scaryblog

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 28/02/65 : The Animals -  The Animals Our second visit with them Animals this year - last time , it was fine if not exactly essential. Wikipedia makes it clear I have to be careful which album called The Animals by The Animals we want to listen to because the US and UK versions are very different - whilst they were both released in '64 and have twelve tracks, only four tracks appear on both albums. "The House Of The Rising Sun" doesn't appear on the UK version (apparently hit singles often didn't appear on albums in the UK around this time), so ironically we miss out on a fourth version of it this year (after  Joan Baez ,  Marianne Faithfull  and Bob Dylan ). It opens with a very odd track, "The Story Of Bo Diddley", which is a trip through the history of rock and roll which ends with Bo himself coming to see The Animals play and announcing "that's the biggest load of rubbish I've heard ...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2023 #19 Incroyable Mais Vrai (Incredible But True) Giddy comedy about middle-aged house hunters who find more in a bargain buy than anyone but director Quentin Dupieux could have dreamed of. I have to say I'm surprised The Guardian chose a "giddy comedy" - it doesn't seem their style at all. So I'm intrigued... Yet another French film and it's only 73 minutes long - which is a length we rarely see outside of TV shows. I should also warn you that the following contains  minor spoilers, but they're clearly explained early on in the film (because you'd never guess the details if they weren't clearly explained to you).  Alain (Alain Chabat) and Marie (Lea Drucker) are looking to buy a house and are shown one which seems perfectly ordinary, except for something the estate agent describes as "dazzling" - which turns out to be a hole in the ground in the basement.  Errr, OK. So, obvious...

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 07/03/65 : I Am P. J. Proby -  P. J. Proby P. J. Proby is an odd one - I know his name but I'm not sure I'm aware of any of his stuff, so let's see what we've got here... This is another one that's not Amazon (it's struggled somewhat with the less popular albums this year) but YouTube came to my rescue. Wow, thanks very much for that YouTube - what did I ever do to you? The album opens with an absolutely dreadful version of "Que Sera Sera" - I wouldn't have thought it was possible to murder that song, but he certainly manages it. He also manages to mangle "The Glory Of Love" (originally by Benny Goodman in '36, but I suspect I know the Otis Redding version) and The Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby" (which is particularly bad). The other songs aren't quite so bad, but all are probably best avoided - "Rockin' Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu" is q...

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 14/03/65 : Oh, Pretty Woman -  Roy Orbison Our second visit with Roy this year - last time it was very brief and mostly unexceptional, but he had a lovely voice and I've no reason to expect this isn't going to be the same. Well, he starts off with the title track, which I'd argue probably counts as pretty exceptional, so we're already off to a good start - interestingly, the only place in the song he actually sings "oh, pretty woman" is right at the end. I actually also really liked "Evergreen" and "It's Over" - the rest of it didn't stand out for me but it was perfectly listenable. And at 34 minutes long, it certainly can't be accused of being a lengthy album. We're at #16 in the chart this week on his last week of a decent sixteen week run, with it having peaked at #5 in its sixth week. The top five this week were  The Rolling Stones ,   The Beatles ,  The Kinks , Val...

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts. 21/03/65 : Kinks -  The Kinks Our fourth visit with The Kinks and it's been a very mixed bag so far, with none of them really hitting the spot for me, although our last visit (earlier this year) wasn't too bad - so there's at least some hope for this one. Hmmm - it's an interesting one because they're definitely trying to find their style, which works better in some places than others. A lot of the time, they're just playing sub-Beatles or Stones stuff ("Bald Headed Woman" is particularly bad) but in other places there's a really edge to it ("Beautiful Delilah", "You Really Got Me") or some surprisingly tenderness ("Stop Your Sobbing", later covered by The Pretenders). It's an interesting listen, but feels like it would have benefited from a bit more "finding themselves" before being released. It's a pretty stylish album cover though - even if the...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #11 :    Ripley With Ripley, Steven Zaillian (The Irishman) took Patricia Highsmith’s literary classic and turned it into an incredibly atmospheric, monochromatic eight-part neo-noir series. Stepping into the (stolen) shoes of everybody’s favourite chameleonic con-man, a criminally insouciant Andrew Scott perfectly carries both the debonair cool and ice-cold sociopathy of Tom Ripley in the level of his unblinking glare. After Ripley accepts an offer to track down millionaire malcontent Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, Zaillian’s lavishly done series follows Scott’s master manipulator as he embarks on a continental spree of murder, manipulation, and identity theft, tailed all the way by Maurizio Lombardi’s relentless Inspector Ravini. Immaculately shot by frequent Paul Thomas Anderson collaborator Robert Elswit, impeccably threaded together by an ace ensemble, and utterly intoxicating in its s...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 16/05/25 : Even In Arcadia - Sleep Token  We've mentioned Sleep Token once before when they had a new entry at #3 back in 2023, but we weren't listening to all the new entries back then, so I never had the pleasure. And I'm not aware I've ever come across them in any other circumstances, so I'm completely in the dark - on the name alone, I'd guess at ambient or rawk. Hmmm. It all starts off very sedately, but I couldn't help but things were going to kick off big time - and about three minutes in, they certainly did. But then, about thirty seconds later, it seems like they thought better of it and settled in to going for some kind of epic soundscape kinda thang. And, I mean, it kinda gets that vibe I guess, but that doesn't make it any good - it's not (to my limited ear) obviously skilful with none of the songs feeling particularly well crafted. None of it's horrible, but I don't know...