And so we arrive at ‘Z’ in my shamelessly nostalgic A-Z of albums that I liked to listen to when I was young. Thanks to everyone who has chipped in with comments along the way, even if it’s to tell me that you’ve never heard of the bands I liked or that you completely disagree…
Month: April 2020
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 25: You’ve Come A Long Way Baby
It’s the penultimate day of the A-Z challenge 2020 and it’s time to ask ‘Y’. Specifically we must ask ‘Y’ to tell us what today’s album is. It wasn’t easy. I assumed a lot of album titles would begin with the word ‘you’. Or ‘yesterday’. But these were not popular choices in the nineties apparently.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 24: XTRMNTR
No A-Z would be complete without the letter ‘X’. Because ‘X’ is very much a part of the alphabet. But it’s not the most accommodating of letters and it’s pretty hard to do an A-Z of anything without cheating a bit on ‘X’. But I don’t think I’ve cheated too much today. The album I’ve…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 23: Wake Up!
Who, what, why, where and when are all words that begin with ‘W’. And so does today’s album. Because we’re on ‘W’ in my A-Z of albums. So it should begin with ‘W’. That is literally the only expectation we can reasonably have of this album. But it is also one of my all time…
May The Soon Be With You
Without a shadow of a doubt, life on lockdown has hit other people harder than me. I am, under the circumstances, relatively lucky. I have a job that still needs me to work (I mean the work bit is mildly irritating but in the current climate, gainful employment seems to be a definite asset), I…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 22: Version 2.0
As we near the end of this A-Z of albums that I liked when I was younger than I am now, and mostly still like today (except for some albums that frankly only made the cut because they began with the right letter) I feel I should acknowledge the heavy bias towards UK acts. This…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 21: Urban Hymns
We’re now at the part of the A-Z Challenge that is all about ‘U’. “About time,” ‘U’ must be saying. And I’m sorry I had to make ‘U’ wait. However, there are 20 letters that come before ‘U’ in the alphabet. But they’ve had their time and now we finally get to ‘U’. U is…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 20: Tellin’ Stories
We’ve finally got to the 20th letter of the alphabet, which means the end is in sight. But we’re not there yet. First we have to stop for ‘T’. I prefer mine with milk but no sugar. Cos I’m sweet enough (ah that office banter that we’re all missing out on because of the lock-down).…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 19: Spiders
If this were an A-S of albums I liked when I was young, then we’d already be at the end. But it’s an A-Z, so we aren’t at the end. Because ‘Z’ comes after ‘S’ in the alphabet. But if you look at ‘S’ in the mirror, it looks like a kind of curvy ‘Z’.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 18: Return To The Last Chance Saloon
If you’ve been looking forward to this A-Z getting to the eighteenth letter of the alphabet then here we ‘R’. But where exactly ‘R’ we? At the letter ‘R’ of course. I’d have thought that was abundantly clear from the way I just cleverly substituted the letter ‘R’ for the word ‘are’ above. And then…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 17: Quench
And so to ‘Q’ in my A-Z of albums I liked to listen to when I was young. ‘Q’ is always one of the more difficult letters in an A-Z challenge. And it was quite the conundrum in this challenge too. Not as difficult to solve as ‘X’ in the end but still quite tricky.…
James Complains About Nanny Plum’s Wand
My daughter’s increasing vocabulary is, I think, quite impressive. Even if we allow for a natural parental bias, of which I am happy to accept I am almost certainly guilty, I think Little Proclaims can say an awful lot for a twenty-month old. And thanks to a relentless effort on the part of Mrs Proclaims…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 16: Pablo Honey
If only there were a way to get to the sixteenth letter of the alphabet without referencing the immortal Blockbusters joke, “I’ll have a ‘P’ please Bob” But there isn’t, so I did. Obviously the above reference may mean nothing to you, particularly if you didn’t watch the quiz show Blockbusters in the 80s and…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 15: On
And so to ‘O’ that most circular of letters. And when you think about the great albums of the nineties, there really could only be one choice for the letter ‘O’. So it’s almost beyond belief that I’ve gone with a different one. But I stand by today’s choice. It was an album that I…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 14: 1977
And so we are officially in the second half of what really is a self-indulgent set of posts about the music I liked when I was younger. If you’re just joining me, then welcome. Although you are going to have to work hard to keep up with the others. If you’ve been with me since…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 13: The Man Who
