This week, Helen at This Thing Called Life One Word At A Time has challenged us to post a set of song lyrics that ‘surrounds a happy memory’. I suppose you could take this one of two ways: either a song that holds links to a personal happy memory (so could, theoretically, be about anything)…
This week, Helen at This Thing Called Life One Word At A Time is looking for a song about the military. Not as straightforward as some of the themes we’ve had – especially having discounted, as I did immediately, Village People’s ‘In The Navy’ – but inspiration struck a little later with this song by…
Looking back at my music lexicon so far, it’s pretty obvious that I’m a child of my time – more specifically from about the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies.That isn’t an apology: I suspect that most people’s musical tastes are largely defined by their formative years. Lucky me. As we reach the letter ‘K’, however, while…
This week, Helen wants a song with a name in the title. No shortage of them, that’s for sure, but to give everyone a rest from the Grateful Dead (‘Althea’, ‘Bertha’, ‘Cassidy’, ‘Corinna’, ‘Loose Lucy’ et al) here’s a very early (1967) single by one of the greatest – and certainly the loudest – rock…
“All I know, I could not leave her there” It’s been a few weeks since the Grateful Dead featured in Song Lyric Sunday, but this week’s theme of ‘flowers’ provides a good opportunity to redress that. Both words and music of this sweet little song were written by Jerry Garcia’s long-term collaborator, Robert Hunter. Oh…
The first time I heard (or even heard of) Janis Joplin was on the BBC’s classical music station, Radio 3. Back in 1968, it also brodcast ball-by-ball cricket commentary on England test matches. It being the school holidays and I being a bit of a nerd, I was planning to score the upcoming test match…
First of all, many congratulations and best wishes to Helen from This Thing Called Life One Word At A Time on her marriage yesterday (which, quite unrelatedly, was also my 65th birthday). Appropriately, the theme for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday is precious metal or stones. This song is not about love in the romantic…
“There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences.” – Robert Ingersoll This week, Helen is looking for a song that deals with ‘consequences’, whether good or bad. As she rightly points out, lots of songs are, in one way or another, about some consequence of an earlier action, as any…
The letter ‘I’ isn’t exactly awash with possibilities for a Music Lexicon – unless you genuinely are/were a fan of INXS, which I’m not/wasn’t. Fortunately though, for me there was one standout candidate to fill this particular vacancy – The Incredible String Band. ‘Psychedelic folk’ is a fair enough shorthand description of the Incredibles, so…
“Oh I’ll be a good boy Please make me well” The theme for this week on Helen’s This Thing Caled Life One Word At A Time is ‘pain’. As Helen rightly points out, there’s no end of songs that seek to convey the feeling of pain. However, many – perhaps even the majority – of…
the only deadhead in the hameau 