Spurred on by the recent podcast thread I have added two significant to-do’s to my long cultural list: catching up the 175 episodes so far of Andrew Hickey’s A History of Rock and Roll in 500 songs, and playing along with Jocelyn Duchesne’s comprehensive (5,110 so far) Spotify playlist of every track Hickey refers to. That’s a couple of years at two podcasts a week.
So what are your substantial cultural challenges this year? We have 86.95% of the year left so plenty of time to get that seven-series box-set done.
Amongst mine are:
Finish the 1001 albums to hear before your die generator – up to 920 so 80 to go.
Reads:
Two more of Patrick O’Briens Aubrey and Maturin series. I am rationing them to two a year, unlike a friend who read them all in 18 months once I introduced her to them! I should finish in 2032.
Continue my first to last read throughs of Ballard (up to Cocaine Nights), Coupland (All Families are Psychotic) and contemplate starting another go through all of Philip K Dick’s sci-fi novels. Hopefully nearer finishes than 2032 (not the Dick, about 32 novels there though most very short).
Film: continue Cronenberg watch through (up to The Dead Zone), and as many as I can from the Sight and Sound Top 50 films of all time from the 2022 poll – I reckon there’s about ten left that either I’ve never seen or have only seen a long time ago. Currently working through Shoah in half-hour intervals.
TV: I’m almost through my second (and probably last) West Wing watch, just two episodes to go of the last series. And similarly only seasons 6 and 7 of Prime Suspect left. So room for another monster TV series to rewatch definitely.
In the toilet: the book that can only be read 10 pages or less at a time. This year: Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. Should keep me going.
I found that Pynchon demanded reading the last 10 pages 10 times over until I’d managed to get some sort of idea about what the f*ck was happening, where we were in the story, where we currently were on the planet, and why Slothrop hadn’t been mentioned in O level English Lit.
40 years of Eastenders!
I’ll pass on that one.
The History in 500 songs is excellent isn’t it. I also discovered it in that thread. Also Backlisted which is also excellent.
Backlisted I think I will dip in and out of when there’s a book I’m reading that’s on it, whereas all in on 500 Songs already.
Agreed
Ambition and aspiration are all very well. I’ll make do with my pile of unheard discs and pile of unread books. If I’m spared. Each get added to, constantly, so why add another challenge to take my eye off those balls.
I got the Scott Walker book, The Rhymes of Goodbye for Christmas. It goes through his career song by song (starting with The Walker Brothers). I have been thinking of doing the same. I have started with making a playlist of his self written (or co written) songs recorded by them. It comes to 21 songs and is a pretty decent listen
Here is his first Walker Bros composition. He certainly changed his artistic path later! (A number of times)
This year I should finish the Maigret novels. I have 10 to go. They’re very short, so they can be read pretty quickly, though there are over 70 of them.
You’re further along than I am. I’ve read thirty three of them so far. I read The Night at the Crossroads a couple of days ago. As you mention they are very quick reads, a few hours or so and they are done and dusted. I’ve been reading one or two a month between meatier books.
Already got a list of 23 late’50s-late ’60s Blue Note jazz albums I haven’t heard yet plus quite a few more albums to give second listens to, lots of unheard podcast, radio show and mixtape downloads to hear and a smallish pile of books waiting to be read. Not looking for any additional challenges.
I’m about 3 films away from watching all of Ingmar Bergman’s cinematic output. I bought the big box set thing discounted about 3 years ago so I’ve been watching all the docs and interviews too.
As a summary I’d say his 40’s was OK and watchable – a lot of melodramas.
He made about 30 films between 1951 and 1974 and all but about 3 are absolutely stunning and amongst some of the best films ever made. Most of the smaller titles such as The Magician, Summer Interlude, :Shame and Sawdust and Tinsel are easily as good as the bigger things like the Seventh Seal.
Then 1975 onwards until 2003 it’s a very mixed bag with some very weird and bleak stuff like The Serpents Egg and utter brilliance such as Fanny and Alexander (and always watch the long TV version).
