The sixth of eight children in a poor black family, Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born in Depression ravaged Tryon, North Carolina. At the age of three she began to play the piano at her family’s church.  By the age of twelve she was giving classical recitals, although at the first one her parents, who had taken front row seats, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people. She refused to play until they were returned to the front and once said that this incident was a catalyst for her later involvement in the civil rights movement.

Upon graduating from school she moved to New York City to study at the Julliard School of Music and began to play a mixture of jazz, blues and classical music in small clubs to finance her musical education.  She also decided to adopt a stage name, combining “Nina” (a nickname a boyfriend had given her) with “Simone” after the French actress, Simone Signoret.  During these performances she was required to sing and it was for her singing that she was first approached to make a recording.

It was Gershwin’s “I Loves You Porgy” from Porgy and Bess, which she learned by ear from a Billie Holiday album. The year was 1958 and although it would be her only Top 40 hit, for the remainder of her life she would ever be known as “The High Priestess of Soul.”

Recorded in 1959, this Sunday selection is a traditional “Negro Spiritual” that was released on the “High Priestess’” third studio album, “The Amazing Nina Simone.”  As I’m far from a Biblical scholar (or a Biblical or scholarly anything) I’ve managed to dig up a little cheat sheet of the song’s Old and New Testament references, including nine, ten, eleven and twelve, which are not included in Simone’s rousing version.

1. We all know who the little, bitty baby is.
2. Two for Paul and Silas
 (Paul being St. Paul and Silas being a close missionary companion)
3. Three for the Hebrew children (Daniel’s companions in the fiery furnace: Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego)
4. Four for the poor who stood at the door (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)
5. Five for the Gospel preachers (Paul and the four others who joined him on his missionary journeys: Silas, Barnabas, Timothy, and John Mark)
6. Six for the six that couldn’t get fixed (i.e. picked)
7. Seven for the seven who came from Heaven (Seven-fold Spirit of God)
8. Eight for the eight who stood at the gate (The eight people who entered Noah’s Ark)
9. Nine for the ninety-nine in line (Those waiting while the Good Shepherd sought “His” one lost sheep)
10. Ten for the Ten Commandments
11. Eleven for the eleven who went to Heaven (The twelve disciples minus Judas Iscariot)
12. Twelve for the twelve Apostles

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Sunday 18 March 

Children go where I send you

 Children go where I send you,

How shall I send you?

I’m gonna’ send you one by one,

One for the little bitty baby,

He was born, born, born in Bethlehem.

Children go where I send you,

How shall I send you?

I’m gonna’ send you two by two,

Two for Paul and Silas

One for the little bitty baby,

He was born, born, born in Bethlehem.

Children go where I send you,

How shall I send you?

I’m gonna’ send you four by four,

Four for the poor that stood at the door,

Three for the Hebrew children,

Two for Paul and Silas,

One for the little bitty baby,

He was born, born, born in Bethlehem.

Children go where I send you,

How shall I send you?

I’m gonna’ send you six by six,

Six for the six that couldn’t get fixed,

Five for the gospel preacher,

Four for the poor that stood at the door,

Three for the Hebrew children,

Two for Paul and Silas,

One for the little bitty baby,

He was born, born, born in Bethlehem.

Children go where I send you,

How shall I send you?

I’m gonna’ send you eight by eight,

Eight for the eight that stood at the gate,

Seven for the seven came down from heaven,

Six for the six that couldn’t get fixed,

Five for the gospel preacher,

Four for the poor that stood at the door,

Three for the Hebrew children,

Two for Paul and Silas,

One for the little bitty baby, One for the little bitty baby,

One for the little bitty baby,

He was born, born,

He was born…in Bethlehem.

