The One Hundred Twenty-Second Album: #122 Dr. John, The Night Tripper - Gris Gris
When I first saw this described as blues rock from New Orleans, it threw me a bit, but listening here it makes complete sense.There's something jazzy in this, but the slow vocals almost immediately talking about voodoo complement the semi-French song titles that you associate with the bajou. It's quite compelling, not in the last part from Dr. John's performance itself, which has a lot of charisma, sounding unpredictable while not being threatening. It's off, a bit crazy, but it's all good.
The fifty-eighth comic: #603 King
Having gone through a few autobiographies on the list, having a proper biography in comic form is quite nice. Going in to take a look at the life of Martin Luther King, this is quite striking. For a large part, the art work is a bit abstract, with stylized lines rather than a more realistic look, you lose some of the emotion, which is more conveyed through words. Instead, though, this focuses more on the events, at times letting the speeches of MLK speak for those emotions more than anything else.
It also doesn't shy away from the truth - MLK as a flawed being, who made soem big changes but whose personal life wasn't always as together - something that sometimes impacted his message too. I liked the use of colour as well. It slowly sneaks in through the volumes, something that I suspect is clearer in the three individual volumes than the collection I read, and starts to make an impact especially as things come to a head. It's an impressive work, sympathetic but feeling real as well.
The fifty-eighth classical recording: #73 George Frideric Handel - Water Music
Yeah, it's been a busy few days - this and the next piece were both live as they were performed for a radio broadcast we attended in the Royal Festival Hall. Water Music is the more abstract of the two pieces, made for an outside performance (originally on boats floating down the Thames) and it feels it. It's big and majestic, the brass instruments having a lot of space that ends up feeling like a call and response sequence. It's big, it's fast with a lot of power behind it and seeing the performers get into it really enhanced all of that.
The fifty-ninth classical recording: #54 Henry Purcell - Dido and Aeneas
The second piece of the evening is the first (known) English language opera. We were probably helped by knowing the myth, as in an hour this keeps up the speed, avoiding the lengthy monologues we get in some other operas. As always, it helped that we saw it live, with the passion of the singers showing through. One thing that impressed me was the use of the choir - sometimes as an instrument, at other times to tell the story and sometimes to create really creepy laughs. Beyond that, the score makes heavy use of lutes, especially when singing as the quieter sound work well as a backup, rather than overpowering the performers. It was one of the best pieces we've seen live for this list and it really makes me excited to see more operas.