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Friday, December 31, 2021

 

 REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2021

Emily Barker - The Woman Who Planted Trees


ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

  1. EMILY BARKER -  A Dark Murmuration of Words | Emily Barker - Bandcamp
  2.    - EMILY BARKER: 'Flight Path Rhymes' - NEW META ALBUM!
  3. STEPHEN FRETWELL - Busy Guy
  4. NAT MYERS! - 'Hobo Wine & Remedy Blues'
  5. MARTHA WAINWRIGHT - Love Will Be Reborn
  6. AMY MACDONALD  'The Human Demands'
  7. WILLIE WATSON - 'Folk Singer no 2'
  8. BELLOWHEAD  'Reassembled'.
  9. RADIOHEAD - KID A MNESIA
  10. JOHNNY FLYNN 'Lost in The Ceddar Wood' (with Robert MacFarlane)
  11. THEA GILMORE - 'AFTERLIGHT' & 'The EMANCIPATION OF EVA GREY'
  12. KATHRYN WILLIAMS/CAROL ANN DUFFY - 'MIDNIGHT CHORUS'

Nat Myers - Willow Witchin Woman


Kathryn Williams - Midnight Chorus 


BEST SINGLES:


  • NAT MYERS "WILLOW WITCHIN'!"
  • WET LEG - Chaise Long
  •  - WET LEG SINGLE NO 2 'WET DREAM'
  • ANDREW BIRD "SOUVENIRS" [BY JOHN PRINE]
  • RADIOHEAD - IF YOU SAY THE WORD
  • BELLOWHEAD - NEW YORK GIRLS - ROLL ALABAMA ROLL!
  • JOSIE PROTO - I JUST WANNA WALK HOME
  • AMY MACDONALD - 'SPARK'
  • EMILY BARKER (FEAT. FRANK TURNER) BOUND FOR HOME 
  •  LINDA ORTEGA - RUN DOWN NEIGHBOURHOOD!
ANDREW BIRD - SOUVENIRS (John Prine) live on his porch

BEST NEW BAND/ARTIST:

NAT MYERS

WET LEG

ELLI DE MON - COUNTIN THE BLUES

AYNSLEY LISTER

(MS LAUREN SPEAR) LE REN



RADIOHEAD - IF YOU SAY THE WORD (Best VIDEO CONTENDER)


PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR - ROUTE 



BOOKS:

KATHRYN WILLIAMS' debut novel - 'The Ormering Tide'

THE CHAMELEON POET by John Bauldie


ARTIST OF THE YEAR

Lin Yung Cheng - art photography
Sand Mooney Else - 
photography online blog



Those we have lost:


NANCI GRIFFITH - folk singer songwriter

JON HASSELL  - musican

HELEN MCCRORY  - actor

MICHAEL NESMITH- singer songwriter

SEAN LOCK - comedian

LOU OTTENS, creator of the cassette tape

U ROY - Dub master and toaster

DON EVERLY- singer songwriter

CHARLIE WATTS  - Drummer and 'band leader'

“LEE SCRATCH” PERRY - musician producer

CHRIS BARBER - musican

BUNNY WAILER - musician

MONTE HELLMAN - director 

FRED DELLAR - writer

DUSTY HILL DEAD- guitarist

CHUCK CLOSE painter/artist

MICHAEL CHAPMAN - musician guitarist songwriter

PADDY MOLONEY - musician band leader

PAT FISH OF JAZZ BUTCHER (64)

PAUL RITTER - actor

ROB REINER - Maverick genius film director 

DEAN STOCKWELL - actor

TERRENCE 'ASTRO' WILSON - singer

ROBBIE SHAKESPEARE -bassman and producer

MICK ROCK - art rock photographer

STEPHEN SONDHEIM - musical genius

JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO - actor

MICHAEL K. WILLIAMS - actor

TOM T HALL -C&W singer songwriter

UNA STUBBS -actor

B.J. THOMAS - musician

LLOYD PRICE - musician

YAPHET KOTTO -actor

GEORGE SEGAL - actor

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI -poet legend and owner of City Lights bookstore and publisher 

PHIL SPECTOR - maverick music producer


TV PROGRAMME/SERIES OF THE YEAR

Hi-lights:

Martin Clunes who plays DCI Colin Sutton in Manhunt The Night Stalker stares at the camera with a serious expression.


Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton (played by a mesmerising Martin Clunes here showing he can do really serious!) is tasked with reviewing Operation Minstead, an eleven-year, multi-million-pound enquiry to catch the 'Night Stalker'.After the first series looked at the true life killing of Amélie Delagrange and implicates him in the murder of Milly Dowler by Levi Bellfield Sutton is tasked to catch up a cold case of the so called Night Stalker ( Delroy Grant) which I had just watched a real crime profile of the case so it was timely and made a truly horrific criminal case edge of the seat watchable with a back up cast including the brilliant Claudie Blakley. I found Martin here little short of sheer brilliance.

FROM THE VAULTS WITH GUY GARVEY - brilliant archive footage from the television vaults from district tele to obscure second takes in pop programmes Guy Garvey gave the voice over to a brilliant series of videos

STONEHENGE - BBC The Lost Circle Revealed

DYLAN THOMAS - FROM GRAVE TO CRADLE - ARENA BBC 4


TV films and series:


Together

(BBC Two) Written by Dennis Kelly, directed by Stephen Daldry and starring James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan, this Covid two-hander certainly didn’t want for talent. A couple are, like the rest of the country, stuck inside together. And, like the rest of the country, they’ve started to hate each other. The real anger, though, is reserved for the government. As such, especially for those who lost a loved one in the first flush of Coronavirus, it was a staggeringly hard watch.


