Category: Music

November 2022 Favourites

Hey there, hope you’re all doing alright, and welcome to my latest roundup. I’ve continued to be happily occupied since my redundancy, so there’s plenty to mention for the last month.

First of all, my big outing was a lovely weekend in Oxford, where I visited the Ashmolean Museum, went on a walking tour of the university and the city, enjoyed a concert by Jools Holland with his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra, and had a good laugh seeing Jimmy Carr. So for all the details and lots of photos, check out my extensive blog post about the trip.

I’ve also been getting out and about to see a lot of the festive displays in London. I’ll share the highlights in my Christmas Favourites post in the New Year of course, but I’ve been posting lots of photos on my Instagram page on a daily basis, so be sure to follow me there, and also my Youtube channel where I’ll post some video clips nearer to Christmas.

Apart from all that however, I also spent a day volunteering and meeting friends at a disability exhibition, had a front row seat for another Queen-related concert, bought a special Queen box set, and enjoyed various other things on DVD and TV as well. So let’s crack on with it. None of this stuff is sponsored or gifted as usual, and I hope you enjoy this month’s post and video!

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Jimmy Carr – Stand-Up DVD & Netflix Reviews

Jimmy Carr is a stand-up comedian who I’ve been a fan of for several years, and at the time of writing he’s the only comic I’ve got around to seeing live twice, albeit with far too long a gap between the two shows. The first time was at The Princess Theatre, Torquay in July 2012, where I actually got to meet him, and then much more recently I saw him at the New Theatre, Oxford in November 2022. I’ll make sure it’s not another 10 years before I see him again!

His humour is often very rude of course, including subjects that are taboo or controversial, so he’s not to everyone’s taste, and that’s perfectly fine and understandable. Nobody has to watch him, and if you’re not a fan of his then don’t read this post.

But I personally feel comfortable with his style of humour. He’s said himself that he’s an equal opportunities offender, in that anybody and everybody is a target for his humour, and thus nobody is singled out. And, like all the other people who choose to attend his gigs or buy his DVDs, I know exactly what I’m getting into. I know that he’s just telling jokes and not expressing his actual opinions, and his jokes don’t reflect my personal views either. I also know that he’s a nice guy from meeting him in person, and I know that he’s clever and insightful about jokes and comedy from both his stage act and his interviews.

So, following the pattern I’ve adopted with other comics whose shows I’ve attended in recent months, I thought I would rewatch and review all of his stand-up shows that he’s released on DVD (a few of which are also on his Youtube channel alongside lots of clips), and more recent gigs that were published on Netflix. Each show includes lots of great jokes and banter with the audience, and sometimes other elements for a little bit of variety. And his DVDs contain a lot of extra features, he’s been quite generous with those too, even going to the effort of narrating the menus and adding comedy subtitles on the earlier releases.

So here’s my little run through of his DVDs and online shows, none of which are sponsored or gifted, and I hope you enjoy!

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Queen Album Review – The Miracle – Collector’s Edition

Back in the first lockdown in 2020 I started doing an occasional series of reviews celebrating Queen‘s 50th anniversary by doing very in-depth reviews of some of their albums. The posts have been very sporadic due to all sorts of other things keeping me busy, as well as the level of detail they contain, but it’s always been my intention to continue the series when time permits.

And now I have the opportunity to do a Christmas special, as the band recently unveiled a new edition of their 1989 album The Miracle. When it was first announced I eagerly pre-ordered the full Super Deluxe Collector’s Edition & Press Pack as an early festive treat for myself, so I thought I’d do a detailed review now that I’ve had time to go through it and savour its contents.

The set was retailing at £169.99 (plus shipping), but I took advantage of a 10% discount code that I received from their store for my birthday a few months ago. So I was charged £127.99 for the 8-disc box set, £25 for the press pack and £6.26 shipping, making £159.25 in total. And that’s not bad at all, considering how much you get.

There are cheaper editions too though, depending on what you can afford, including the 8-disc set without the press kit, a 2-disc edition consisting of the album and the sessions, and a download version that covers all 4 music CDs, plus there are related items of merchandise. So there’s something for everyone.

