So this week there are no major video productions so nothing that stands out visually. If I was going to suggest just two video in this week's list that are worth watching then I would go with "Death Defying" by the Hoodoo Gurus and Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix. The former because it is just a brilliant song and the later for the cool hippy audience enjoying Hendrix amazing guitaring.

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

A great song by Carly Simon and interestingly she must have performed it at the same venue as the first song of hers I shared all the way back in week 8, day 54. Would love to have been on one of those boats in that Marina.

I am a little surprised I have not included a Carol King song in my collection yet. I wanted to find a live performance of her song Tapestry because once again I find the lyrics of this song more interesting than some of her other classics.

However, it is quite hard to find a clip of Youtube with her performing this song as it is not as famous as her other works even though her best selling album was named after this song. Finally I found this Youtube clip which contains a little bit of Carol King's life history at the end of it.

This Aussie band makes its long overdue debut today in Covid Island Discs. This song is probably their most famous. A song that if you grew up in Australia in the 70s/80s, you will know because it was regularly played on Aussie radio and at those brilliant teenage parties that form such wonderful memories for me as a now "50 something" year old. Perhaps the "Don't tear it down there is life it yet" could be applied to all us old fogies as we enter the twilight years of our lives. 😎

So I'll admit that Jimi Hendrix is not my favourite artist but here is one of his classics which demonstrates some of his guitaring skill. If you like electric guitar, you're going to love this one. This video is quite funny really as it is sooo late 60s early 70s. Like the two cool hippy dudes dancing at the front getting the ears blasted by the outside speakers. Also quite funny crowd scenes capturing the "dress code" of the time. What I find a little sad about these 70s clips is that all these folk, who at the time, were so non-conformist, went on to form, in general, a generation which was far more materialistic than their parents and whose leadership has seen the most outrageous growth of inequality which has practically all but wiped out some of the gains we made in creating a more equitable society in the post 2nd world war Western world.

Yesterday I cited a Travis song. Not sure why but Travis and Keane always remind me of each other so I thought it was therefore time for another Keane song. This is also the second time Keane has appeared in Covid Island Discs. The last song I cited was She has no time which I think is their prettiest song. This one however is probably one of their most famous and better known I think than "She has no time"

The day John Lennon was assassinated I came home from school and my Mum told me the news as I came through the front door of our house in Gurney Crescent Seaforth. At the time I actually did not know much about the Beatles but this was all to change as over the following months Sydney radio stations were full of Beatles music. As I got to know their music better, I began collecting some of their albums and one album I bought was a compilation called the Beatles Ballets. This was one of the tracks on this album and at the time I think it became one of my favourite Beatle songs. Unfortunately, I could not find the original recording of "The Fool on the Hill" on Youtube so the best I could do was get this performance of the tune from Paul McCartney which is pretty decent.

Now this was originally meant to be the final Covid Island Discs song as the UK was scheduled to come out of lockdown on the 21^st of June. However, due to the UK government not shutting down travel from India, as post Brexit they wanted to get a quick trade deal with this nation, we now have the Indian delta variant spreading rapidly through the UK population. This means that the government announced on the 14^th of June that they are delaying the removal of lockdown restrictions until the 19^th of July. So I will continued posting on this web page new songs for another month.