Jeroen's Micro Blog

2021-12-01 00:00:00

• The three hundred and thirtieth track: #330 Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti It feels like Physical Graffiti doesn't properly take off until Kashmir - moving from fine but somewhat interchangeable hard rock songs that I wouldn't give an edge over any other, to a prog rock sound that really grabs you from its first riff. The album has more experiments like that from that point on, but it never quite reaches that same level, feeling a bit less focused and less controlled.I still prefer it over the more generic hard rock sounds, and while that's probably the sound they were more keen on going for, it doesn't pay off for me.

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• The three hundred and twenty-ninth album: #329 Neu! - Neu! '75 Although referred to as psychedelic and krautrock, this album's electronic sound and sound effects make the first side feel more like some easy listening music, a gentle flow that feels like it shares a lot more with Brian Eno's work in the seventies. It's only with Hero that the rock music kicks in and it loses the background feel for a few tracks, although it takes the time to refer back to it quite well.

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• The three hundred and twenty-eighth album: #282 The Dictators - Go Girl Crazy! As a listener in 2021, this album feels quite simple, a protopunk album that works quite well for me, the vocals working fine and underscoring the message. It feels like a development that makes sense, toning down the metal in favour of vocals while still sticking to the louder sound and moving away from the experimentation. At the time, however, it wasn't quite as understood and the consequences of it aren't as clear. Still, it's a musical direction I appreciate and I really feel I just breezed through the album enjoying myself.

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• The three hundred and twenty-seventh album: #327 Brian Eno - Another Green World A lot of the time, you don't really realise Another Green World is playing. Yeah, there's music there, but it's ambient and quite gentle, often without any lyrics, mostly setting up moods and sound landscapes. From that, it's very specific in what it does - something I ended up liking quite a bit as it suited my tastes, but it's something where you have to let yourself be taken either to imagine to, or as the background while you're involved in other things. Different from what other albums do, perhaps, but it works as a direction for me.

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• The one hundred and seventy-fifth TV show: #419 Around the World in 80 Days As discussed before, I'm a fan of Monty Python, and it's quite clear from everything surrounding it that Michael Palin is an affable guy that, more than the others, I'd want to hang out with. I wouldn't necessarily have seen him as a travel documentary presenter, but it makes sense watching this - he clearly cares about connecting with people, in a way that doesn't feel forced. And for this first documentary, replicating the journey of the book, that is really useful, as it's clear he spent most of those 80 days stuck on a ship, with a few people around him, which means he has to make the best out of that when the actual travel experiences are more sparse. It's an interesting insight, even if the reason for it - not being allowed to use a plane as that wasn't around in book times, leaving him to rely on irregular, unconnected freight ships to get him across the world - means that more of the show revolves around a "Will he make it" dilemma than I personally would have wanted. There's an extra edge for it, but I'm more looking forward to other documentaries of his where his interaction with everyone is allowed to breath a bit more.

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• The three hundred and twenty-sixth album: #326 Gram Parsons - Grievous Angel It's rare for a country album to fully connect with me and Gram Parsons' Grievous Angel doesn't seem to make any attempt to do so. The music is so generically country that I don't find anything I really enjoy in there, while lyrically it doesn't have much more for me. The maudlin parts don't connect and the more upbeat parts are less common and don't have much of an impact. It's exactly what you expect of a country rock album, including the rowdy audience for a track or two, and it's not one that impresses me.

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• The three hundred and twenty-fifth album: #325 Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom Rock Bottom is an odd album to place in my mind. Tragic backstory aside, the vibe it's going for is (possibly appropriately) quite morose, a subdued psychedelic sound that has its prog rock roots but avoids all of its excesses, instead staying small and more personal. With that, it's at times quite impenetrable, creating a soundscape that's hard to get into at the best of times and sometimes quite off putting to the point where I can struggle to really enjoy it. There's a lot of skill here, sure, and some really intriguing music, but it's hard to find my way in.

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• The three hundred and twenty-fourth album: #324 Bob Marley & The Wailers - Natty Dread It feels wrong to set an album aside as palatable reggae, but it's the best description I think I have for it. There's not much here that I care much for, but the rehearsed approach works better than the looser feel of others in the genre. I don't have much that stands out or captures me, least of all when it goes hardest on its reggae, but it's not an album that frustrates me. It's at its best when it goes poppy, but it lacks the depth to me to be more than reggae-pop.

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2021-11-01 00:00:00

• The three hundred and twenty-third album: #323 Randy Newman - Good Old Boys The problem with Good Old Boys from my perspective is that it's an album set in the political reality of its day, long since distorted by what happened in American politics after, and coming form the south of the USA in a way that doesn't connect to me. The album feels distant for that reason, placed in a time and period where its viewpoint gets less respect from me because of everything that followed since. On an album that thrives on its lyrics, it makes it harder, with the music being country pop, some rock in there, but nothing that impresses me further. The album is a wash for me.

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• The one hundred and seventy-fourth TV show: #334 The A-Team I remember really enjoying The A-Team as a kid. The formula is fair enough, the action is good and there's some funny, light dialogue. It doesn't vary its formula much, but you can see how it would appeal on a base level. On the other hand, with my modern eyes, the show has lost some shine. It's shallow, with some questionable eighties sides and plots that leave a lot of unnecessary dead air. The focus of its violence is such that it can't commit to what it wants and to a modern eye, it feels carried by Dwight Schultz and Dirk Benedict as actors that bring some more nuance to what they do, while the guest actors surrounding the show don't necessarily give much - assuming they don't fully give into the stereotypes. So it's not necessarily a bad show, but it has its issues where the stunts are a focus that don't appeal to me, and at this point, unless you were invested as a kid, there's a lot less to find in here now.

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• The one hundred and seventy-third TV show: #869 Mrs. Brown's Boys There are some comedies on the list that I'm not looking forward to. They're outdated, not funny and rely on a type of crudeness that I don't find amusing - not pairing it with anything smarter. Most of these are at least several decades old, but here it's such a deliberate throwback that I found the previous bits of episodes of Mrs. Brown's Boys that I watched quite difficult to watch. Seeing the first episode, before the cheers of recognition from the audience, didn't help, with the loud laughter track coming in on every track, whether they were funny or not. I couldn't stomach a full run of episodes, as I found it boring. There's no dual layer, no subversion, nothing that appeals to me in here, just basic jokes that don't land with me. It's... just nothing.

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• The one hundred and seventy-second TV show: #757 Forbrydelsen While I remember watching the first season of the American The Killing, it was quite forgettable after a strong start. The Danish original, on the other hand, managed to maintain that tension through its first twenty episode season, as it peels away the layers and masterfully reveals its different twists in a way that doesn't feel forced. There's a lot that happens, and while the suspicions in the first few episodes don't matter much later on, it feels like a lot of it builds on each other. The political intrigue that gets woven into the story helps just as much with that, by adding this other layers that feels disconnected, but show the wider impact of the murder as it ripples out. It's a pretty dark and depressing show, the mood of the characters and so on show that. But they keep the case intriguing through most of it and it remains tense until the very end, even if it remains that harrowing. I'm not sure how the later two seasons hold up to that, but its first season is exemplary.

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• The three hundred and twenty-second album: #322 Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic Pretzel Logic just carried on - like a good pop rock album, it sounds good, makes you feel good, and takes you through a number of good songs. I guess that compared to the previous album, this is paired down a bit again, but it feels like the band has settled here into a good groove to give us some really good songs.

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• The three hundred and twenty-first album: #321 Gene Clark - No Other I don't know if Gene Clark's music is my thing either. Again, we get a heavily country-inspired album, mostly going towards folk rock but incorporating more soul-like elements as well. There are a lot of parts to like about it - there are some lovely quiet tracks, the harmonies build well without being overdone and all the songs have several things to unpack. However, it never quite gells, with tracks dragging on a bit too long for me while I often get to a point where I wish I could just focus on less things. Not overproduced, but a situation where it feels like less is more, and the tracks that follow this closer leave a more positive impression.

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• The three hundred and twentieth album: #320 George Jones - The Grand Tour I'm not a fan of classic country, so the big mercy of this album is its brevity, taking less than half an hour to listen to. George Jones doesn't make me feel different here, the maudlin songs just not connecting with me.

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• The one hundred and thirtieth classical recording: #625 Edward Elgar - Falstaff Edward Elgar's Falstaff is a richly textured work that combines some big orchestral pieces with smaller phrases that lend it a lot of personality, There's a story and build up in the piece that often comes with operas and other more narrative works is done there through the music and while you need some more familiarity with the work, it still stays accessible as a lovely piece of music.

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• The three hundred and nineteenth album: #319 Neil Young - On the Beach It's time for some more good old folk rock, courtesy of Neil Young. It's relaxed and gentle, often more about the message than the music, but overall quite chill and easy to digest. It's been a lovely companion, not one where I think I caught all the intentions, but the sound just felt right, creating a nice headspace to focus in.

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2021-10-01 00:00:00

• The one hundred and seventy-first TV show: #182 The Stone Tape As it is nearly Halloween, it felt appropriate to watch a spooky story. The BBC production of the 1970s were actually broadcast around Christmas, but to our modern viewing it feels as appropriate to watch these now, especially as the end of December already has so many other viewing traditions. The story of The Stone Tape involves proper ghosts and images from the past, but the way it approaches them is different. Rather than having any doubt or disbelief, the characters get on board quite quickly and instead take a far more scientific approach to trying to understand the phenomenon and, in this case, to exploit it. Things escalate from there as the phenomenon defies explanation, as the tension builds and keeps moving throughout. It's a good ninety minutes of tension that remains highly effective even now we're nearly fifty years on.

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• The three hundred and eighteenth album: #318 10CC - Sheet Music While Sheet Music reaches for the avant garde in some of its tracks, others clearly reach for the pop side of things and end up in what I was starting to call bubblegum rock - simple, accessible, but without much staying power. It's not that I got nothing out of it, but it feels like an album that wants to break away from rock but can't quite do it yet. There's just not enough here to become meaningful.

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• The three hundred and seventeenth album: #317 Queen - Sheer Heart Attack Coming back to the list, we're kicking off with Queen's glam rock. Again the tracks are harder than you'd expect based on Queen's popular songs, but while Killer Queen here shows off the direction they're known for, the real rock tracks are more memorable and fun to listen to. There are places where the harmonies in the vocals shine, places where multi track recordings add that layer, but in all these cases you can tell that the live performance would be just as good. It stands as a whole album not because of pure throughlines, but because the balance of the songs seems just right, adding some experiments in the mix while still having good rock tracks and an emotional ballad, while showing off their skill at other sounds as well. As a finished, complete product, it holds up really well.

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• The ninety-third book: #1015 Persuasion - Jane Austen I have to ask myself whether part of the reason I've been struggling with really getting back into the books list are the romance novels of this era. I've enjoyed Austen well in her earlier works, but for some reason Persuasion didn't connect. Part of that might be is because, as with Mansfield Park, our protagonist doesn't feel as involved in the narrative of the start of the work, and the destitution storyline feels like something we've seen before, while dealing with stubborn characters I didn't connect with. I never quite got caught up and the romance story, usually such a strong throughline, fell by the wayside in favour of family issues I didn't really feel. The work tries, sure, but it never quite grabbed me, and so the pay offs that are there didn't reach me either.

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2021-09-01 00:00:00

• The three hundred and sixteenth album: #316 Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Winter in America There's something really engaging about this soul/jazz album, chilled while staying up beat and positive. It's often paired with a more socially engaging message that's as interesting, but it all stands on its own as its own music. Sometimes it's more upbeat, sometimes it's sadder, but the fusion it lands on works far better than other versions. It's lovely to listen to with a depth that I don't think we see as often in jazz albums, while having more pep than blues albums give me.

