Covid Island Discs

Day 22: How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly

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.“

My Video Summary

If you click on the Playlist Video for Week 4 (top right of this page) you will be taken to a single video which allows you to play each song in this week's list one after the other. Alternatively, if you watch my own video summary below of this week's songs at the end of the video two playlist links will appear. The one on the left hand side will take you to the video playlist for this week while the one on the right will take you to a single video playlist that allows you to play the complete Covid Island Discs collection for all the currently completed weeks so far — well over 200 songs and counting!