Charts – 17 July 2015
If the compilers were hoping for some exciting, memorable weeks to liven up the first few charts after the shift to Fridays, it seems they’re going to be disappointed. This is one of the deadest charts I’ve ever seen outside the Christmas-New Year break. How dead? Try this for the lowest new entry…
6. Avicii – “Waiting for Love”
Charts – 10 July 2015
It’s a podcast weekend, so check that out in the post below. Nearly two hours long, this one.
So then. We skipped last week’s chart, which was the last one to be announced on a Sunday, before the music industry’s “Global Release Date” scheme harmonised all new releases on a Friday around the world. So from here on, the chart will be announced on a Friday afternoon. It gets a shorter slot on Radio 1 – cut from three hours to 1h45 – but it’s actually a significant trade up. Listening figures are much higher on a Friday afternoon, and besides, playing the entire chart is just not a sensible format in these days of streaming media, and in an era when the chart itself is relatively slow.
The Sunday night slot is a British tradition – Radio 1 has been playing the entire chart in that slot since 1962 – but like Top of the Pops, it’s long outstayed its usefulness. And the significance of that Sunday slot is easy to overstate, because although the chart was calculated on the basis of a Sunday-to-Saturday week, it wasn’t actually possible to turn around the calculations in 24 hours until 1987. Before then, the chart was actually announced on Tuesday, so the Sunday night show was playing the chart from the previous week. Things moved more slowly in the analogue age.
House to Astonish Episode 134
Paul and I are back after a slightly unusually long break, with a massive run-through of the All-New All-Different Marvel books, the announcements out of Image Expo, DC’s Convergence tie-in launches, Vertigo’s new slate, IDW’s surprising licensed launches and the return of Tokypop. We’ve also got reviews of Archie, The Spire and Dungeon Fun, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is lovely jubbly. All this plus Little Nico in Slumberland, Belfast’s most bangin’ DJ and the gentle caress of a brick to the face.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. Don’t forget that you can also deck yourself out in one of our natty t-shirts by visiting our Redbubble store and, like, buying one. They’re all the rage in Paris, I expect.
Charts – 28 June 2015
The reign of Jason Derulo is over! It only took four weeks! And the end is nigh in another respect – this is the penultimate Sunday chart. Next week is the last one before we jump to Fridays with the “Global Release Date”.
32. Duke Dumont – “The Giver”
Uncanny Avengers vol 1 – “Counter-Evolutionary”
First of all, no, that’s not a typo. This is volume 1 – the second volume 1, even though it features a creative team that worked on the previous run. And if everything is getting a fresh #1 after Secret Wars, it will presumably be the only volume 1 of the second run, to be followed promptly by a third volume 1. This is confusing. I was tempted to call it volume 6 but (a) that’s not the title, and (b) volume 6 should logically be Axis, which wasn’t billed as an Uncanny Avengers collection at all.
Oh well. Bitching about the numbering helps me get through a paragraph before turning my attention to the more important point, which is that this book completely lost my attention somewhere along the line.
Chikara 15.3: “Out on a Limb”
Preamble: Three shows into the year, Chikara gets back to its regular schedule of running multiple shows over one weekend per month. Between shows, they’ve also announced “Challenge Of The Immortals”, a tournament which will run for the rest of the year.
There are a lot of COTI matches coming up in future shows – a lot – so let’s run down the rules:
- There are ten teams of four. Director of Fun Mike Quackenbush (the GM) appointed the team captains, who then took turns to draft members from the roster, followed by a brief window for trades.
- It’s a double round robin – every team faces every other team twice.
- Each match can be a singles, tag, trios or atomicos (8-man tag) match. The team captains are supposed to decide between them. The same two teams can’t meet in the same type of match on both occasions. (Singles and tag matches don’t count towards title contention.)
- A team gets one point for every match it wins. The team with the most points at the end of the day is the winner.
- Everyone on the winning team gets a vaguely-defined “Golden Opportunity”, which is effectively a money in the bank title shot, though you could use it for something else if you really wanted.
Charts – 21 June 2015
Magneto vol 3
This one rather slipped by me – we’re actually two issues into volume 4 by now, which is a “Last Days” Secret Wars tie-in. But let’s go back to volume 3 before it slips from mind entirely.
It is the fate of the lower-selling Marvel comic to spend a lot of its time doing crossovers, which is why Magneto has wound up doing both Axis and Secret Wars. But that means joining in large-scale high-stakes adventure with big name characters and mainstream Marvel Universe concepts floating around, all of which was quite at odds with the tone established by the early issues of the series. They went for Magneto as a small-scale, largely de-powered vigilante still hanging in there despite being a shadow of the man he once was.
Chikara 15.2 – “National Pro Wrestling Day 2015”
Preamble: Well, I did say these would be erratic.
National Pro Wrestling Day is Chikara’s annual free charity show, which basically means they run the live show for donations, and there are regular exhortations to donate to the year’s selected charity. It’s notionally also a celebration of pro wrestling generally. This is the third one. The first two were (in storyline) not Chikara shows – this was terribly useful because it meant there was an actual show where they could pay off the shutdown angle in 2014. This year it’s an official Chikara show, and pretty much a regular one with a couple of outsiders and not much in the way of explicit angles (though some stuff is set up for the future). Anyone with a complicated story pretty much skips this show entirely.
Charts – 14 June 2015
Look, Britain, it was nice when you gave Jason Derulo a second week at number 1, because it kept up this year’s trend for a slow turnover at the top. But three, Britain? Really?
34. Ed Sheeran – “Photograph”