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• The three hundred and fifteenth album: #315 Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight This is a folk rock album. There are decent lyrics and musically it's a very British folk rock album. There's some emotional songs and some drinking songs, or at least songs with that feeling. They're decent folk rock songs and feel like good examples of the genre. However, I also don't think the album really gave me a stand out track or had something in there that felt memorable to me.

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• The three hundred and fourteenth album: #314 Supertramp - Crime of the Century The notable track on Crime of the Century - at least for me - is Dreamer. It's a fun track, prog rock that's easy to listen to, fun to sing along to and an enjoyable song, but ultimately not a song that has a lasting impact on me. The rest of the album feels similar. It's fun to listen to, there are some nice experiments and interesting sounds, but I don't feel it ultimately has much of an impact. It's a well put together album, but not one that really inspires me to keep listening.

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• The one hundred and twenty-ninth classical recording: #751 Maurice Ravel - Piano Concerto for the Left Hand While the story behind the creation of this piece is a sad one, its sound is one of triumph, starting with an orchestral opening to introduce an impressive piano piece played, as I could also see in the video that accompanied my version, with one hand. Throughout, the piece is set up to allow that to be showcased, with the tempo changes showing both delicacy and fervour and the rhythm perhaps invoking a bit of the military fervour that led to this. Ravel, as we've heard before, can be a bit drawn to less sane sounds, and it's that bombast that comes through from the orchestra, but the piano's playing, even if frantic, works to create a frantic focal point that it can keep coming back to.

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• The three hundred and thirteenth album: #313 Sparks - Kimono My House Sparks' entry on the songs list, This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us, features as the first track on this album. The song sets the tone for album, an art rock track that flirts with glam and avant garde sounds that centres around Ron Mael's keyboard playing that his brother's vocals fold around, surrounded by everything else that goes on on this track. It's a good album to listen to and in a way the later tracks become a bit easier to listen to. It's a bit weird, sometimes a bit extreme, but also a lot of fun to listen to, showy at times but constrained enough to continue to work.

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• The three hundred and twelfth album: Tangerine Dream - Phaedra The seventeen minute long title track of this album is a composition using electrical instruments, a melding of synthesizers with occasional other sounds that enhance that. I use the word composition quite deliberately, as it feels like without the modern instruments used, it has more in common with the classical tracks we've been listening to than the modern music this list usually covers. It is more of an ambient album than most, but there's still something magical about the images it sets in my head without any lyrics or prompting.

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• The one hundred and twenty-eighth classical recording: #731 Gustav Holst - Egdon Heath Egdon Heath is a work that passes you by - sombre, slow and, at least in the recording I listened to, at times played at a low volume. It's not something that should be played loudly, it's the low tones that produce the dark, swampy feeling I get from it. It makes for a great tone piece, not inviting or event something I'd see myself listening to a lot, but it works well here to set its mood.

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• The three hundred and eleventh album: #311 Roxy Music - Country Life Clearly past the Brian Eno era of the band, Roxy Music's fourth album is a good rock album, having some tood up tempo tracks, some throwback blues riffs and a generally enjoyable vibe. Mind you, it doesn't feel like it introduces anything unique, but it meanders through a number of styles of rock as they were around at the time, which feels like a more interesting journey - the tracks are different enough that it's hard to pin down the album as a whole, but it does work as a story.

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• The three hundred and tenth album: #310 Queen - Queen II As a Queen fan - much to the dismay of my husband - I have obviously been looking forward to listening to their three albums on the list. While the album doesn't feature any of their biggest or well known hits, the route to them from here seems obvious. The album has their sound and song writing style, with their evocative lyrics, but has enough of a metal bend that it also harkens back to the earlier ages - there are shades of King Crimson in some of the songs on this album, such as the fantasy imagery in a few songs. The black side in particular shows more of the showiness of their set list, but also focuses on the harder rock side that predates their move into poppier songs, still a bit away from glam rock. It took a while before I discovered the older albums, but they work for me. As more of a harder rock enthusiast, the mix of these sounds works for me and there's so much in these songs - even down to their classical influences - that it's hard for me not to enjoy the journey this takes me on.

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• The three hundred and ninth album: #309 Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark Court and Spark is a simple folk pop album, an easy listening album with some meaning behind the lyrics. Joni Mitchell's lyrics are quite meaningful - not quite central to the song, but with enough of a focus to listen to, while the music is full in a good accompaniment to her voice, perfectly balanced so it doesn't drown her out but gives her a good backing. There's a vulnerability in there at times, combined with more power and certainty depending on what the song allows. While it doesn't stray too far from the basic folk formula, it's enough variation to make the songs feel distinct enough.

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• The one hundred and seventieth TV show: #577 Farscape I've been looking forward to watching a bunch of SF series, with the likes of Farscape coming from a particular high in the series - in response to Star Trek: The Next Generation and the rise of the Sci-Fi Channel and its original brief, we got some great original SF series that had a lighter tone even as the budget wasn't quite as high. Farscape is one of the notable entries in that list, with the Henson Company's muppets adding a lot to the show, introducing more alien aliens and a strange world. The show does not disappoint, creating an interesting setting that doesn't quite hit the ground running but soon sets up a band of misfits that works quite well together. While following some stereotypes, the characters never feel a lot more real than that and the stories work well, including some really good SF stories. Within a season, it has really gripped me, and while I have a lot more to go, I'm just looking forward to seeing more of this world and how its storylines will develop.

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• The three hundred and eighth album: #308 Van Morrison - It's Too Late To Stop Now It's Too Late To Stop Now is listed as one of the best live albums. Where in the past, I found that those happened in part because they drew from the live audience, here I don't think the album really gained from that. As a very jazzy rock album, it feels like it would really connect with the right person, but I'm not the best audience for this style and I never found that there was any music that I really wanted to listen to. While there's a lot of skill and good musicianship here, I'm not sure I quite feel the appeal of this.

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2021-08-01 00:00:00

• The one hundred and twenty-seventh classical recording: #347 Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde There are some long pieces that we know we just need to tackle at some point, and when this came out randomly it was with a weary sigh - but with the bank holiday coming up, it means skipping an album this Thursday so I can keep my weeks aligned. Tristan und Isolde is an opera telling the story of the two lovers, musically impressive but as a long romantic tale somewhat lacking the energy of other pieces, with lengthy slower parts dominating without giving as much to help you follow the story. It makes, I'll admit, for a less interesting passive listening experience, with all of it sounding good but it took until the third act to really grab me and make me pay attention.

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• The three hundred and seventh album: #307 Kraftwerk - Autobahn Especially when covering classical tracks, it feels like the words "inspired by" can be a bit overused. There's some allusion, but you need to know what the work is referencing to actually get it. Autobahn, on the other hand, gets you into it. The 22 minute track isn't exactly driving music, but its mostly instrumental setting creates and imitates a lot of the sounds you here while driving and builds it enough in your mind to put you in that mindset. There's something intriguing about the electronic style of Kraftwerk. For a modern listener, they're somewhat retro, with the style having evolved massively since then, but going through the list, there's also something unique about their reliance on almost just electronics surrounded by mostly still conventional bands that use synthesizers more as a novelty than a craft of its own.

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• The three hundred and sixth album: #306 Eric Clapton - 461 Ocean Boulevard While I know Eric Clapton is meant to be an accomplished musician, I found this album uninspiring. This might be influenced by me finding the man generally unpalatable, especially in our current days, but I still can't find anything in the music either. Clapton mostly covers existing blues tracks, and while his solos are quite good, his vocals don't really carry the work and the music doesn't do anything for me to make it hold up. It's just not there for me.

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• The ninety-second book: #627 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke I've gotten back to the occasional book, as I felt I needed something to occupy me in the morning, and it seemed like time to get to a book I really loved. 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as, to some extent, Dune, show how some stories are difficult to film and easier to write, to the point where I feel both are better as a visual companion to the book than a work in their own right. For Dune, of course, this has resulted in a generally less liked movie, but the movie version of 2001 is still acclaimed. Its cinematography is spectacular and the core parts of the story work really well - the confrontation with HAL having a tension you can't get in the books - but the more esoteric opening and closing parts make perfect sense in the book but are more vague in the film. The book, through this, creates a rich world - whether it's the insight into the minds of apes as they develop higher brain functions, the description of life on a long spaceship journey or the visions left by long-dead aliens, it's all engaging and described so well. Clarke isn't necessarily the best at describing action scenes, staying quite clinical, but the interest is in the internal monologue and interactions with the world that stay engaging, even if the date for many predictions have long come and gone, prescient enough to still apply to us even as you ignore the dates mentioned in the story.

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• The three hundred and fifth album: #305 Stevie Wonder - Fulfillingness' First Finale Stevie Wonder's soul album always work for me. There's a good beat of optimism in there, a sound that agrees with me and a flow to the album that really works as the start of a work day. It's a mix of feelings, deeper than the above my suggest, but the soul sound works well to both give those emotions without spiralling. It's a good album and it's a shame we only have one more Stevie Wonder album left.

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• The one hundred and sixty-ninth TV show: #115 Mission Impossible I won't deny that there's some pull in the spy fiction genre that Mission Impossible moves in, but I can't say I wanted to watch too much of it. While suggesting they'll have a different group, you know that the intro always has your lead select the same group. The missions are somewhat different, but it all has to go a little bit too well when the occasional set back would have been more interesting. There are some interesting conceits, but it's a show that in the modern day struggles to hold my attention, with a style of storytelling that feels a bit too smooth here. I think it's clear this type of action show is one that hasn't held up in the modern era, but also hasn't appealed to me for a long time anyway.

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• The three hundred and fourth album: #304 Shuggie Otis - Inspiration Information In the years that I've been going through this list, jazz has been a contentious genre for me - even live performances haven't won me over and I still proudly have the "Jazz is dead" postcard on display that I got handed in LA. Now Inspiration Information isn't jazz, it's soul and funk and other genres deriving from it, but some of its high points feel like a jazz fusion, fading into the background sometimes while at other times pulling you in when they're different. There's R&B in here, there's funk, there's all sorts of things that work really well out here. Mostly, this is a good album to have on, working to keep me entertained without dominating

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• The one hundred and twenty-sixth classical recording: #841 Sergei Prokofiev - Symphony no. 5 There are cliches that I want to adopt to these write ups that make a remarkable amount of sense now I've listened to quite a few. Don't, for example, judge a work by its first movement. Often, as in the case of this symphony, it's a set up that gets referred back to and contrasted with other works, but can take on quite a different tone. The anger in its first movement gets contrasted with a more exuberant second and slower third. It's a gentle, quite pleasantly flowing piece with a joyful finish that's quite inspiring to listen to and a good start of the day.

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• The three hundred and third album: #303 Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway We've reached another concept album, with Genesis' prog rock extravaganza the last album Peter Gabriel did with them - and the last time Genesis shows up on the list. As is usual, it's hard to say a lot about the overall feel of a concept album as there really is a lot of variety in here. The more fantastical elements come across quite well as such, playing with different genres and some quite discordant sounds when needed. For other, more grounded parts you get some good, bouncy rock tracks, nothing too extravagant but you can tell the difference between the different parts of the story from the way the tracks sound. While not many tracks work as s stand alone song, and those that do are mostly earlier in the album, it works as a journey that doesn't even need the plot description of the liner notes to give you an idea of what is happening here.

