scaryblog

Continuing my trip up #album-of-the-day... 21.03.17  : Teens Of Denial : Car Seat Headrest (2016) Never heard of album or artist, but Car Seat Headrest have got to be indie dudes, surely?  And yeah, they're indie dudes - I mostly liked it with it reminding me of The National.  Sometimes they got a bit too excitable for my tastes but, all in all, I'd say it's a pleasant introduction to something new for me.  I didn't need it to be 70 minutes long though - it was dragging by the end. The channel  warned us about the start of "Vincent" (and with good reason) and gave this eight thumbs up, one loud sound, a couple of positive comments and a few new joiners (but I think it's still the anniversary effect).  Wikipedia tells me the album was very highly regarded critically, featuring in several "best of 2010s" lists but didn't exactly set the charts alight - #198 in the UK and #180 in the US.  It also didn't have the smoothest path to release, wi...

Continuing my trip up #album-of-the-day... 21.03.12  : TRON : Legacy - Daft Punk (2010) And with this, Daft Punk become the first band to feature on the list three times - I'd have to say they wouldn't have been the obvious choice for me as the first people to make it to such lofty heights (at time of writing, only one other band has made it there - stick around to find out who!).  And, once again, it's a Daft Punk album I've never heard - I'm expecting it to be impressive but pointless, because that's pretty much what I always think of film soundtrack albums.  And yes, that's very much where we are - it paints a sonic landscape which is exactly what I'd suspect the film needs - but since I've never seen it, I am unable to confirm or deny this.  But I find myself very quickly not caring and the album feels like it goes on for considerably longer than the 61 minutes it says it does. The channel gave this nine thumbs up, two nice, three nice swans (obv...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  Top 50 Movies of 2020... #23 :  Spaceship Earth An eye-opening eco-documentary about the Biosphere 2 experiment in the 1990s, in which a commune of like-minded people built a closed ecosystem in Arizona to try to improve humans’ relationship with the natural world. Never heard of this one - I was expecting either a dull but worthy piece of hippy nonsense or an amusing tale of disastrous hippy nonsense.  And well, it kinda falls somewhere in between, but I'm not entirely sure how much I'll be able to tell you about it. The story starts in San Francisco in the late 60s, so it won't surprise you in the slightest to hear that there's planty of hippy nonsense involved with the main protagonists establishing an experimental theatre group (but didn't everyone back then?), which involves exactly the amount of nonsense that you'd expect.  However, it soon becomes clear that there's slightly more spine to this outfit than you ...

In the summer of 1980, it's fair to say I didn't have any great idea what I wanted to do with my life.  Which was OK I guess - I was only 12, after all - but I was starting to think that maybe I should have some vague inkling.  I was doing fine academically, but I was at a school that I knew I was only going to be at for one more year before transferring out.  This made the usual minefield of friendships even trickier to navigate and I most definitely hadn't found "my crowd" - or was even clear that such a thing existed.   Then Mr Miles (probably the only teacher whose name I can remember from that school) announced he'd bought a ZX80 (retailing at £99.95, which was some money back in the day - but considerably cheaper than anything similar) and he was going to bring it in and start a computer club after school if anyone would be interested.  I'd heard of computers, but the idea of actually seeing one up close was impossible to resist, so I and a sizeable ...

Continuing my trip up #album-of-the-day... 21.03.09  : Music For Dancing - The Grid (1995) Never heard of album or artist - part of me was expecting dance music but part me was also expecting the title to be ironic and to be presented with god-knows-what.  But it's pretty dancey-trancey (although Wikipedia tells me it's really more techno, but that doesn't rhyme).  It's something I might have listened to back in the day, but it doesn't really float my boat sitting in my rocking chair smoking my pipe these days, I'm afraid.  It also has a surprising amount of banjo on it - and whilst there's a time and a place for the banjo, this isn't it because it just reminds you of Rednex.  I was surprised there were only 27 minutes and four songs though - I was expecting it to bang on a lot more than that. Oh, the channel points out that tracks 3-5 out of 11 aren't available on Spotify, so it appears that Amazon have a completely different version.  Odd - I could...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  Top 50 Movies of 2020... #24 :  Les Misérables In this award-winning French drama that alludes to the celebrated Victor Hugo novel, tough, cynical police try to keep the peace on tinderbox streets in the Paris suburbs. A film I'd heard of, heard good things about and was planning on watching sometime before I died - so I was pleased to see it on the list to speed up the viewing process.  Tough police/street dramas tends to be something that French directors do quite well, so I had high hopes for it. And it starts with an impressive piece of film-making, following various characters watching an unknown football match, but it must have been a big one what with the crowds thronging on the Champs Elysée (it was  the 2018 World Cup Final, Wikipedia tells me) .  It presents a view of a happy, multi-cultural France - but you know what, I'm not sure that feeling is going to last all that long. And then we're following a new recruit ...

Continuing my trip up #album-of-the-day... 21.03.04  : Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub) - Groove Armada (2001) I own and love Vertigo, but have never experienced any other Groove Armada album - which makes me a bad person, I feel.  And I'm expecting more of the same, so there's no reason I won't like it and I'm glad this exercise has made me listen to it.  And yeah, it pretty much is more of the same (if a bit more upbeat) and I pretty much did like it - so I should have listened to it earlier.  I particularly liked "Edge Hill" - it's got a lovely flow to it. The channel gave this eight thumbs up and a lot of positive comments.   Wikipedia has a few sentences on the album - mostly listing the guest artists that sing on each track.  It also surprised me by reminding me they were English, which I feel have must have known at some point, but I think I just assumed they were French.  The album did OK commerciially - #5 in the UK and #1 in NZ, fo...