Supernumerary rainbows, monochrome rainbows, multiple rainbows, reflected rainbows, tertiary and quaternary rainbows, circumhorizontal arcs… for a guy who’s colorblind there certainly seems to be a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to the colors of the rainbow, and that’s just from the scientific perspective.  Rainbows glisten brightly throughout many of the world’s religions (e.g. where would Noah have been without one?) and whether Greek, Norse, Sumerian, Amazonian or countless others, they also play a supporting role in most mythological traditions. And then there’s the rainbow of folklore.

As we ease into St. Patrick’s Day (hey, I see McDonald’s is back with its Shamrock Shake) and those of a certain heritage take to the “wearing of the green” (which came about after St. Patrick purportedly used the three leaves of the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to the Irish pagans) invariably we are drawn to that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow guarded by a Leprechaun.  How could someone NOT write a musical?

“Finian’s Rainbow” by Yip Harburg and Fred Saidy, with music by Burton Lane, was a 1947 Broadway production that ran for 725 performances (there was a revival in 2009).  In 1968 it was made into a musical film when studio head Jack Warner took a chance on a novice “hippie” director named Francis Ford Coppola.  The film starred Petula Clark, in her first Hollywood musical, and Fred Astaire in his last.

Today’s selection, with lyrics by the same man (Harburg) who brought us “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is now a nightclub standard. And who better to transport us over those emerald hills and streams than a woman born in São Paulo, Brazil and raised in Tokyo, Japan, the fine bossa nova singer, Lisa Ono.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Saturday 17 March 

Look to the Rainbow

 On the day I was born

Said my father said he

I’ve an elegant legacy waiting for ye

‘Tis a rhyme for your lips

And a song for your heart

To sing it whenever the world falls apart

 Look, look, look to the rainbow

Follow it over the hills and stream

Look, look, look to the rainbow

Follow the fellow who follows the dream

 T’was a sumptuous gift

To bequeath to a child,

Oh the lure of that song

Kept her feet running wild.

For you never grow old

And you never stand still,

With whippoorwills singing

Beyond the next hill.

 Look, look, look to the rainbow

Follow it over the hills and stream

Look, look, look to the rainbow

Follow the fellow who follows a dream

 So I bundled my heart

And I roamed the world free

To the east with the lark

To the west with the sea

And I’ve searched all the world

And I’ve scanned all the skies

But I found it at last

In me own true love’s eyes

Look, look, look to the rainbow

Follow it over the hills and stream

Look, look, look to the rainbow

Follow the fellow who follows the dream

 Follow the fellow

Follow the fellow

Follow the fellow

Who follows the dream

It was 02:29 a.m. Houston time and Day Three of the 135^th and final flight of a glorious, tragic 30-year program. Time to awaken the (light) four-person crew of Space Shuttle Atlantis for one of Mission STS-135’s most critical maneuvers. A favorite of Commander Chris Ferguson, and chosen by his family, today’s selection served as the wake-up call.

With a name that conjures up laser-light images but was actually derived from the use of  “electric” rock instruments combined with “light orchestra” (one that uses only a few cellos and violins), Electric Light Orchestra (or ELO) was formed in 1970 when Birmingham musicians Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood had the idea to “take rock music in the direction that the Beatles had left off.”

Originally billed internationally as “The English guys with big fiddles,” their eponymous debut album, “The Electric Light Orchestra” was released in the UK in 1971 and later in the U.S. as “No Answer” (after a record company secretary tried to ring the UK producers for the name of the album and, unable reach to reach them, left a note with the words “No Answer”).

Today’s selection, which ambitiously serves as the final track of the “Concerto for a Rainy Day Suite” was featured on ELO’s seventh studio album, “Out of the Blue” in 1977.  It peaked at Number 35 on the US Billboard Charts and reached Number Six on the UK Singles Chart.

The song is notable for the “vocoded” voice that sings “Mr. Blue Sky” during certain stanzas and it was long assumed that the (synthesized) vocoded voice at the end of the song is saying the same thing, but it’s actually saying “Please turn me over” as the song was at the end of Side Three and the listener was being instructed to flip the LP over.

