The twenty-fourth classical recording: #12 Cristobal de Morales - Motets
We're back! Time for some old motets and such, and so the choral multiple voices play to sound angelic. While the skill involved in these is impressive and I know I'm not quite educated enough to appreciate and understand the full set of techniques used, it doesn't fill me with the reverence that's meant to come from these songs. They don't speak to me, they don't evoke much of an emotion in me and doesn't give the journey I hope for.
It's probably not its fault - it's a work of its time - but given how much more we've seen done with this, I prefer the baudier, more diverse 'folk' music we got (even) earlier in the list.
The seventy-third album: #73 John Mayall's Blues Breakers - Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton
Yeah, there are two names in there - Eric Clapton joined the band later in its life, so you get this odder combination. We get a blues album here, a bit of rock, nothing too loud, but with some decent tunes and okay, if forgettable lyrics.The music just doesn't suit me for the most part, though, and I didn't really find anything in it - it played, but it seemed like that was about it.It didn't connect and lost me early on because of that.
The fourtieth book: #40 The Vicar of Wakefield - Oliver Goldsmith
So far I've been down on more of the serious books, while appreciating the satires and funnier books. That's not a pattern that always holds, but it certainly influences my initial thoughts.
WIth the Vicar of Wakefield, the reverse applied. There are two parts - starting with a satire, playing with the ideal life novels and adventuring with its ups and its downs. Partway through, however, it moves to become more of a melodrama, as the problems and bad decisions that have been building up in the past chapters become a real problem ending up with the titular vicar in debtor's prison. It ends up with a happy ending, but goes deep and serious for a while.
The second half felt more compelling to me. The first, describing country life of the day, doesn't really connect because it's so far away. It's fine, but intentionally a bit too far up itself and it didn't work. In the second part, the characters become more and more human and interesting. And while there are some deus ex machina, it makes for a better story.
That's not to say the first half isn't bad - it was still decent, but not as compelling and I found myself staring out of the train window more often. It's unfortunate, but it worked out well in the end.
The fifty-ninth TV show: #507 Knowing Me, Knowing You
I haven't gotten to The Day Today yet, the predecessor of this show in a way - or rather, where the character of Alan Partridge originated. However, I have listened to the preceeding On The Hour radio show, which sets it up just as much.
That Alan Partridge, originally a sports caster, can be presenting a chat show is a testament to how quickly it felt like a developed character. A lot of it builds on known stereotypes that hold up even now - this was parodying Top Gear before that show was established, amongst other things.
The main part is that it's hilarious, trading on a lot of general tropes and subverting them, mostly from incompetent hosting that pushes far beyond Alan Partridge's limits. It works well, though and we raced through this. Now to watch the follow up series for more.
The thirty-ninth book: #39 The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
This is said to be the first gothic novel, in part thanks to its addition to the subtitle, but it also doesn't appear to have refined it quite yet. There are the supernatural occurences, which mix up the story nicely, but for the most part they don't inform the story as much as I wish it was. Instead, the supernatural events, like a giant helmet falling out of nowhere, feel more like they reinforce the story, sometimes as a plot device, sometimes to emphasize what is already happening. There are a lot of events of death and betrayal, but I couldn't quite keep up with the events - perhaps not quite in the right mindset, but I felt I missed out on some of the hooks as well. One step at a time.
The thirty-eighth book: #38 Emile - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I struggled with this book. It's not really a novel, more a treatise on how to raise a boy left in your charge. It's about ways to do it, techniques and plans for it. But there's no real story here, characters are flimsy and more strawmen to create point, except for some anecdotes that intersperse the explanations and justification. A lot of it is dated, parts of it I disagree with, and everyone is idealized to show how things would go. I'm sure a lot of the advice would go different based on who it's being done to. At the same time, there are parts that feel ahead of their time, and are interesting to see how some now normal practices seem to have been different at the time.
Still, this isn't a novel, there is no story and there are no real characters, and on the whole it's just boring to read. Sure, it might be influential, but it doesn't feel like it matters much as a novel - more as a work of non-fiction. And fiction is what I was looking for.
The fifty-eighth TV show: #880 Bron/Broen
We've taken some time to get through this series. A murder drama in Danish and Swedish that tends to have quite a few conspiracy theories in it, meaning that we have to pay a lot of attention, which is exhausting enough. But it was so worth it. We watched the first two seasons, and the third is in our queue to catch up with at some point.
The murder mystery is one part of that, which in both versions has had several layers, some social commentary and enjoyable misdirection. The start of the second season was a bit weaker, but that was in part to set up later episodes. On the whole it works well.
Where it shines, where I get more of my enjoyment and where most shows tend to rise or fall, are the relationships between the characters. Like any crime show with two leads, you have the straight laced and the relaxed one. Here, however, Saga issues with social interactions - she's possibly on the autistic spectrum - which makes her blunt and straight forward, good and putting connections together but not endearing people to her. It makes for a more interesting dynamic and it means that when you feel for her, you really do. It impacts her life in the story in a meaningful way without being denigrating and it's been really interesting to see.
Beyond that, the story takes a personal turn, especially once we reach the second season, and the development of Martin is just as engaging. They make for a decent double act and the end of season two hits all the harder for it.
We'll be watching season 3 and are generally taking some time to catch up on our TV viewing. We need more of this.
The seventy-second album: #72 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators
While, I must admit, the Beatles are one of my main touchstones for psychedelic rock, the thing that makes them sound poppier to my mind are the lack of hard guitar riffs, usually peeferring a gentler sound. The 13th Floor Elevators show that things can be different though, as they have the heavy guitars in here that come from their garage rock roots, as well as the shoutier vocals.The psychedelic elements are still there though, with weird sounds dominating part of the music and adding an otherworldly feel to what we'd otherwise have as a fairly standard garage rock album.
The trick is compelling enough to work, but the lack of variety means that while the whole is good, I struggle a bit to identify individual standout tracks on the album. It's a decent album, what it is trying is interesting, but falling between two genres as it does, I struggle to get a grip on it. Other bands may do it in a way that works better for me later on.
The fifty-seventh TV show: #772 Californication
I've done my best to try and get into this show, or even understand it. It has a lot of Showtime "we can show boobs" moments and a lot of it is about the vapidity of these people leading their life in a world of drugs and sex, while at the same time making their way through it with all the smaller things that inhibit this - children, bills and trying to form more mature relationships. David Duchovny is amazing at playing this, balancing the knife edge of likeable and abhorrent, but the world is one that drives me away. I don't care about the struggles and I don't really see any development. A lot of it felt like more of the same. It's a fine show, but it just isn't for me.
The seventy-first album: #71: Simon & Garfunkel - Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
While I've covered a couple of folk albums before, with Bob Dylan the most notable, Simon & Garfunkel feel like they lift the genre to a different level. Wile the basic sounds are still there, there are many more effects, instruments and ideas mixed in that even beyond the lyrics, the songs sound quite distinct, and the feelings a song is meant to evoke come through strongly in the music. Cloudy sounds floaty, Homeward Bound has the rhythm of a train and Dangling Conversation feels distant. There's even a Bob Dylan parody on here that hits the sound and the voice quite well.
A lot of it is like poetry, the way the words flow and the lyrics sound, as well as the images it creates. It's a lovely sound that keeps impressing me. None of it is ever very complicated, but the songs are all so different that the album as a whole feels different and more layered. It makes for something easy and lovely to listen to, while leaving more of an impression than mostly any album.