I’ve made an unboxing video to go with this post, where you can see my initial reactions to the contents of the set, and there’s an unboxing video by Brian May as well. Queen have also posted a couple of short documentary features about The Miracle to coincide with its re-release, which you can see here and here.

So in this post I want to review the set in full, to give my thoughts on all the music tracks and videos, the memorabilia, the book and the radio interviews – which means there’s a lot to cover here, and I hope you enjoy it!

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Oxford – Art, Academia, Jools & Jimmy

Last weekend I had a nice little getaway in the beautiful historic city of Oxford, which I’ve never visited before. I spent the daylight hours visiting a museum and going on a walking tour, while in the evenings I attended a concert and a stand-up comedy gig, so I made good use of my time there. None of it is sponsored or gifted, and I hope you enjoy this review of what I got up to!

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The Beatles – Super Deluxe Box Sets

In recent years, The Beatles have released 5 big box sets of some of their classic albums – Sgt. Pepper, The White Album, Abbey Road, Let It Be and Revolver – each containing a lot of fascinating extra material. Smaller and cheaper box sets were also available with fewer tracks, but I decided to buy the biggest super deluxe sets with everything in.

I had mentioned the first few sets in previous posts to some degree or another. But as they’re all broadly similar in various respects, I thought I would take the opportunity to do a combined summary review for all of them. That way, it keeps everything together, enables some comparisons to be made between the sets, and has allowed me to take clearer photos with my new iPhone. You can also still watch the unboxing videos I posted for the Sgt Pepper & White Album box sets.

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October 2022 Favourites

Hello again, I hope you’re all doing well despite everything going on in the world at the moment. Here in the UK, Liz Truss having to resign after a disastrous 45 days as our shortest-serving Prime Minister was certainly quite astonishing to witness, and now it remains to be seen if new PM Rishi Sunak can start to get things back on track and last at least as long as she did!

Still, despite all that chaos, I’m doing well, I’m happy to say. My redundancy certainly hasn’t left me twiddling my thumbs, as I’ve been very busy indeed this month. The fact that I’ve been invited to contribute to various disability and accessibility projects, some of which I’ve been paid for, has shown that I’m still very much in demand for my skills and opinions, and I’ve continued to socialise with friends as well of course. So I still have a sense of purpose and don’t feel at all lonely, bored or cast aside in any way despite my job loss, and I still have financial stability for the time being.

So I’m enjoying the career break, and there’s plenty to cover this month, including the aforementioned disability projects, virtual reality games, stand-up comedy shows, a museum visit, a seaside trip, an overseas holiday, TV shows and music releases. So I hope you enjoy this bumper roundup post and video!

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September 2022 Favourites

Well, what a month this has been! When I published my August Favourites at the start of September, I had just left my first job due to my redundancy, and Liz Truss had just become Prime Minister. But then 2 days after I’d made that post, the ultimate career change took place at the top of our Royal Family, and normal life in the UK was disrupted for the best part of a fortnight as a result. I’ve written a separate post saying farewell to Her Majesty The Queen and reviewing the coverage, as it’s not really suitable for a Favourites post and there was quite a lot to talk about.

Apart from that though, and despite my redundancy, I’ve still been pretty busy this month. I’ve attended a Derren Brown show and a couple of tribute concerts, listened to an audiobook I got for my birthday, and enjoyed new episodes of my favourite comedies on TV once the schedules had returned to normal. So there are still plenty of nicer things to mention in this post and the short video I’ve made to go with it, none of which is sponsored or gifted, and I hope you enjoy my latest roundup!

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August 2022 Favourites

Hello again. I hope you’re doing well, in what I know are worrying and stressful times for many, given all the economic, financial, environmental and political turmoil at the moment.

It’s certainly not the ideal time for me to be made redundant, that’s for sure – not that there is a ever a good time of course. Fortunately my mother and I are doing fine though, despite that. We’re lucky to be in a comfortable financial position where we can ride this out for a while, and I can have a nice break to reset while I consider what to do next. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy as well. But hopefully it won’t be too long before I find a new career. Given all the financial and economic uncertainty, however, we have decided not to move house for the time being – but then that was never essential anyway, it was just something we were considering. It will happen eventually, at a later date, and in the meantime we’ve got some small improvements we can make to our current place.

