As I write this, it is Friday morning. I am at home, as has been the case for the last five weeks, because school is officially ‘out for summer’ and I work in a school. Not that I haven’t had a fair amount of paperwork to do in the ‘off season’ because I have. I…
Tag: music
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 26: Who Killed…… The Zutons
And so another A-Z comes to an end. From tomorrow I will no longer be writing about music from the noughties. I may not be writing about anything at all. Or I may be writing about something. Only time will tell. In another 11 months I may well decide to complete my trilogy of A-Zs…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 24: X&Y
On last year’s A-Z I had to cheat a little bit for X by including XTRMNTR by Primal Scream. The main reason this was cheating was because last year’s retrospective was meant to be 90s music and that particular album was released in the year 2000. It was very much at the beginning of the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 23: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
And so to ‘W’ in this A-Z musical retrospective of the noughties. There were a few decent albums from the 2000s that began with ‘W’ but one from 2006 still managed to stand out from the crowd. W is for Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not In January 2006, I was entering…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 22: Vampire Weekend
Day 22 of this self-indulgent wander down a memory-lane of music from a decade that is inherently less nostalgic for me than the decade that preceded it, but which, nonetheless, does retain elements of nostalgia – nostalgia which is often evoked by listening to the albums of the day. V is for Version 2.0 Vampire…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 21: Up The Bracket
It’s always a shame that I have to write twenty other posts before I can finally make time for ‘U’. But that is the way of an A-Z challenge. As much as I would like to put ‘U’ first, it just wouldn’t be proper. U is for Up The Bracket By the time I got…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 19: The Seldom Seen Kid
When I get to ‘S’ in an A-Z challenge, I always feel like I’m on the home straight. Although there are still seven letters to go, psychologically I feel like I’ve done most of the hard work. Of course ‘psychologically’ does not begin with ‘S’, even though it sounds like it should. So I’m probably…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 6: Franz Ferdinand
It’s time for ‘F’ in the James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger. And there is no time to ‘F’ around, so let’s get on with it. F is for Franz Ferdinand The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria of Austria triggered a…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 5: Elephant
It’s day 5 of ‘James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger’ and it’s time to address the elephant in the room. Which is that in last year’s A-Z I had a distinctly British bias and managed to overlook most of the great US bands of the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 1: Amnesiac
It’s April! A month best known worldwide for being the one which hosts my birthday. It’s also a month which enjoys a dubious association with fools. Although really only for a half a day. Mainly though it is a month synonymous with alphabetical blogging, as April also plays host to the A-Z Blogging Challenge, an…
A Redundant Post To Announce My Return To Blogging After An All Too Brief Hiatus
Hello dear readers. After announcing that I would be having a break from blogging just over a week ago, I’m now announcing my return. This does presuppose that anyone cares, which is, perhaps, too great an assumption all things considered. On the other hand, if I didn’t announce my return then how would anyone know…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 26: Zeitgeist
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…
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…
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 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 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…
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…
Alphabetical Albums
Two years ago this blog was positively thriving. Between November 2017 and May 2018, I wrote a post everyday for 200 consecutive days. I write a lot less these days. I would like to write more, but the time to do so is rather less available. Because my 19-month old daughter has been occupying a…
James Proclaims! 