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10–Jan–2021
TJR PRESENTS… TOP 10: The Doors
Leading lights of the late 60s counter-culture movement, lyrically intense and musically vibrant for five glorious years...
 
24–Dec–2020
VARIOUS ARTISTS
I dunno how I managed it, but the page for Various Artist compiles has not been in place all this time. Maybe I deleted it by accident one time, I can't quite recall. Anyway, I've rustled up a quick fix, which looks ok, so I'll probably settle on that. Featuring 'Dance Craze' in the news feature as it was the first LP I ever bought nearly 40 years ago. Blimey.
 
23–Dec–2020
1982 – THE ASCENSION OF THE HIP PRIEST AND KAMERADS
The Album Chart of 1982 is published today, complete with reviews, ratings and track picks. Like a preacher possessed, Mark E. Smith cajoled his double-drumming troops into new territories, unleashing another unorthodox Fall masterpiece, much to the great bemusement of the world at large. Although a completely different beast, much the same could be said of ...more →
 
22–Dec–2020
DREAMGAZE
Way back at the start of my review project, I adopted a one-song one-genre-tag policy, which I later came to regret, although it was too far gone to change by then. Two of these original tags were “Dream Pop” and “Shoegaze”, but so often were the lines were blurred between the two, sometimes even within the same song, that at some stage I joined them together as a single tag, “Dream Pop / Shoegaze”. Now, after much deliberation, I've consolidated them again as a renamed single tag, “Dreamgaze”, which, as well as being less wordy, dismisses the somewhat disrespectful “shoegaze” term, something I've been keen to do for a long time. The change is effective immediately on all relevant pages, and comes in nice time for the forthcoming 80s era reviews.
 
21–Dec–2020
ANT AMALGAMATION
Bit of housekeeping ahead of my Album Chart of 1982 being published. Came to realise that I had set a precedent with the Paul Simon discography by including his Simon & Garfunkel records in there. My logic was that his name is common to both, even if they were solo and duo records. For consistency, I've now applied the same principle to Adam Ant's discography, merging Adam and The Ants (the group) with Adam Ant (solo), now all in one cohesive overview.
 
16–Dec–2020
TJR PRESENTS… TOP 10: THE CLASH
Ten of the best from the cross-culture ideologists who were way more than just a Punk band...
 
04–Dec–2020
TJR PRESENTS… TOP 10: THE JAM
The ever-sharp mod revivalists had a thousand things to say to you. Taking hard-hitting social commentary to the pop summit was one of the great triumphs of their generation...
 
25–Nov–2020
35 NEW ARTIST PAGES
Work is well underway to publish the album chart of 1982 and, with this in mind, 35 new artist pages are now in place, all with fully illustrated discographies, as promised in the recent revamp notices. I'm especially thrilled to see Sonic Youth and Cocteau Twins take their place, two of my big guns. The new entries: A Flock Of Seagulls, ABC, Laurie Anderson, Adam Ant, Associates, Lacksley Castell, Cocteau Twins, The Dream Syndicate, Duran Duran, Donald Fagen, Fun Boy Three, Grandmaster Flash, Eddy Grant, Green On Red, Zaine Griff, Haircut One Hundred, The Kids From Fame, Midnight Oil, Musical Youth, Orange Juice, Orchestra Super Mazembe, Papa Wemba, Peter and The Test Tube Babies, Prince, R.E.M., Alpheus Ramavhea, Diana Ross, Shakin’ Stevens, Sister Nancy, Sonic Youth, Television Personalities, Venom, Die Vier Transvalers, The Waitresses and Yazoo. For some reason, the New Order page was overlooked for 1981, a situation now rectified along with this batch.
 
05–Nov–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 10: BRAND NEW HOME PAGE DESIGN
As intimated with the preceding news posts, the new homepage design consists of a responsive 3 column design, highlighting the latest posts from the all-new TJR News, Album Reviews & Rebel Recommends pages. Hopefully you will find this new set up more pleasing to the eye than the clunky feeds from Twitter which previously dominated the page in a somewhat off-putting manner.
 
