Jeroen's Micro Blog

The seventy-eighth album: #78 The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

It sounds like there was this back and forth around this time in Music, with Pet Sounds influenced by the Beatles and that album influencing them right back for this album, while also pushing the idea of a concept album. In the mean time, all of these songs have been repeated so often that there aren't as many surprises on here. Compositions like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds may not be at the top of a list, but the composition, the effects used to slow down and speed up the song work well, especially with the psychedlic imagery that it includes and invokes.

At the same time, songs like Getting Better and Fixing A Hole may have some interesting features, but they also feel like they are less known because they don't relaly offer much new - there's no fresh sound here as there is elsewhere and a lot of the tricks get a bit buried sometimes under the vocals that are fairly standard for the Beatles - still good, but I struggle to really pick them out. They're good, but not for what this album tries to do. She's Leaving Home would be in danger of this too - very much bringing Eleanor Rigby to mind - but it works better and McCartney's voice really works for these songs. I think, though, that something like Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! is a track that really works - playing with the music and sounds, drawing on an unusal theme and doing slightly odd things that display a skill that you'd need to have to make it work.

Side 2's first three songs all contrast with each other, showing quite different sides to the album, with When I'm Sixty-Four and Lovely Rita both feeling like good upbeat songs, but feeling completely different at the same time. Good Morning Good Morning probably best showed to me how the album fades between songs as well - avoiding silence, there are instead some animal sounds that tie into the song and theme while hiding the shift nicely. What ends this pleasant, mostly upbeat album is the darker A Day in the Life, with Lennon moving away from the excited sound, back to reality. It's a contrast, but one that works amazingly well, taking down the energy in a great way. It feels like the perfect book end and while this isn't the perfect album it seems to have once been hailed as, it is still great.

The thirty-ninth comic: #297 Tex

Today we dive into our first western, and of course we start with one from a country that's second most associated with it - Italy. I'm still not quite sure why that country loves them so much, but it's a definite trend in movies that clearly transferred to comics as well.

Tex Willer is a ranger (although for part of the work we read, he's demoted due to an incident that was clearly implied not to be his fault, but that he did get the blame for. He travels around, taking on outlaws, saving the innocent and especially bringing down those harming others. There is still plenty of bloodshed, but there's meant to be a moral difference.

The art is good, although it works best in colour, but the stories are absolutely of their time, which irks at times. There are some good things here, though, and on the whole it held up better than I expected.

The seventy-seventh album: #77 Nico - Chelsea Girl

This is, at its base, a folk album, the songs and lyrics support that. When it was being made (as I might have discussed when covering the titular song from the album), additional production elements were added - strings and the like - that add body to the music. On the whole, I think it works to create good songs, but there are places where it feels a bit much - almost comical - and they overshadow Nico's voice. Her near-monotone adds to the effect of the music, injecting plenty of emotion but also setting a mood that supports the folk music and keeps it grounded. Sometimes, it seems like the vocals are there to support the music, which is where it's not always succesful. On the whole, though, there is something calm and inspirational in here, something that connects - but especially when the production don't overshadow everything else.

The fourty-third book: #43 A Man of Feeling - Henry Mackenzie

I've struggled a bit with sentimental novels before. The issues I had with them were here - I think the difficulty of the language makes it more difficult for me to keep up with narratives that are disjointed at times, it's not suited to sleepy commutes.

Here, however, it was more readable than Tristram Shandy, even if it was more disjointed (thanks to its found documents interpretation), it also didn't rely as much on information that can be more difficult to keep track of. It works well enough and fun enough to play.

The fourty-second book: #42 A Sentimental Journey - Laurence Sterne

The previous Laurence Sterne novel obviously didn't work for me, but here it did. Probably because, although it meandered through some stories, they held together with a more coherent story and narrative. It kept things more focused, so the story made more sense - I guess it worked better this way today. The end of the book is rather abrupt for it, but personal and tantalizing, and it felt fine as saying how things could continue.

The twenty-sixth classical recording: #13 Antonio de Cabezon - Diferencias

And finally, we move away again from the purely choral songs to something with more instruments and content. While it still retains the heavenly sounds from religious music, the different, probably at the time more common sounds are a welcome change as it expands what is possible. It's perfect as a background music for a Civ game too, it is pleasant and what we've been looking for in the earlier songs. It harkens back, in a way, to the first few that we covered, but now brought a bit more up to date with more strings.

The seventy-sixth album: Astrud Gilberto - Beach Samba

When I hear samba, the carnival sounds of Brazil often come to mind. I know that's not quite true, but the album here feels like it goes broader, drawing a lot of bossa nova to create a melodic, but also inwards sound. It's actually very gentle and relaxing, great working music. At the same time, there's a nice set of lyrics and themes that keep everything interesting.

You Didn't Have to be So Nice is especially stand out, with a quite kid singing along as well. It's a decent mix of songs, mostly relaxed, in a way that really creates a break from the rock songs of before while staying swinging and avoiding more maudlin tones.

The seventy-fifth album: #75 Nina Simone - Wild is the Wind

It's nice to have a gentler album in a stretch of albums that feels quite rock-inspired and seems set to add more of that. Nina Simone's somewhat sombre voice sounds amazing on this, drawing attention to itself and not needing much accompaniment. The lyrics of the songs come out well, their tone and mood working better with those.

While powerful, Nina SImone's voice never goes large. It's strong, conveying sadness and anger, but it stays constrained in a way that works well to get that message across too. It's a great combination that I've mostly just enjoying everywhere.

