Jim’s key words for Song Lyric Sunday this week could all be classed as terms of endearment. I’ve gone for ‘honey’ and this lovely song by Van Morrison, from the 1971 album of the same name. You can take all the tea in China Put it in a big brown bag for me Sail right…
The Proclaimers – twin brothers Charlie and Craig Reid – are arguably a Scottish national institution. It is, for example, an iron rule that any evening wedding ‘do’ that takes place in Scotland must end with ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’. This lovely song is a nod towards their birthplace of Leith – once the…
Any Tom, Dick or Harry will do for Jim’s Song Lyric Sunday challenge this week – so here is ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, written and performed (under the group name The Verve) by Richard Ashcroft. There was a great deal of controversy about this song when it was first released (in 1997) , as it clearly…
Even a great wordsmith like Leonard Cohen sometimes ran out of things to say – especially when in want of a chorus. ‘Joan of Arc’ is the final track on ‘Songs of Love and Hate’. With this dialogue between Joan and the fire which is to burn her at the stake it is, in my…
Song Lyric Sunday this week has the theme of ‘Crazy’. This was the first thing that popped into my head: an archetypal – and archetypally mis-spelled – Slade footstomper from 1972. I don’t want to drink my whiskey like you do I don’t need to spend my money but still do [Chorus] Don’t stop now…
Appropriately enough for the time of year, Jim has selected a yuletide theme for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday. One of the truly worst aspects of `Christmas shopping is being subjected to the ceaseless barrage of a comparatively short playlist of ‘Christmas classics’. This song by Wham! is one of the few that doesn’t make…
Oh Bob, you old romantic… This is the final track on the 1967 ‘John Wesley Harding’ album that got plenty of needletime from me back in the day. It’s a sweet, upbeat ending to an album that has more than it’s fair share of darker, more serious material. Close your eyes, close your door You…
Facial features constitute the unifying theme for Jim’s Song Lyric Sunday keywords this week. At last this gives me an opportunity to feature this gem. In the unlikely even that anyone ever put a gun to my head and demanded to know what one song by the Grateful Dead was my favourite, it would probably…
“I was hungry and it was your world” Jim’s key words for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday reflect the closeness of Thanksgiving Day in the USA, so it seems appropriate that this song was apparently (as in ‘according to Wikipedia’) written by Bob Dylan on Thanksgiving Day in 1965. Nobody feels any pain Tonight as…
And now for something completely different. Lonnie Donegan was at the head of the skiffle craze in the UK in the late fifties and developed a successful side-line in humorous little ditties such as this (another was ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’). Although it was written in the USA as long ago as 1924, in…
the only deadhead in the hameau 