#AprilSongs #21 Sunday

You can't search for music about and Easter day without bringing back nothing but hymns and worship songs, which I mentioned in my Good Friday post. This time I have gone for a Nick Drake instrumental, "Sunday" the closing piece from "Bryter Later" for the #AprilSongs sequence. The opening flute made me think of the spooky sixties "Wicker Man" folk but actually this turns into a lovely listenable piece.

This is the day after I have started a seven day ban on Facebook, for sharing a picture FROM facebook , which is still there and you can see here which is basically mens bum cheeks decorated as Easter Eggs. The thing is it's a link to a site and the linking site posts the pictures. This has happened to me before when I posted an IMDB link to the Peter Greenaway film "Drowning By Numbers" . The film itself features nudity but the DVD cover picture, if you really zoom in has the suggestion of a female nipple underwater. Follow the link and see for yourself.

The problem is this is just a Kafkaesque situation and if you are a member of club then you abide by the rules but when those rules are applied arbitrarily without warning then that becomes annoying . I see a lot of  shall we say more explicit pictures than those I have been banned for, and of course racism and right wing hate and political lies are fine, freedom of speech and all that. So for a week I can't like, share or use messenger, without any dialogue or explanation from Facebook.

So anyway, it's another lovely day, enjoy your Easter Eggs and Easter Sunday.

#AprilSongs #20 Another Saturday Night

Resuming the #AprilSongs sequence this gorgeous Saturday morning and I and going with "Another Saturday Night" by Sam Cooke, which was also covered by Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam). Both artists produced some essential songs in their bodies of work so it is nice to actually find this link between them.

Sam Cooke was shot dead in 1964 at the age of 33 by Bertha Franklin the manager of the Hacienda Hotel in Los Angeles. He was shot 30 times in wat the court decided was a "justifiable homicide", ir being black in the USA is still a reasonable excuse to shoot someone. There is one take on it here

The song does have some misogynistic lines, with the assumption of male privilege, but it is a fine tune and was a product of it's time but he was responsible for some extremely powerful songs like a "A Change Is Gonna Come" .

Yusuf Islam is still with us and making music that is still worth listening to.

So time for a shower and then despatching an Eric Burdon CD for a Discogs order and maybe a walk into town.

This Land Is YOUR Land

Tonight I caught a bit of a program I was recording about the great Woody Guthrie , Three Chords and The Truth which will be available on BBC iPlayer for the next month. While it is a great song and applies to any country, but is geographically situated in the USA stating that the land belongs to the people , not to governments and not to corporations.

I didn't know it had been used at Barack Obama's Inauguration as while it was sung in schools as an almost national anthem, only the first three verses were sung because the next three were deemed offensive.

At the Inauguration all six verses were sung, and it was very uplifting and moving and I am glad to be able to share it with you on this post thanks to Youtube. The documentary is very revealing but I just had to share this with you. Here are those words:

This Land Is Your Land

Woody Guthrie

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walkin', I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said : 'No trespassing'
But on the other side it didn't say nothin'
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple, I saw my people
By the relief office, I'd seen my people
As they stood hungry, I stood there askin'
If this land made for you and me ?

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking that freedom highway
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walkin', I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said: 'No trespassing'
But on the other side it didn't say nothin'
That side was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Songwriters: Woody Guthrie

This Land Is Your Land lyrics © S.I.A.E. Direzione Generale, Ludlow Music Inc., Woody Guthrie Publications Inc, LUDLOW MUSIC OBO WOODY GUTHRIE PUBLICATION INC, LUDLOW MUSIC INC OBO WOODY GUTHRIE PUBLICATIONS

Enjoy , digest and remember This Land is YOUR Land

I suggest you watch and enjoy

The documentary features Billy Bragg now a UK music elder statesman (though he's younger than me), but I was surprised that I couldn't track  down a Springsteen recording of the song on Amazon as I am sure he has recorded the song, but maybe not.

