#blogs | Take It Easy

The time has come, the Walrus said… no, hang on, that was someone else. But the time has come for me to do another raking through the embers of what I posted here on the blog last month. So here goes…

In total I landed in your inbox thirteen times, all but one of which were musical offerings. A little unusually, there wasn’t a monthly review amongst them, as I had already got that out of the way to avoid squashing it in somewhere – thanks to the calendar. Four of these were for Tuesday Tunes, five for Song Lyric Sunday, three others took a musical theme and there was that one outlier that somehow sneaked in.

As usual I’m starting the review with Tuesday Tunes. The first of these in September was Tuesday Tunes 215: Clothes, which was prompted by my watching videos on YouTube and playing a favourite. That was by the fantastic Frank Turner, and there were other tunes by Rod Stewart, The Hollies, Chris Farlowe, and Prince and the Revolution. Excellent tunes, all of them, and three which took me back a good few years.

I built on that theme the next week with Tuesday Tunes 216: Shoes. I had realised in compiling the previous one that there were a great many songs that I liked which were something to do with shoes, and they made for a good set. The music was by Traffic, Paul Simon, Kirsty MacColl (with a superb video), The Beatles, and Carl Perkins. A fairly eclectic mix, I think, and I managed to avoid playing a more obvious version of that last one.

For the following week the post came a day after my birthday, so I rather self-indulgently celebrated that with Tuesday Tunes 217: My Birthday. Well, I figured that if I didn’t, no one else would! I began with what for me was an obvious choice – The Beatles – and followed that with Altered Images, Stevie Wonder, Drive-By Truckers, the Swedish Chef from The Muppets, Marilyn Monroe, and closed with an exhortation to have a good time from The Darkness – possibly the best video I played last month!

I closed the month with Tuesday Tunes 218: International Day Of Peace. The actual day for this was three days earlier, but I figured that the message was always going to be valid. I gave a little of the background to the day, and played a selection of pertinent tunes from Cat Stevens, Jessie Buckley, Merry Hell, Big Country, and George Harrison. Some less familiar names amongst those, perhaps, but they were good for the message.

1 September was a Sunday, hence there being five posts for SLS. For the first of these we were invited to play a song from the year we were born. Yikes! I gave you Song Lyric Sunday: A Hooly-Hooly Skirt which led with a nice little novelty song by Guy Mitchell. For good measure I added in a second by him, as it was #1 in the UK the week I was born, not that I noticed.

For the next week Jim ran again with a theme that he had used a couple of years ago, to play a song that reminds us of ourselves. After a fair amount of thought I went with the same one as the previous time – it saved writing a whole new post! That became Song Lyric Sunday: I Still Won’t Back Down, which of course was based on a song by the late, great Tom Petty. No one appeared to mind the repetition, as this was my second most viewed and ‘liked’ post of the month!

Then came a week when we were playing a song that reminded us of our childhood. Given that I was 9 when the Fab Four started I think they qualified for a memory from that time, and this became Song Lyric Sunday: Always Rain In My Heart, which of course is a line from The Beatles’ Please Please Me. The record was released during the worst winter I have known, which brings back so many memories. As a bonus I added in a short documentary video of the making of the album it was on – which was all recorded in one long day!

The following week saw us being invited to play a song which makes us think about life. I played two tunes, the first of which provided the title of Song Lyric Sunday: To Everything… That was, of course, The Byrds and Turn! Turn! Turn! and I also played a rather different take on life by Joe Walsh.

For the last one of the month we were playing a song by someone who has died. I couldn’t choose between two of my favourites so I played a song each by both of them, in Song Lyric Sunday: The Dear Departed. The two in question were Nanci Griffith and Warren Zevon, both of whom I loved for a long time. This produced one of those weird copyright issue things that occasionally arise: I played the official video for the Nanci Griffith song but apparently it is available everywhere except in the US, where Nanci came from. Jim advised me that YouTube’s licence to play it had expired, which came as a surprise as I had played it three times previously with no problem! But I added in a link which did work over there, to a live performance – which I’ve also played before. If that doesn’t tell you that I like that song, nothing will!

My first midweek post of the month was the outlier. This was the latest in one of my occasional series, which became Friday Funnies 8: 70s Ads. I ran a piece a few months back about ads from the 50s and 60s, so it seemed like a plan to move a little further forward with another selection. This qualified for the series as I deliberately chose clips of ads which were humour-based, something which had become much more prevalent by then.

The next week I shared a piece which may well become another occasional series. I had previously posted about how folk music can tell a story, and went for another in The Story Of Tam Lin. Unlike the first, this wasn’t based on real history, but it is interesting to me to see how superstitions and fairy tales have been passed down the ages. I played four versions of the song, by Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Steeleye Span, and Faun (absolutely beautiful, especially as the band had re-recorded their version in English, with a new video).

Prompted by the inclusion of Fairport Convention in that, with the beautiful voice of Sandy Denny, I then made her the subject of the following week’s post Listen To The Band: Sandy Denny, another in one of my occasional series. I take an in depth look at artists in that, and gave you nine of her songs, from early days with the Fairports, through the short-lived band Fotheringay, a one off collaboration as part of The Bunch, and then her solo career. I could listen to her sing just about anything, and was pleased to see how many of you enjoyed her too.

Last week’s midweek post was another for what is becoming a fully fledged occasional series, in A Classic Album: 3. The album in question was the brilliant George Harrison offering All Things Must Pass. This is another series in which I play an extended set of songs, in this case eight of the eighteen tracks on the first two albums in the triple set – I didn’t go near the third, the Apple Jam session.

So, that was it for my month of posts. As always, I like to conclude these reviews with a tune, and where better than the brilliant opening track for my first Tuesday Tunes post last month: