The eighty-second album: #82 Moby Grape - Moby Grape
Take the Beatles' harmony - still a touchstone for me - and add heavier guitars to it. Moby Grape isn't a household name anymore, in part to a number of legal difficulties, but there is a definite feel listening to the start of this album that they fall effortlessly in the ranks of their contemporaries, with peppy and blues songs that are similar to what we heard elsewhere. I think it's difficult to discover an exact voice in here still, but there's something between the voices, slower speed and use of guitars that makes feel it's there - I just need to go through more albums. What's still clear is that they are accomplished - the song writing is good, it's performed well, it all sounds good andworks for me. There didn't seem to be any really weak songs.
The sixty-sixth TV show: #16 The Good Old Days
In contrast to the previous few shows, here is one where we genuinely struggled to see the point to keep watching - so we didn't. The Good Old Days harkens back to the old days of musichall entertainment, replicating that for a TV audience while everyone is dressed in period costume and gets excited about these old acts.
Sadly, it's a real mix on whether or not it hits, and most of the time it doesn't. I don't care much for the songs and a lot of the humour just isn't funny. There were some good acts, but it's too few and far between to be enjoyable. This type of entertainment ended decades ago, replaced by TV, and while there is a lot of theatre entertainment that does work well, this just isn't and doesn't. It's harkening back to the good old days - but those aren't my days.
The eighty-first album: #81 Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Safe As Milk
I've mostly been exposed to Captain Beefheart from Peter's earlier listening to and reading about Trout Mask Replica, a later album of his with some odd elements in its production. Based on the name, too, I'm expecting some psychedelic sounds, or at least ones that stand out and will be weird.
Instead, so far this is more blues rock, with some odd details added, but some weird changes sneak in and the songs make more use of contrast. Dropout Boogie has a hardrock vibe, but drops in these really light moment. I'm not sure where it's meant to lead, but it brings in these sudden surprises. These are the songs that stand out from beyond the blues ballads though, which don't seem as impressive. Sure, they are competently done, but I can't say it feels that much better. It veers between, in a way that shows some progress in the music, but is mixed in how well it actually works.
The sixty-fifth TV show: #100 Green Acres
Yeah, this was a pretty quick watch. Green Acres doesn't sound like it's a very inspiring show: a succesful lawyer moves from New York to a farming village to become a farmer himself and drags his socialite wife along, even though it's not her scene and she's not happy there. They have to adjust to live on the farm - one that clearly needs a lot of work.
It's incredibly silly, though, with a bunch of great sight gags and excellent execution of some of the standard gags. The characters themselves are interesting - sketched with more depth than you'd expect. Soon, however, the show starts to show its true face. The show adds a lot of meta elements - at one point, for example, the characters comment directly on the credits that show up on screen, while another shows a subtitled conversation between a pig and a horse. The subtitles continue into the next scene, until one of the characters calls it out so they stop.
It's a delight to watch the show, excellently executed (including by the editors) but also feeling ahead of its time. It's a show we want to continue watching, because it's just that good.
The sixty-fourth TV show: #717 Bleak House
I'm effectively a year or two away from reading the novel, but in the man time I've seen this adaptation from Bleak House. I'm sure it's edited in what it covers (including, I understand, an added character to make scenes flow better), but what feels more noticeable is that the show speeds up its storytelling compared to, say, Brideshead or Pride and Prejudice. It feels more like a modern show in that end, rather than imitating the pace of what's expected from these older shows. It works to keep the show a bit more interesting and accessible. A comment on us, perhaps, but it's more considered in what it does and how it does it. It still keeps time for the significant moment, just doesn't linger where it isn't needed.
The performances stand out here. There are some of the greats here that clearly dominate, where you would expect the performers too: Charles Dance allows those around him to shine, but stands out, as do Gillian Anderson and Denis Lawson. It's impressive that the real lead of the story, Anna Maxwell Martin, holds up against that. While her character is sweet and smaller, she holds up against these personalities and comes across really well, without overwhelming either. She's great to watch and enjoy during the show and anchors it well.
There are some great emotional highs in here, moments that work well - often earned from its biuld up and followed up with better. Again, it doesn't linger on it too long, and jumps off to the next step after that, showing the consequences and ripples. It's great editing, which is something we've seen works from other shows... ones that aren't as historical. It's a quality production, exceeding others in the genre that didn't always work for me.
The fourty-fifth book: #44 Humpry Clinker - Tobias Smullett
Another epistolary here, although here it's satirical for sure. We have five writers, each writing to someone else, with all five traveling around the UK to different places in aid of the health of the uncle. We explore these characters through each other's and their own eyes. There's an exploration of society at the time, with a number of different viewpoints from the different characters.
The story is quite good and has some interesting moments while also telling its story quite well. It does struggle to stay focuse din place - or perhaps it's better to say I struggled with its focus sometimes - which led to some moments where I lost parts of what was going on, but for the most part it worked well and became an entertaining work.
The eightieth album: #80 Buffalo Springfield - Buffalo Springfield Again
Before I started listening to this album, I was expecting a collection of country songs. THe presences of Stephen Stills and Neil Young shows this isn't the case and instead we get rock. There's a heavier bass line here than what I've been getting from the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young supergroup, which makes this sound even harder - and different from what I expected.
There's still quite a bit of folk rock in here and the music moves to country (where are the boundaries, right?), but what strikes me most is how the sound changes more than I'd expect. Just as the different genres are still spinning off at this point, here the album seems to fill several voices and niches, with decent success. While others experimented - the Beatles, for example, had distinct sounds too - it is rare that we get this variety of songs.
The sixty-third TV show: #588 Clocking Off
They're the stories of employees of a textile factory in north west England. While focused around one or a few characters, the different people intersect and appear in different stories, as they normally would. It's a diverse range of stories, even as most tend to be pretty dramatic. It deals with different stories from cheating, to starting new relationships to an amnesia story that led to some harrowing discoveries. While mostly standalone, some parts of the stories overlap to create setup for more dramatic turns later in the series. The sense of continuity really helps, setting up a lot and giving us an easier in for later stories.
It's a difficult watch, though, as parts are quite harrowing and difficult to deal with. There are moments of levity, helped by some amazing performers who are able to layer their performance to really make the dilemmas clear, but there are often difficult moments and, especially in season two, some storylines that become hard to watch and deal with.
Even so, it feels like the series keeps the storylines real and grounded, which creates episodes that feel small enough to stay believable. In that sense, watching it really is worth it.
The sixty-second TV show: #639 Little Britain
I've struggled with Little Britain for a while now, and I just couldn't. It's mostly just not funny and as a sketch show, once it lost me I couldn't find anything else in it. For a show starring a gay man, there are a lot of gay jokes (and not just laughing at homophobes and the like, but perpetuating a number of LGBT stereotypes that feel misguided and because of that, just not funny. The same thing applies to other groups as well, the disabled coming off badly as well, but this is one place where I really felt it and where, I think, it shows how entrenched these attitudes are in our society.
Where this didn't apply, a number of sketches fell flat because they relied too much on repetition, wanted to become funny by creating catchphrases but didn't do any of that. You know where it's going, the show leans on it and it gets boring.
There are a handful of cases where the show works and it sometimes does hit the mark - even in sketches that otherwise don't work - but it feels so wildly inconsistent that I just couldn't get into the show and mostly just stared blankly at the TV. Not a good experience.