#AprilSongs #24 Just Wednesday

A rather subdued Inspiral Carpets song, "Just Wednesday" for the final Wednesday post in the #AprilSongs sequence.

Now only another six posts to do and it has got my posts way on track to hit 2K since the start of this blog this year (does that make sense, well it does to me).

Anyway we are mid week, the weather is looking grey and there is nothing much to report apart from seeing  Rapasa Nyatiti on Northumberland street in Newcastle watch him here on my Instagram feed. His website is here

Enjoy that and have a great Wednesday

#AprilSongs #23 Gentle Tuesday

Apparently it's St George's Day , so a day for Little Englanders to moan about not having a Bank Holiday to celebrate their most English of Saints, for "celebrate" read go to the pub and get drunk on John Smith's or Bombardier, but actually today is the first day back after the Easter Bank Holiday.

Also today I heard a really annoying term "slashies" , this usually refers to self employed people who embrace multiple "careers" / "businesses" . Now I have no problem with people doing multiple jobs because that's what they want to do, but most people in this situation are forced into this because the only jobs are zero hours or short hours contracts that do not pay enough to basically live, so taxi driver / pizza delivery guy / toilet attendant  / bouncer would be an example of a "slashie" today. Says a lot about how our economy is run.

Now to the business end of the blog, the #AprilSongs and today we have "Gentle Tuesday"the opening song from "Sonic Flower Groove"  by Primal Scream for the penultimate Tuesday song. The guitar sound is almost Byrds like and is a welcome addition to this sequence.

So time to take drugs and take a walk to work and listening to some decent music on the way to work.

#AprilSongs #22 Come Monday

Well I am writing this at sixteen minutes past midnight so it's actually Monday and this will be my penultimate Monday post in the #AprilSongs sequence.

Again I'm not going for the obvious one so I have chosen "Come Monday" by Jimmy Buffet which is not his best or most subversive but is pleasant and has a great introduction from the man himself on the video I am sharing with you. So enjoy , but check out his other stuff such as my favourite "Volcano" or "Margaritaville"

I am vaguely thinking of theming May's posts on Food, so songs about Food, but then again goven how many posts I've done this month , I may put that off for a month or two.

I know this is a very short post as it is now nearly half past midnight and I need to share this on non Facebook social media to get the Robots checking in on me.

So have a great Easter Monday everybody.

Woody Guthrie - 3000 Unrecorded Songs

I've just watched the BBC documentary Woody Guthrie: Three Chords and The Truth and it reminded me of a few things and showed me a lot i didn't know about them man. I didn't that Guthrie and his father were racist and his father was involved in or facilitated lynchings. A lot of Guthrie's early writing was awash with racist wording and illustrations until ...

.. on his radio show he played a piece called "Run Nigger Run" , and he used THAT word in the worst ways you could, but then he got a letter from a Negro listenten, an educated guy who said up to the that point the show had been excellent, but by playing that and using THAT word he was showing disrespect and race hate towards African Americans. Guthrie took this on board and vowed never  to use THAT word again, he apologised on air and in a letter and became very active in pushing race equality. The problem is race inequality is still with use but Woody showed that people can change when educated by events.

This then brought me on to the fact that though he was struck down by the horrifying Huntingdon's Chorea which destroys the nervous system and therefor you lose control of everything, he had been a prolific writer being inspired by everything. After his death there were over three thousand sets of lyrics to unrecorded songs.

A lot of these are now being picked up by artists examples of which are seen in Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Mermaid Avenue Sessions" and the wonderful  take on "Old Man Trump" by Ryan Harvey (with Anne Di Franco and Tom Morello) and he remarked bout the number of songs that Woody had written.

Another remarkable one is "Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" , my favourite take on this is by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez (see here), but this illustrates the absolute disdain the for immigrant workers not even acknowledging them as human and the same is happening today with Trump's Wall and Brexit in the UK.

The documentary is excellent watch it , listen to Woody's songs and if you need to change yourself for the better , do it.

#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.