Atlantis seemed to understand. The mission brief for that July morning in 2011 included the last-ever docking between a space shuttle and a space station. According to the NASA record … “with Atlantis arriving on time on the R-Bar underneath the Station, Commander Ferguson took the controls and guided her through the 360 degree back flip, the final time an orbiter will conduct the RPM under the Station they helped to build….”

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 16 March

Mr. Blue Sky

 Sun is shinin’ in the sky

There ain’t a cloud in sight

It’s stopped rainin’ everybody’s in a play

And don’t you know

It’s a beautiful new day hey, hey

Runnin’ down the avenue

See how the sun shines brightly in the city

On the streets where once was pity

Mister Blue Sky is living here today hey, hey, hey

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why

You had to hide away for so long

Where did we go wrong?

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why

You had to hide away for so long

Where did we go wrong?

Hey you with the pretty face

Welcome to the human race

A celebration, Mister Blue Sky’s up there waitin’

And today is the day we’ve waited for

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why

You had to hide away for so long

Where did we go wrong?

 Hey there, Mister Blue

We’re so pleased to be with you

Look around see what you do

Everybody smiles at you

 Hey there, Mister Blue

We’re so pleased to be with you

Look around see what you do

Everybody smiles at you

Mister Blue Sky, Mister Blue Sky

Mister Blue Sky

 Mister Blue, you did it right

But soon comes Mister Night, creepin’ over

Now his hand is on your shoulder

Never mind, I’ll remember you this

I’ll remember you this way

 Mister Blue Sky please tell us why

You had to hide away for so long

Where did we go wrong?

 Hey there Mister Blue

We’re so pleased to be with you

Look around see what you do

Everybody smiles at you

 Please turn me over

It’s certainly one of the odder vehicles for a Top 20 hit…really, everything about it, including the group, the album and its very existence.

In the late ‘60s Southern conductor / composer / musician / author / artist, Tupper Saussy and Nashville singer, Don Gant formed The Neon Philharmonic, a psychedelic pop group that released its debut album in 1969.  Described as a “Phonographic Opera” the album’s name was “The Moth Confesses” and there has been much debate over whether it or The Who’s “Tommy” (released the same year) was actually the very first “Rock Opera.”

Curiously, it was inspired by Samuel Barber’s three-act “Antony and Cleopatra” which The New York Times scathingly called a terrible opera.  Saussy read the review and went to see the production because he wanted to see what a terrible opera looked like.  He then conceived “The Moth Confesses,” centered around a single protagonist, and publicly offered it as a challenge for someone (anyone) to stage.  Although no one ever took Saussy up on his challenge, today’s selection (the album’s fourth track) reached Number 17 on the Billboard charts.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – 15 March 2012 

Mornin’ Girl

Mornin’ girl, how’d ya’ sleep last night?

You’re several ages older now

Your eyes have started showin’ how

The little girl’s growin’ now

Mornin’ girl, was that you last night?

Crying on the radio

Beggin’ for a way to go

To go back where love wasn’t jumbled so

 Oh no, things are different now than they were before

You know love is more than kisses

A whole lot more

 Mornin’ girl, put your dreams away

And read your box of Cheerios

And powder-puff that pretty nose

And go out and find your man where the wild wind blows

Mornin’ girl

As cemeteries go it’s a happening spot.  Intermingled amid the resting places of relative unknowns are those of well-known actors and comedians, an Egyptologist of world renown, celebrated scientists and decorated soldiers, politicians and entrepreneurs, there’s a Russian revolutionary and a celebrity chef, as well as one of the world’s great footballers, a Nobel winning doctor and a survivor of the Titanic.  And there’s the woman who famously posed the question (in song) that applies to everyone there…and everyone here, “Who knows where the time goes?”