Starstruck

(BBC One) In New Zealand comic Rose Matafeo’s lovable romcom, her character Jessie is having a strange old time living in London, with a titchy flat, tedious jobs – and the fact that she can’t stop bumping into a movie star named Tom Kapoor (Nikesh Patel) that she had a one night stand with.


Motherland

(BBC Two) By its third series, you pretty much know where a sitcom will go. That’s true of Motherland, which barely attempted to deviate from its formula of middle-class mums being horrible to each other. But why bother when the blueprint is so good?


Ghosts

(BBC One) The best all-round British sitcom in years, Ghosts’ third series mined slightly more heartfelt territory than before. Not only were the phantoms fleshed out more fully, but the frankly wonderful Charlotte Ritchie’s Alison found herself yearning for a family that couldn’t quite manifest itself. As beautiful as it was funny.


The Cleaner

(BBC One) Greg Davies adapted and starred in this adaptation of the German series Der Tatortreiniger, about a man tasked with removing crime scene evidence from the homes of several guest stars. It might not be the most original premise, but when The Cleaner worked, it really worked.


Alma’s Not Normal

(BBC Two) Sophie Willan’s autobiographical show about the childhood she describes as being “the baby in Trainspotting, if she’d lived” won a comedy Bafta for the pilot alone. So this six-episode series, which saw her move from a job in a sandwich shop to becoming a sex worker and finally joining a theatre troupe, was an absolute riotous delight.


Help

(Channel 4) Another one-off Covid drama, Help starred Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham as a care home worker and resident respectively. Jack Thorne’s script surged with rage at the indifference with which the care sector was left to rot as the first wave of the pandemic rolled in. There’s plenty of warmth, but you’re never allowed to forget who the villains are.


Stephen Fretwell - The Long Water (Busy Guy album)


Guilt

(BBC Scotland/iPlayer) The first series of Neil Forsyth’s crime thriller was a word-of-mouth hit, largely thanks to Mark Bonnar’s psychotic growl of a performance. This year’s second series lost a little of its pace, but was still as compelling as ever. Let’s all cross our fingers for a third series.


Inside No 9

(BBC Two) By now you could be forgiven for taking Inside No 9 for granted. But this year, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton managed to find even greater heights. There was a Brexit episode, an episode about the uneasy relationship between fans and creators, an episode where Sian Clifford played against type twice at once. The invention here continues to be phenomenal.


This Way Up

(Channel 4) Like Back to Life, the second series of Aisling Bea’s This Way Up improved on its first. This time, as well as focusing on the recovery of Bea’s character Aine, the show was also bold enough to tackle Covid as a storyline. The fact that it was almost entirely alone in making the subject work with this little distance makes it doubly worthy of praise.


Unforgotten

(ITV) A dusty old survivor like this ITV detective show always runs the risk of becoming set in its ways. Not so with Unforgotten, which this year said goodbye to its star the constantly reliable Nicola Walker. It’s bittersweet: she was perfect in this role, but now she’s freed up to become an Olivia Colman-style megastar.


Le Ren - May Hard Times Pass Us By

Vigil

(BBC One) How to create one of the most nail-biting televisual experiences of the year? Take a tense, twisty procedural plot, get Suranne Jones to fire on all cylinders as a trauma-racked action hero badass, then cram her into a ready-made environment for a claustrophobic whodunnit: a nuclear sub.


Time

(BBC One) Jimmy McGovern’s hard, horrifying look at prison life was seen largely through the eyes of former teacher Mark Cobden (Sean Bean), who was serving his first stretch. Bean’s performance was a masterclass in understatement, communicated mainly through silence and shuffles on the wing – and it made for even more devastating television.


Line of Duty

(BBC One) Now overshadowed by its finale, dismissed as anticlimactic by viewers and aggressively defended at length by Jed Mercurio, Line of Duty’s sixth series was just as tight and knotty as ever. And it absolutely pummelled everything else on television to pieces. Sixteen million people watched its final episode in May. In 2021, that’s incredible.


Disappointments that I don’t have Netflix or Sky, HBO, Apple TV or Amazon Prime TV

Get Back (Disney+) 

WandaVision, 

Squidgame, 

Mare of Easttown, 



Josie Proto - I just wanna walk home


RADIO

AMANDA KNOX INTERVIEWED ON BBC RADIO FOUR


FILM OF THE YEAR: ON TELEVISION

PARASITE - BONG JOON HO


Things that have kept us sane during lockdown


Kate Rusby - Singy Songy Sessions


well they spanned 2020 really but did finish in Spring of 2021 (March) so it still figures and all the posts from such folk did much to keep our sprits up


Ricky Gervais - Daily check ins from Facebook

Hilarious and uplifting too!

The Self Isolating Bird Club - Chris Packham and step daughter Megan 'Beast' McGubbin

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8IZMOohZNxP5thvS9sMqVy8cq8NX3Mou



 EMILY BARKER at the Downend Folk Club


FOLK ON FOOT THE LIVING ROOM CONCERTS!

NEWS:



Emily Barker returning to her homeland with her husband Lukas Drinkwater had to self isolate in quarantine in their hotel so what to do well record an album of cover songs obvs!!!
This came as a revelation by the Australian singer songwriter with his diatribe upon the green eco issues of the day . . . . . . . someone ensure they put this album out PLEASE!

Emily Barker ( and Lukas Drinkwater) - Sleep Australia Sleep

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