I don’t think there’s anything new in what I’ve just said there. He does manage to cover a lot of genres, as well as things that don’t seem to exist in any genre, and there’s plenty of humour in a lot of the films too. It’s been a throughly enjoyable experience as I’m coming to the end. There’s plenty I’ll rewatch and soon. And if you do fancy doing the same, and I do recommend it, take your time and do it nice and slowly. Make it a very unhurried experience and you’ll enjoy it all the more.
Keep waiting for that box to be discounted. Think I missed my chance
It was the Criterion set Dai. I got it on the Barnes and Noble 50% sale. They usually have one a couple of times a year
Yes, I have seen it for $150 on amazon also, now twice that which seems to be the normal price. But with a weak Canadian dollar even $150 is quite a lot when shipping/duty is added. I can go to US and pick it up if I time it right.
@myoldman You may already know, but the Criterion box, great as it is, is not complete. Ignoring TV movies, docs and shorts (as well as stuff written by but not directed by him), Prison (1949) is available on DVD, as is Music In Darkness (1948) – both are also available as part of the big 31-DVD set that came out in 2006 and on Vol1 of the BFI Bergman box sets from a few years ago. It Rains On Our Love (1946) is available as part of the Artificial Eye Classic Bergman 5-BluRay box from 2012. The cinema released version of Face To Face (1976) is only available on Australian blu-ray (it’s a good print). That leaves only This Can’t Happen Here (1950), which doesn’t appear to be available anywhere legally, but can be found on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYJWJqifEx4
Thanks KDH. I was aware there were a few other things, but the Criterion box is about as much as I need (or can probably handle!). I’ve got the Eclipse series small box which has got Torment on there – which he wrote and didn’t direct.
I believe in achievable goals so I’m going to listen to all of The Blue Nile albums. In order.
Funnily enough I did this last week. WATW and Hats are still sublime, Peace at Last hasn’t aged well but I really enjoyed High which has some lovely songs. It’s the Paul Buchanan album next time I have a free Friday evening and a nice glass of malt whiskey to hand.
I do it regularly and I agree with you. The first two albums are so good. For any other band, Peace At Last would be a career high.
I’m a huge Blue Nile fan but I’ve never heard Peace at Last for the shocking and totally illogical reason that I loathe the cover. Paul Buchanan on a horse? Nope. I just can’t process that. If it was a photo of him moping on the number 66 bus or looking wistful on the tube, I’d be all over it.
You really should give Peace At Last a go. It’s lovely.
I’ve just (almost) completed my mission to hear every TBN track, by purchashing a US-only CD single from a popular internet auction site, because it has a remix of Soul Boy on the ‘b-side’ (if such a thing existed on a CD single).
There are three or four radio edits I’ve never heard, but I’m somehow not bothered by those.
Not everything exists on download or streaming platforms, so it cost me best part of a tenner for a 3-minute track.
I was thinking of including this as my cultural blackspot. I know they are well loved and I’ve tried giving them a whirl a few times, but so far it’s not working for me.
I don’t make new year’s resolutions or set aims like this, but I do want to get my reading mojo back after a long spell when I’ve found it difficult to concentrate enough. The books that have done the trick this year were Jonathan Coe’s The Proof of My Innocence for fiction and Rory Stewart’s Politics On the Edge for non-fiction. Now I just need to find more books which keep me as engaged as those.
Those are precisely the two books that have got me engaged this year. I’m hopeful that William Boyd’s ‘The Romanticist’ and Dominick Nolan’s ‘White City’ will similarly keep my reading mojo going. If you haven’t read it, you might find Andrew O’Hagan’s ‘Caledonian Road’ worthwhile.
I’m not one for setting myself challenges on the whole preferring instead to pursue whatever whim or fancy captures my attention at any given time. I know I will continue to read around ten books a month as that has become my established practice. Usually a mixture of fiction and non-fiction makes up the mix across various genres and subjects, I like a varied diet. The same applies musically although I find myself gravitating more and more towards classical interests along with the usual fare of jazz and ambient with smatterings of folk, americana and others as and when I feel in the mood. The only thing that approaches a musical project this year is a deep dive into the studio recordings of Maria Callas due entirely to a piece of shameless indulgence when I purchased as a birthday gift to myself a box set comprising of sixty nine CDs of her entire studio recordings remastered at Abbey Road. I also have a box set of Alban Berg in transit to me so that will be poured over when it arrives. As Berg wasn’t exactly prolific it will when compared to the Callas box be more of an amuse bouche but no less toothsome I am sure.
