So this week's video goes to "If you want to sing out" by Cat Stevens mainly because the video track is actually from the quite incredible movie Harrold and Maud. If you like black comedy, this movie is the one for you.

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

OK given Helen is currently reading 1984 and since there is no discernible change in the Johnson government's behaviour, I thought I would share two more songs from David Bowie's Diamond Dogs album before returning to my 21^st century theme. The second half of the album had three songs all dedicated to the dystopian novel 1984. I remember studying this novel for the HSC (yes back in 1984 in fact: I'm a very old git now) and we studied it alongside Aldous Huxley's "A Brave New World". I think Huxley's book is a more accurate prediction of what would happen in the Western world up until what I will call the "post-truth" Trump era. However, the doublethink of 1984 certainly appears to be becoming more present in modern political discourse. One absolutely unforgettable scene in the book is when Winston Smith turns to his lover and says "We are the dead". She replies "We are the dead". Then the government speaker on the wall sounds to life saying: "You are the dead". Freaky stuff which is captured well by Bowie in today's Covid Island Disc.

But now
We're today's scrambled creatures, locked in tomorrow's double feature
Heaven's on the pillow, its silence competes with hell
It's a twenty-four hour service, guaranteed to make you tell
And the streets are full of press men
Bent on getting hung and buried
And the legendary curtains are drawn 'round Baby Bankrupt
Who sucks you while you're sleeping
It's the theater of financiers
Count them, fifty 'round a table
White and dressed to kill
Oh caress yourself, my juicy
For my hands have all but withered
Oh dress yourself my urchin one, for I hear them on the stairs
Because of all we've seen, because of all we've said
We are the dead
We are the dead
We are the dead

This song came out in 1995 and is rather ironic because if you're a Christian, you believe that God really did become one of us in the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth born circa 4 BC in Bethlehem. Joan Osborne imagines that if God was one of us, we would have to believe but, in reality, we know what happened to the historical Jesus so her surmise is off the mark somewhat if indeed Jesus was the incarnation of the creator of our universe.

A pretty song by a UK artist who lost her life in 2000 in terrible circumstances. Kirsty MacColl was holidaying in Mexico when she and her sons went diving in the Chankanaab reef. Not sure if this is correct, but I read on a feed that she was pregnant with the son whose life she saved in 2000.

As the group was surfacing from a dive, a powerboat moving at high speed entered the restricted area. MacColl saw the boat coming before her sons did. Louis, age 13 at the time, was not in its path, but Jamie, age 15, was. She was able to push him out of the way (he sustained minor head and rib injuries), but she was struck by the boat which ran over her. MacColl suffered severe chest injuries and died instantly (taken from Wikipedia).

Covid Island Discs Covid Island new year's Day

So what mega band do I open up the second year of Covid Island Discs (hopefully the UK lockdown won't last for two years)? Well surely it has to be arguably the greatest rock and roll band of all time and that is the Beatles. I have already cited several Beatle songs last year but this one is also another classic - Penny Lane. As mentioned previously, whenever I listen to the Beatles I always wish I could go back in time to the 60s when the Beatles were actively at work producing such incredible ground breaking music.

This is a great little song by REM. I remember when it came out I was working as a PhD student at the University of Manchester. I have a very distinct memory of doing tissue culture work with another scientist Juliet while this song was blaring out of the radio. The lyrics to this song are also quite fascinating:

Now, Andy, did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Andy, are you goofing on Elvis? Hey, baby
Are we losing touch?

Say what? Also the line "hey baby are we losing touch" sounds like it is sung by the late great Roy Orbison

This one of the Police's strangest songs. I cite this song straight after yesterday's song by Dido Life for Rent because apparently it is about a guy submitting to his girlfriend in a relationship but in the final verse he turns the tables on her and she becomes wrapped around his finger. Again these songs capture the more adversarial aspect of boy/girl relationships where both parties are trying to establish dominance over the other rather than acting in love which ideally looks to putting the other person's interests first.