This week all the videos are worth watching. I think there are at least 4 which are visually evocative:

1. Road to nowhere, Talking Heads
2. Mad hatter, Melanie Martinez
3. Be Good Johnny, Men at Work
4. One of us, Joan Osborne

Out of these four, the "Be Good Johnny" video really captures in the rather negative pressure that was put on my generation of Australian males to be good at sport. I really like the caricature of the older Australian male asking the boy "are you going play cricket this year Johnny? Nah, Nah, Nah... So tell me, what kind of boy are you Johnny?"

Melanie Martinez song is of course really out there in terms of visual imagery fitting the LSD-type altered reality of the Mad Hatter.

The video for "One of us" goes really well with the lyrical content of this song. The video switches back and forth from Joan Osborne singing to images of humanity living their lives in the strange reality in which we all find ourselves. The images have been purposely red colour-shifted so the whole thing has a more observer-like quality as one watches the various scenes unfolding in the video.

Yet this week my vote goes for Talking Head's video "Road to nowhere" as the imagery in this video consistently matches the theme of the song reflecting on the apparent meaninglessness of life's progression. I particularly like the sequence from 1 minute to 1 minute 21 seconds capturing a couple going through their whole life's events and ending in a dancing kiss — what a cool way to resolve life's apparently meaningless paradox!

So today I watched a very interesting video analysis of a song by the Beatles called A Northern Song. Post Covid Island Discs now usually records the death of famous musicians and of course poor old George Harrison passed away many years before the Covid-19 pandemic. So I guess this post is in memorandum to George Harrison even if he did pass away so many years before this website was even born. Yet there appears to be so much more to this song of Harrison's than meets the eye as explained by James Hargreaves in his video which is also included under the Beatles Anthrology recording of Harrison's clever song which I think, as Hargreaves argues, is a passive-aggressive dig at the way McCartney and Lennon treated him as an inferior member of the Beatles.

After watching Hargreaves excellent analysis of the Harrison's song, along with his detailing of the complicated tensions that existed between the Beatles in the late 60s, it became obvious that the band was always in trouble and it was only a matter of time before the fab four would go their separate ways. Hargreaves analysis challenges the commonly held idea that the breakup of the band was solely down to Yoko entering the scene as clearly relational tensions in the Beatles were not just confined to John and Paul.

A less known version but better version (in my opinion) of the song before Lennon and McCartney fell into a possible trap set by Harrison (see Hargreaves analysis below).

Analysis of the song and its meaning by James Hargreaves

The mainstream version of the song as first published on the Yellow Submarine Album

So on Thursday I posted a song by probably the greatest wordsmith of rock and roll, Bob Dylan. Yet this Australian give the great Dylan a run for his money in my opinion. For my UK friends, his music is really worth getting into if you like poetry set to music. He has so many great songs but in this little number he manages to smuggle a recipe for making gravy into his lyric ("Just flower, salt, a little red wine; don't forget a dollop of tomato sauce for that sweetness and extra tang"). Like Bob Dylan's Hurricane, this song tells a complete story about a guy in prison over Christmas.

Another clever lyric clause in this song is: "and you'll dance with Rita, I know you really like her, just don't hold her too close oh brother please don't stab me in the back. I didn't mean to say that, it's just my mind it plays up, multiplies each matter, turns imagination into fact."

In this song, Alan Parsons adopts Egyptian mythology and imagines a conversation between a man who is at the point of death and the boatman who has been charged with taking his soul across the river of death. I have written below the beginning of verses 1 and 2.

"Well I sympathise completely, but there is nothing I can do, I am just a humble servant with a message here for you. And I know you have good reasons and there's things you have to do but the boatman won't be waiting and he's leaving here with you."

"Well I sympathise completely, but there is nothing I can do, I am just obeying order, I'm a simple soul like you. Well you really are persuasive but I heard it all before.."

That final line of verse 2 I have always found striking as the image is so powerful. Yes imagine the most powerful richest man or woman in the world trying to argue with death that it is not their time. I love the way death (the boatman) is so polite softening the blow with feigned praise; "yes you really are persuasive .... but I heard it all before: wow what an understatement when one thinks of the number of people in the history of the world who have died.

Back in the days when I was a St Paul's fellowship leader, I used this song in an Evangelistic play I put together. A girl who attended our fellowship group at the time, who was a dancer, put together a really cool choreographed dance sequence for me. Once more all distant memories of long lost days.

So one final thing, about this clip. It features the late comedian Robin Williams playing the part of the protesting traveller. Somewhat sad and ironic because, as with so many comedians, in reality William's life was much more towards this melancholic end of the scale rather than the funny man of many of his movies and of course in the end he embraced the boatman through suicide — RIP.

First Joan Armatrading hit in Covid Island Discs.

There is a song on Kate Bush's album Never for Ever called blow away. In the song she sings the line:

"Hello Mini, Mooney, Vicious, Vicious, Buddy Holly, Sandy Denny"

And here is the long lost Sandy Denny, another tortured soul who suffered immensely from alcohol addiction and mental illness finally losing the battle with both in 1978 at the age of 33. "Who knows where the time goes?"

Well I never thought I would be doing a second Covid Island Disc post on Good Friday. Given it is Good Friday, it seems only appropriate to share a song that is related to the Christian story of the creator God who redeems humanity via the death of his son Jesus of Nazareth around AD 30 in Roman occupied Jerusalem. Whether the story is true or false is something that every individual, who hears the story, must decide for themselves. However, if it is true, then it offers us an incredible hope that this present life, with all its pain and suffering, is not the final reality of our existence but there is a much greater and better reality that awaits us if we can just embrace the message of the gospel story which simply calls us to say sorry and to recognise that the creator of this incredible universe has the right to rule it.

Amy Grant is probably one of the most famous Christian artists within the mainstream musical industry and I have already cited one of her songs It takes a little time on day 184 of Covid Island Discs.

A new hit from Coldplay. Quite a catchy song with a very funky video sequence to go with the music.