The inscription on her headstone reads, “The Lady” Alexandra Elene MacLean Lucas (Sandy) Denny, 6.1.47 – 21.4.78 and the cemetery is in South London’s Putney Vale, just off Wimbledon Common and but half a league from where Britain’s “pre-eminent folk rock singer” first saw the light of day in Nelson Hospital on the Kingston Road.

Her Scottish grandmother was a (traditional) singer and Denny, who studied classical piano, showed an early interest in singing too, although her parents were dubious that a living could be made from such a vocation. So after leaving school she began to train as a nurse.  But soon she was drawn to the folk club circuit and was eventually invited to join the (folk rock) Strawbs in 1967, followed by Fairport Convention in 1968. In the early ‘70s Sandy Denny turned to a solo career and was by then recognized as Britain’s premier female singer.

It was all cut short in 1978 when, while on holiday in Cornwall with her parents and infant daughter, Denny tumbled down a staircase and hit her head on the concrete floor. Following the incident she suffered from intense headaches (a doctor prescribed her painkillers) although she continued to perform days after the fall, before collapsing into a coma and dying from a traumatic brain hemorrhage.

Written and first recorded by Denny as a demo in 1967, “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” was recorded by Judy Collins and released as a B-side to her cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides, Now” then later included as the title track of her popular 1968 album. Denny’s legendary version was released the following year on Fairport Convention’s album “Unhalfbricking.”

In addition to featuring this, the “Favourite Folk Track Of All Time” (according to the listeners of BBC Radio 2), “Unhalfbricking” is also remembered for a sleeve design that features neither an album title nor a band name, but only a photo of Neil and Edna Denny (Sandy’s once dubious parents) standing outside their family home on Arthur Road, Wimbledon…about halfway between Nelson Road Hospital on the Kingston Road and Putney Vale Cemetery….

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Wednesday 14 March

Who Knows Where the Time Goes

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving

But how can they know it’s time for them to go?

Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming

I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?

Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving

Ah, but then you know it’s time for them to go

But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving

I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?

Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone while my love is near me

I know it will be so until it’s time to go

So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again

I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?

And who knows where the time goes?

I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?

And who knows where the time goes?

They marched nearly 300 miles in protest against the ravages of poverty and unemployment, generating enormous public support.  And the diminutive “Red Ellen” was with them every step of the way.  Today’s selection was inspired by a query about  the use of the term, “Geordie” in yesterday’s posting.

That’s a nickname for someone from the Tyneside/Newcastle area of Northeast England and there were quite a few of them on the North Sea rigs.  Perhaps the most famous Geordie, at least in popular song, is the keyboard luminary Alan Price, born in 1942, who went on to form the Animals (perhaps you recall their rendition of “The House of the Rising Sun”) and later the Alan Price Set.

A self-taught musician with a proud working class upbringing, Price was educated at Jarrow Grammar School in the former shipbuilding hub that served as starting point for the great Jarrow Crusade of 1936, when 200 men and their MP, Ellen Wilkinson, one of the first British women to be elected to Parliament (under five feet tall, she was dubbed “Red Ellen” both for her hair color and her Labour leaning politics) marched all the way to London to lobby the Palace of Westminster and call attention to the collapse of Tyneside’s (and much of the North’s) once great industry.

Today’s song was featured on Price’s 1974 autobiographical album, “Between Today and Yesterday” and well and truly, along with those of the bairns (children) he works very hard to “make your heart feel glad.”

  LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Tuesday 13 March

The Jarrow Song

My name is Geordie McIntyre

And the bairns don’t even have a fire

So the wife says “Geordie, go to London Town!”

And if they don’t give us half a chance

Don’t even give us a second glance

Then Geordie, with my blessings, burn them down

 Come on follow the Geordie boys

They’ll fill your heart with joy

They’re marching for their freedom now

Come on follow the Jarrow lads

They’ll make your heart feel glad

They’re singing now, yes now is the hour

 My name is little Billy White

And I know what’s wrong and I know what’s right

And the wife says “Geordie, go to London Town!”