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• The three hundred and second album: #302 Bad Company - Bad Company The point of these lists is always two fold - it both needs to show the exemplars of music and genres in particular, while also taking you through the outliers that tdo their own thing and the albums that set up what's to come. When listening, it's the last two that are more exciting, as they show you something new or do something different. Bad Company is the former, though, a really strong rock album that doesn't do anything too innovative and follows the lead of bands like Rolling Stones, but does it so well that the eight tracks of the album sound really good.

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• The one hundred and twenty-fifth classical recording: #680 Igor Stravinski - Pulcinella There is something quite stately about parts of this ballet, a deep and overwrought sound that contrasts with the more delicate ballet. At the same time, the reliance on commedia dell'arte concepts adds a levity to the proceedings, so that the chase sequence is fast paced and humorous. It's a decent and varied piece without the visuals, but quite unpredictable in how it develops, building less than other pieces do. Obviously, the visuals add a lot to it, and even if, like me, you're not constantly watching it, some glimpses help set the scene.

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• The three hundred and first album: #301 Brian Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets We're starting off the 1973 albums with something more avant garde, with rock tracks that are experimental and, at times, quite off putting when they divert further from the norm. They are quite interesting in the way they're structured, but the conventional sounds do work a bit better. Brian Eno's vocals are a bit off as well and don't really fit the rich sounds of the songs, which really makes it clearer to me why he's such a major producer: the instincts of what makes a good song are there, but at least as a vocalist he doesn't add as much and at times makes it sound more like he's mocking the songs. On the whole, the album is worth listening though for what's so different here.

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• The three hundredth album: #300 New York Dolls - New York Dolls New York Dolls' self titled album has two sides to it. The music itself is good, with a punk vibe that I like quite well combined with some decent experimental tracks. The music often stands or falls, however, with the quality of the vocal track. This is fine when David Johansen goes for the punk vocals we know, slightly shouty and loud, but falls down when he tries other things, with his voice not really carrying the softer tracks. Sadly, those also lead the album, and drag it down to where you'd prefer an instrumental version or similar. With this, it's a decent punk rock album that veers into glam here and there, but keeps you at an arm's length and never quite made me love it.

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• The one hundred and sixty-eighth TV show: #536 Ally McBeal I can't quite put my finger on how I feel about Ally McBeal. There is a good ensemble show in there, with the supporting cast being excellent with some I never get enough of - Jane Krakowski, of course, who got us more, Peter MacNicol, and Portia de Rossi and Lucy Liu as new additions in the second season. There are times where you wish they could get more time. There's a bizarre sense of humour at times - I appreciate the dream sequences and other weird touches. Calista Flockheart's performance as Ally McBeal is just as good. But the other side doesn't work. Ally's life as a single woman trying to find love falls flat. The second season's opening episode is a good example of that - we skipped ahead to that season to see whether the shake up would help - and it features Ally basically wanting a relationship with a minor. It is played quite stereotypically and, considering the episode revolves around a court case with this boy being in a sexual relationship with an adult, falls incredibly flat. The lawyer bits are same, feeling TV-unrealistic with the sudden revelations that don't normally happen, and this episode's sudden plea of insanity feels wrong. It means that the core the show revolves around, its drama writing, fails to connect with me, and it makes me wish we could see the ensemble dramedy version of this instead of the single woman focused drama series we get half the time.

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• The one hundred and twenty-fourth classical recording: #421 Gabriel Faure - Elegie It's still a bit odd to listen to this dark and sombre work on one of the hottest days of the year. There's a weight to the piece that you feel deep inside you, a sombre tone that really got to me early on. It's dark and a bit depressing, but the impression sticks around and it would work incredibly well in the right setting - a dark autumn evening as the world gets darker. It's short, but packs the weight in from the start.

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• The two hundred and ninety-ninth album: #299 The Isley Brothers - 3 + 3 3 + 3 isn't necessarily a complex album. At its core a soul album, the Isley Brothers take a lot of rock elements to enhance that, both in the way it builds the sound and some of the songs that are covered in the album. It takes on some of the funk stylings and repetitions, but avoids going overboard on that and instead builds on the themes and expands on them. It's a pleasant album, quite easy to listen to, never really feeling too deep but something I can see myself listening to more often.

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• The two hundred and ninety-eighth album: #298 Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power The screeching guitars sets up Raw Power as a metal album that does just that, featuring straight forward satisfying riffs that support Iggy Pop's vocals quite well. The depth in the album grows as you explore it further though, with Iggy's vocals changing more than you'd expect, a smooth and young sounding vocal in Search and Destroy, the first track, giving way to a more expected scream in later tracks, and a jazz-influenced sound in I Need Somebody feeling quite different, but still in tune with the rest of the album. Its a more impressive experiment than I was expecting from the album, but it felt like there was a lot to find in these eight tracks.

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• The one hundred and twenty-third classical recording: #956 Toru Takemitsu - A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden is the only work on the list by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, a Japanese composer who brought some of those roots into western classical music. A Flock Descends makes for a solemn work, at times tense in its build up results in a chaotic set of notes that becomes unsettling, the build up of discordant sounds resulting in a sound that's regularly quite hard to place. It's not a work that says much. Instead, it's a vaguely unsettling sound that takes time to find its place, experimental in a way that I appreciate but also not something that I would be able to listen to in a longer work.

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• The two hundred and ninety-seventh album: #297 Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies While Alice Cooper's presentation feels like one of the big glam rock stars, listening to Billion Dollar Babies I can see the seeds of metal in there, sounded darker and more harrowing in places even if in other places the glam rock side really takes over for a weirder experience. It's probably the mix of both that is at play here and works, a darker undertone to a more experimental glam rock track. There are quite a few nice, good bits here and the combination works best on a track like Sick Things, slow and draining with a heavy bass, rather than when it tries to go conventionally rock-like.

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• The two hundred and ninety-sixth album: #296 The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Next Normally, a glam rock album works for me. It's not my favourite side of rock, but it hits the right buttons. Next still doesn't quite satisfy that, though, and I think it's partially because the specific indulgences it takes don't quite work for me. Some of the songs are too long, but not in a way that really works, and consequently the slightly shorter second side works better. It feels like it lacks identity a bit, working better as a part of a performance you can watch. The title track in particular feels off - an adaptation of a Jacques Brel song - something that can work quite well in a rock context, gets too twisted and distorted at times to make for a good listening experience. The core of genius is there, but in this song, as perhaps with the album as a whole, it sometimes gets too distorted with how glam the album feels it needs to be.

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• Blogging has been a bit slow due to some recent surgery, but I think I'm okay now to do some occasional writing as I have a gentle recovery. It doesn't take much effort to listen to an album, after all, and comics have made for some nice, gentle reading through this. The two hundred and ninety-fifth album: #295 Paul McCartney & Wings - Band on the Run While Paul McCartney's solo album on the list was almost all his own, the recording of Band on the Run was more collaborative, with the songs credited as being co-written by Linda McCartney and a small band playing the songs. It means that we get an album closer to some of the Beatles songs in its production values, but one that suits McCartney in its scope, more classic rock with heavy jazz influences rather than being experimental as the later Beatles albums were. It makes for a good rock album with some catchy tunes - nothing that fully grabs me, but a good rock album to listen to. The one hundred and seventh comic: #283 Silver Surfer I like the concept of the early Silver Surfer stories. Rather than a hero ultimately celebrated for being the hero, the way he goes about his business and his lack of communicating his intentions leads to him being hated, on the same level as some of the villains he defeats. It makes sense as the response to someone who swings in and defeats, sometimes kills, someone else while causing a lot of destruction. It's a good concept, but it also feels like it takes a certain amount of stupidity and lack of communication to get to pull it off - after this much time it feels like you'd realize that just claiming "the common good" as a reason for doing this won't fly. It can be nice to see some superheroes fight each other as a concept, but it feels like it could have been polished and balanced a bit better. The other part of the story that's meant to offset this is the other half that alienates you a bit as a reader. The Silver Surfer is on Earth as he's trapped there because of the decisions he made to protect it. A barrier protects him from leaving, but every story seems to start with him trying to escape and half of the bad outcomes of stories link to him wanting to get through. There's something obviously unsympathetic about a hero who doesn't want to be there, and the two elements combine to make reading the comic quite uncomfortable at times. I believe later volumes clean this up and give him more freedom, but right now it feels like an interesting concept that is perhaps too off putting to have as the sole focus of a monthly series.

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• The two hundred and ninety-fourth album: #294 ZZ Top - Tres Hombres Despite the variation of genres that pops up from time to time, the brand of blues/hard rock that was part of the rise of rock and is probably exemplified by the Rolling Stones still comes up from some bands. In my (admittedly bad) memory, I haven't heard them as much recently, but I'm really enjoying these back to basics albums, where the pure music and albums are what matter, rather than the studio tricks that seem more prevalent in other genres of rock. The songs are also short enough to stay to the point and don't go on for an unnecessarily long time. It's a good, classic rock sound, using blues riffs but sticking with the rock sound that works.

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• The one hundred and twenty-second classical recording: #575 Maurice Ravel - Gaspard de la Nuit Intentionally written to be difficult, there is an element of frantic uncertainty to hearing this. The first of the three pieces, Ondine, has the notes constantly flooding through, a cascade that mimicks the watery setting of the piece. There's a joy and excitement in the piece, and it comes across with a real rush. In comparison, the second piece Le Giet is slow and sombre, repeating a single note that the rest of the music slowly and deliberately forms around. The franticness comes back with Scarbo, but here far more chaotically, without as much of hte clear repetition as the earlier pieces but instead moving around like the mischievous creature the underlying poem subscribes. Aside from anything else, the piece is really impressive to hear played, clearly requiring a lot of skill, but it also manages to create a setting incredibly well and are enjoyable because of that. It really feels like a masterpiece just listening here.

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• The two hundred and ninety-third album: #293 Stevie Wonder - Innervisions While I've mentioned some of my dislike for soul and funk in earlier albums and songs, it feels like the genre started evolving in the early seventies to more closely match my sensibilities - less frantic and more accessible, losing some of the gospel side in favour of something closer to a pop track with a specific sound. That's to say that I really enjoyed Innervisions, with a good sound, some songs that spoke to me and something that's upbeat and good to listen to. The religious message that's there isn't too strong, but is also in that same optimistic set up, still staying accessible and absolutely listenable.

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• The two hundred and ninety-second album: #292 Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon Luckily, anticipating an album pays off often enough to feel worth it. The Dark Side of the Moon is one of those famous albums that I've been looking forward to listening to. It doesn't disappoint, either. It's one where everything comes together, featuring a unified sound with still clearly defined track, making some different choices in the music without losing sight of what makes them work.Whether it's the intros, either spoken word or with odd sounds, or the deeper rock sounds when a track gets started, it all works, it doesn't jar, it creates a work that really stands out. For me, this has already been one of the highlights of the list to listen to.

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• The one hundred and sixty-seventh TV show: #570 Queer As Folk While the series doesn't seem as progressive now - there are plenty of queer dramas around now or varying quality - seeing a gay drama in 1999 was quite a big change. I might not connect with the Manchester gay scene of the late nineties - neither the partying or the general setting - but the feeling of inclusion and addressing issues in the community does do so. The whole show feels accessible in a view it has on gay life that other shows don't have and something like Will & Grace pointedly does its best to ignore. It's exaggerated, sure, but while the series is missing a bit of a full arc, the experience is really good.

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• The one hundred and twenty-first classical recording: #199 Ludwig van Beethoven - Piano Trio in D major, op. 70, no. 1, "Ghost" There's a sensitiveness to this piece that doesn't entirely fit its "Ghost" moniker, more a sad mood than a presence or remembrance. The complexities build well, never overwhelming, but I also keep finding new things in there. It's a nice sound, a slow journey through its emotions, , melancholic and dark, and a great mood piece for those darker days.