03–Nov–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 9: 'REBEL RECOMMENDS' PAGES INTRODUCED
My blog of 'newly collected treasures' started out as 'The Last Great Record' on WordPress back in July, 2015. Just last month, I switched it to Twitter, gave it a unique timeline , and repositioned it as more of a 'tweet size mini-blog', the idea being that if it was less time consuming to prepare, there could be more regular content. With no fanfare, on post #523 (24-Sep-2020) I changed the name of the blog to 'Rebel Recommends', the name speaking for itself. As per 'TJR News', this blog has always been fed into the homepage, but it was never ideal and looked a bit awkward. Now, with a dedicated page on the website, a few of the very latest posts can be fed into the homepage in a neater, more user-friendly way. I'll keep the Twitter mini-blog posts going simultaneously for now, we'll see how it goes. The wee guy stays on the decks as he has done since 2015!
 
28–Oct–2020
TJR PRESENTS… TOP 10: THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN
To recognize the Shangri-Las and the Velvet Underground as sisters and brothers is to understand The Jesus and Mary Chain; Scotland's finest Rock n Roll stars. William Reid is 62 today, here's a health to the man...
 
25–Oct–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 8: 'ALBUM REVIEWS' PAGE INTRODUCED
This simple new page is a great way for you to catch up with any album reviews that you might have missed since your last visit. Note that the albums are being filed here in the date that they're being uploaded to the site, not the date the review was originally written. Hopefully, by the time I catch up with the 2020s, these two dates will be one and the same! As with the 'TJR News' page, the very latest uploads will be highlighted on a special homepage feed.
 
24–Oct–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 7: DEDICATED 'TJR NEWS' PAGE INTRODUCED
I've always had some sort of News feed on the homepage; from July 2015 it was fed in via Wordpress, then from March 2019 it was fed in via Twitter. I've always felt these external feeds looked 'too clunky' so the Autumn 2020 revamp seems like a good opportunity to remedy that. From now on, there will be a dedicated page here on the website, which will feed the homepage with the most recent news snippets. Admittedly, I haven't been great at keeping visitors up to date with project developments but this new non-fussy and concise set up will, hopefully, make it a bit easier to drop in quick tidbits as I go along. The wee guy delivering the news has been with me since my first Wordpress news blog in July, 2015. He stays!
 
18–Oct–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 6: PLAYLIST PAGE
A simple and effective improvement to the page, introducing the new block headers seen elsewhere during this revamp, and re-ordering the playlists alphabetically / chronologically / by category wherever appropriate.
 
14–Oct–2020
TJR PRESENTS… TOP 10: TOOTS AND THE MAYTALS
RIP Toots Hibbert. In the middle of prepping my Top 10 in tribute a few weeks back, YouTube “permanently terminated” my a/c, the algorithm having identified me as a wrong 'un, bloody cheek. To cut a long story short, I appealed and, in the most Godly fashion, my account miraculously came back to life two weeks later. Toots must have had a word with the high heid yin! Anyway, better late than never, here's my ten...
 
10–Oct–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 5: ALBUM PAGES
As shown by The Jam's “All Mod Cons” example, I've rejigged the album profile pages. Where the separate elements were previously hidden behind “on demand” tabs, I've brought them out into the open. For example, directly underneath my tracklist / ratings will be the Spotify embed, if available, giving you the chance to check out more of the album as you read. Similarly, the page signs off with the album's Wikipedia entry, if available. Hopefully this new approach is a bit more user-friendly.
 
08–Oct–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 4: ARTIST PAGES
As can be seen by the P.P. Arnold example, each and every artist page has been given a bold new look, emphasizing the three main sections of headline info, album discography and bio, the latter usually being fed in via Wikipedia. In a change of priority, I'm now illustrating the full album discographies with the cover art, where previously I was going to leave that element out until all reviews were in place. As I mentioned last week, there's a nice by-product bonus to this i.e. all of the cover art is now recompiled in a neat gallery feature, where you can click on / flip through them in their natural 315px x 315px size. In a further bid to cut down workload, I've now dropped the intended “C-list” (unofficial bootlegs) and “D-list” (collection doublers and regional variations) categories. Reflecting all of this, the A-Z indexes have been updated accordingly; 702 of the 3,022 intended artists are hyperlinked and available to view now.
 
