Songs
As I've said on my homepage, I've long been a low-key singer-songwriter-acoustic-guitar-player. "Low-key" in part because my music has always taken second place - at best - to my writing and academic work. Even so, listening to and creating music has been and continues to be a vital part of my life and has sustained me in more ways than I can say. In particular, I have long admired the compression of thought and feeling that can be squeezed into the few minutes it takes to sing or listen to a song.
Here, then, are home demos of (i) a few songs I've written over the years and (ii) a few songs written by others (albeit with modifications of my own to lyrics in a couple of cases as indicated below).
(i) Selected Songs I've Written:
- How Simple the Changes -- "How simple the changes, the way life rearranges; you and I were lovers once, now we're just like strangers..."
- The Glory Train -- There's a whole genre of songs about a train, whether real or metaphorical, coming to take us to a better place; but this song, written more in sorrow than anger, runs with the idea that, if there is a Glory Train, then it sure ain't running on time!
- The Travellers' Wells -- God help you if you're out there on the parched plains and don't stumble upon the Travellers' Wells.
- These Days -- About breaking free from one's ghosts.
- All the Fishes in the Sea -- Fishes and birds can ask the strangest questions.
- 17 Angels -- An almost mystical song about mad love.
- The Things to be Done -- A song of solace for the lonesome cowboy or cowgal inside us all.
- Old, Old Story -- "It's an old, old story about love and its glory, but it's always a good one to tell."
- Dilapidated Soul -- About being worn down by the workaday world. You've never felt that way yourself, right?
- Saviour -- About what really saves us.
- The Taste in my Heart -- Which way will it go?
- Seize the Day -- Remember the Captain and his mandolin.
- Everything but the Girl -- "You know what 'the thing is'? The heart just yearns and yearns."
- Heaven's Call -- On hearing a woman with the sweetest voice singing in the London Underground.
(ii) Songs by Others (albeit with modifications of my own to lyrics in the two cases indicated by double asterisks):
- Into Temptation -- Neil Finn's (of Crowded House) atmospheric song about, well, falling into temptation. Enough said!
- **American Tune (now become "Song of Our Days") -- Forgive the mini-essay, but this might interest you. This song is Paul Simon's magnificent reflection on the state of himself, his friends, and the American union in the early 1970s. However, that was many years ago and I am not American but rather Australian-UK, so I have taken the (in some ways time-honoured folk tradition) liberty of changing some of the lyrics in the last third of the song to reflect a more global, mid-2020's perspective. Besides, although Simon is credited in the sheet music for this song as the composer of both its words and music, the beautiful melody line in fact derives from a lovesick lament published in 1601 by Hans Leo Hassler. This essentially secular song was then appropriated to become a Lutheran hymn before being appropriated in turn by J S Bach as part of his St Mathew Passion. It's against this background that the melody was then put into service by Paul Simon with a lovely guitar arrangement for his "American Tune" (the title of which is ironic given that tune itself is, as we can now see, not remotely American in its origins).
- Blackbird -- Paul McCartney's classic, short acoustic piece, written, he's said, under the influence of Bach (for those who care about such things, it employs guitar intervals of 10ths, as does some of Paul Simon's also Bach-influenced "American Tune").
- Sweet Baby James -- James Taylor's beautiful lullaby. A cast-iron song - any change would diminish it. Taylor has said that the first verse was written for his then four-year-old nephew and the second verse was written for himself.
- **Too Long at the Fair -- Written, I believe, by Joel Zoss, but first recorded by Bonnie Raitt. I've loved the mood, melody, refrain, and guitar part of this song for ages, but I could never really relate to the lyrics in the verses and the bridge. I've therefore again taken the liberty of replacing these parts of the song with lyrics of my own (listen to the original and see what you think).
- Helplessly Hoping -- Stephen Stills's alluringly alliterative early song from the first CS&N album (1969), probably written in the context of his doomed love affair with the crystal voiced folk-singer Judy Collins.
- Propinquinty -- Forget his stint with The Monkees, Michael Nesmith wrote some great songs as an independent singer-songwriter - this is one of them. Propinquity, an unusual word, is a fancy term for "nearness" or "closeness".
- Baker Street -- My version of Gerry Rafferty's great song about alienation in the city, dreaming of the future, and going home.