Anyway, I’ve now finished my first ever job, and I’ve made a post all about my last month at work and the wonderful messages I’ve received, including a lovely gift I was sent by one department, so do check that out for more details. I’m flattered and humbled by the amount of kindness everyone has shown, and I will miss my colleagues very much.

Beyond that, because work was my main focus, I haven’t done a huge amount this month, and there were even a couple of weekends where I couldn’t go out at all. But there are still a few happier things to mention, as I celebrated my birthday, received an award and briefly visited a couple of museums. Plus I really enjoyed watching the Commonwealth Games on TV, so I’ve written quite a bit about those in this post, and I revisited the 2012 Olympics & Paralympics on Blu-ray, which I’ve already written about elsewhere. So, while August wasn’t very eventful overall, I hope you still find some items of interest in this latest roundup!

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London 2012 Revisited – Sporting Celebrations

Recently I’ve been looking back in detail at the 2012 Olympics & Paralympics, with the aid of the Blu-ray sets released by the BBC and Channel 4. For the Olympics I wrote about the Opening & Closing ceremonies and highlights from Days 1-8 & 9-16, and then I made a separate post about my Paralympics highlights.

Back in 2012, however, I also had a combined hard drive and DVD recorder connected to my TV, which meant I was able to record programmes, do some very basic editing and copy them on to discs. So I ended up recording a selection of shows relating to the Olympics & Paralympics, and I stored them on several DVDs, which I still have in my collection. And I’ve therefore been rewatching them as part of my nostalgia trip. They naturally aren’t as high quality as professional DVDs or Blu-rays, but they’re still good enough.

I’ve already discussed a few recordings relating to the Olympics in previous posts, as noted in the list of contents below. But here in this final post, to conclude my trip down memory lane, I’m going to run through the other stuff I captured, including our big victory parade, the Sports Personality Of The Year, documentaries, and appearances by some of the athletes on chat shows and game shows. I’ve also created a playlist with clips from some of these programmes, and some other relevant videos. So I hope you enjoy looking through it all!

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London 2012 Revisited – Paralympics Highlights

Soon after the sensational Olympics in 2012, which I’ve recently posted about extensively to mark the 10th anniversary, we then got to enjoy another couple of weeks of multi-sporting excellence courtesy of the Paralympics. Having disabled people take centre stage in these Games, for the whole world to see their stunning achievements, is always incredibly important and thrilling to watch. The Opening Ceremony took place exactly 10 years ago today as I’m publishing this, on 29 August 2012.

The Paralympics cannot change all of society’s attitudes and behaviours overnight of course, nor does it claim to do so. It clearly doesn’t represent every disabled person or impairment, nor the myriad of different ways we each go about our lives. These are exceptional athletes who have pushed themselves to their absolute limits, so their lives are very different to the rest of us in many ways. But even so, they are still people with conditions and experiences that many of us can relate to, and their exposure on a global stage undeniably helps to raise awareness, challenge misconceptions, and encourage greater acceptance and inclusion, in an engaging and entertaining way. It isn’t a quick fix for equality and inclusivity, and it’s totally understandable that some disabled people take issue with the way it’s promoted – there is a lot of work to be done beyond the Paralympic bubble for sure. But it is a very prominent springboard in the right direction, and I for one love watching it.

The London 2012 Paralympics were the biggest Games to date, and they certainly made their mark, by successfully extending and surfing on the tidal wave of intense enthusiasm that had been generated by the Olympics. They sold record numbers of tickets and attracted a huge TV audience, as people flocked to watch and support the biggest number of disabled competitors to date, many of whom were or became lasting household names.

So in this post I’m going to look back at some of my favourite moments of the 2012 Paralympics, with the aid of Channel 4’s Blu-ray set of the Games. There isn’t as much to talk about as there was for the Olympics, so I can go through it in just one post this time, but there are still lots of great highlights worth mentioning along the way. And I’ve also created a Paralympics playlist on Youtube with plenty of clips too. So I hope you enjoy!

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