05–Oct–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 3: SHARE THE PAGE GONE
Again, in an effort to try and cut down on workload, I've taken the decision to get rid of the page share module. Google+ was a goner anyway and I wouldn't be surprised if one or two others follow suit. The module had a fairly tedious routine attached to it, different for each and every page. I won't miss it and, looking at the poor share stats, I don't think anyone else will either! That said, I may re-introduce a simpler and more attractive version for Twitter and Facebook in the future.
 
03–Oct–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 2: AMAZON & I-TUNES GONE
I do need to try and generate some income to recover some of the costs of my expensive hobby, but it was proving to be too much hassle dealing with Amazon and iTunes, the effort to maintain working links being incommensurate with the recompense. You might see them return to the site in some guise at a later date but, for now, all links to those sites have been removed.
 
01–Oct–2020
AUTUMN 2020 REVAMP PT. 1: POLICY RETHINK LEADS TO NEW COVER ART GALLERY FEATURE
A recent time-and-motion study has forced a rethink on certain ambitions. Take album reviews for example; whether there was a review or not, I had intended to publish a separate page for each of the ~30,000 albums in the database, thereby covering the full artist A-list / B-list discographies. Instead, I will now have dedicated pages only for the ~10,000 albums which are actually being reviewed i.e. those which I actually own. As a small compensation, I'll embed the cover art gallery for all of the aforementioned A-list / B-list profiles (especially since the majority of these already have been collected!) To see this new cover art gallery feature in effect, look to the bottom of any given A-list and click on '+ Show cover art gallery' e.g. Bert Jansch →
 
15–Sep–2020
NEW HOME FOR 'THE LAST GREAT RECORD' BLOG
Sadly, I've next to no time to prep Wordpress posts and therefore my blog of newly collected treasures is now housed on Twitter, with a feed coming in to thejukeboxrebel.com homepage. The downside is there's less handy background info, and not so much of my charming commentary. On the upside, I'm going to aim for one-a-day @ 8am, with 6 months minimum commitment from me. We'll see how it goes...
 
30–Aug–2020
TJR PRESENTS... THE GOOD YOU DO LIVES AFTER YOU
John Peel would have been 82 today; that's my cue to revisit the playlist and plant the tune for 2020. Always with one ear out for something new, the “Notts Rap” craze sweeping the nation would have piqued an interest for our man; John Paul's “Subjects” LP bites hard from start to finish, and I've picked out “Pub Quiz”.
 
01–Mar–2020
A STATS RECORD!
Wow. I'm looking at a Record set of stats for February, 2020. The monthly report tells me that 14,528 different individuals made 26,184 visits and looked at 73,482 pages. Thank you!
 
24–Dec–2019
TJR PRESENTS... TOP 10: CHRISTMAS SONGS
My best of the season, first introduced via a Twitter special on the 23rd/24th; yer superstore cheezefest can get in the sherry trifle! Merry Christmas tout-le-monde x
 
20–Dec–2019
1001 ALBUMS YOU MUST HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE
Been busy! As an offshoot to TJR, I've launched a separate website, dedicated to exploring the famous book, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, which might end up in a few Xmas stockings. A handy resource for musical adventurers...
 
28–Oct–2019
TJR PRESENTS... TOP 10: NEW ORDER
The thoroughly likeable Stephen Morris is 62 today; I celebrate by nailing down my New Order Top 10 @ TJR this afternoon.
 
27–Oct–2019
TJR PRESENTS... TOP 10: LOU REED
Going in @ TJR this evening, joining everyone paying their respects to the man, six years gone today. As usual, comes with cool playlists on Spotify & YouTube.