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• The two hundred and ninety-first album: #291 Waylon Jennings - Honky Tonk Heroes When I look at the country that has been in recent entries of the list, it's clear that rock changed the genre a lot and that when I think of country music, especially country music I'd hear in the 70s, I think of country rock. Hearing this album feels like so much of a throwback to the old days that itjars a bit, as something that doesn't belong in this era.I think that, with rock having moved along, these classic throwbacks don't have as much of an effect anymore. It's fine, it does what it does, but it doesn't have that much of an appeal to me.

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• The two hundred and ninetieth album: #290 Steely Dan - Countdown to Ecstasy I liked Steely Dan's previous album and while this one became bigger, the added production doesn't dominate. Instead, it's a nice collection of rock songs without too much fanfare, sounding good and making for an enjoyable album to casually listen to or dive deeper into. They're good, nice jams with some content, nothing overstaying its welcome or pushing it too far, the right pop rock point for me.

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• The one hundred and twentieth classical recording: #812 Samuel Barber - Violin Concerto Samuel Barber's violin concerto is a lovely, delicate piece that doesn't have any great themes and avoids the sweeping movements, but instead stays small and feels sensitive. It's never quite as evocative as other pieces, but it's good at what it is.

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• The two hundred and eighty-ninth album: #289 Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road There is something really infectious about Elton John's brand of rock and roll that's on display here. It's glam, a big sound that really hits you and something I've enjoyed listening to. It's the first disc that obviously has the big, show stopping numbers that really take their time to develop and set up a theme, but it works as well, if not more so, in the second half that has pop songs of a more conventional length, making some easily listenable pop that mostly seems cheerful and just makes you happy. Of course the title track isn't quite there, and while it is a masterpiece in the way it's performed, there's this longing that the music brings across so well. Elton John never loses the optimism and happiness, but it's transferred so well to this different feeling that it continues to work here.

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• The two hundred and eighty-eight album: #288 Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star As a shorter double album, A Wizard, A True Star actually starts off with a number of really short tracks - taking a minute or two to explore a song or concept before moving on to the next, never quite dwelling on the different parts of its pop music. Nothing overstays its welcome, but then again, nothing in those early tracks has a lot of staying power either. It pays off when you get to the first longer track, Zen Archer, which also has a tendency to flit around but keeps its focus and roots as it moves through them. I would still argue that while there are a lot of interesting, smaller elements here, by the short nature of them none of them have real staying power. It works well as an album and a showcase of Rundgren's music, and that nature is interesting enough.

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• The one hundred and nineteenth classical recording: #570 Frederick Delius - Brigg Fair Brigg Fair is a short piece, creating an orchestral song for a folk song. It's a nic epiece, exploring variations on the theme with some quite rousing elements, but without being familiar with the original I guess some of the impact might be lost. It's the final where it really pays off, going from gentle with some stirring segments to a large finale, not as big as you might hear in other works, but big for the gentle, I suppose country life-appropriate style of the piece. It never goes big, but it knows its setting and where to go from there.

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• The two hundred and eighty-seventh album: #287 Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells Not knowing anything about Tubular Bells going in, the opening immediately gave me goosebumps as the standard tension music used in childhood favourite TV series Bassie & Adriaan. The slow, simple build really works well to create tension. Outside of the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking parts of Belgium this was of course more known from the Exorcist, but luckily I have a more friendly association with the music. The album has two instrumental tracks, with very few vocal performances ready - the introduction of the instruments at the finale of the first part stands out, surprising you with their presence as a choir comes in afterwards. They're quite a contrast to the demonic-sounding vocals that appear in the second part and create an aggression that's otherwise not quite as present on the album. While there are only two tracks on here - more two halves of the same track, split because of technical constraints - the album feels like a full journey. There are no different parts to the songs, but at the same time they go on a journey with enough changes that it doesn't get boring. While these long concept tracks often don't work for me, in Tubular Bells they're tuned to perfection, immensely listenable and making for a good experience.

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• The one hundred and sixth comic: #328 Delirius It's hard to focus on reading Delirius. The psychedelic visuals draw you in as you try to comprehend what's going on, switching from scene to scene, often without a clear link. The story is that of Lone Sloane, a character we'll encounter in other entries, traveling to this planet of excess, where all of man's vices seem to be celebrated. They deal with the underclass, get involved in various dealings and end up setting off a revolt that replaces some of the capitalists with communist overlords. That didn't end up being my focus, though, and while I tried to follow the story I found it more comfortable to get wrapped up in the visuals, deal with the colours and weird sights and enjoy the disturbed but always interesting and intense art. None of it feels realistic, but the style sets such a specific atmosphere that it enhances what would otherwise be a fairly standard story.

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• The one hundred and sixty-sixth TV show: #196 The Water Margin I was quite looking forward to watching The Water Margin. I had a fine experience with the book, which had its issues at the start but worked well enough. Seeing it visualized would have worked better, making for a decent drama. This failed me on several levels though. First, we watched the dub of the show. It's the most widely available to us and while subbed shows are probably more acceptable now than they were back then, the dub has British actors using Asian accents for their portrayals, with differing amounts of subtlety, and the awkwardness of that never left me. Then there are the many characters - dubbed by only a handful of characters - that we struggled to keep separate. Some become memorable, but often it feels like we have a conversation between bureaucrats that we can't remember. Again, it doesn't help that we can't distinguish between the voices, but there's little done to help you remember then. The translation itself doesn't help either. Apparently this was done without access to the original scripts, using only brief plot synopses. While done well enough when compared to the difficulties inherent in this, it feels like some exposition was dropped in favour of pseudo-mystic quotes. It certainly wouldn't have helped coherency. I wonder whether a sub would have helped, but the number of characters would have stayed an issue. In the end that was not the series that was known over here, and I suspect its famous dub is part of the reason the list includes the show - it would have been an early Eastern show that would have transferred. I am more looking forward, then, to other shows like it that have a more focused story.

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• The two hundred and eighty-sixth album: Mott the Hoople - Mott There's still, at times, a specific feel to British rock bands compared to American ones. Not all do it, but Mott the Hoople sounds British even as it lives in the same hard rock space that is elsewhere. We're in the run up to punk, loud and aggressive with its specific guitar beat, and it's present in a lot of the tracks on Mott. It does that job well, I enjoyed the songs, and the Ballad of Mott The Hoople manages to really follow that line between the two styles, sounding perfectly as it does so.

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• The one hundred and eighteenth classical recording: #414 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin Looking at the story of Eugene Onegin, you get something that feels a bit more mundane than other operas. There are no kings or queens, no big events, but instead it's a love story - still from the nobility, but on more of a Pride & Prejudice scale. I'm basing this partially on what happens, as the book is on my reading list for the far future, when I get back to that (still waiting for my commute to start coming back). What that means is less big group songs and more smaller, focused songs. It's not as epic, that's for certain, but that means we get a bit more emotion in there and some more connection with what's going on in the story. It feels rare that an opera gets this personal and emotionally connected and feels this readable even if you need translations for the lyrics. I was thoroughly charmed and I'm looking forward to more of this.

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• The two hundred and eighty-fifth album: #285 Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters If you've read this blog for longer (wow...) you'll know that I am not a fan of jazz. It no longer dominates the list, but the jazz fusion that's coming in the seventies isn't doing much to win me over. In fact, the psychedelic rock oddities have moved into jazz, making Head Hunters' sound even more difficult to get into. It's an album that goes so far away from what I want to listen to that it doesn't connect, it always feels jarring to listen to, and at this point I can't say more than that there's nothing taking this jump for me.

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• The one hundred and fifth comic: #312 Achille Talon While I vaguely remember reading the Dutch translation of Achille Talon when I was younger and I am certain I watched the TV show, today I read the only volume translated to English that is out there. I believe Magnesia's Treasures is quite typical of the series, a comedy -adventure where our 'hero' reaches his goal by blundering through life. I wouldn't say that it is the best at telling that stories. Aside from some dubious stereotypes, it hangs a lot on deus ex machinas and other characters being more competent while the hero mostly gets led to places by others. I don't think the jokes - relying quite a bit on wordplay - translate that well and without those hitting that well it starts to fall flat. So with a flat story and jokes that don't work, the whole book isn't as engaging as it should be. This might be better in the original, but it's not worth it for this translation.

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• The two hundred and eighty-fourth album: #284 Faust - Faust IV The opening track of Faust's first album, Krautrock, is an eleven minute instrumental that makes a habit out of repeating itself. It's way too lengthy for what it brings, but as we know I have little patience for these things. The contrast is strangers as it then transitions into traditional rock songs, the electronic elements and drums overpowering the vocals, and it feels more relaxed even as the repetition sets in. The album continues like that, with long and repetitive sections suddenly interrupted by bursts of energy (I won't name tracks as there seems to be a lot of confusion about which track is which) that are a welcome distraction. it's a mixed bag, but there are times where it's good when it hits those points.

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• The one hundred and seventeenth classical recording: #957 Arvo Part - Fratres Although instrumentation will affect how you would look at this piece - it is not scored for anything specific - in the version for violin and strings and percussion I heard the piece sounds somewhat melancholic throughout. Sometimes it comes from a lonely violin, but when it bursts forth in a larger setting it still has this slower sound to it, a frantic violin on top as it seems to want to break through. It's a great mood piece and its use in all sorts of productions shows how it works to set that mood and it stays effective, being only about ten minutes long.

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• The one hundred and fourth comic: #951 Logicomix: An Epic Search For Truth After finishing the book, Logicomix left me feeling a bit empty. It takes the life of Bertrand Russell to explore an area of time where logic evolved a lot, but deftly manages to avoid saying anything of consequence. It plays with the idea of madness and logic being linked, but doesn't do much more than point out spurious details but doesn't carry it through to the end. Its biographical elements are fictionalized to a point where I can't quite trust it. And its story of logic has beginning and end points set so it doesn't follow to its final conclusion - something it points out in its own epilogue, but tying it to the life of Bertrand Russell feels like it limits itself. Even the logic is barely explained, the consequences being clearer to the background I have than it might be to someone who doesn't know. And perhaps that's why this was the wrong comic for me. As a programmer, I'm somewhat aware of the consequences of this and how their quest is ultimately futile - and wouldn't survive contact with the real world (after all, mine rarely does). It's unfortunate, as a focus on just one of these elements would have done better.

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• The two hundred and eighty-third album: #283 Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure With For Your Pleasure I'm taking on some glam rock today that feels appropriately cheeky and self aware. Do the Strand feels like it sets that up appropriately, referring to a dance craze that never gets described and in its lyrics making a mockery of the older, just as commercialized rock. While the energy of that track doesn't transfer to all tracks, the music's production sits at the right point of big without over the top, well produced but knowing when to pull back. The album goes big, but it works in the size of the tracks, the way it plays with music, but never lets the tricks overwhelm the music or the band. Instead it hits the right balance to stay entertaining and engaging while still getting its message across.

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• The two hundred and eighty-second album: #282 John Martyn - Solid Air I struggle to put my finger on the exact reason why, but there seemed to be something that puts me off the tracks on Solid Air a bit. The way John Martyn sings the title tracks, the subdued slurring, feels over the top and hard to listen to. While partially affected, it seems, for the first track, the album's halting folk feels discordant at times, and with the lyrics being less intelligible while the music doesn't go anywhere I appreciate, this was a genuinely difficult album to listen to.

