The Sundays on a Friday

The Sundays are one of those bands who probably would never have crossed by radar without this blogging malarky.
I can honestly say that I had never heard of them til some of my comrades featured them although Summertime which I subsequently picked up as a CD single seemed vaguely familiar.

Purchasing Blind their second album from 1992 in a Dunblane charity shop now means that I have the set when it comes to their albums as I had previously acquired Static and Silence their third one and then Reading, Writing &Arithmetic their first one all from charity shops.

Blind is probably their least accessible offering and is somewhat dark and melancholy. It may well be a grower but at the moment I feel that if this was the first one I had encountered I wouldn't have bothered with the rest. Which would have been a shame.

The Sundays - What Do You Think?

The Sundays - Blood on My Hands

Is it Only 'Cause You're Lonely

Finally getting round to listening to and featuring an Uncut compilation I picked up recently in Fort William.
Uncut Presents from June 2004.
I was initially drawn in by the list of artists including a number of Americana artists who have graced these pages before.
However there were no real standouts. The best track is probably Tonight We Ride by Tom Russell but I have featured that before.
So here are Earth, Wind and Fire who have appeared once before getting Dirty and Grant-Lee Phillips who somewhat surprisingly hasn't but who provides the Mona Lisa reference.

A fairly unexciting Thursday post there!

Earth, Wind & Fire - Dirty

Grant- Lee Phillips - Mona Lisa

Crowns and Coronets # 6 - Another Guest Contribution

A guest contribution a couple of weeks ago from Germany and now one from Portugal. Chances are we will not be allowed such continental collaboration after Brexit which would be disappointing.
Then again  maybe no jazz fusion or prog rock. Mmmmm!
Take it away George...

Two wildly different tracks today in CCs king and queen series, one prog rock and one from South Africa. 
 By now I have lost at least 80% of readers by using the words  “prog rock”. Look, it could be worse, 
 I could have written “one of today’s tracks is smooth jazz” . The first group features Mr Toyah Wilcox
 (oops, there goes another 7% of readers)  and to shed the remaining 13% I should add that the album
 this track is taken from has been reviewed with those dreaded words “jazz fusion” (see how I didn’t make
 a maths teachers joke by saying “the remaining 15 %”?).  The album is Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, and the 
track is the last track on the album, and is called Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, part two.

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues in Aspic part 2


So that’s 7 and a half minutes of your life listening to King Crimson  that was very well spent. Given that
 there’s now no one reading these words it looks like I’m talking to myself. “Tremendous track, that one,
George.”  “You’re not wrong there, George.”
The Mahotella Queens’ track is from the album Izibani Zomgqashiyo. According to the notes on the back
of the album this means “the lights of Mgqashiyo, and surely everyone knows that Mgqashiyo is an" African
 kind of beat which will never die”. I should have started this article with the Mahotella Queens,   because
 no-one has made it this far down (as the actress said the bishop).

The Mahotella Queens - Xola Mama

Thanks to my very good friend CC for hosting this, it led to me playing two albums that have not had an 
airing for a long time.

These Days of Ours

I picked up These Days of Ours a 5 track EP by India Bourne from 2011 for 50p in a charity shop in Forres.
It was a pretty random purchase. Pretty random rather than totally random as I figured from the cover that it may well be folky and ethereal - and so it proved. Also Forres is right beside the Findhorn Foundation who sometimes put on music and are very much left field so I thought she may have played there or this was donated by someone who lives there.

So who is India Bourne? Well my research tells me that she is from South Devon but now resident in South London and that she plays piano and cello and is a member of  Ben Howard's band having known him from childhood.
This was her debut record. I can't see any evidence of a follow up.

India Bourne -In His Arms

India Bourne - These Days Of Ours

Monday's Long Song

I had something lined up for today but it has been usurped by a recent purchase from a Stranraer charity shop as part of a three for a pound package.
From 1999 and on Peter Gabriel's Real World label Volume 2: Release as the name suggests was the second album from Afro Celt Sound System.
They are a group who fuse dance music with traditional Irish and West African music in a similar vein to what fellow Real Word artist Martyn Bennett did with traditional Scottish music.

The title track Release is the first one on the album and the collective are joined on this one by Sinead O'Connor or Shuhada Davitt as she is now known following her recent conversion to Islam.

Afro Celt Sound System - Release

What Passing Bells For These Who Die As Cattle?

Today marks the centenary of the Armistice between the Allies and the Germans at Le Francport near Compiègne in France at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
The war that was meant to end all wars saw the death of between 15 to 19 million people - 9 to 11 million of them military personnel.

I've featured the words of Wilfred Owen and the music of Eric Bogle before on this date and I make no apology for featuring them again.They sum up the futility and the carnage better than I ever could.

And in the morning we will remember them.

The Men They Couldn't Hang - The Green Fields of France (No Man's Land)

The Pogues - The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Memphis v Nashville 3

We have been away for a few days so this post was written in advance. At the time of writing (Sunday the 4th) Carl and Pearl Butler had a commanding lead over Robbie Fulks and Linda Gail Lewis which if it still stands makes it  Memphis 1 Nashville 1 

This week we have Chuck Berry v Steve Earle.
You will all be familiar with the song  Memphis,Tennessee .Sadly  I don't have the version by the Silicon Teens mentioned by Dirk so you will have to settle for the original.

South Nashville Blues from Steve Earle's 1996 album I Feel Alright is somewhat autobiographical from his years lost to drug addiction prior to a spell in prison. Not one I suspect that is mentioned by the Nashville Tourist Board.

I'm going for Mr Earle in this instance. Who knows if the Silicon Teens had been available it may have been another story.
Others, as always may choose to disagree.

Chuck Berry - Memphis, Tennessee

Steve Earle - South Nashville Blues