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

At the very beginning of Covid Island Discs (Day 3 in fact) I posted the song Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits. The back story to that song was that in year 11 we had to write an essay on our two favourite rock songs and analyse their lyrics (you can read about it here). However, our English teacher, who set us the writing task at the time (her name was Mrs Jackson), also presented her two favourite songs and this was one of them.

After she presented this very sad song, one to the guys in the class said "What's all this about is this singer gay or something?" Needless to say this comment reduced a class of young 17 year old boys to fits of laughter much to the chagrin of our poor long suffering English teacher.

Time for another old one from an American band that makes its first appearance in Covid Island Discs. As I've said a few times since starting blog, it is strange how you can mine so much music and yet forget about bands that brought you lots of joy when you were a twenty something year old. Dr Hook had some great hits in their time but this is probably one of their best known ones. Unfortunately the recording quality of this clip isn't the best.

So poor old Little River band has thus far only be cited once in Covid Island Discs and that was all the way back in April 2020 when it was my 20^th wedding anniversary. The song I cited that day was Happy Anniversary Baby which I must confess is not what I would call one of their best songs. This song however was the opening track on their debut self-titled album "Little River Band" and is a great little number. This particular version of the song is sadly a little truncated by a radio interview of the band at the end of the video clip. However, the radio interview brings back an interesting childhood memory for me which involved my older brother using this song and wiring up our Dad's sound system so it could play music down the telephone line. He then rang random sydneysiders and pretended to be a disc jocky telling them they had won a prize if they could just answer an LRB-related question. Can't remember if many of those we called fell for his trick now but I remember I found it hilariously funny at the time.

Time to end the week with this classic from Fleetwood Mac. This song of course is one of their classics from their most famous album rumours. It is kind of an oddly appropriate title given the personal shenanigans that were going on in the band when this album was recorded. Below is a little snippet from the Wiki article about the making of the Rumours album.

As the studio sessions progressed, the band members' new intimate relationships that formed after various separations started to have a negative effect on Fleetwood Mac. The musicians did not meet or socialise after their daily work at the Record Plant. At the time, the hippie movement still affected Sausalito's culture and drugs were readily available. Open-ended budgets enabled the band and the engineers to become self-indulgent; sleepless nights and the extensive use of cocaine marked much of the album's production. Chris Stone, one of the Record Plant's owners, indicated in 1997 that Fleetwood Mac brought "excess at its most excessive" by taking over the studio for long and extremely expensive sessions; he stated, "The band would come in at 7 at night, have a big feast, party till 1 or 2 in the morning, and then when they were so whacked-out they couldn't do anything, they'd start recording".

Another very old classic from Janis Ian. This is the second time she has appeared on Covid Island Discs.

OK so time for one of the most ultimate Meme songs: Sweet home Alabama. Listen out for the line:

"Well I heard Mr Young sing about her Well I heard old Neil put her down Well I hope Neil Young will remember A southern man don't need him around anyhow."

So these lines are in response to Neil Young's protest songs Alabama and Southern Man.