The ninety-fifth album: #95 Young Rascals - Groovin'
Am I used to too much? This album feels quite light, with the happy go lucky sound of something like early Beach Boys, gentle rock, R&B influenced but quite light and fun. And I guess it works, but it's just not standing out as special, more just fairly generic. There are some interesting experiments (although the stereo switching between audio channels were more making me feel queasy). It's early Beatles... at a time where we had Sgt Pepper, Revolver and the others
The ninety-fourth album: #94 The Byrds - Younger Than Yesterday
Today's stop on this tour of sixties rock drops us off with folk/country rock, the Byrds including some psychedelia in their music but staying true to those roots. C.T.A.-102 is a revelation in that sense - having a standard folk riff that involves weird sound effects and an alien invading the song about a minute and a half in. I'm not quite sure what happens, but it shows that there is more to this album than might seem at first.
It nicely interrupts the easy listening songs. They're nicely put together, easy to listen to, a bit sentimental but suitable for the album. Then songs like that heighten the stakes, showing they're aware of what's out there and not avoiding it.
The ninety-third album: #93 The Doors - The Doors
It's been a bit of a bad couple of weeks and some rock goes down like a treat - some hard guitars, loud vocals and aggression. The organs are still out there, reminding us we're in the psychedelic sixities (doing the songs list messes with my perception of time here). It's also haunting at times, to sink away into, and that mood really gets invoked as I listen.
Still, it's not quite as hard as the bands the Doors would inspire. Light My Fire feels really slow - apparently an issue with the album recording, which is slowed down from the original recording, but also in how it's put together.
The eightieth TV show: #109 Thunderbirds
I was a fan of Thunderbirds growing up. My father watched it when he was young and the excitement was carried over - probably helped by the mechanical wonders seen (some of which are now, and only now, becoming reality) and the exciting stories they told. The franchise is a kid friendly action show, the Thunderbirds machines from the title used to rescue people who end up in different emergencies (and some other stories). This is done using Supermarionation, advanced marionettes that look impressive. They are not realistic - having oversized heads to focus your attention on where the action is - and it's amazing how much they portray with three different static expressions (done by swapping heads), moving mouths and subtle movements. The wires show - literally - and the tricks don't always work, but a lot of the time it's amazing how much moving eyes and eyelids can tell.
The series moves at a pace that still works today - apparently, short shots were needed because the lack of movement got boring on longer shots - and makes it still fun to watch. It helps that they pay a lot of attention to details - signs work at the small scale, they make deliberate choices on when to use real life substitutes (mostly when a hand double is needed). I got lucky enough to get a studio visit to Thunderbirds 1965 after they finished filming the most recent three episodes (based on audio plays, but matching the episodes seen in this series) and seeing the amount of work and care that goes into it makes it more understandable. It's high pressure, so stuff goes wrong, but while you see the wires on screen, you really can't see them in real life. They are also gorgeous models, even if they look like they're difficult to deal with.
Watching it again, the show is a lot of fun to watch. It's still convincing and the crafsmanship of the creators shows throughout. It avoids interpersonal drama, although there are personal touches in there, but in a way the focus helps the show. The recent part-CGI remake goes for a more modern plot, with more life lessons for kids and all that, but it doesn't work. This show needs the rough edges, the scuffed models showing these vehicles are used in real life, and characters that do make it each time, but are realistic and flawed in subtler ways than the lesson of the day plot requires.
The fifty-third book: #1008 A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift
Satirical works always rely a bit on the reader understanding what's going on. The best don't necessarily do so - which is why Gulliver's Travels has some good sections - but it means that works that were relevant and entertaining in their day (this was considered Swift's best) are lacklustre these day. The parable of the three brothers comments on the development of protestant religion and how none met Swift's puritan vision. It doesn't feel as relevant today - a few hundred years making a difference in how these religions are perceived and mixed - and I don't really care about the point it's trying to make in the first place.
The long philosophical digressions didn't help either - they always bore me - and on the whole that left me with a novel that had some interesting passages, but bored me just as often. Sorry to disappoint, your best doesn't seem as good to me.
The fourty-third comic: #26 The Gumps
Today we're covering a 1917 newspaper comic about an inventor (although that barely comes up in the ones we read) and his family. Constrained to the Sunday comics as we are (availability is limited), it feels like the setup is too long and the pay off too little, with most punchlines just not that funny. It might have been special at the time, but it feels like it all bypassed me here.
The ninety-second album: #92 Frank Sinatra - Frank Albert Sinatra And Antonio Carlos Jobim
Old Blue Eyes is back, moving from his show tunes to cover more bossa nova songs as well, starting with the now famous Girl from Ipenima. We've not covered his songs in quite a while and it feels like music has taken over Sinatra's music, but here he's showing more flexibility. He's staying where he's comfortable, but there's a modern twist here that shows him trying to evolve. It won't have set the youth aflame, but probably appealed to older audiences.
For the most part it's all standard, though, and while it sounds incredibly good, there isn't actually much news here. The bossa nova influence changes the music somewhat, but there's not loads that would have been different a decade or two ago. Now it feels a bit boring and stale and while other later singers go in this direction too, it feels like here it's missing some energy that really grabs me. Perhaps it's because Sinatra doesn't swing himself - something like the aforemention Girl from Ipenema feels flatter than it should be. Sensitive, sure, but that's not the emotion you want here. It all doesn't quite correlate, and this year offered better.
The fifty-second book: #46 Evelina - Fanny Burney
Evelina is another epistolary, but this time that's better than before. Fanny Burney is a predecessor of the likes of Jane Austen, forward looking in how women aren't treated as the saintly, perfect beings. Evelina is flawed and is surrounded by people who are as well. Evelina's nearest family - a silversmith with wife, daughters and so on, are the biggest example of this. There's a long section surrounding an opera visit that I loved reading. It just worked that well.
Some of the letters don't feel as well set up, but on the whole, we get an interesting, engaging story with real characters that starts to challenge the standard role of women in society, including the conflict between those that want to go with it and those who want to stay where they are - and what happens there in lower classes than the aristocracy these usually cover.
The thirty-fourth classical recording: #606 Igor Stravinsky - The Firebird
While it can be quite difficult at times to write down a specific interpretation for a piece, the magic of the enchanted garden and the firebird came through quite clearly in the music for me. It stays evocative throughout, a lot of emotions running through at different speeds and in different places, creating a story you can start to visualize.
The seventy-ninth TV show: #4 The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
Green Acres has shown us that old comedies aren't necessarily hokey and stale as they imagine to be, even if some of the tropes are there because they started them. Still, Green Acres was ahead of its time and so when this comedy came up, I did wonder. And while it's not as weird as Green Acres, the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show has it's moments of weirdness. First, George Burns is here often as a narrator, getting involved in plots, but rarely really being the focus. Gracie Allen gets the attention, playing her role as dimwitted wife whose leap of logic don't always make sense, but it's somewhat understandable where they come from. Her patter stands out in these episodes, creating a delightful bizarre set of situations that sets up and resolves the plot, but just works well on its own.
They came into this from their radio act, and their double act works well from the start, including the interactions with their secondary characters (Blanche always follows along amazingly). The plots follow familiar beats, but the characterization works so well that it stays a delight to watch these.