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• The one hundred and sixty-fifth TV show: #553 Goodness Gracious Me Sometimes, a show's focus can be both its strong point and, in the long term, its detriment. Even if not all jokes land for me, I enjoy getting sketches from an Indian perspective, both aimed at an ignorant British public and ones aimed inwards. While the first season wasn't amazing, it was quite a lot of fun that way. After that, however, the jokes become more repetitive and the second season in particular feels like it's repeating the same jokes without adding much - while also introducing mandatory songs even where those don't really work. The third season manages to change it a bit and bring in more new sketches, but it feels like the series' viewpoint doesn't add much more after a while.

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• The one hundred and sixteenth classical recording: #769 Zoltan Kolady - Dances of Galanta According to the additional notes, this work was based on the folk music of Galanta, currently a region of Slovakia. When listening to it, this becomes a work of two halves, with energetic dances focusing on a few wind instruments mixed with bigger, often slower pieces playing with a full orchestra. The mix of styles - in speed, grandeur and instruments - is exhilarating, even when I prefer it when the piece returns to the origins of its dances. It's one of those places where I really notice that I'm drawn to pieces that more heavily feature the wind instruments over the conventional string orchestra, its versatility and happiness adding to how lovely a piece is to listen to. This delivers so much joy and showmanship in its music that still harkens back to the original dances that it becomes difficult not to smile while you're listening to it.

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• The two hundred and eighty-first album: #281 Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On While I've mentioned my dislike of certain funk tracks before, Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On does hit the right notes for me. As before, Marvin Gaye's songs are focused on his vocals, which initially feel less political than What's Going On and incorporate a more sexually explicit outlook. I wouldn't describe it as crude, but there is a raw passion to the songs that feel out of place in the soul world of the day. For me, it feels quite refreshing and open and allows him to link the subject to different parts of a relationship - seductive and romantic, the deed, but also a political angle in some of it. All of this is done in a rich, Motown souls package that keeps it seductive and attractive.

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2021-04-01 00:00:00

• The two hundred and eightieth album: #280 Genesis - Selling England by the Pound Possibly more than any other album before, Selling England by the Pound is an album that I feel the need to listen to again, so I can parse it and place it. While some act have some baroque elements in addition to their normal rock, or on the other hand go showy with it. While Selling England by the Pound has its showy moments, it integrates it here into eight tracks that manage to create an odd vision of England, a look at a fantasy rooted in reality. That doesn't mean it's flattering or nostalgic, but it recontextualizes events in a really fascinating way. The art rock music is over the top, sure, but in a way that I like, not pushing it too far but creating a production out of it - creating something more resembling an older symphony while using rock instruments. The long tracks - pushing ten minutes - don't wear out their welcome as they thrive on variety, using a common theme that they move around and play with. It's a lovely album, more than I was expecting, and I've made a note to find more of Genesis' albums beyond the one I'll cover in a few months.

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• The one hundred and third comic: #703 One Piece It's clear that One Piece is one of those successful anime and manga series that has connected with a lot of people and been quite popular. I quite enjoyed it too - the pirate setting is different, the power sets exaggerated, appropriately so for a comic like this, but with a good amount of variety in the powers that don't overwhelm or overpower what's possible. Eight volumes in, the joy and the wackiness held up, with some good characters that come through and some interesting settings. The issue it ran into for me - and it's one that comes up frequently with these sorts of series - is that at a certain point, the storylines get longer. I guess it helps to capitalize on designs and not reveal your hand too early, but dealing with each villain takes ages, the plots become repetitive and the fight scenes can't sustain the action for that long. By volume eight it has worn me out and I started to wish it would move faster, to the point where I didn't notice skipping half a volume as the temporary betrayal for a good reason seemed obvious enough. Something abridged would have worked well, but this requires you to be in for a bit too much of a long haul.

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• The one hundred and fifteenth classical recording: #708 Igor Stravinski - Les Noces While one of the issues with a lot of ballets is that they are quite visible and that means you lose out listening to a recording of it, Les Noces stands out as different. The piece is chaotic and dramatic, the choir sounding distressed, and unlike what I would expect to make for the serene sound you would normally set a ballet to. Instead, it feels like a chaotic opera, a wedding gone wrong (or, some would say, a typical contentious one) and it feels strong enough to create the scenes in your mind. This piece has its own hectic, almost droning sound, and it's off putting if you're not quite ready for it, but it settles into a pattern that finds harmony and meaning in that sound, a story that makes sense in a more real and down to earth way and feels like it works in this setting.

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• The two hundred and seventy-ninth album: #279 Lou Reed - Berlin Berlin succeeds reasonably well as a rock album. As a solo act, rather than a rock band project, the focus is heavily on Lou Reed's vocals and guitar playing, which stands out especially for his slightly slurred, dark style of singing. It feels dark and aggressive, with some very maudlin songs. As a 'rock opera', the story doesn't reach through, but the tone of the album works really well. It didn't really hit me until The Kids, though, where the shouting children really tugged at me and reached me. There's a build up to it, but as a long of the tracks blur a bit they tend to feel like an on going work - there are differences between tracks, but just as much a recurring theme. I don't know whether the darkness here always connected with me, the combination sometimes feeling a bit off, but this is an album that connects with a specific mood and I can see it being great to listen to when you do feel that way.

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• The two hundred and seventy-eighth album: #278 Can - Future Days More Can? After Tago Mago I should have known what to expect, and these fourty minutes in four tracks give it away soon enough. The album seems to be background electronic rock, subdued with some odd sounds in there, dragging its themes out for a long time. Unlike other long tracks, it doesn't overly rely on repetition, but instead gets in a variety of sounds that fit the general theme of the song, if not the album. I'm not sure whether I could tell the difference between tracks each time, but as ambient music this did its job quite well.

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• The one hundred and sixty-fourth TV show: #45 The Donna Reed Show Watching The Donna Reed Show is an odd experience. For the most part, it's a sitcom squarely from the 1950s, with a proper housewife and a standard nuclear family. The kids are well behaved and willing to learn their lessons. The father is a pediatrician, dedicated to his job but with wise advice when it's needed. Donna Reed of course plays the stay at home mother, keeping the house clean, cooking well and keeping on top of the required social engagements. It's at its best when they can break the facade - when the kids can be sassy, the husband goofy and Donna Reed's character not be perfect. It feels like too often, though, they're restricted enough that they can't do so. It means that the joy is in the small moments, a gag in a scene and a comment here and there. It's the fifties sentiments that constrain and limit the series and it needs a good plot to break through that - selling pickles, for example, rather than dealing with rejecting a boy as a dance partner for being too short - so the lessons don't matter as much. When you find that, it feels quite good to follow, but the series mostly just feels too outdated to keep me interested too often.

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• The one hundred and fourteenth classical recording: #479 Claude Debussy - Fetes Galantes As much as this list covers the bigger classical pieces, when you think about people gathering around a piano to sing a song it feels like Fetes Galantes might have been the sort of music used. A piano and a vocalist are all the instruments needed for these songs, a small and simple set of them. They sound lovely and simple, but because of their lack of power lack some staying power as well - lovely but simple.

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• The two hundred and seventy-seventh album: #277 John Cale - Paris 1919 At what point does a wall of sound cross over from big into over the top? While Paris 1919 features some nice, meaningful pop songs, but on a number of them the orchestral score takes over, creating a sound that's over the top and distracting without feeling they make the song better - it's John Cale's voice and lyrics that matter, worked best with an instrumental backing that's simpler, or feels more integrated - Andalucia does the former well, while Paris 1919 manages to walk the balance well enough that the urgent violins work in the context of the song, rather than feeling overbearing.

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• The two hundred and seventy-sixth album: #276 Hawkwind - Space Ritual Pulling off a double album is a tricky thing. You need to be able to fill ninety minutes with music that is consistent enough for your sound but has enough variation to keep your listeners interested. Having lengthy prog rock tracks helps fill the sound, but as this album proves, their repetitiveness can jar and not all tracks can sustain the interest for as long as is needed. Even a short track like Upside Down feels like the repetition wears out its charm. Part of this is the live aspect of this album, which was meant to be an audiovisual spectacle that obviously doesn't translate as I listen to it now. What it means is that I find myself tuning out large parts of the labrum until a track has a reason to grab me again, with most of it just getting lost as a repetitive drone stops appealing to me.

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• The one hundred and thirteenth classical recording: #159 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Symphony no. 41, "Jupiter" After a rough Monday, I needed something to lift my spirits a bit. This symphony did so quite well, a high energy performance with its romantic elements, some gentle elements interspersed with bombast. There's something in there that gives you a lot of energy, with a finale that especially manages to set up that finish and just left me with that optimism I needed today.

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• The two hundred and seventy-fifth album: #275 Bob Marley & The Wailers - Catch a Fire I've not always loved the reggae we covered for the list that much, but Catch a Fire worked well for me. If I have to give a reason, it's the rather insulting-feeling "it's not too reggae". What I mean with that is not that the sound of the album has changed to become more palatable to a wider audience, but that while the reggae sound is present in the album, it doesn't dominate or feel like the main point of the album. Instead, the album feels like it focuses on creating some pop tracks in the reggae 'mold', accessible and polished, using reggae instruments and sounds without those being the focus of the album.

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• The one hundred and twelfth classical recording: #84 Johann Sebastian Bach - St John Passion Needs must, and I don't think I could have skipped doing one of the famous Easter oratorios at any time other than Easter, but having workmen hammering away just outside the room I work in hasn't been the ideal way to experience a piece like it. It meant that my focus was diverted and I missed out on the lyrics of the performance and the division in songs, instead letting the music do its thing. In particular, I think I've been missing out on some of the nuances of the different arias, which have been blending together more than they probably should. They are heavy, stately, the choral sound that I expect to hear from Bach. The tenderness increases later in the piece, especially as the sadness of loss comes in, but that is as much down to the choice of vocalists, switching to sopranos as time goes on to get that effect. This work has its feel and sound that feels like it fits in with the religious setting it would be performed in. It means that it's not a piece best suited for casual listening, but it works here.

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• The one hundred sixty-third TV show: #950 Africa After Blue Planet, I've been looking forward to another David Attenborough nature documentary. Africa came up as an option and it's been amazing to watch. The harsh conditions of large parts of Africa leads to a diversity of behaviour that stays fascinating and the conditions threatening nature on our planet seem to be felt worse there than anywhere else. The sights we see are amazing - especially how things are filmed that have never been seen before - and the glimpses of the life of these animals stay fascinating. Seeing short segments of how these were filmed makes it even more impressive (and sometimes heartbreaking), but there is a lot that comes just from the sight of these creatures. There is hope in the almost obligatory conservation episode. People are trying to preserve them too, work with others to protect them. The Sahara desert will stay inhospitable and those that survive are amazing in their capabilities, but we can avoid making it worse. And with that we can see more creatures in their natural behaviour, with all the ways in which they can interact. It remains a beautiful series in a beautiful continent with some amazing creatures.

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• The one hundred and sixty-second TV show: #1 The Ed Sullivan Show When it came to picking a show yesterday, I went for the earliest one in existence. It's a show that I wasn't expecting to be amazed by, but as the first show it feels it will help define early American television. It lasted until 1971, at which point its audience was too old for the advertisers, but seeing it promote I Love Lucy was an interesting way to set its place in history. The Ed Sullivan Show is a variety show, and it really seems to be there. Ed Sullivan isn't a major presence that you see, on regular shows doing little more than introducing the show and possibly having a short interview with one or two of the guests. While probably known at the time and working for that, he doesn't have the charisma to pull this off for a modern audience. The acts are the most interesting part then, but while it gets the occasional youth-focused rock song, it also has a number of songs that do feel dated. It's not quite as intentional as the Good Old Days, but to the contemporary viewer there's not as much to this show as its reputation may suggest. It's best preserved through clips and compilations, rather than full episodes.

