Skummy

That's really it, that his songs were utterly bombastic, ridiculous, and lacked any real "pop" or commercial sensibility, but worked regardless - "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" is preposterous, and should not work as a pop song at all, but somehow it does. He was never someone I got massively into, but "Bat Out Of Hell" was one of those albums that absolutely everyone seemed to own, and in the last couple of years, before I left Jersey, I'd often end up in my mate's café after closing time with a few cans of cider, and at some point during the night we'd almost always end up sticking some Meatloaf on and just reveling in how utterly ridiculous and audacious everything about it was. After Jim Steinman died, I listened to a lot more of his stuff than I ever had before, and what Steinman said about his music holds equally true for everything Meatloaf did without him - if you don't go over the top, how are you ever going to know what's on the other side?

I loved 7-Remake - I had some objections to changes to the story, though fully understand why they were made - but I don't know how much sense it would have made to me if I hadn't played 7 to death in the past. I don't really rate the MMO games, or really any Final Fantasy game after 9, but I will make a controversial recommendation: If you like the MMO gameplay but not the social aspect, give Final Fantasy 12 a go. I didn't really like it "as a Final Fantasy game", in terms of not hitting the notes I want from that series, but it's a decent RPG in its own right, and if you're coming in without the baggage of having played through the whole series, I imagine you'd like it.

took me til sixth attempt for this one, and felt like a complete idiot for it. Just burned through repeating letters because I couldn't think of obvious words. Not my day.

did not think I was going to get that one at all. Nothing like none of the letters in your first word, and only one in the second, showing up to give you the fear. Got it on the last go, but fucking hell.

always starting with "ANGLE" as my first word paid dividends for me today, at least.

I always start with "ANGLE", though it's not done me much good so far. I got this one on the last, more by chance than anything else;

Possibly, yeah - you had things like Parson Davies' Company of Gladiators or William Muldoon and John L. Sullivan's touring athletics troupes that could potentially be represented as "promotions". Someone like Harry Hill could potentially be included as a promoter, with a promotion tied to his New York dance hall to try and reflect that set-up. What would be trickier is that you never really saw a full card of wrestling matches in those days. Neither Gotch/Hackenschmidt match had an undercard, for example, and I doubt the seven or eight hour Muldoon/Whistler match had any preliminary matches either. I don't know if TEW can be made to reflect that.

working my way through the 2021 releases list, filling in some of the blanks I'd missed, and it's good to see Self Esteem's album from October making some of the top album lists, because listening to it now it's fantastic. Just very cool, well-polished pop music, from the former singer of Slow Club;

my Spotify stuff is always a bit skewed, because I have a playlist I put on to fall asleep to, and another that's just a handful of songs downloaded in a playlist for when I'm commuting and don't have internet access - and because they end up my most played, a lot of my Daily Mixes and so on reflect that too. Of the top songs, 1, 3 and 5 are all Orville Peck, 2 and 4 are Richard Thompson. That's pretty accurate, they're both artists I got into in a big way this year.

I enjoyed it - there were some parts that were oddly high concept, and felt a bit at odds with the rest of the show, but I liked that it had that ambition. Steve Martin and Martin Short are great fun, even if not everything landed. Comedy built around "new media" can sometimes be a little cringeworthy, but it felt like they nailed the whole true crime podcast thing - if it felt like people cashing in, or making fun of, a thing they didn't quite understand, it would never have worked. It was never something that made me desperately want to binge-watch it, or rush to watch the next episode, but it was a nice watch.

I didn't like this episode at all - too many big concepts were just hand-waved away, or never really amounted to anything. I'm assuming we see the Grand Serpent again, though, because he got far too much build for very little gain. It had the problem of a lot of Doctor Who finales in that even if it ostensibly wraps up a lot of things - the Flux is over, Swarm and The Grand Serpent somehow dealt with, the token historical figure sent back to their time with the knowledge that their contributions are valued in the future, Vinder and Bel are reunited, and so on - it does so in such a scattershot, deus ex machina way that there's no real sense of meaningful resolution to any of it. It's just not satisfying. Someone once wrote that Sherlock Holmes stories are all terrible detective stories, because they don't do what a detective story should - they don't provide the reader with all the information they require to potentially solve the mystery before the characters do, or at least to be able to look back and think "oh, of course"; instead, the solutions always rely on Sherlock picking up on minute, obscure details that are kept hidden from the reader. Doctor Who is that turned up way past eleven - the solutions require knowledge of concepts that don't even exist, of pseudo-magical tricks, and explanations plucked out of thin air. Nobody at the end of the last episode, when confronted with the question of "how do The Doctor and her mates get out of this situation?" would or could possibly have answered, "The Doctor will be split into three parts because reasons, Swarm will be handwaved out of existence, Dan's mate will figure out a hitherto never mentioned weakness of Passenger, and The Grand Serpent can be frozen in place by a big red light because fuck you that's why". When the storytelling and the pacing is good enough, that kind of magical ending isn't a problem, but when it's as convoluted and overly busy as this series has been, it's a huge problem. They could have cut Vinder and Bel's entire story arc from this series and I don't think the overall story would have been affected at all, and it would have just left more room for everything else to breathe. I was cautiously optimistic about this series going in, because New Who's weakness since the beginning has been a consistent failure to deliver on the second episode of a two-parter - the pay-off is never as good as the set-up, and usually relies on either the story completely switching gears, or "I do believe in fairies" levels of deus ex machina writing - so I thought spacing it out over six episodes would actually allow time for the story to be told coherently. By the end of this episode, turns out I was completely wrong. I also think that the character of the Doctor, as best exemplified in Genesis of the Daleks (clip below), isn't someone who would attempt to avert the Flux by sacrificing countless Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans in its wake. How do you square that "solution" with the "do I have the right?" speech about ending the Daleks? It was especially egregious when they immediately after killing thousands use Passenger to absorb The Flux. Maybe Chibnall could have just gone straight to that solution, rather than just writing in the Doctor committing multiple genocides? 5

