“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…
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…
‘Rain’ is this week’s theme for Song Lyric Sunday, hosted by Helen at This Thing Called Life One Word At A Time. Ideally, I think she would like something upbeat and fun. Sorry about that. For happy songs about rain, I could steer you towards ‘Singin’ In The Rain’, of course, and ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’…
[WordPress’ ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ wants ‘the satisfaction of a list’ today. So here’s one – and it’s about music, for a change] Most songs are ‘covered’, in the sense that they are performed by someone other than the writer/composer themselves. Some songs are so popular that they get to be covered by many…
This week, Helen at This Thing Called Life One Word At A Time is looking for a road-trip song. There’s certainly no shortage to choose from and, as usual my thoughts turned first to the Grateful Dead – who for many years of touring seemed to be on a semi-permanent road trip themselves. They had…
“There’s something happening somewhere baby, I just know that there is” This week, Helen at This Thing Called Life One Word at A Time wants a song from the 80s….. My initial response was that the eighties was a bit after my time really. I tend to associate that era with New Romantics and bad…
And so we reach the heart of the matter. The band that this blog derives its name from, the band that this blogger listens to more than any other. So what’s so special about the Grateful Dead? I’m by no means a natural evangelist, but a bit of background explanation might help. The bus came…
This week, Helen at This Thing Called Life One Word At A Time has set us the theme of ‘Healing’ for Song Lyric Sunday. I was pleasantly surprised at how many potential candidates I managed to come up with in a short time: Marvin Gaye, obviously; The Beatles ‘It’s Getting Better; even ‘Fix You’ by…
When I was eleven or twelve years old, I wanted to be Billy Fury. He could sing, he was handsome, he made the girls scream. It was a very competitive field, British male soloists back then. Let’s be honest, everyone wanted to be the British Elvis. There’s no doubt that the top dog was Cliff…
the only deadhead in the hameau 