And if they don’t give us a couple of bob

Won’t even give you a decent job

Then Geordie, with my blessings, burn them down

 Come on follow the Geordie boys

They’ll fill your heart with joy

They’re marching for their freedom now

Come on follow the Jarrow lads

The joy’ll make your heart feel glad

They’re singing now, yes now is the hour

 Well I can hear them and I can feel them

And it’s as just as if they were here today

I can see them, I can feel them

And I’m thinking nothing’s changed much today

 Not all came here to stay their way and die

But they would come and hit you in the eye

Now’s the time to realize that time goes on

Nothin’ changes, changes, changes

Now I can feel them, I can see them

And it’s as just as if they were here today

I can feel them and I need them

And I’m thinking nothing’s changed much today

 Not all the people stay their way and die

But they would come and hit you in the eye

Now’s the time to realize that time goes on

And nothin’ changes, changes, changes

My name is little Alan Price

I tried to be nice all of my life

But I’m afraid that up to date it doesn’t work

Because when you lay some money down

The people try to put you down

Now where do I stand, either side or not

 Come on follow this Geordie boy

He’ll try and fill your heart with joy

We’re marching for our freedom now

Come on follow this Jarrow lad

He’ll try and make your heart feel glad

We’re saying now, yes now is the hour

The day’s first offshore flight was never an upbeat journey. It was far too early, especially after a typical fortnight of fun and frolic. But we’d all had our two weeks on “the beach.” Now like clockwork, we were at the Aberdeen heliport again, making ready for the devil’s payment of two weeks on a North Sea rig.

At precisely 0600 the chopper lifted off, with two pilots and 26 mournful men clad in Day-Glo orange survival suits, each anticipating the 14 grueling twelve-hour shifts that loomed ahead. At least we were treated to a spectacular sunrise.

In 1983 cassette tapes were the favored musical medium (remember?) and just prior to take-off the pilots would allow you to pass one up.  Then they’d theatrically make a choice from the pile and play it for those who wished to blot out the old Sikorsky S-61’s many sounds (but not shakes) on the headphones tethered to every seat.

The only tape of mine that was ever chosen was Tom Wait’s “Closing Time” and it was the very first track on the album (as we used to refer to them) that set the stage for one of the more poignant hour-long passages to the Brae Alpha Field, some 150 miles off the Scottish coast.

The helicopter rose like a fly, vertically at first and then forward, slowly gaining height and speed and soon you could see the sun beginning to crack the horizon out over the cold, roiling bay. And then the music, yes my music, began to play.

The song that brought wistfulness to the demeanor of some of society’s coarsest members (me included, I suppose), while the creaking chopper swayed and the headlights of the early morning traffic shined from down below, is today’s selection. Listen and picture if you will:

 “Well my time went so quickly…”

[What was that he said? You know…it bloody well did too.]

“…As I pulled away slowly, feeling so holy, God knows, I was feeling alive…Now the sun’s coming up, I’m riding with Lady Luck…Freeway cars and trucks…Stars beginning to fade, and I lead the parade, just a-wishing I’d stayed a little longer…”

[By now a few tears were welling up in the eyes of a Geordie roughneck across the aisle.]

 “And it’s six in the morning, gave me no warning; I had to be on my way. Well there’s trucks all a-passing… and the lights all a flashing…”

[On the song goes, describing a completely different scenario and yet achingly true to this very experience, while our chopper continued to gain momentum and altitude and jarred onward; leaving behind the last visible remnants of a comparatively happy world, so preferable to the dreary one that awaited us. And away we flew, hanging on to that last image of “terra firma”…away out over the shore…and then the sea…]

 “…Now the sun’s coming up, I’m riding with Lady Luck… freeway cars and trucks, freeway cars and trucks, freeway cars and trucks…”

