Only the lonely know the way I feel tonight

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

21/07/63 : Lonely And Blue - Roy Orbison

No weeks missed out this time and it's our third visit with Roy and I've generally found him bearable, but rarely hitting the heights that he managed a few times throughout his career - I fully expect that to continue here.

Well, it opens with "Only The Lonely" so it contains at least one height - but it is just the one height. The rest of it is all decent enough though provided you like that Orbison wail - and I have to admit I enjoyed it a lot more here than I was expecting to, so this was a pleasant enough listen for me. But it's not one I have an awful lot to say about.

We're at #20 again in the charts this week on the last week of an eight week run, with #14 in its second week being as high as it got. The top five this week were The Beatles, The Shadows, Cliff Richard and best-ofs from Buddy Holly and Cliff Richard (what a depressing top five!) and the highest new entry was Frank Sinatra (#19).

Wikipedia tells us this is his debut album and interestingly, was available in both mono and stereo, which was unusual, particularly because it was released in '61 but took two years to chart here. It also, for a '61 album, features a surprising number of self-penned tracks, with Roy having written or co-written half of them. That's pretty much your lot of interest on the album - critically, Cashbox went overboard and declared it to be "good material and a striking delivery" but commercially it didn't chart anywhere else.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up an original mono copy for a fiver, but there are no original stereo copies available, so either they're super rare or Wikipedia was lying to me - if you want to splash out then you're going to have to go for the '02 reissued 200gm (fancy!) vinyl that's going to set you back £86.12. I didn't mind this at all - it's obviously of its time, but because it's Roy it stands out from the crowd.

28/07/63 - Better than expected

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And all at once I owned the earth and sky

Image
A new year to start the New Year - starting my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 30/12/01 : Swing When You're Winning -   Robbie Williams There's a reasonable argument I should reject this album, but it was such a surprising cultural moment that even I don't feel I can, so it means we're starting the year with one that "we" own. This is our fifth visit with Mr Williams - I'm determined not to enjoy it, but I also have to admit I'm not going to hate it nearly as much as I would like to.  You know what? This is perfectly fine. Completely inessential, but he's not doing anyone any harm. For the most part, it's classic Sinatra-or-thereabouts tracks which Robbie does a decent job with on the vocals (along with some slightly peculiar guests) and they've obviously got some decent musicians in to lay down the backing tracks. He rarely does anything wildly original with them but, most importantly, he doesn't ruin them either - I don't...
Read more

I wanna keep the door from closing, yeah

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 26/12/25 : I Barely Know Her - Sombr Christmas week gives us some odd albums - last year we had Lana del Rey's album from '12, which hasn't left the chart all year. I'm pleased to say we're somewhat more up to date this year with an album that came out in August - I met it as a new entry  and was somewhat nonplussed by it, but I have mentioned it a couple of times since because it's just not gone away, which is somewhat unusual. So let's see what I make of it on a second listen (this trick totally failed to convince me of the virtues of Addison Rae earlier today). Well, well, well - Sombr at least intrigues on second listen. I'd struggle to describe it - it's kinda poppy indie with a woozy vibe to it, but it feels like it has depths to it and I reckon the more you listen to it, the more you pick up on. Intriguing indeed - I'd love to tell you more but that's all I got for the time ...
Read more

In your grace, I looked for some meaning - but I found none

Image
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #3 :  Essex Honey - Blood Orange Dev Hynes’ fifth album as Blood Orange felt uniquely keyed into the fragmented, distracted headspace that comes after someone passes, in his case, his mother. Essex Honey’s restive nature was summed up in its painful opening lines, which you could read as the dying’s acceptance of death starkly contrasting the living’s ability to meet them on those terms: “In your grace, I looked for some meaning,” Hynes sings on Look at You. “But I found none, and I still search for a truth.” That search is wide-reaching: The Field refashions the Durutti Column’s Sing to Me as a racing hymnal made for the stereo of a Ford Escort. There are tough little Robert Rental-style post-punk gems in The Train (Kings Cross) and Countryside that bristle with frustration. Vivid Light is a plainly soulful duet with Zadie Smith; Life, featuring Tirzah’s unmistakable vocals, basks in languid, flute-dappled funk. T...
Read more