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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.

The fifty-seventh comic: #151 MAD

Sometimes, the format of this list limits what we read. In this case, it's MAD magazine that's known and beloved. For the list, however, we're looking at the 23 issues of the preceeding comic book. While, I suppose, still iconic as the source, it resembles titles like Shock and Suspenstories a lot closer. It has two or three stories that, this time, are humorous rather than horror like, often parodying existing stories or tropes, but still in a more rigid form. Sometimes it hits, and the more experimental parts towards the end of the run do so a lot more often - I'd say it starts working for me around issue 15 - but too often it's too dense and the jokes don't land because of that. I've started reading the magazine too, and it's slightly better, but for the most part, this specific entry is too much part of that time to enjoy here.

The one hundredth TV show: #949 Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Starting this list coincided with us giving up this show - not because of the list, but because we were generally overwhelmed by shows to watch. I'm not sure why we gave this up, but I guess that's how our time went. The cast of the show is great, with Andy Samberg as a charismatic, goofy but capable enough lead. The show is more of an ensemble show, though, with a number of characters who are larger than life, mostly goofy, with enough character to create stories on their own. There are a bunch of great performances here that mean the show stays just as weird.

All the small touches, tiny gags that lead nowhere, but create life in the show, keep the show interesting and I keep wondering why we gave it up - the Nine Nine is back on our list.

The ninety-ninth TV show: #894 Revenge

While we watched the first season of Revenge, we never went back to it afterwards - possibly not a bad decision, now I've continued watching the second season for the blog. The first story was a fascinating story of revenge, sometimes twisting itself to make sure there's a victim of the week, but overall building up to some great moments and making for a compelling watch. The second season moves into more standard intrigue, a bunch of it feeling almost standard soap opera fare, and the story feels like it loses its impact. I've not really seen how it goes from much further after that, but it's the first season that really stood out for me - a great story of revenge that fits in a lot of character development around keeping the per episode plot moving forward, creating some decent themes that push it beyond standard drama fare.

The one hundred twenty-first album: #121 The United States of America - The United States of America

At a time where a lot of rock bands were experimenting, it feels like The United States of America is even further out there. Just listening to the first track, it's hard to imagine them being able to repeat the feat of how unique the electronic sound is. It's repeated and imitated, but often to try to make it more of a song, while this feels like it's just trying things from start to finish.

There's bits of everything in there, which makes for a weird experience. It's not always coherent, and while those clashes may sometimes be intentional, I don't think it works as a single product either. Basically, what we get is a bunch of experiments, going poppy, rocky and psychedelic in different places, and there are some places where it works, some that don't, and on the whole it's a bit unsatisfying compared to something that focused on a thing. I guess more than that, it works as inspiration to other artists - and I know we'll see that later with, for example, the Beatles.

The ninety-eighth TV show: #120 Ultraman

Tokusatsu - basically shows around superheroes often fighting men in rubber suits - is a long running genre that's probably most known for sentai, which spawned Power Rangers. Ultraman could be argued to be the first - although its predecessor series has the monsters and Godzilla has been around for ages, this show is the first with a superhero character that fights them, while they're giant, including a transformation sequence.

A lot of the show relies on models work, not too different from Thunderbirds but with a human walking through them. It's fairly impressive to see and quite convincing for the most part. Unfortunately, in most episodes the most exciting parts - the big monster fights - are restricted to the last few minutes, probably because of cost. It means that the plot needs to carry a lot of weight, and that doesn't always work out well. Of the science team that's the focus of the series, only some characters are interesting (Ide probably most of all) and the side characters are a mixed bag. Parts of the show explore some interesting ideas, but they're too often mixed in with generic plots that they get quite boring.

The drive to include this show here is that it represents a major Japanese genret hat hasn't made it out elsewhere, but it feels like the story telling isn't quite there yet to pull it off.

The one hundred twentieth album: Big Brother & The Holding Company - Cheap Thrills

One of the other things I got out of this album is how it's a studio album made to sound like a live one - knowing that, the cheers from the crowd seem weirdly out of place. The album wouldn't sound out of place - despite being psychedelic rock, it doesn't sound like it uses anything they wouldn't be able to do live. It's a more solid rock album, though drawing on the call and response that is more familiar from soul, probably because of the blues roots, but it also fits in well with the multiple vocalists in the ban. Led by Janis Joplin, there's something sharp about the vocals, contrasting with the deeper male vocals from some of the other members of the band.

Piece of My Heart and Summertime both show off the vocals well, classics rearranged to work incredibly well as rock songs, aggressive but emotional.The former is a particular high point, both full of energy and anguish. The blues influence shines through in all of this and is quite effective to create this emotion and outshines the likes of the Rolling Stones, in large part because of the vocals, but also because everything else is straight and polished enough to work.

The sixty-fourth book: #53 Justine - Marquis de Sade

The 120 Days of Sodom was salacious, sadistic and depraved. The characters were reprehensible, but I at least felt some morbid curiosity in how far it would go. Justine, another libertine work, doesn't always go as far, and tries to condense the horrors. It tries to be a biography as seemed fashionable at the time, but doesn't succeed in making it compelling. It ends up flat and repetitive, without really thrilling this time.

It feels pointless, unnecessary and mostly just boring - these are terrible people, we don't want to know more about them, but there's nothing else that really makes it worth reading. I suspect this was exciting considering the time and contents, but if you're not into the erotica, this isn't a great novel to read.

The fifty-sixth classical recording: #18 Tomas Luis de Victoria - O Magnum Mysterium

Two short pieces today, both choral. O Magnum Mysterium again has this mystical quality, long notes heading into something that, for the time, is faster. As always, meaning gets lost a bit, but that relative variety sets this apart and makes it more interesting.

The fifty-seventh classical recording: #19 Francisco Guerrero - Battle Mass

Unlike other masses and religious songs in the list so far, this mass is chaotic. While there's a structure to the different voices, they don't all line up, creating a more chaotic, almost more aggressive sound - lining up with the purpose of the mass. It's an unexpected sound, pleasing and more interesting to listen to as it feels there's always a bit more going on. It flattens out later on, but it's an interesting sound nonetheless.

The sixty-third book: #52 Vathek - William Beckford

By now a long time ago, I started this list with Arabian Nights. It was an interesting, if at times formulaic read and it's not surprising it would have inspired other authors. Vathek isn't directly trying to mimic their style (although some have tried to link it that way), but it has clearly been inspired by it. What we get are a number of stories about the titular Vathek, a caliph who abandons islam and goes on a series of adventures.

There are some interesting twists in there and it's a quick enough read with entertaining situations - something quite different from other books of the era, with a unique tone. That made it quite nice to read through, in a way that gives you an insight of what an 18th century Brit found and valued in this tale.