The eighty-eighth album: #88 Cream - Disraeli Gears
Our next album stays in psychedelic rock - the big thing at the time - now coming in from a blues angle. Both sounds are in there for sure - the blues guitar with the audio experiments that we get from other psychedelic albums. What's nice is how the blues doesn't get overshadowed - it feels dominant, with the psychedelic elements added where appropriate to make it sound better. The core dominates, which really makes it feel better.
Tales of Brave Ulysses is a good showcase as well. The lyrics are more interesting than most and are easy to follow. There's apparently one of the earliest uses of a wah wah pedal in here - something that doesn't stand out until you pay attention to it, but it does make the song sound more modern. It's modern, but the blues influence stays throughout. It works so well, and that goes for the entire album.
The fourty-second comic: #744 Nana
Romance mangas (they have a special name, but I don't remember what it was and don't care enough to look it up) aren't necessarily my thing. Rose of Versailles was fine, but didn't leave me with amazing memories for it. Nana is more modern, and has that as an advantage for me (historical settings are good, but the filter doesn't always work in these circumstances) but it started to drag as these stories don't get resolved and don't feel like they go anywhere. It's good as an investigation of this life, but while rock Nana was interesting, we didn't get much from her that really felt like it kept going for me. Other Nana was frustrating in her behaviour and I would have prepared someone a bit more grown up. I know it's probably partially real, and the series was fine for the half of its run that I read, but I couldn't quite keep it up.