Remember my profession of love for blogs that take the form of ambitious, slightly crazy long-term projects? If you share my ardor, then click over to Then Play Long, Marcello Carlin's blog wherein he plans to review "every UK number one album so that you might want to hear it."
I've only just discovered this, but thus far I've quite enjoyed the epochal '60s-into-'70s run of Abbey Road to Let It Bleed to Led Zeppelin II. Carlin deserves some kind of medal for not making those entries nauseating Boomer nostalgia trips--I certainly didn't think I wanted to read another lengthy piece on Abbey Road at this point in my life, but it's great. Two of his strategies pay off particularly well: 1) genuine musicological analysis deployed with a light touch and 2) frequent, surprising comparisons with music from much different eras: in one sentence about "Whole Lotta Love" he manages to reference both Eric B and Derek Bailey. Still, I'm almost more intrigued by the (previously completely unknown to me) likes of Val Doonican's Val Doonican Rocks, But Gently, which is a phrasing I expect to gain currency immediately.
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