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Monday 12 March  

Ol’ ‘55

 Well my time went so quickly,

It went lickety-splitley out to my ol’ ’55

As I pulled away slowly, feeling so holy

God knows, I was feeling alive

 Now the sun’s coming up

I’m riding with Lady Luck

Freeway cars and trucks

Stars beginning to fade

And I lead the parade

Just a-wishing I’d stayed a little longer

Oh, Lord, let me tell you that the feeling’s getting stronger

 And it’s six in the morning

Gave me no warning

I had to be on my way

Well there’s trucks all a-passing me

And the lights are all flashing

I’m on my way home from your place

 And now the sun’s coming up

I’m riding with Lady Luck

Freeway cars and trucks

Stars beginning to fade

And I lead the parade

Just a-wishing I’d stayed a little longer

Oh, Lord, let me tell you that the feeling’s getting stronger

And my time went so quickly

I went lickety-splitley out to my Ol’ ’55

As I pulled away slowly, feeling so holy

God knows, I was feeling alive

Now the sun’s coming up,

I’m riding with Lady Luck,

Freeway cars and trucks

Freeway cars and trucks

Freeway cars and trucks…

Taking their name from King’s College Cambridge, where a number of the original members were choral scholars (reading for their university degrees while singing six days a week in the college chapel) today’s selection was first featured on the King’s Singers 1980 album “New Day”.

Written by Welshman, John David (best known for his work as a bass player with Dave Edmunds), the inspiration for the song came while David was… “sitting alone late at night on the settee feeling very low, and watching an ominous story on the news about the very real possibility of nuclear war.

“I started singing to the (hopefully) soon-to arrive New Day like it was an entity, that would rescue me from the depths. If the sun came up and the birds started singing as usual then I could believe that it really was the new day in which life would go on, and in which hope would survive.

“The tune and the words popped into my head at the same time, and it was all written in about 10 minutes, which is why (to me at least) it’s not perfect. But I didn’t feel I had the right to change anything. I think that’s about as close as I can get to an explanation.”

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Sunday 11 March

You Are the New Day

I will love you more than me

And more than yesterday

If you can but prove to me

You are the new day

Send the sun in time for dawn

Let the birds all hail the morning

Love of life will urge me say

You are the new day

 When I lay me down at night

Knowing we must pay

Thoughts occur that this night might

Stay yesterday

 Thoughts that we as humans small

Could slow worlds and end it all

Lie around me where they fall

Before the new day

 One more day when time is running out

For everyone

Like a breath I knew would come I reach for

A new day

Hope is my philosophy

Just needs days in which to be

Love of life means hope for me

Borne on a new day

You are the new day

Dylan had gone electric; the Beatles had just released “Sgt. Pepper”. And the prolific, insightful, sardonic and poignantly tragic Phil Ochs wanted to make a record that reflected these trends and more.

So he hired a producer with a classical music background to help him to realize his vision. The result was his musically diverse (fourth) studio recording “Pleasures of the Harbor”.  Released in 1967,  it was his most ambitious album.

A fitting selection for a Saturday, the album’s elegiac title track was composed after Ochs saw a screening of John Ford’s 1940 film, “The Long Voyage Home”.  Listen carefully amongst the woodwinds, horns and strings. One of the session musicians on guitar was (“…send lawyers, guns and money, Dad get me out of this”) a 20 year old Warren Zevon.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Saturday 10 March 

Pleasures of the Harbor

And the ship sets the sail

They’ve lived the tale

To carry to the shore

Straining at the oars

Or staring from the rail.

And the sea bids farewell

She waves in swells

And sends them on their way

Time has been her pay

And time will have to tell.

Soon your sailing will be over

Come and take the pleasures of the harbor.

And the anchor hits the sand

The hungry hands

Have tied them to the port

The hour will be short

For leisure on the land.

And the girls scent the air

They seem so fair

With paint upon their face

Soft is their embrace

To lead them up the stairs.

Soon your sailing will be over

Come and take the pleasures of the harbor.

In the room dark and dim

Touch of skin

He asks her of her name

She answers with no shame

And not a sense of sin.