#AprilSongs #19 Good Friday

As it's Good Friday and some of us have the day off, I thought I would do a Google search for songs about Good Friday and every link was about religion and hymns. Now don't get me wrong, I was expending a big proportion but not everything, and really Good Friday is a bit of a misnomer for who it's supposed to be remembering and what for. Luckily for me, in my collection I have a song called "Good Friday" by The Black Crowes and I found a live take with Chris Robinson doing an impression of The Man.

So this is today's #AprilSongs entry, and today I actually had a lie in until eight o' clock. I still haven't got dressed or showered but I will do as soon as I publish this.

I am still reading "White Wolf's Son" by Michael Moorcock and enjoying it although it does swirl around a bit and points me in the direction of more books by the author that I need to catch up on, but this weekend I am one of the lucky ones to have four days away from the work environment and I am definitely going to enjoy them a lot.

Have a Good Good Friday everyone.

#AprilSongs #18 Thursday

Next in the #AprilSongs sequence is "Thursday" by The Pet Shop Boys ft Example. While I'm all for collaborations (check out FFS) sometimes it just seems to be about making the product more marketable to consumers rather than any artistic exploration and adventure.

I'm surprised The Pet Shop Boys have not appeared in the blog before as they are relatively local to me, and the finest purveyors of sequencer / arpeggiator based tunes probably ever , with a dry sense of humour and a sense of occasion. Example is the stage name of Elliot Gleave who extrapolated his name from his initials E.G. (exempli gratia ("for example")) so obviously more than a little intelligence on both sides.

So just a short post on this beautiful looking day (or it will be when the cloud completely burns off)

Enjoy your Thursday everybody.

Rock Samplers

I've been meaning to write this, as I discovered, or got access to a lot of great music from the loss leader rock samplers in the late sixties and early seventies. I have been looking on Discogs and a lot of them can be picked up at very reasonable prices.

While I am semi tempted by some of them , the reality is that I have all the music digitally and the reason that these albums were put out was to tempt you to actually buy the albums. THe prices were as little as 50p with some of the double albums maybe hitting £1.99.

Sometimes these albums contained previously unreleased songs such as "New Age of Atlantic" which contained "Hey,Hey, What Can I Do" a stunning Led Zeppelin non-album song (although it did appear on later compilations, and a take of Simon and Garfunkel's "America" by Yes, ten minutes of it.

I'm going to put up ten covers of some compilations that I either have or have had, I still have a copy of the Island compilation "Nice Enough To Eat" which I loved so much I put together my own CD compilation so I could listen to it digitally as well, but the vinyl copy is downstairs and that will always be part of my collection.


Another favourite was the United Artists double compilation "All Good Clean Fun" which also had a booklet with it, but I have forgotten what was in it so need to track that down at some pome point.

The were many double sets such as Island's "El Pea" and "Bumpers", Vertigo's "Suck It And See". Harvest's "Picnic:A Breath of Fresh Air" (containing the , at the time, Pink Floyd rarity "Embryo")

Many of these are now available digitally and there and now often free digital downloads available to tempt you to buy more, but these all hold a lot of fond memories for me. The images link to Amazon but you can probably track them down on Discogs.

These are just a very small sample and you will probably have your own favourites but delving into these can bring some wonderful music into your life.

#AprilSongs #17 Wednesday Evening Blues

For the #AprilSongs sequence I have been surprised how many options there are for each day. At the beginning I was sure "Blue Monday" by New Order would be in here, it probably won't. I though I may have to include the Inspector Morse / Endeavour Theme by Barrington Pheloung because Morse's boss in Endeavour has a surname of Thursday, but I have a long list of Thursday songs.

Today we are going with "Wednesday Evening Blues" by John Lee Hooker another blues song like the one we opened with "Stormy Monday Blues" by T-Bone Walker.

So as it is a Bank Holiday Weekend we are more than half way through the week and I am well past halfway in the #AprilSongs sequence, which has surprised me a little from when I first had the idea, though it goes to show you never know if something can be done until you actually try it.

I'm sure I will have other ideas to make me write, but for the rest of April this will keep me occupied.