I'd contemplated doing a T-shirt of the Dungeon of Doom with Greg poorly Photoshopped in Kevin Sullivan's place, but it wasn't worth the effort.

I like that Pharoah Sanders album getting some recognition too - I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but what I've heard was brilliant. I actually didn't know Sanders was still alive until I saw tracks from it popping up.

Other than a select few, I've fallen a couple of months behind on listening to new albums. Some stuff I've especially liked this year, though: Beautify Junkyard's album from back in January - I didn't know the band at all prior to this, and they've been a great discovery The KLF making their back catalogue available on Spotify and elsewhere First Aid Kit's Leonard Cohen covers album, particularly the version of "I Want It Darker" Tom Jones' latest - his last two albums went the Johnny Cash route of doing stripped down arrangements of blues and gospel songs among choice modern covers, so to go from that to Krautrock and Radiohead-inspired guitar work as the backing at this point of career, and for it to work, is superb Mdou Moctar's Afrique Victim is one of my favourite albums of the year that's likely passed under a lot of people's radar Fucked Up and The Hell have both done some really ostentatious, weird multi-part concept albums/rock operas that deserve at least one listen apiece The new Mountain Goats is as good as they've ever been Mono, The Ruins Of Beverast, Wolves In The Throneroom and Red Fang are among my favourite metal albums of the year - though I haven't listened to the new Sunn O))) yet Peter Capaldi's album was a really pleasant surprise, I enjoyed all of it - clear Lou Reed and Bob Dylan influences, but feels like a considered artistic endeavour, rather than an actor's vanity project. The only reason I can see ABBA making end of year lists is for the novelty of them having come back because the album is terrible.

Rifftrax have done this one as well, it's bonkers, and has one of my favourite lines of dialogue in any movie ever:

I wanted to like the Angels episode a lot more than I did - the previous episode was peak Chibnall, just unfiltered nonsense, whereas this one was a potentially great episode being consistently marred by Chibnall-isms and being too clever for its own good. Leaning heavily into the potential of the Weeping Angels in a folk horror 1960s setting should be brilliant, and at times it threatened to be. The reason the Weeping Angels are so good is that, like The Silence but better, they lean into some absolute base fears - "what happens when you're not looking?" is a brilliant horror starting point, and distilling that to "don't blink" is a genuinely inspired bit of writing, and that they're also creepy statues just adds to that. Unfortunately, while they've had a better hit rate than most New Who monsters, the more they try and add to the concept, the further they move away from that root idea. I could have happily never heard a Weeping Angel talk (I don't even want to know that they are capable of communication), I hate the idea of the Angels managing to inhabit human minds, and all the psychobabble that went with it - the Doctor entering someone's subconscious is a daft superpower and lazy writing, and if "that which contains an image of an Angel is an Angel" extends to people thinking about them, why isn't there one inside of everyone that's ever met one? As for Angels working for The Division, hate it. The idea of them working for anyone, rather than just being single-minded predators, doesn't work for me at all. A lost kid stranded in another time, a village becoming deserted, Weeping Angels - it should all be like a brilliant Doctor Who take on an M.R. James story, but it felt like they had to crowbar in elements of the overarching Flux story. It kills the mood to cut away from the horror atmosphere they're building up to a sci-fi mess with characters we barely know. Such a shame.

yep, that's exactly what happened to me the first time I ever played Mario Party.

I loved it - again, on paper would have preferred a full band, but he was fantastic. My girlfriend was worried when he went into his first song straight away that he'd be the sort of live act that doesn't talk to the audience at all, but he was perfectly affable. For someone with a long career, and trying to please everyone, as well as touring to promote a book focused on a specific time period, it could have been a bit of a lucky dip in terms of what songs he'd play, but aside from "Feel So Good" he basically hit every one of my favourites.

I'm going to see Richard Thompson tonight! I wouldn't say I know his music particularly well, but I've been really getting into him over the last year.

I love Tinariwen (actually wearing their shirt right now), but even then I'd struggle to justify them making this list.

I did wonder if...

I've not listened to nearly enough new music in the last decade, with the exception of this year trying to get back on top of things. Off the top of my head (and it's pretty clear that I spent 2016 working jobs where we had a radio on, as that year is massively over-represented); Beyonce - Lemonade David Bowie - Blackstar Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly Kamasi Washington - Heaven and Earth Eliza Carthy - Neptune Sage Francis - Copper Gone Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree Probably some real obvious ones I'm forgetting. I'll maybe post actual thoughts on them later/tomorrow.