‘Til the fingers draw the blinds

Sip of wine

The cigarette of doubt

The candle is blown out

The darkness is so kind.

Soon your sailing will be over

Come and take the pleasures of the harbor.

And the shadows frame the light

Same old sight

Thrill has blown away

Now all alone they lay

Two strangers in the night.

Till his heart skips a beat

He’s on his feet

To shipmates he must join

She’s counting up the coins

He’s swallowed by the street.

Soon your sailing will be over

Come and take the pleasures of the harbor.

 In the bar hangs a cloud

The whiskey’s loud

There’s laughter in their eyes

The lonely in disguise

Are clinging to the crowd.

And the bottle fills the glass

The haze is fast

He’s trembling for the taste

Of passion gone to waste

In memories of the past.

Soon your sailing will be over

Come and take the pleasures of the harbor.

 In the alley, red with rain

Cry of pain

For love was but a smile

Teasing all the while

Now dancing down the drain.

‘Till the boys reach the dock

They gently mock

And lift him on their backs

Lay him on his rack

And leave beneath the light.

Soon your sailing will be over

Come and take the pleasures of the harbor.

And the ship sets the sail

They’ve lived the tale

To carry from the shore

Straining at the oars

Or staring from the rail.

And the sea bids farewell

She waves in swells

And sends them on their way

Time has been her pay

And time will have to tell.

Soon your sailing will be over

Come and take the pleasures of the harbor.

The first thing that strikes you is the remarkable bone structure.  They look like a band that’s comprised of three super models and their brother.  Good genes you might say.  And then they begin to play and you’re compelled to make a reassessment. The Corrs from Dundalk, Ireland have…spectacular genes.

In the ’60s and ’70s Gerry Corr (a payroll department manager by day) and his wife, Jean regularly played and sang pop standards together at local pubs.  As their young family grew they would often bring their kids (Jim, Sharon, Caroline and Andrea) to the performances. Gerry also taught each of his children to play the piano and while Jim (the eldest) took guitar lessons, Sharon (the eldest daughter) learned violin.

Once they graduated from school, Jim and Sharon began playing as a duo at their aunt’s local pub and were eventually joined by their younger sisters, with Caroline on drums and Andrea singing lead.  Then the Corrs’ career took off, when in 1991 they each landed small parts in (that seminal film) “The Commitments” and the film’s musical coordinator became their manager. Since then the sibling group has released five studio albums (and numerous singles), which have all gone platinum.

And yet there’s more. In 2005 they each became honorary Members of the Order of the British Empire for their prolific philanthropy, making them the first Irish band ever to receive such an honor from the Queen.

Written in 1982 by Phillip Lynott, lead singer for the Dublin band, Thin Lizzy, “Old Town” was the first song to be played on Irish legal Independent Radio (Dublin’s Capital Radio 104.4) when it was launched in 1989. Although the Corrs covered the song with a studio recording for their 2005 album, “Home” they first performed it during their 1999 appearance on MTV’s Unplugged series.  Today’s selection is that rendition.

 Oh and regarding that good bone structure.  Take a look for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSEBUCu-wYs

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 10 March

Old Town

The girl’s a fool

She broke the rule

She hurt him hard

This time he will break down

She’s lost his trust

And so she must

Know all is lost

The system has broke down

Romance has broke down

 This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broken down

This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broke down

She plays it hard

She plays it tough

But that’s enough

The love is over

She’s broke his heart and that is rough

But in the end he’ll soon recover

The romance is over

This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broken down

This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broke down

This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broken down

This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broke down

 I’ve been spending my money

In the old town

It’s not the same honey

With you not around

I’ve been spending my time

In the old town

I sure miss you honey

Now you’re not around

You’re not around

This old town

Hola

 This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broken down

Yeah, yeah

This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broke down

 This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broken down

 Yeah, yeah

This boy is crackin’ up

This boy has broke down