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• The one hundred and sixty-first TV show: #364 Moonlighting At some point, Moonlighting failed to pay off the hype. There's an interesting feeling to the show, one that does what it wants with some fun meta-jokes and fourth wall breaking, including them walking off set at one point to do a chase through the studio. It's cheeky and fun, and when it goes for those it's a lot of fun. The problem is the other half, where David (Bruce Willis) and Maddie (Cybil Shepherd) are in a will they, won't they relationship that just isn't as gripping as the creators think it is. It's not too believable, it's drawn out way too much and it works best when we aren't actually worrying about this love plot - frequently bickering friends is far better than a love story. And having seen the episode where it comes together and they sleep together for the first time - a supposed highlight - shows how toxic the writing around this is. It was a frustrating episode that we didn't like, and missing the genius that the show can be when it wants to be its own madcap self. There's a lot of potential here in Moonlighting, which occasionally pays off, but in the end it's not what I'd want it to be.

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2021-03-01 00:00:00

• The one hundred and sixtieth TV show: #971 Happy Valley When it comes to crime shows, there's a specific dichotomy that tends to apply. There are the procedural, case-of-the-week shows that focus on a case a week, such as Midsomer Murders, sometimes with a character arc in there, but while the cases can inform the story, they rarely matter beyond an episode. On the other side, there are shows like Broadchurch where the case runs through a full system, informs the characters more closely and where we often get a more personal link. It's a more modern way to tell these stories and often the more engaging if you can get into what's going on. Happy Valley falls into the latter. Set in a grim Yorkshire town, it starts off with a kidnapping case that turns into murder. Catherine is a police sergeant who gets caught up in it, as there is a personal connection to the people around it. For both seasons, it's safe to say that they start slowly, but pay off immensely once you get deeper into it. Sarah Lancashire's performance is the most outstanding in all of this, playing the line between making you care about her and getting annoyed when she's too stubborn for her own good. That's not to say there aren't more good performances, but it all relies on her while not feeling like she's a person handling everything, but is realistically limited by her police powers. Be ready for a slow burn, but it works out so well at the end that you want to keep going at the end of every few episodes.

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• The one hundred and second comic: #290 Doraemon There's something comfortingly familiar about Doraemon. They're stories of a couple of pages each with a familiar basic set up - Nobita, the human protagonist, encounters something in his life he needs to deal with, Doraemon, his robotic protector from the future, has a gadget that helps resolve it in some way, and the consequences follow. It's a gentle, kid-focused sense of humour and it makes for a comfortable read. The gadgets provide quite a lot of different stories that we're not constantly seeing the same beats. Instead it's a nice creative way to see what they can come up with for these issues, what comeuppance they get for using it and how it all reverses. Nothing that, these days, feels really innovative - and I'd argue others were doing this around the same time as well - but it's just fun.

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• The one hundred and eleventh classical recording: #444 Gustav Mahler - Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen Unlike many other collections of smaller works on this list, this one has a throughline in its lyrics rather than just in musical motifs. It's a love story, specifically one of love lost, and the four songs with their moods set these up quite well. There's a longing in there, modulated with the different moods they go through - despair, happiness and anger. It's effective in its story and manages to be efficient with its time as well - it's rare to see all of this fit into less than twenty minutes.

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• The ninety-first book: #797 Watchmen - Alan Moore Looking at some output related to the books list (which I'll get back to once I go back to a stable commute) I realized that I'd already covered this for the comics list, so here we go.

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• The two hundred and seventy-fourth album: #274 King Crimson - Larks' Tongue in Aspic I think it's fair to say that the titular track - or rather the two tracks bearing the title - are the core of this album. They're soundscapes, partially telling a story through the music, but where the first album used its lyrics for that too, here its focus shifts further towards using the music to set the environment. I don't think the lyrics made a real impact on any of the tracks this time, with the sound of it instead creating a mood to disappear into. It might look gimmicky from the outside, but I think this hits the right tone for me.

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• The one hundred and first comic: #268 Lupin III Considering the apparent presence of Lupin, the French aristocratic thief, in Japanese culture, and that this manga about his grandson created a character popular in all media, I went in with fairly high hopes for this work. Sure, I wasn't expecting an amazing work, but this is flawed enough to be unenjoyable.The most obvious flaw, at least in the works I've read, is that it quite quickly jumps over showing what's going on - show, don't tell, if you wish. Lupin commits a theft and we get told some bits of how he did it, but don't get to see it. We don't even follow the investigation, but just the lead up to the crime, the reveal of what happened and then it ends. This gets worse in some non-crime chapter, where in one, with Lupin trapped on an island, the resolution seems to happen in seconds because they're reached the page count. Add to that how it's often not as clear what's going on. A bunch of characters look similar, in particular Lupin and his adversary Inspector Zenigata. The latter is often the focus character, but since Lupin loves disguises it happens a bit too often that he's disguised as the inspector, sometimes as a meaningless reveal at the end. The action, too, is rushed, and it means that my eyes end up glazing over until there's some conversation to latch on to again. Even looking ahead to some later issues, most of these problems stay around - at least not to a point where I'm enjoying it any further - and I guess that's the groove it settled into. I'd say we moved on to do it better, but by 1967 I think the medium was advanced further anyway.

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• The one hundred and tenth classical recording: #699 Joseph Canteloube - Chants d'Auvergne Very early on, the list started with a number of folk songs before we saw it go into choral music. While the Chants d'Auvergne don't entirely go back to those days, still using an orchestra using traditional instruments, the feel of songs harkens back to it as time. It's hard to say how, but the folk origins of the songs come through in these songs. While the lyrics are in Occitan, not a language I understand, it feels they have been written to focus on the message of the song, rather than the repetition and skill of the singers as other, more conventional classical pieces have done. The sound of it matters, but you can tell that this originates from folk songs where not everyone would have such amazing skills. The music supports that too. While certainly not out of place it is set up to evoke an atmosphere as well as to support the lyrics and while there are plenty of moments where it gets to shine, it also takes a step back during the sung parts. While still beautiful and stirring, it tries to focus more on the vocal performance and the effect that creates. Although it isn't (to misuse a genre) 'poppy' enough, it's easier to see the link from this to the music from 1930s movies and what I believe to have been popular at the time than other classical works do and, as we have seen with more modern works, it's a fusion like this that can produce the more interesting and forward driving results.

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• The two hundred and seventy-third album: #273 David Bowie - Aladdin Sane As good as I've heard David Bowie be on list albums here and elsewhere, listening to Aladdin Sane makes it feel like the authors of the list may have been pushing a bit too much in getting him included this often. Aladdin Sane isn't a bad album, but its side one has some fairly generic rock tracks that don't feel as aspirational as his other work, with the avant garde jazz on its title track feeling especially off. Time on side two starts off with the sound I expect more, the lyrics having more of an impact when not coupled with the heavy rock music and its showy vamping works well. The side goes between several styles - there's another rock song, but also a mysterious ballad, and on the whole it's closer to what I was hoping for from the album. Despite its odd single choice - the Prettiest Star really does feel like a B-side or pure album track - there are some good tracks here. On the whole, though, the album is a bit of a disappointment compared to what I expect from Bowie and it's not one that really feels like it fits on the list.

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• The two hundred and seventy-second album: #272 The Incredible Bongo Band - Bongo Rock The premise, if you will, of this album is quite straight forward. It's an instrumental rock album where the main percussion comes from the bongo, with the drums having a secondary role. The success of that varies, with the percussion getting lost in the more traditional rock songs to the point you have to actively remind yourself while it's there, whereas it takes centre stage in others. And while I can see the point in doing the former to release tracks to listen to, it's obviously the latter that's actually interesting to listen to for me. Mostly it pays off, but I can't say it stands out here either. The one hundredth comic: #762 Blacksad The use of animals as allegories for humans goes back quite far in fiction - I've covered Aesop's fables before for the books list - and comics are the ideal medium to drive it, using visuals to convey a character's personality through its animal representation. While the initial book claims that it's not a direct representation, there are several points in the story where it refers to the species to indicate it's not just a visual choice. Whether or not it feels needed depends on the story, with the racism episode making decent use of the conceit, but it always makes for an interesting visual. This comes through especially in the dynamic scenes where a character moves according to the animal's movements, rather than a human's, and that portrayal becomes quite effective. At the same time the stories offer a view on 50s life with a number of its follies and issues, making for quite a dramatic look at the world that feels like it can pull it off more because it's shrouded in animal form.

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• The one hundred and ninth classical recording: #357 Johannes Brahms - Piano Quintet in F Minor I feel like the word 'stirring' can be overused when it comes to describing classical music, but it's hard to deny when it applies. The larger movements of this quintet are sweeping while even the clamer parts have this energy to them. It's hard not to feel like you're doing something epic even when you're just running some maintenance scripts. There's passion and excitement in the works, a motivation that carries through in even the most melancholic parts of this work.

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• The one hundred and fifty-ninth TV show: #183 MASH For me, MASH was partially a rewatch. It was part of late night repeats for me for a while, mostly with episodes from the final cast from season 6 on, but I've jumped around enough to see other major episodes. The basic premise of a series set in a medical hospital in the Korean war is different enough in the 1970s sitcom landscape, but the way it manages to bring in relevant issues of the time and creates a number of more dramatic episodes shows what else they can get from it. As the series moves on, it becomes capable of experimenting and exploring these subjects in a way few shows are allowed to do. The freedom came from its enormous popularity - the final episode still holds the record of the highest ratings for a scripted series. Revisiting and rewatching the series has been great, with the first season still holding up. Even though it's still more of a comedy at some point, halfway through it's introduced a number of more dramatic episodes while the later episodes we watched show how they seemed to have moved these to perfection. The version we had omits the laughter track as well - famously negotiated so it wouldn't play in surgery but had to be present everywhere else - which probably makes the stories work a bit better. We're going to keep watching - we'll see if we finish it - but it's great to see that (a few dated jokes aside) the series still holds up.

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• The two hundred and seventy-first album: #271 Lynyrd Skynyrd - (Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd) After I commented on not liking the Rolling Stones' blues rock before, the way Lynyrd Skynyrd handles it works a lot better for me. Perhaps it's the clearer vocals, which add focus to the songs. Perhaps it's the mellotron that adds body to some of these. The overall feeling I get is an album that's rock with blues elements added, rather than adding rock to blues, and it's a mix that works better. The mix of tracks hits well too, with SImple Man a relatively simple, quiet song after some louder, more aggressive numbers. The whole album manages to keep this up, the B-side perhaps a bit more experimental and fun, but mostly there's a nice, coherent country rock sound here that has been rare so far.

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• The two hundred and seventieth album: #270 The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St. Given how I experienced them before, I found myself struggling to get into Exile on Main St. Considering this is the Stones' most acclaimed album, that's a weird situation, but I've always preferred their hard rock tracks over their blues or country rock and that's the music that mostly seems to be on display here. It took until Sweet Black Angel - a song with more bite both musically and lyrically - for the album to really pick up steam, which felt (almost) like a waste of time. The album picks up after that, not dropping the blues influences but having more bite to it by that point that transfers better, having that 'weight' to it that the Stones bring to their blues tracks and that makes them sound so good. Even so, it feels best for me to ignore the hype - I don't think this is on top of the list as others do.