A 69-cd set I would feel is the very definition of a challenge. I am working through my late dad’s large collection of classical CDs (another challenge of course, there’s several hundred) and have just completed a double-CD of her greatest hits. One of those realisations in life is that I will never have good enough classical music ears to distinguish Callas from Sutherland from Caballe. Or perhaps the patience to hear the same piece over and over by different singers.
With my predilections I see it more as a pleasure than a challenge. I get how some have an aversion to opera, I however do not. My late wife loved it. It’s her influence that opened the door to it for me. She enjoyed the hugely overblown nature of it but understood that essentially opera is about the voice. Without great singers it just doesn’t work however grandiose the production. I have recordings of many of the operas in the Callas box with other singers, orchestras and conductors and some I have a distinct preference for over the Callas recordings but Callas was a force of nature and I’ve desired this particular box set for some years so I thought if not now then when? I hope you’re enjoying your explorations via your Dad’s collection. It’s a deep pool. I keep finding music that presses all the right buttons for me which hits me in the wallet but nowhere near as much as it hits me in the head and heart.
Two of my retirement challenges have badly faltered. I intended a leisurely read of all of Shakespeare’s plays, having been force fed two thirds of them at breakneck speed while at university many eons ago. Having thoroughly enjoyed The Hollow Crown cycle of the history plays recently, I’ve picked up the Shakespeare baton again.
Equally disastrous was my first attempt at ploughing through Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, which ground to a halt after volume one. Volume two is now beckoning.
More successfully I have watched just about all of Hitchcock’s films in backwards chronological order. I’ve now reached the silent era and really enjoyed The Lodger, although the remastered version I saw had an intrusive and inappropriate soundtrack composed by Nitin Sawhney, best watched with the sound off. There’s a handy little boxset of Hitchcock’s early films available from Studio Canal.
Musically, I’m trying to discover new artists by working my way through 2024 top 50 polls. Some are a little too obscure to hold my attention for long, but the Uncut poll has a good balance of new and familiar. A few good finds so far.
I might restart my project of listening to all of Beethoven’s works, in published order.
I began this a couple of years ago, but for reasons I don’t now recall, it fell by the wayside.
I read a biography of LvB about 40 years ago and, if I recall correctly, compositional order and published order are not quite the same.
I have just checked my progress notes and see that I got up to Op 18 #3 – String Quartet No 3 in D Major.
Likewise, I’ve recently acquired Norman Lebrecht’s “Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in 100 Pieces”. This book has 100 chapters, each dedicated to one work, or several connected works, but not in chronological order, together with some biographical notes. It starts with mostly minor works, with the meatier works coming towards the end. As far as I can gather, all works assigned an opus number are in there somewhere, together with some of the WoO (without opus number) works.
I’m currently at chapter 25, which covers the Septets and Wind Octet. So far, I’ve listened to many early piano sonatas, a couple of minor symphonies, a piano concerto, the Op. 18 string quartets, and many other chamber works.
I’m going to play the entire vinyl box set of Wilco’s A Ghost is Born over a few days. It’s more of a pleasure than a challenge really, and I’m looking forward to it. The box and book are things of beauty & so is the music.
I’m going to try to file all of my recent (last 12 months or so) records from the floor into my Kallax, in an alphabeticalised by artist name order.
This is going to be a right bloody faff, but I’ll play some records while I do it.
The whole of that post should be on an Afterword t-shirt.
Might be seen as a faff to some, but it is oh so cathartic (and a chance to stumble upon vaguely forgotten purchases).
You don’t get that sort of filing fun with streaming services
What with playing records in public once a month now, I’ve been flicking through the shelves with some regularity, and always finding a “when did I buy that?” surprise.
Early last April I discovered a little second-hand shop in Cromer which has bargain box LPs for 2 quid, 12″ singles for a quid, and 7″s for 50p. We go to Cromer several times a year, and I haven’t yet left with less than 50 quid’s worth of records. They’re taking over the floor…
I’m currently going through a whole pile of 12″ records bought in the late 90s from a Clapham second hand place near the train station. Promos and white labels mostly – 10 for a quid they were.