The one hundred twenty-eighth TV show: #303 Cosmos
Cosmos, initially, presents itself as a show about space. Talking about how we explored it, learned about the Earth, the solar system and galaxies, while teaching about what's there and how it interacts. It's simple if you've read up on it, and at times a bit outdated, but it explains it well, giving you some things to think about, with things we discussed afterwards and in between. It reflects on the Earth too, the dilemmas we face with things like climate change, an issue even in the seventies, and war, which was an even bigger threat at the time.
As the show continues though, that later part starts to overtake. While there might be life on other planets, they're unlikely to reach us unless we reach out, and only if we survive for long enough. It ends up preachy, but at the same time uses science and reason to promote a better, more conscientious earth. It paints the spreading of science as political and makes points that still ring true today - even if it feels we progressed a bit. I miss the space talk - it's the best bit - but Carl Sagan stays engaging throughout.
The one hundred eighty-eighth album: #188 Deep Purple - In Rock
Deep Purple's In Rock is another early driving force for the heavy metal movement, using long tracks with prog rock influences to break up the metal sound that mostly underlies the vocals. It goes for epic, mixing in these different elements, especially in the long runs like that of Child In Time, which feels like a mini album on its own considering the many things it does. With that said, this is the point where we've really embraced metal, and it's great to have another album on the road to it.
The eighty-seventh book: #72 Emma - Jane Austen
After Mansfield Park, Emma, the protagonist this book is obviously named after, suits me a lot better. She's active and strong willed, she drives the action and she's flawed - for the purposes of this book and in comparison to the era, very flawed. She enjoys playing matchmaker, but it shown several times to be bad at it, leading to some unsatisfactory unions and others avoiding her attention or work to get their own way. She fails, she's flawed, and while it gets tricky to keep up with the characters flying around sometimes, on the whole it's nice to see it all play out with our protagonist in the middle.
Jane Austen set out to write a character, she said, that no one but herself would really like and while I think that description goes a bit far, the fact that she isn't as easy to love makes her a more interesting character that really stands inside the world, rather than above it. Through it you get other characters around her, not straight villains and heroes, but other complex characters that the novel can explore more freely. It's an empowering story in that sense, and feels like a highlight of these romance novels so far.
The one hundred eighty-seventh album: #187 Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III
Led Zeppelin provides us with another album of rock.It varies a bit on where it goes - Immigrant Song is rockier, Since I've Been Loving You closer to blues rock, but on the whole the rock stays, the aggression is there and the energy is there. It's good to wake me up on a sleepy Tuesday and is the right music to get you through on a day like that.
The seventy-seventh classical recording: #360 George Bizet - The Pearl Fishers
Taken as a musical piece, The Pearl Fishers is imposing, with some big songs and vocal parts to match. There aren't necessarily as many calm parts, it feels like the piece stays big and powerful a fair amount. I miss the balance a bit, as it feels quite full on throughout. It matches the tone of the work - both the storms and the anger that's in there. The work feels big - something that must come across quite well in the theatre performances as well.
The one hundred eighty-sixth album: #186 Neil Young - After The Gold Rush
While Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's folk rock went for the more energetic, faster folk rock, Neil Young's album goes to the gentler country rock, not quite producing ballads but creating something simpler, perhaps at times sadder ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart" shows that) as well. There are comparative rockers, like "Southern Man", but even then those would be gentler songs for other bands. Lyrically, the songs are richer, with the aforementioned Southern Man commenting on racism, while After the Gold Rush tells a fairly vivid story. It's nothing fancy, but the album just works so well.
The one hundred eighty-fifth album: #185 Black Sabbath - Paranoid
I'm covering another Black Sabbath album pretty shortly after the first, with the band, it seems, already moving more into heavy metal. There are some absolute masterpieces in here that cover that, with Paranoid feeling like an immediate classic that gets followed by a quieter, simpler Planet Caravan that feels as trippy, just not as loud. I'm not sure the lyrics always extend that well - Iron Man isn't a literary masterpiece - but the music does enough to evoke a feeling that the lyrics feel easy to overlook in those place.
This is probably where heavy metal comes out better - not as a single song, where its isolation makes it stand out, but in an album where it has time to build and relax. There's a good flow to the album, with some great moments in the song that sound better in context.
The eighty-fifth book: #129 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The eighty-sixth book: #142 Alice Through the Looking-Glass - Lewis Carroll
After a few more books in order, I got a Lewis Carroll in to break up my Austens. I'm grouping the two Alice stories together as they are both fairly short and feel linked enough. They're technically the story of Alice as she explores these weird places, but its main focus is that it shows us these bizarre vignettes, situations with outlandish fantasy characters (most of which you know by now) that Alice travels between. Some carry from one to the other, but there's very little throughline to Adventures in Wonderland. Through the Looking-Glass has Alice travel to the other side of a chess board, but aside from the Queens' occasional appearances, each square is its own story and place.
That's not a criticism, it's a view into one man's imagination, clearly inspired by the people and toys around him as he was telling these stories. I don't know the exact inspirations behind them, but it feels like he put in jokes into short stories that he collected and built a single story out of, with some crossover characters and references at the end. It's a bit more structured in Through the Looking-Glass, but seeing these different situations is the most appealing. It occasionally makes you think, but at the same time, there's not much point to trying to find too much meaning in it - and here, that's just fine.
The seventy-sixth classical recording: #715 Marcel Dupre - Symphonie-Passion
A purely organ-based piece is always going to sound a bit more ominous, and the way this piece leads off, with almost discordant, dark notes played almost at random, adds to this unsettling feeling. Part of this remains, but at the same time it provides a contrast to the second movement, the nativity, which has a lighter melody through it as well. Knowing the basic subject, the four movements become easier to pick out and place, with a natural progression that stays ominous while conveying their meaning - it's there to impress for the most part, although the resurrection itself starts telling even more of a story, with its slow, gentler start, staying sombre but not necessarily as imposing. It's a piece that goes from unsettling to affecting in half an hour, one that needs to grow on you but was effective for me once it does.
The one hundred eighty-fourth album: #184 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu
After I enjoyed Stephen Stills' self titled album, his next collaboration is one I'm looking forward to listening to here. The album gives more of that, some powerful rock songs that are more personal and impactful - louder, but not a screaming match. It's impactful, helped by the great performances of the band, the harmonies sounding beautiful and the whole album feeling perfected in all places. Whether it's the simple Our House or agonizing Almost Cut My Hair, there's craft that's gone into each of them and I can see how they might have reached the 800 hours in the studio needed to really make this work.