The two hundred and eighty-second album: #282 John Martyn - Solid Air
I struggle to put my finger on the exact reason why, but there seemed to be something that puts me off the tracks on Solid Air a bit. The way John Martyn sings the title tracks, the subdued slurring, feels over the top and hard to listen to. While partially affected, it seems, for the first track, the album's halting folk feels discordant at times, and with the lyrics being less intelligible while the music doesn't go anywhere I appreciate, this was a genuinely difficult album to listen to.
The one hundred and sixty-fifth TV show: #553 Goodness Gracious Me
Sometimes, a show's focus can be both its strong point and, in the long term, its detriment. Even if not all jokes land for me, I enjoy getting sketches from an Indian perspective, both aimed at an ignorant British public and ones aimed inwards. While the first season wasn't amazing, it was quite a lot of fun that way.
After that, however, the jokes become more repetitive and the second season in particular feels like it's repeating the same jokes without adding much - while also introducing mandatory songs even where those don't really work. The third season manages to change it a bit and bring in more new sketches, but it feels like the series' viewpoint doesn't add much more after a while.
The one hundred and sixteenth classical recording: #769 Zoltan Kolady - Dances of Galanta
According to the additional notes, this work was based on the folk music of Galanta, currently a region of Slovakia. When listening to it, this becomes a work of two halves, with energetic dances focusing on a few wind instruments mixed with bigger, often slower pieces playing with a full orchestra. The mix of styles - in speed, grandeur and instruments - is exhilarating, even when I prefer it when the piece returns to the origins of its dances. It's one of those places where I really notice that I'm drawn to pieces that more heavily feature the wind instruments over the conventional string orchestra, its versatility and happiness adding to how lovely a piece is to listen to. This delivers so much joy and showmanship in its music that still harkens back to the original dances that it becomes difficult not to smile while you're listening to it.
The two hundred and eighty-first album: #281 Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On
While I've mentioned my dislike of certain funk tracks before, Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On does hit the right notes for me. As before, Marvin Gaye's songs are focused on his vocals, which initially feel less political than What's Going On and incorporate a more sexually explicit outlook. I wouldn't describe it as crude, but there is a raw passion to the songs that feel out of place in the soul world of the day. For me, it feels quite refreshing and open and allows him to link the subject to different parts of a relationship - seductive and romantic, the deed, but also a political angle in some of it. All of this is done in a rich, Motown souls package that keeps it seductive and attractive.
The two hundred and eightieth album: #280 Genesis - Selling England by the Pound
Possibly more than any other album before, Selling England by the Pound is an album that I feel the need to listen to again, so I can parse it and place it. While some act have some baroque elements in addition to their normal rock, or on the other hand go showy with it. While Selling England by the Pound has its showy moments, it integrates it here into eight tracks that manage to create an odd vision of England, a look at a fantasy rooted in reality. That doesn't mean it's flattering or nostalgic, but it recontextualizes events in a really fascinating way.
The art rock music is over the top, sure, but in a way that I like, not pushing it too far but creating a production out of it - creating something more resembling an older symphony while using rock instruments. The long tracks - pushing ten minutes - don't wear out their welcome as they thrive on variety, using a common theme that they move around and play with. It's a lovely album, more than I was expecting, and I've made a note to find more of Genesis' albums beyond the one I'll cover in a few months.
The one hundred and third comic: #703 One Piece
It's clear that One Piece is one of those successful anime and manga series that has connected with a lot of people and been quite popular. I quite enjoyed it too - the pirate setting is different, the power sets exaggerated, appropriately so for a comic like this, but with a good amount of variety in the powers that don't overwhelm or overpower what's possible. Eight volumes in, the joy and the wackiness held up, with some good characters that come through and some interesting settings.
The issue it ran into for me - and it's one that comes up frequently with these sorts of series - is that at a certain point, the storylines get longer. I guess it helps to capitalize on designs and not reveal your hand too early, but dealing with each villain takes ages, the plots become repetitive and the fight scenes can't sustain the action for that long. By volume eight it has worn me out and I started to wish it would move faster, to the point where I didn't notice skipping half a volume as the temporary betrayal for a good reason seemed obvious enough. Something abridged would have worked well, but this requires you to be in for a bit too much of a long haul.
The one hundred and fifteenth classical recording: #708 Igor Stravinski - Les Noces
While one of the issues with a lot of ballets is that they are quite visible and that means you lose out listening to a recording of it, Les Noces stands out as different. The piece is chaotic and dramatic, the choir sounding distressed, and unlike what I would expect to make for the serene sound you would normally set a ballet to. Instead, it feels like a chaotic opera, a wedding gone wrong (or, some would say, a typical contentious one) and it feels strong enough to create the scenes in your mind.
This piece has its own hectic, almost droning sound, and it's off putting if you're not quite ready for it, but it settles into a pattern that finds harmony and meaning in that sound, a story that makes sense in a more real and down to earth way and feels like it works in this setting.
The two hundred and seventy-ninth album: #279 Lou Reed - Berlin
Berlin succeeds reasonably well as a rock album. As a solo act, rather than a rock band project, the focus is heavily on Lou Reed's vocals and guitar playing, which stands out especially for his slightly slurred, dark style of singing. It feels dark and aggressive, with some very maudlin songs. As a 'rock opera', the story doesn't reach through, but the tone of the album works really well.
It didn't really hit me until The Kids, though, where the shouting children really tugged at me and reached me. There's a build up to it, but as a long of the tracks blur a bit they tend to feel like an on going work - there are differences between tracks, but just as much a recurring theme. I don't know whether the darkness here always connected with me, the combination sometimes feeling a bit off, but this is an album that connects with a specific mood and I can see it being great to listen to when you do feel that way.
The two hundred and seventy-eighth album: #278 Can - Future Days
More Can? After Tago Mago I should have known what to expect, and these fourty minutes in four tracks give it away soon enough. The album seems to be background electronic rock, subdued with some odd sounds in there, dragging its themes out for a long time. Unlike other long tracks, it doesn't overly rely on repetition, but instead gets in a variety of sounds that fit the general theme of the song, if not the album. I'm not sure whether I could tell the difference between tracks each time, but as ambient music this did its job quite well.
The one hundred and sixty-fourth TV show: #45 The Donna Reed Show
Watching The Donna Reed Show is an odd experience. For the most part, it's a sitcom squarely from the 1950s, with a proper housewife and a standard nuclear family. The kids are well behaved and willing to learn their lessons. The father is a pediatrician, dedicated to his job but with wise advice when it's needed. Donna Reed of course plays the stay at home mother, keeping the house clean, cooking well and keeping on top of the required social engagements. It's at its best when they can break the facade - when the kids can be sassy, the husband goofy and Donna Reed's character not be perfect. It feels like too often, though, they're restricted enough that they can't do so. It means that the joy is in the small moments, a gag in a scene and a comment here and there.
It's the fifties sentiments that constrain and limit the series and it needs a good plot to break through that - selling pickles, for example, rather than dealing with rejecting a boy as a dance partner for being too short - so the lessons don't matter as much. When you find that, it feels quite good to follow, but the series mostly just feels too outdated to keep me interested too often.