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• The ninety-ninth comic: #400 Luther Arkwright Sometimes, I feel like an awesome concept can really get wasted. Possibly because the author is too eager to copy another or because the appeal it has didn't transfer to the author. In the case of Luther Arkwright, I wonder whether the disappointment came, in part, because the outcome of the series - the main character moving to the next stage of human evolution - is one I've seen done since several times over. I suspect it might have been more novel in the late seventies, at least in comic form - or perhaps it was the done thing - but I felt it took away from the appeal the early series had to me, one of exploring parallel worlds and timelines. The way it's set up, with rolling news broadcasts from various areas and a threat for all of them, doesn't quite materialize in favour of a handwave to promote our hero. It's a shame, because parts of the latter half of the series lose steam with it when it was set up so well early on and really made me want to see this concept explored further instead.

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• The one hundred and fifty-eighth TV show: #575 Big Brother I remember the first Big Brother season. Not - probably - the one you know, but the very first Dutch season that became a larger hit than anyone expected. It was meant to be a social experiment, I believe they marketed it with some strange events happening in the house messing with people's minds, but those were quickly dropped when it turned out people enjoyed just seeing these people hang out. I even remember going online on a dial up connection (or did we have cable at this point?) and watching grainy black and white footage of these people. It was mostly a normal, but large house, with a fence to keep people out, but no luxuries and no have-not bedrooms or similar. Their budget varied based on how well they did but, as I suppose it was partially improvised, most of the show was about the participants hanging out and the going-ons between them. I guess it seemed boring now, but having two of the house guests have sex under the covers and the betrayal of a secret nomination for elimination was shocking at the time. There are no head of house votes, no battles, just the experiment of having people together, see who votes who off, and where all of this goes. Watching some episodes of Big Brother US and Canada as this viewing, the show feels so different. Contestants are really producing themselves, aware of what's happening and what the consequences of their actions are, playing a game and talking about strategies, rather than the far more interesting story of how they live their life. You get cronies around the head of household, alliances that go far beyond what stays interesting, and it lost that charm of people just living their lives. It's obnoxious and hard to watch, and I'm going to say that the original formula - although it didn't hold much interest after a first season - is better than the mess this show became at this point.

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• The one hundred and eighth classical recording: #304 Giuseppe Verdi - Nabucco As hard as I've said these can be to judge, there's something energetic about an early morning roaring opera, the music injecting energy into some large performances. The story is easier to follow than some others, with a number of opera flourishes added to a biblical tale so it becomes its own thing, just 'inspired by'. It's an impressive, big piece, made for a big performance, and the evocative sound means the play can work even without those visuals.

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• The two hundred and sixty-ninth album: #269 Al Green - Let's Stay Together Al Green's only album on the list is anchored by the titular track, a lovely and well performed soul classic. It sets the tone for the album - a nice smooth sound, lyrics mostly about love, nothing too complicated, just getting you through the variety of sounds while giving you something to hold on to. The tracks are a bit grocery story music - a song you can put on to remove silence, without causing too much concern or oddities. I'm not sure there are necessarily masterpieces in here, but the album is here as an example of a great soul album, well performed and lovely to listen to throughout.

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2021-02-01 00:00:00

• The two hundred and sixty-eighth album: #268 War - The World Is a Ghetto War, at least on their fifth album, trades on lengthy funk jazz tracks. While the first two tracks - Cisco Kid and Where Was You At - are okay funk songs, with the former's riffs working quite well, City, Country, City is a long jam session that seems quite nicely put together but doesn't gain anything from its thirteen minute runtime and boredom starts to set in about eight minutes in. Four Cornered Room, on the other hand, only really kicks off when its lyrics come in and it starts to deliver on that promise. The cop out response here is that funk isn't quite for me, but I feel like I enjoy a lot of it when it's in concentrated bursts, something I think future genres take in. As it stands, though, I struggle to really appreciate pure jazz and that has carried over into funk. There's a reason I still have a 'Jazz is Dead' postcard up.

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• The one hundred and seventh classical recording: #235 Franz Schubert - Octet in D Major, D803 There is a blessing in listening to a lot of these recordings in that they don't require you to look for meaning in them. Some do, of course, but the goal of this octet, for example, isn't to tell a story. It's to set a mood, to explore a theme or to show off the abilities of the musicians. It means that for writing, I have less to comment on, but get to just focus on the music. It sounds lovely here, as a lively and upbeat piece that brightened my day

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• The ninety-eighth comic: #46 Destiny: A Novel in Pictures While a lot of comics in the early parts of the list are newspaper strips, we're also seeing experiments with the media at this point. Destiny: A Novel in Pictures is a graphic novel at its most basic form: It's completely wordless, using one panel - from lead cuts - per page to tell a story. It's a dire one reflecting social life at the time, a poor woman living a bad life that she's unable to escape, sometimes through fate and sometimes by choice. It feels powerful enough for that even now, in a way that feels unescapable as it did nearly a century later in Scalped. The art is gorgeous, the black line work creating a contrast that paints an even more bleak world,adding even further to that atmosphere of being inescapapble while being its own stylistic treat. It makes for a sharp work in several ways, and the fact that it's now digitized helps more with being able to enjoy that.

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• The two hundred and sixty-seventh album: #267 David Bowie - The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars There's a mystique hanging over Bowie's work that comes out strongest in Ziggy Stardust. Ever morphing, his work is incredibly varied and the persona he takes on in this album feels like it's the most enduring example of that. As an album, it brings a good variation of glam rock which, thanks to its opera direction, gets taken in several different directions. As a story, it's not complicated, but its extended hopeful message feels remarkable on its own. And then the character as it's created - not Bowie, but at the same time wanting to be seen as him - works well to set him apart and make the performer seem that bit more alien too. Despite the musical innovation, what's as amazing is how many different influences Bowie takes in. This isn't doing its own thing or trying to pretend that it does, instead it plays with other influences. Doctor Who is cited as a direct influence, Over the Rainbow from the Wizard of Oz is a clear influence on the outstanding Starman, and it feels like it just expands from there. It's a worthwhile creative endeavor and an album that I will return to.

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• The ninety-seventh comic: #931 Scalped Scalped is the story of Dash, a cop returning to his native American tribe to enforce the law there and, increasingly, the other people surrounding him. Through that lens, we get a bleak picture of life on a reservation, filled with alcoholics and drug addicts, where life is cheap when you're not at the top. It's a difficult read, the constant push downwards making for some harrowing tales that doesn't seem like they have a way out. It's well made and, depending on the point of view character, often compelling, but it feels like something to read in small doses, so it can takes its time to find a place and you can take your time to process.

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• The two hundred and sixty-sixth album: #266 The Temptations - All Directions I think my issues with these funk albums keep carrying through. The tracks on this album have some good hooks and tie in well when those come through, but Papa Was a Rollin' Stone has parts that get lost in the context of an album, losing the edge when it's surrounded by the lengthy repetitive sounds. The second side appeals to me more in that sense, even though I know the funk of the first is the reason this album is listed. It has a number of lovely, sensitive ballads that really appeal to me. The First TIme Ever really is that amazing to listen to, for example. It stays an album of mixed influences, but it's clear that what I latched on to wasn't where this music was going.

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• The one hundred and sixth classical recording: #132 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Violin Concerto no. 5, "Turkish" There are a lot of Mozart's pieces to get through, clustered around this era, and I can see why they're so genre-defining - sure, there doesn't seem to have been as much competition in these days, but there's a beauty in the sound that comes through, always feeling somewhat ethereal and magical, played big for this piece but small enough to avoid being that bombastic. It doesn't necessarily have the most memorable phrases, but it's a lovely small piece.

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• The two hundred and sixty-fifth album: #265 Alice Cooper - School's Out One of the weird things about bands like Alice Cooper, which were outrageous at the time, is how shock rock doesn't have that impact anymore. So much of it seems to have come from rumour and hearsay, while the music itself is tamer than that. Are there some edgy lyrics on School's Out? Sure. Is the title track going in hard? Absolutely. But the jazzy Blue Turk is none of that and is a nice, subdued rock song. Underneath the theatrics, there is a solid album here that draws from a lot of different influences, moving between hard rock, classic rock and glam rock to create a solid set of tracks that hold up far better than their reputation may suggest

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• The two hundred and sixty-fourth album: #264 Roxy Music - Roxy Music On a cold and dark day like today, with the snow fading and turning into ice, Roxy Music's loud and upbeat British glam rock feels pretty incongruous. They're nice songs, sure, nothing that necessarily stands out as anything amazing. Some of it is off putting for a while, but there's thought put into the sounds that makes them work. It's not comfort listening, the changes in direction makes sure of that, but there's so much more going on in places that you wonder what's going on. At the core there are some good, standard rock songs - parts of this really could come from an early sixties rock album- but it's been added to, with unconventional intros and intermissions, so the occasional changes in instrument don't stand out as much. It's probably Brian Eno's signature that's in there, pushing the music beyond its rock roots, and that influence is one I know will stretch beyond this. Focusing on that though ignores the good rock songs in there, the variation that comes in, and everything else in there. Part of why it's hard to place is because it feels this album experiments, still, with new styles in a way that I think I'll see pay off in later albums.

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• The one hundred and fifth classical recording: #951 Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians There are few pieces that use vocals as an instrument, a repetitive lyrical sound that the performers even modulate the volume of through moving their microphones as they perform. That sound and the ongoing marimbas create the base of a hypnotic sound, then manipulated by other instruments as they come in and out until it returns to that same base. It's interesting, different from what game before, something I can imagine as part of a video game soundtrack, giving it such a different feel from the standard classical pieces on the list. There's something hypnotic about it, more than anything I feel I could just sit here and listen to it. We've already heard of Steve Reich with Different Trains, a piece that stood out for its innovation, and I can see how this originated that work. In fact, this is the one work that is also ons ome popular music lists, and it has its place as a work that both draws on the differences in popular music of the day and passed it on to later artists. It's a beautiful piece, different but in a way that works really well.

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• The two hundred and sixty-third album: #263 Paul Simon - Paul Simon It was weird to hear a song use "Queen of Corona" when it's nearly fifty years old. It's a weird turn of phrase in these times in a folk rock song that doesn't quite suit that mood, but also isn't miles away from it. It was an odd stand out line in an album that's well written, but also didn't have a standout hit for me. There's some good folk in here as we've expected from Paul Simon as a writer, but this doesn't hit me quite as well.

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• The two hundred and sixty-second album: #262 Nick Drake - Pink Moon It's hard to shake the impression this album leaves on you, one of music as depression. It's not necessarily incredibly sad as much as it invokes that feeling of being tired, unable to move or do anything. The murmured vocals, the single guitar playing repetitively, bright spots like 'Know' are pretty rare. Even so, the album isn't a hard one to listen to, the tracks feeling more like a comfortable blanket than something pushing you away, weirdly a way to find some comfort in those feelings. It's a lovely album, but it feels like one you need to listen to on your own, without any distractions or sounds from anywhere else - it's a Thursday morning, I'm waiting for scripts to run, I don't have anything else to pay attention to, this feels like the perfect album to feel maudlin to.

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• The one hundred and fifty-seventh TV show: #561 Will & Grace As much as it was revolutionary at the time, watching Will & Grace doesn't feel like that way. Will, the gay character, is living a normal life. He's gay, and that impacts parts of what happens, but isn't the over the top stereotype that's common on TV, nor a tortured soul as other dramas seem to have. It normalizes the gay life style in a comedy, which makes for comfortable viewing and a good way to have an occasional twist on the formula. There are a number of jokes that feel dated, but on the whole it feels loving enough that it works as a sitcom - even now feeling like a rarity to have gay characters just living their life, to the point where it felt like the revival still worked despite its internal problems.

