Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)

This is a post that I couldn't resist. I love snow, and there is plenty of it here right now, but there is however a certain ambivalence to that comment; it actually makes me want to be at home, warm and with good food. I could do the whole snowed in thing - at least for a week, I guess.
This song sums it up far better than I ever could.

You were so smart then
in your jacket and coat.
My softest red scarf was warming your throat.
Winter was on us,
at the end of my nose,
but I never love England more than when covered in snow.

And a friend of mine says it's good to hear you believe in love even if set in fear
well I'll hold you there brother and set you straight
I won't make believe that love is frail and willing to break.

I will come back here,
bring me back when I'm old.
I want to lay here forever in the cold.
I might be cold but I'm just skin and bones
and I never love England more than when covered in snow.

I wrote my name in your book,
only god knows why,
and I bet you that he cracked a smile,
and I'm clearing all the stuff out of my room,
trying desperately to figure out what it is that makes me blue,
and I wrote an epic letter to you,
but it's 22 pages front and back and it's too good to be used
and I tried to be a girl who likes to be used
I'm too good for that.
There's a mind under this hat,
and I called them all and told them i've got to move.

Feel like running
Feel like running,
running off.
And we will keep you
we will keep you little one,
safe from harm,
like an extra arm you are part of us.

You were so smart then
in your jacket and coat
and my softest red scarf was warming your throat.
Winter will leave us,
left the end of my nose,
so goodbye old England 'till next year's snow.

New Music 2012 - Part 20 - Difficult to resist?

Amazing live in the UK last summer.  She Keeps Bees.  Released July 17, 2012 in the US.

'Blue Moon' is a cover version to be filed alongside such veteran songs as 'Ghost Woman Blues' (1928), as re-recorded by Low Anthem on the 2011 album 'Smart Flesh'. Written a little before (1933-4?) it was first recorded in 1935 and, as it happens, is also the unofficial anthem of the supporters of both Crewe Alexandra and Manchester City Association Football clubs. The exact lyric may not be strictly followed but then even the original lyric had at least four re-writes before it first aired as a bona fide single in its own right!

It has been covered many times down the decades, including that by Elvis Presley on his eponymous début album in 1956, something that without doubt contributed to its early adoption into the canon of 'American songs' although both Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were English. It appeared in snippets in the film 'Grease' and again in Glee (season 1) and in many other films, performed by a myriad of artists, in the meanwhile. It was originally written for the purpose of film accompaniment but went through three sets of lyrics before it was actually used in a film release. Both Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart have been known to perform live cover versions of it.

It is, therefore, a true song-survivor.

2008 matters because... Part 1

I've not posted much recently but that is not because music has been far from my mind. Rather the opposite in fact; it is just that I have been listening to it and thinking about it rather than writing about it. Several people have asked about lyrics to some albums I have mentioned recently, particularly 'Jill Jackson' - Jill Jackson and 'Love Tattoo' - Imelda May and I hope to have these on-line this coming weekend at the latest.

Some say, and it has been the case for decades, that the latest year is just more proof of the end of the world as we know it. I am quite willing to believe that the global economy in 2008 has suffered vicissitudes unknown in the lifetimes of most of us but does that therefore mean the end of music as we know it? I'd wager that the answer is no for that never really happens, new layers are simply added and, while some genres fade in popularity and prominence (not always the same thing) they rarely disappear completely and have a tendency to return, revisited and reinvented, when least suspected. I have only one reservation and that is: Do you get the feeling that things are undergoing a subtle, but perhaps profound, change?

Think back over the last year and there are some surprises, the most surprising often not being the most immediately obvious. A good and fairly easy place to start is the continuing ascent of apparently unlikely, but often very successful, cover versions.

Who, say three years ago, would have predicted the likes of Adele covering Bob Dylan's Make You Feel My Love?
It's the only cover on her 2008 début album '19' but what a dangerous choice - he has rarely played it live, hinting that it it is too difficult to perform under pressure - but when she performed it live on 'Later... with Jules Holland' as a piano ballad it went stellar and is now to be a single.
Leona Lewis has just released an updated version of her #1 2007 album 'Spirit', which went straight to the top spot again this week; of the two new tracks on it one is actually a cover version of Run from the 2003 Snow Patrol album 'Final Straw' which she first revealed, by performing it live, on BBC Radio 1's 'Live Lounge' in 2007 and again on X-Factor a couple of weeks ago.

I've heard this cover of Willie Nelson's Angel Too Close To The Ground (from the soundtrack to the 1980 drama Honeysuckle Rose), performed live by Beth Rowley twice now and it is amazing:

If you had not have fallen then I would not have found you
Angel flying too close to the ground.

I patched up your broken wings and hung around a while
Kept your spirits up and your fever down.
I knew some day that you would fly away
For love's the greatest healer to be found

So leave me, if you need to, but I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground.

It is included, as a duet, on her 2008 début album 'Little Dreamer', which also includes a fine cover of Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released and also some very good new songs. In my opinion So Sublime is the best of them, and amongst the best on the album, but it is all a close call.

I'll expand on what I mean by this generalisation in the coming weeks, but this is my premise:
Could the diversity that we have seen this year be the start of a new era of popular music we can hardly yet even imagine?

Chase the dragon...

The interest in this has somewhat subverted any plans I might have had. I thought my residual liking for Magnum was exactly that but it seems that this is not so! As the album art for Chase The Dragon that I have been able to find so far (on the internet) is quite poor I've defaulted to providing it myself and simply because I can.

[Click image to see it at 1000 x 1000 pixels.]

This is the cover of my original vinyl copy photographed for this very purpose and if you want it at 2000 x 2000 pixels you could ask me. Some years later Magnum were to follow Chase The Dragon with another album of great potential. In 1988 Wings Of Heaven was both their most commercially successful album and also the one that proved that Magnum were not the kind of band many still believed they were. The single 'Days Of No Trust', taken from it, made the singles chart but after this Magnum faded away as it was a bad time to be the kind of band they long had been, which was our loss and also doubtless theirs too.

Behave

I'm supposed to be telling you about the albums of 2005 that I still frequently listen to, and in a bit I will do so, but I have just been reminded of a splendid solo album from 2004, Grey Will Fade by Charlotte Hatherley. She was then still lead guitarist with Ash, but as of early 2006 she has been a solo artist. Her first new release, on 'Little Sister Records', is out on Monday 17th December. There is a four-track download EP and also an extremely limited 7" release of first single Behave.

Luckily I already have the vinyl version on pre-release and a fine thing it is too. Just like Grey Will Fade it is full of strange twists: some are lyrical but most are musical. Grey Will Fade is still one of my favourite albums of 2004 - and few would attempt the kind of key and time changes to be found on it.
The 'B' side of the 7" is a remix of Behave and I generally have rather mixed feelings about such things. This particular one I really like however - I'm not sure quite why but it just "works". It presages her second solo album The Deep Blue, which is due to be released in March 2007.