This week has some really good videos in it. The three videos that make my video shortlist are:

1. Love Story, Taylor Swift
2. She Moves in her own way, The Kooks
3. To the Island, Crowded House

To be frank the video that goes with the Doors song "Riders on the storm" is also pretty good, especially if you like the idea of a long car journey on US interstate highways, but I can't really shortlist more than half the play list can I?

"Love Story" is just a very well shot video and of course Taylor Swift in it looks stunning. "She moves her own way" is also an interesting video for it nicely captures the life of a rock band on the road, with some interesting hotel and travel scenes all shot while the lead singer, Luke Pritchard, sings out the words of this song in his distinctive Northern English accent.

Yet the video that gets my vote this week is the Crowded House song, "To the island". Given this song was only released last month, it has all the quality of a modern video production with some really great imagery, although the dancing of the guy who is dressed in the white suit, leaves a little bit to be desired 😎.

Covid Island Discs came to an end after the UK finally came out of all lockdown restrictions on the 16^th of July 2021. However, a lot has happened since my final Covid Island Discs post. Besides the many covid-19 variants (now up to Omicron XE) that mean the incidence rate in Britain is as high as it has ever been, although thankfully, the pathogenicity of the disease is now much less with the majority of the UK population being vaccinated and the virus itself is becoming less pathogenic, the most terrible development of 2022 has been the invasion of Ukraine by Putin's Russia. This has resulted in senseless death of many thousands of innocent Ukrainians and Russians alike.

It was therefore significant that on the 25^th of March 2022, Sting re-released a Cello/guitar version of his famous hit Russians which first appeared on the Dream of Blue Turtles album that was released in 1985. After the collapse of the Berlin wall, we all thought that this song had been safely assigned to history. As with so many assumptions in this fallen world, how wrong we all turned out to be. Anyway, I guess the only good thing to come out of Putin's unspeakable wickedness is at least we get an updated version of this Sting classic to enjoy for another 30 years (assuming Putin doesn't do something completely insane).

I fell in love with this musical in my twenties when I first saw a performance of it out doors in Sydney. It even stimulated me to read Victor Hugo's Les Misérables which is a very loooong book and is much darker than even the musical.

In the 80s Pink Floyd released what was then to be their last album entitled "The Final Cut". This represent the point where Roger Waters left the band. Some years later the remaining members of Pink Floyd released another album suitably titled "A Momentary lapse of Reason". However, "the final cut" is more Roger Waters than Pink Floyd per se and the main theme of the album's songs is based around a strong protest against Thatcher's Falklands war.

This song however returns to Water's other major theme captured in their album "The Wall". The idea of how we all hide our genuine selves from other people. In this context the final cut is full of double meaning from suicide to the cutting away of all external pretence to reveal one's "dark side". And yet "if I show you my dark side, will you still hold me tonight?" is the age-old question Waters considers in this heavy but moving song.

I shall close off week 38 returning to my musical centre of gravity with this Pink floyd classic from their Wish you were here album. It is funny but I started scouring the 2020 music charts for something modern to include in Covid Island Discs and I could not believe how the music scene now is dominated by what I would describe as techno pop from single female artists. A far cry from the stuff that constitutes the golden days of rock and roll. What happen to all those amazing guitar riffs. I guess like every generation before me I'm showing my age and let's face it, it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

Well it is my lovely wife's birthday today and I have the perfect song for this day. "Happy Birthday Helen" by Things of Stone and Wood. Sadly, the audio quality of this video is very poor so I have put two versions of the song one so you can see the Aussie band members of Things of Stone and Wood performing, the other so you can hear the song with decent sound quality. It is always gratifying when one can find the perfect song for an occasion (slightly more aligned than the song I chose for our 20^th wedding anniversary (Covid Island Discs Day 26) 😀.

Video of the band performing but poor sound quality

Audio of song with no video

So this song is particularly interesting lyrically for it covers a disturbing theme of a guy who hits a woman in his car while driving home. Out of fear he doesn't stop but continues on his way. It is clear from the song that the woman is not killed but remains in a permanent coma. Although the hit and run driver escapes justice, he cannot escape his conscience and it is his anguish cry against his conscience that occupies the chorus of the song

All my life I'll be haunted by
All my life just one moment in time
All my life until the day I die
And it will live inside of me
I will never be free all my life
Trapped in her memory all my life
Till the day that you open your eyes

This song captures the hope that Christians have in terms of what Easter Sunday means in terms of redeeming our present universe from all the pain, suffering, death and wickedness that so many people experience on a day to day basis. I'll admit that sometimes it feels almost impossible to hold onto this hope but at the end of the day, as Simon Peter (one of the 12 Disciples) once said to Jesus when he asked his disciples whether they wanted to leave too, replied: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69)

I have now found the studio version of this song so replaced the original live version, which was part of this original post, when it was first published at Easter 2021. The studio version has some really clever imagery with a rejected mirror found on a rubbish dump that gives glimpses of the future hope that is all around us if only we could see through these present sufferings and trust in the Christ's redemptive power.

Happy Easter!