jgmcquarrie

We’re Number Eleven: 1966 – “My Girl”, Otis Redding

It seems fairly obvious to start off an article about Otis Redding by pointing out that he has one of the best voices in all of popular music, but here we are anyway. The King Of Soul had a voice that few could match, that few could even try to match. If you’re going to cover a song like “My Girl” you need the pipes for it, and it’s not exactly controversial to point out that Redding had them. And with talent to spare. Yet the truth is, for all that it’s an excellent recording – and it really is an excellent recording – this is, at best, minor Otis Redding. It’s not “Sitting On The Dock The Bay”. It’s not “Try A Little Tenderness”. In fact, it’s so minor it doesn’t even feature on Redding’s Wikipedia page, nor is it on The Very Best Of Otis Redding. And there’s a good reason for that. It’s not the very best of Otis Redding. And yet… it’s bloody Otis Redding singing bloody “My Girl”. It’s great! The fact that a cover this good, and which peaked at our all-important position of Number 11 on the charts, barely even warrants a footnote says something about the strength of the material that does actually warrant inclusion.

We’re Number Eleven, Introduction

Greetings! And welcome to We’re Number Eleven, a follow-up series of articles to the award-winning, genre-defining, penetratingly-observed We’re Number Two (cough). There’s something perennially fascinating about songs which are slightly (excuse the pun) unsung — the ones which almost made it to whatever marker we choose, but not quite. In this case that’s songs which came close to cracking the Top Ten but never quite got across the line. Very much a case of so near, and yet so far.

Beatles Stuffology Podcast – Episode 10: Baby It’s You

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JG and Andrew continue through Side Two of Please Please Me with “Baby It’s You”. How does the second Shirelle’s cover go (and does the album really call for two of them)? How many sha-la-la-la-la’s are strictly necessary? And just how seriously should those backing vocals be taken?

eMail: beatlesstuffology@gmail.com

Twitter: @beatles_ology

Doctor Who – Eve Of The Daleks

What’s The Show? The Doctor Who New Year’s special, Eve Of The Daleks.

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor, Yaz and Dan land on New Year’s Eve in a self-storage depot while the Doctor attempts to purge the remaining Flux energy from the TARDIS. Turns out doing that causes a time loop, which the Daleks pop into in order to extract revenge for the Doctor wiping out their war fleet with the Flux. Also there are Sarah (a brilliant Aisling Bea) and oddball Nick (Adjani Salmon), who’s storing the possessions of ex-girlfriends there and using it as an excuse to see Sarah, on whom he has an unrequited crush. Every time the Executioner Daleks – with the really cool Gatling gun weapons – kill them, time resets and the loop becomes just that little bit shorter, so its up to the Doctor to figure out how they can defeat the Daleks, keep everyone alive, and escape the loop before time runs out.

Dr Brain (Dr. 브레인)

How goes Apple TV’s first foray into Korean-language television? Remarkably well!

What’s The Show? Dr Brain

What’s It All About, JG? Lee Sun-kyun stars as Dr Koh Se-won, the titular brain doctor, a brilliant scientist who had discovered a way to “brain synch” his mind with the recently deceased. This allows him to explore their memories for clues to what happened to them when they died. His family are killed in a mysterious accident, so it’s down to the good Doctor to figure out what’s going on, and also to try and keep his grip on reality as it becomes increasingly difficult for him to distinguish reality from the experiences he’s had in other people’s minds. In the end it turns out his son has been abducted by his terminally ill and wheelchair-bound father, who believe he can transfer his brain into the young boy and thus become, essentially, immortal. Like you do. Can Se-won stop his deranged father and rescue his son?

Beatles Stuffology Podcast – Episode 9: Please Please Me

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We reach the title track of the first album this time as JG and Andrew tackle “Please Please Me”. Is the track mighty enough to deserve having the album named after it? How impressive is George Martin this time out? And can the conversation actually remain on track? (surprisingly, yes!).

Since this is posting on 25th December I would also be remiss if I didn’t turn to face you, break the fourth ~~wall~~ speaker and say, “Incidentally, a happy Christmas to all of you at home!”

eMail: beatlesstuffology@gmail.com

Twitter: @beatles_ology

Star Trek Movies – And In Conclusion…

Star Trek films are, in the end, a strange breed. Born from the ashes of the Phase II project, The Motion Picture attempted to shift the adventures of the Enterprise from the small screen to the big one, but t’s worth reminding ourselves how unusual it was in 1979 for a TV series – a cancelled TV series no less – to make the transition to cinema. Star Wars, of course, is partly to blame / be held responsible (delete as applicable) for this since Paramount wanted a slice of the box office pie and had a handy space-based franchise just sitting there. But back in the beige, chilly days of the 1970’s this wasn’t a Thing That Happened. The likes of Kojak and Colombo might get a TV movie here and there but that absolutely was not the same thing. Now we live in an era where TV shows transitioning to big screen adventures can happen to almost any intellectual property, from The Addams Family (twice so far) to Mission: Impossible, from The Twilight Zone to Miami Vice. A dash of nostalgia here, a sprig of brand recognition inserted into the carcass of memory there and off we go.

Star Trek Beyond

Can the third Abramsverse Star Trek movie find something better to do than resurrect an old bad guy? Yes!

Third time’s a charm? After the standard-action-fare of the 2009 movie and the misguided attempt to use Khan in Into Darkness, can Beyond find a successful balance?

Pre-Existing Prejudices: It’s the most recent of the three Abramsverse movies which means that there’s not a lot of scope for historical distance. But as with the other two Abramsverse movies I had generally warm feelings towards it on its release and I’ve watched a couple of times since. I like Idris Elba a lot but don’t remember him making a vast impression, and of course it’s hard to view Anton Yelchin’s performance objectively since his death. Neither a stand-out classic nor a total failure, I remember this as fine. We shall see if that’s still true…

Doctor Who – Flux (Season 13)

Is third time the charm for Chris Chibnall’s version of Doctor Who? Remarkably, yes!

What’s The Show? Doctor Who‘s six episode long truncated series 13

What’s It All About, JG? Trying to find out if there’s anything worth salvaging from the Chibnall era of Doctor Who before both he and the reliably brilliant Jodie Whittaker bow out, and also embracing the full force of serialisation. But in terms of plot, the universe is threatened by a mysterious “Flux event” the Doctor knows nothing about. The Earth is protected by the Lupari, as represented by the appealingly dog-like Karvaista. Turns out there’s been some kind of battle between Space and Time (capital S and capital T) as represented by Azure and Swarm on one side and the mysterious Division on the other. Meanwhile, two survivors of the Flux, Vinder and Bel, are separated and are trying to reunite while getting into/out of the way of the plot, and the Doctor has a new companion, Dan (a surprisingly strong John Bishop), a Liverpudlian who turns out to be a dab hand at taking out Sontarans with a wok. It all ends with the Doctor struggling to get back her memories from her adoptive mother (unsuccessfully), a snake-like Grand Serpent infiltrating UNIT, and the Flux wiping out vast amounts of Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans. Whatever else you can say about Flux, it’t not lacking for event!

Arrival

It was the boat that made the decision for her, in the end. It wasn’t a beautiful vessel, at least not aesthetically. The physics of its buoyancy, the amalgam of engineering and logic in its engine and the interplay between the two might conceivably be described as beautiful, but that’s all. This was no sleek yacht of the super-rich, no sailing boat of the well-to-do. Just a large functional vessel, a few time-worn scars on its hull, leaving port. The tak-tak-tak of its engine rolled serenely across the water, making its presence known, but not intruding.