hard, I tel you - but I decided to take my first punt to see a band I've always fancied seeing, but have never loved quite enough to pay to see, And so, in the week that More, their latest album (24 years after their previous one) hit #1, I headed over to The O2 to see Pulp. Due to an emergency shopping trip request from my daughter, I arrived at the venue slightly later than I usually would - the word was that they'd be on stage at 8:00...

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 14/10/79 : The Pleasure Principle -  Gary Numan Our second visit with Mr Numan and last time I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting, so expectations are high for this when we're heading back to where it all began (kinda - more on this later). Yeah, I liked this. "Cars" is the only track I recognised and it's a particularly fine track - so much so that he reused large portions of it on "Observer". I also particularly liked "M.E.", but it's all got that groovy synth sound from the future - which still sounds pretty futuristic now (or maybe that's just my sense of futuristic being stuck in the past). Mr Numan has always very much done his own thing and this is a pretty good example of it. We're at #6 in the charts this week on his sixth week of an impressive 21 week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its first and third weeks - it also popped up for a week in '09, I assume ...

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews... The Deep Blue Sea : Theatre Royal Haymarket  My first visit to a Terrance Rattigan play, although I remember doing The Winslow Boy back in school and finding it surprisingly enjoyable (because most of the stuff we did was perfectly dreadful). It's also my second visit with Tamsin Greig this year - I was hoping for something more relatable than my previous trip . And well, it was and it wasn't. The play is set in a single room and follows Hester (Tamsin Greig), a middle-aged woman, in the wake of a suicide attempt brought about by her relationships with her estranged husband (Nicholas Farrell) and her current lover (Hadley Fraser). And it's relatable because the plot is pretty straightforward to follow - you understand everyone's personalities and drivers, with no-one behaving in a manner which seems unexpected. However, it's not relatable (for me, at least) because everyone's just so damn repressed, althou...