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• The ninety-sixth comic: #10 Happy Hooligan Oh man, formulaic doesn't seem to cover it with Happy Hooligan. Reading through a selection, I can summarize any comic's plot with "Happy tries to be helpful to someone, it backfires (usually by the person falling) and Happy gets arrested". The cops seem trigger happy, people are unreasonable, and the whole thing isn't very amusing from the start. Even ignoring 1900s racial stereotypes doesn't improve that one bit, although these days just reading that is a bit uncomfortable. The crossover with the Katzenjammer Kids shows that this is what newspaper comics were at the time, a lot of visual slapstick and people getting hurt, but the repetition here doesn't feel like it pays off.

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• The one hundred and fourth classical recording: #182 Ludwig van Beethoven - String Quartets, op. 18 Having a work that covers over two hours of classical music can be a bit exhausting. That's not to say these aren't beautiful to listen to, but when listening for these entries, I do some work to form my opinion as I do. With six separate works, each with several movements, that means it needs a bit more time to fit together. These are some lovely works, suiting a more upbeat mood, and it's lovely to listen to even if I wouldn't listen to all of them in one go again.

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• The two hundred and sixty-first album: #261 Tim Buckley - Greetings from L.A. I already know funk isn't quite my thing. Funk done by a white man, as much of a genius he might have been considered to be, works even less, as the abundance of sound and energy is replaced with a lonelier sound that doesn't work as well - a folk feel that doesn't work as well with the sound, a musically competent song that feels like it missed the beats it wants to hit. It's not unlistenable at all, but I just didn't get anything I wanted out of it. The ninety-fifth comic: #415 Jeremiah There's an appeal to a post apocalyptic setting - on one hand, you've got the back to the wilderness idea, working with your wits without all the technology we have these days. On the other hand, you can use modern conveniences when it suits, repurposing them when needed and still giving that familiar feel. It allows for a lot of different directions, regardless of the source of the apocalypse. While interesting, it feels like a world like that can need more exposition - who are the people, what are they doing, what are the rules that are present. Other settings come with that built in, but here you need more exposition on the world. Jeremiah doesn't do that well. While the first story sets up Jeremiah and Kurdy, the two protagonists, well enough, outside those two I quickly got lost with what was going on. This is both in the stories, where it can jump from place to place quickly, resolving some things off screen, and having you fill in a few too many blanks to help, and between them, where side characters show up and disappear without much explanation. Sure, often it doesn't matter much, but it left me just about confused enough where, for example, the train carriage they camp in for a few episodes comes from. The darker art doesn't help much with that, but the clues don't seem to be there in the writing. This might be a victim of the translation, where the albums seemed to be in order but might not be entirely, but it is so present in the stories as well that I don't think my reading exhaustion came only from that set up. So much happens on each page without as much of a guide that the explanations I would hope would follow never materialized. There is something here, sure, but I think there's something in the story that just didn't give me enough to go on.

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• The one hundred and fifty-sixth TV show: #540 Midsomer Murders There's the idea that we enjoy scary stories at Christmas because it makes us feel more comfortable being cozy and safe at home. It seems like the same applies to murder mysteries - we enjoy them when they're in these idyllic places where a murder is a big deal, finding all the secrets under the veneer of pleasantness. The series trades on this, always having some secrets hidden under the idea of staying proper and having the calm of their life disrupted. Aside from that, our lead chief inspector Barnaby is savvy enough to realize what's up, wisely deciding not to actually move to the countryside at one point, with his personal life providing a nice and gentle, less dysfunctional contrast (expect for his attachment to the job). They're all well built mysteries, not jumping in with a murder and not going too gritty even if it goes dark. Add to that that, as with so many British shows, this can be a case of spot the actor, using the same stable so many other shows do, and you can see some actors enjoying getting the chance to play the violent murderer when they'd normally play nice old ladies. The show does have its issues, with homophobia featuring a bit too heavily in the early murders and the series being too white for too long - perhaps representing some of these areas, but feeding into the xenophobia rooted in these areas rather than challenging it as the show does with this village lifestyle. It's not something that really impacts your day-to-day enjoyment of the series, but it's something you start to notice when you pay attention to it.

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• The two hundred and sixtieth album: #260 The Eagles - Eagles There's something quite relaxing about the standard, country-inspired rock of the Eagles. There are no tricks, no attempts to sound fancy or go weird. There is just a good, solid rock sound that brings a nice bit of energy. While there are benefits to the glam rock experiments, this proves why you don't necessarily need that and can just rely on some good, basic sounds executed to perfection. Even Earlybird's early 'extravagant' bird sounds are there for the introduction before fading into a solid country rock song. It's all the album needs, and it feels like that really pays off.

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• The one hundred and third classical recording: #939 Elliott Carter - Concerto for Orchestra It's easy to dismiss this piece as a mess, a cacophony of sounds that assaults you - and to be fair, we've had some modern pieces that feel like that. That's not the case for this concerto though. While there is a lot going on at once here, with some sounds that can seem to bite each other, there is a structure in here that means that while the work doesn't always harmonize, it all leads to a complete piece that works together, bringing a clear intention to the piece. The moments when they do come together and align are even more brilliant for that reason, as the sound becomes that much more powerful following the build up. It's an intense piece to listen to, consuming your attention more than other pieces, but it's worth finding the beauty in there.

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• The ninety-fourth comic: #869 We3 There's something fully uncomfortable about reading We3. This story, about three animals turned into cyborgs to function as half-robotic weapons, starts off with orders for their destruction. Only barely understanding what's going on, they escape and roam the countryside as they try to defend themselves against those trying to capture and kill them. There's a lot of action in here, but the comic's focus is its sadness, with pets who were trying to please their owners being chased and not understanding. The fact that you can see them deteriorate as they do so, while they miss the medicine needed to keep them alive with their implants, emphasizes that further and they keep looking worse. It's an upsetting and brutal story, which builds a lot of pathos for creatures who can barely communicate even with what you see - recognisable and moving, with a dark art style to match.

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• The two hundred and fifty-ninth album: #259 David Ackles - American Gothic I hadn't heard of David Ackles before, despite him being a celebrated songwriter in the community. The folk rock-inspired Americana album has some of the feeling of a Bob Dylan album, mixed in with some music hall elements where I can imagine him on the stage, a piano playing next to him. In that sense, it's a lot more optimistic and happy than folk can feel. Add to that Ackles' ability to tell a story in a song, with Midnight Carousel as much a story as a song, and it feels like an album that comes together in every sense, its focus on feelings and what it's trying to saying rather than a sound working incredibly well here.

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• The two hundred and fifty-eighth album: #258 T-Rex - The Slider I'm not sure where to stand with The Slider. The first track, Metal Guru. fits the bill as a hard rock track that hits that feeling of being slightly inaccessible and taking a bit of work to get. Then there are tracks that just don't make an impression, including title track the Slider, while Spaceball Ricochet, which is more like a ballad, feels like it doesn't quite fit in with everything else. The album has some glam rock elements and plays with hard rock, but it feels like a mixed bag with some tracks hitting - like Metal Guru and Ballrooms of Mars respectively showing the hard rock and glam rock of the album - and others feeling a bit too toothless to fit the feel they were going for. The ninety-third comic: #630 The K Chronicles The K Chronicles take the form of a weekly, Sunday-style comic - not unlike Life In Hell. Written by an African-American artist, it covers a number of racial themes, current affairs and political humour included, which gives it quite a different viewpoint from what you'd often get in these, and it's a welcome one. It's obviously not one I've experienced, but there are bits that seem familiar and it manages to hit the right button, while maintaining the humour. Add to that the cases where the cartoon covers slice of life stuff, recognisable but coming out quite unique, and this became an accessible, as well as entertaining read that still has a large chunk of its archives online to read - even covering recent events when it feels it needs to be covered.

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• The one hundred and second classical recording: #124 Giuseppe Tartini - Violin Sonata in G Minor, "The Devil's Trill" Said to have come to him in a dream, The Devil's Trill was apparently a bad copy of a song he had the devil play to him in a dream. While probably just as much a good story as it is him talking about his dreams, the work has a certain charm that I don't entirely associate with work from the 1700s, it being a speedy and seemingly technically difficult piece in places that relies as much on tension and haste as it does on the slower movements that fill the room. There is something especially impressive about the piece when it starts to dance like that, taking you more on a journey to a conclusion that's still as amazing to listen to.

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• The one hundred and fifty-fifth TV Show: #681 Lost I'm sorry Lost, you never really found me. There was a lot of hype around Lost and it's been on our backlog for over a decade to watch it. Watching it now, though, we never really got into it. In part it's because we knew the conclusion - spoiled by its comparison to a different TV show ending - making a lot of what happens meaningless, but I often feel it's about the journey more than it's about the outcome. The journey, however, never really appealed. The show's split between flashbacks, focusing on a character per episode, and life on the island, often focusing more on what happens to that character and how they fit into what happens on the island. The flashbacks are mixed - not all of the characters are as interesting and as much as it's a delight to see Charlie do his thing, main lead Jack is a bland American hero type that didn't gain much over the first season. The island loses out further. It feels like a lot of what they can and can't do and do or don't have available is plot based rather than survival based, which would have made for an interesting angle they never really get into. The interplay doesn't work well, the antagonism feels a bit forced, and the whole thing seems set up to drive the group into two camps rather than something more natural. I mean, the fact that the 'leaders' are the characters I care the least about put a damper on that anyway, with Jack and Kate not really working as interesting protagonists. And the mysteries? Barely there, and when they are there's not enough to look at. You want to get answers to some of the small mysteries, so they can lead to bigger ones, but instead it doesn't give you anything. Knowing where it all ends up, and how because of that it's all meaningless, means that it just doesn't get that interesting. That's not to say there aren't good bits - there are a bunch of good characters and an episode like Numbers works incredibly well, but there are so many scenes and episodes in between that feel perfunctory, spinning its wheels for some time, that the series doesn't connect. Ten years ago, I might have liked it. It might have been a good watch at the time. These days, however, it doesn't offer enough.

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• The two hundred and fifty-seventh album: #257 Stephen Stills - Manassas Usually I try to find a hook when listening to these albums - a song or two that draw me in and define the album, or something special that stands out. The problem with Manassas is that I struggle to find anything like that. It's competent country/blues rock, the bluegrass is fine, it has some feeling put into it, but there's nothing that stands out. I couldn't tell you a song that I really enjoyed or something that made me sit up and pay attention. It's not that I can't tell the difference, we're certainly moving between several different songs, but it's hard to mention anything that actually makes an impact. The one that's closest is probably the final, fourth side, Rock and Roll is Here To Stay, which swings a lot more... but even then this doesn't have the impact other rock albums have for me.

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• The two hundred and fifty-sixth album: #256 Stevie Wonder - Talking Book Talking Book is mostly a poppy soul album, flirting with rock in places and shifting a bit, but mostly sounding like a soul album that's polished itself to reduce the repetition that tends to get to me and feeling like a normal pop album, with the familiar topics of love and life without going that deep. Stevie Wonder brings several influences to the album, some funk, some rock and drifts between upbeat pop numbers, ballads and funk in an album that cheers you up and makes you feel better.

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• The one hundred and first classical recording: #971 Olivier Messiaen - Livre du Saint Sacrement Sometimes music just hits you the wrong way. We were admittedly at a low energy moment when we started listening to Livre du Saint Sacrement, but there was something anxiety-inducing about it. Part of it might be the discordant sound of the first few tracks, a messy sound that we felt we couldn't keep listening to. On a later listen the later tracks move back from that a bit, although the nature of Messiaen's work still leaves you off balance, never letting you settle into a listening experience. The question is whether you can get something more out of it even if it leaves you feeling off and get you in the right head space. Here, the work's disjointed nature means that there's not much I find in it and that anything that works is so fleeting that it's soon followed by something I don't enjoy. Without that through line, this doesn't give me much I enjoy.

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