scaryblog

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/05/26 : ICEMAN - Drake  Well this is a peculiar week and no mistake - and it all starts off with our seventh visit with Drake. None of the previous visits have shown me what people see in the lad and I suspect it's really rather late for me to be converted. Yeah, there's nothing here to make me see the light - I will agree that there's some skill involved in the lyrics, but it's all a bit defensive, feeling sorry for himself or annoyed that people don't recognise his genius for my liking. If you like it, then I'm perfectly happy you're along for the ride but I won't be joining you. And so, quite obviously, we're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week - sigh (and things are about to get a WHOLE lot worse). The rest of the top five are a Michael Jackson best-of,  Olivia Dean , Michael Jackson 's  Thriller  and  Noah Kahan   - well, that doesn't seem too bad now, does it? Mayb...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 03/11/63 : Greatest Hits -  The Shadows It's impossible to say which visit this is with The Shadows because of all the albums we've met which have some combination of Cliff, The Shadows or both on them, but my verdict so far has been a mildly damning "mostly competent". But this is their greatest hits, so it's got to be great, right? It's another album I couldn't find but didn't have any difficulty recreating from the ten or so other greatest hits albums of theirs lying around on Amazon Music - and I was pleased to see it started with "Apache", a track I actually quite like, and "F.B.I."  and "Wonderful Land"  are OK as well. I actually didn't mind the album as a whole with there being more variety than I was expecting (within the somewhat narrow confines of guitar-based instrumentals, although "Stars Fell On Stockton" does include some whistling!). Howev...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 10/11/63 : Born Free -  Frank Ifield He's been mentioned a few times in the top five this year, but apart from that I can tell you absolutely nothing about him - the best we can do is hope he doesn't come from Liverpool. Ah yes, there's no danger of that Merseybeat sound - we're back in 50s territory here in the style of Andy Williams or Perry Como, complete with, quite obviously, added yodelling in places. Well, I guess I was asking for something different and that's definitely what we've got here - there's no danger of me every listening to it again, but it was nice to have some more variety. We're at #4 in the charts this week on a surprisingly length 32 week run (obviously not everyone was listening to that hip new sound) with it having peaked at #3 in its 5th-7th weeks. The rest of the top five were  The Beatles ,  Gerry & The Pacemakers ,  The Searchers  and Kenny Ball with the highest new...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 17/11/63 : Kenny Ball's Golden Hits -  Kenny Ball Somewhat to my surprise, this is our first ever mention for Mr Ball - I know he was closely associated with Acker Bilk who's popped up a few times but we have yet to have the pleasure of Kenny's company. And I strongly suspect I'm going to be nonplussed by the whole thing. I couldn't actually find this album, but I don't feel I can miss out any albums this year, so I recreated it by using Kenny Ball's Greatest Hits, which might have come out 37 years later but still contained nine of the ten tracks on the original album. And it's all perfectly fine trad jazz with the occasional vocals thrown in for good measure - it's done well but it's not at all the sort of thing I need in my life. It would be fine at a summer fete, but I find it gets very tiresome if I have to actually listen to it for any length of time - sorry, Kenny! We're at #4 in t...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 24/11/63 : Freddie & The Dreamers -  Freddie & The Dreamers A band not based in Liverpool - what's going on? Yeah, this lot are from the massively distant metropolis of Manchester. And one look at the album cover makes me suspect I'm not going to like this. Well, in the same way that Manchester isn't a million miles away from Liverpool, this isn't a million miles away from the Merseybeat sound.  There is more variety than we've seen on some of this year's albums but that's not always a good idea - their cover of "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" is a most peculiar downbeat thing and "I'm A Hog For You" is really surprisingly bad. But, for the most part, it's pretty listenable - their version of Roy Orbison's "Crying" was actually pretty decent and we also met the second version of "Money (That's What I Want)" of the year. We're at #4 in the charts thi...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/05/26 : Is This How Happiness Feels? - Reverend & The Makers  I like R&TM '07 debut album and was pleasantly surprised when my youngest added their debut single "Heavyweight Champion Of The World" to one of her playlists, which shows that it's travelled well. However, I would never, in a million years, have imagined that nineteen years later I'd be reviewing their latest album as one of the highest new entries of the week - I'm very happy to do so though! Yeah, this is decent "wry state of the nation and/or relationships" stuff. It's not going to blow anyone away but  they're decent tunes with decent lyrics from a slightly off-kilter viewpoint. There are also a couple of unexpected guest artists - Vicky McClure on "Haircut" (which is a surprisingly tender song about how not noticing a haircut can be a reflection on the state of a relationship) and Robbie Williams...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 01/12/63 : Sugar And Spice -  The Searchers Oh look, another album from this lot, making it 4 out of 5 for the year for Liverpool-based bands (compared with only one album which featured any women). I've very much expecting this to be similar to their last album - and to suffer somewhat by being visited so soon afterwards. Yeah, it's pretty much more of the same, although the tracks are a lot less recognisable - the title track and "Saints And Searchers" (which you'd know as "When The Saints Go Marching In") were the only ones I recognised, with the rest of the album just drifting past me. So yes, it's definitely a case of diminishing returns - but it was unlucky I met it the day after their previous album. We're at #5 in the charts this week on their fourth week of a thirteen week run, with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were  The Beatles  (starting a TWENTY ONE week ...