The halfway point of the alphabet lies somewhere between ‘M’ and ‘N’. Which is where we’ll be at the end of this post. For we are on ‘M’ today. I’m not sure if the fact that we’re almost halfway there is a source of comfort or distress really. M is for The Man Who Yesterday’s…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 12: Laid
And so we’re at the time of our A-Z journey through nineties music nostalgia when we ask, what the ‘L’? And ‘L’ is coming, make no mistake about that. But what fresh ‘L’ is this? L is for Laid I could hardly do a series nineties nostalgia posts predominantly about indie music without including a…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 11: K
We’re up to ‘K’ in the A-Z of albums that I listened to a lot in the nineties. I’m not sure if there’s anything more to say. I’ll throw in this sentence as a bit of ‘filler’ before we get to the ‘big reveal’. Although I always reveal the album in the title of the…
A Pun-ishing Eggs-ercise In Which I Shell Not Egg-Cell In Cracking Eggs-tremely Eggs-cellent Yolks
If the title of the post has brought you to here in the eggs-pectation that I’ll be cracking lots of egg-based puns then I’m sorry to disappoint, but I won’t be. Apart from in that sentence. Which I admit, looks a little misleading as disclaimers go. But, much as I enjoy a good egg-based pun…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 10: Jollification
And so to ‘J’ in this self-indulgent amble down the memory lane of my music-loving youth. ‘J’ was a pretty hard one to select, because, frankly there wasn’t much to choose from. And I didn’t expect that to be the case, because while I anticipated ‘Q’ and ‘X’ to be problematic, I expect more of…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 9: I Should Coco
Day 9 of this A-Z malarkey and it is time for ‘I’. The letter ‘I’ obviously. Not me. If it was me I’d have said ‘it is time for me’. Because ‘me’ would be the correct pronoun to use in that sentence. That’s just basic grammar. But it’s not time for me, it’s time for…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 8: How To Make Friends And Influence People
It’s always been my personal belief that the eighth letter of the alphabet should be ‘H’. Which it is. I’m not saying I’m responsible for that fact. That’s not for me to say. If others wish to credit me then that’s up to them. But, which album has the honour of representing ‘H’ today? H…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 7: The Great Escape
And so to the seventh letter of the alphabet. Which was ‘G’ the last time I checked. And it’s probably safe to assume it still is. G is for The Great Escape No-one enjoys a bit of pedantry more than me, but I think it’s reasonable to ignore the definite article in the album’s title…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 6: Fuzzy Logic
And so on to day 6 of this alphabetised meander through the musical memories of my youth. And what the ‘F’ have we got today? F is for Fuzzy Logic The Super Furry Animals were a Welsh band, who sometimes had the audacity to sing in Welsh, but the commercial nous to mostly sing in…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 5: Everything Must Go
And so, on the fifth day of ‘James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young’ we arrive at ‘E’. And for this there were a few contenders. But there was one that invokes so much nostalgia it was ultimately the only choice I could make. E is…
Blowing Out The Birthday Blues For The Second Consecutive Year
Though I wrote very little on my blog in 2019, I did manage a post on my birthday. It was a post lamenting a fairly rubbish birthday. So, I had moderately high hopes that this year things would be marginally better. After all, this year my birthday fell on a Saturday and not just any…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 4: Definitely Maybe/Different Class/Dookie
As is the case most years, today is my birthday. But there’s no time to implore you to wish me Happy Birthday in the comments section below. I’ll just have to leave it to you to do the right thing. No, I must get on with the important business of letting you know which album…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 3: Coming Up
Day 3 of the A-Z challenge and who would have imagined we’d be dealing the letter ‘C’? So we’d better head off to 1996 and ‘C’ what we can find… C is for Coming Up Given that some people credit Suede for paving the way for many of the bands that were part of the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 2: The ‘Blue’ Album
Day 2 of the A-Z Blogging Challenge and thus today’s album of the nineties must begin with the letter ‘B’ And I may have taken a bit of liberty with today’s choice. Because it doesn’t really begin with ‘B’ at all. Because today’s album is: B is for The ‘Blue’ Album Weezer’s 1994 debut was…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 1: Attack Of The Grey Lantern
And so here we are in April, which means I can stop writing about the terrifying worldwide pandemic and start writing about some albums I liked when I was young (and mostly still like now if I’m honest). Because today is also the beginning of the 2020 version of the A-Z Blogging Challenge, which is…
James Proclaims! 