The fourty-first book: #41 Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne

I didn't get today's novel. There were a lot of digressions, comments on the contents of the book itself - I swear every other chapter started with a comment on the start of a chapter - and a lot of other things that distracted from the novel, to the point where I lost the plot repeatedly and had to try to catch myself up each time. That got me several times, unfortunately, and I think I mentally gave up after a while.

The other issue I have with the book is the semi-conversational style, often with the reader, and that's written in a way that I felt was difficult to keep track of. So yeah, I guess in the end I just didn't care.

The sixty-first TV show: #602 Beckett on Film

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot has always fascinated me as far as its concept goes, even if I hadn't had a chance to actually watch it yet. So to see it come up as the next TV show from our bucket made me quite happy.

What we went on was a mixed journey, with some engaging plays (Play and Come and Go come to mind, as well the first Act Without Words) and some that seemed pointless (like Endgame). The latter is probably the most interesting, as it highlights the problems I find with the work. The wordiness wouldn't necessarily be too bad, but being wordy while also at time nonsensical means that I lose interest fairly quickly. The absurd staging - or lack of staging altogether - doesn't help there either, and a lot of the quality here came, to me, from whether the actors and director managed to do it well. This didn't always come down to the usual suspects either, but it seems to be down more to whether it all lined up right.

It's been worth seeing, from a cultural growth point, to understand post war play writing and culture, and the dedication of the actors add to that, but it feels like there are times where Beckett's rules for staging constrained the medium and others where it just isn't htat good.

The general rule here was shorter is better. The monologues work well when not too long, and more players tend to make slightly more interesting plays (although this isn't quite as universal). It's when it drags and gives you too many strands to follow - often, it seems, with half of them unneeded or unclear - that it falls flat. The genius is in here, but it doesn't necessarily work, or at least work as a television series. Maybe, for plays, you do need the captive audience of the theatre.

The three hundred and second song: Black Night - Deep Purple

This feels like a road trip track - a group of travelers on their Harleys driving across endless American plains. The music is loud, straight forward but it drives you on. The lyrics were written to be incidental and it shows - there's a few words that jump out fitting the theme, but they don't matter as much. For that genre, it suits it well and the solo songs alone drive it well enough.

The three hundred and third song: War - Edwin Starr

Originally a Temptations song, the single release was tied to a performer whose career would not be ruined by it. Adding a James Brown sound it, we get a more soul, looser and because of it angrier sound to it. There's a lot of energy in it, driving the structured chorus to jump out from the chaotic verses surrounding it. It's a powerful effect that sustains the song well and the sing drags you through all of it.

The three hundred and fourth song: (To Be) Young, Gifted, and Black - Bob and Marcia

Here we get another protest song, aimed at civil rights, but here adding a Jamaican band to a Nina Simone originally. It's interesting to hear the normally quite energetic, frenetic sounds and instruments of reggae applied to a more subdued, quiet song focused more on a message and it butts heads here sometimes. It works decently well though, even if I'm told it doesn't hold up to the original.

The three hundred and fifth song: Ball of Confusion- The Temptations

Whereas War was a bit too much for them earlier, here the Temptations still show a larger connection with the political at the time, although possibly in a way that's trying to be more open. We're getting more soul and take a step further for that genre, going bigger and creative once more with, still, a lot of energy. There was a lot of anger at the time (as there is now) and it feels like these songs are giving a voice to it.

The three hundred and sixth song: Avec le temps - Leo Ferre

So what's going on in France at the same time? We still mostly seem to get the slower chansons coming from there. While I'm sure rock won't have passed them by, I guess they wouldn't last as long and that's why we have this sad lovesong instead. The language and music do a lot to convey the sadness and it reaches you from the start, even without keeping up with the lyrics. It's a lovely, sweet song on the whole.

The three hundred and seventh song: The Man Who Sold the World - David Bowie

And so another big musical influencer enters the list. Produced from beginning to end, there's something esoteric from the rock song, using a lot of electronic sounds and sudden jumps, with some now odd sounds keeping up in the background, the changing of different rattles moving you between songs. There's a differnet sound to this, its own niche that I haven't quite identified before, that is good to listen to.

The three hundred and eighth song: Awaiting on You All - George Harrison

It feels like, now the Beatles are over, that George Harrison goes back a bit more to their roots rather than their later work, and here crosses it with Phil Spector's big productions. It's a good, swinging song that has a lot of happiness and exuberance in there that's clearly missing from earlier in this batch of songs - then again, you couldn't say that he wasn't at least partially in the establishment at this point. Despite its big sound, this song just can't help but make you feel good on some level.

The three hundred and ninth song: Northern Sky - Nick Drake

And now some folk music in between to calm us down - together with Leo Ferre the two smallest songs in this nine, and the lowest energy. Here that's intentional, based on Nick Drake's style, but it is a mental shift. The music was improvised separately from the writing of the track, but it works here to evoke a more magical work than just a man and a guitar would create, and it's that dreamlike quality that appeals to me here.

The three hundred and tenth song: Maybe I’m Amazed - Paul McCartney

Paul's first album following the Beatles has this on it, on what sounds like is a mostly self-produced work. There's something sweet and really well meant in the lyrics of this song, clearly dedicated to his then-wife Linda. It feels really real, something that was often missing from Beatles tracks and it becomes a lot more personal because of that. THat's what works, even if musically it doesn't feel as challenging. It's solid, which feels like it has its own appeal here.