So this week I think the best video visually is Sting's "If you love someone set them free" as it uses a clever superimposition of the band members onto a performance room. However, some band members are fully present while others look like ghosts. Some are in colour while others are in black and white — all very interesting. A close second however is also U2 video, I still haven't found what I'm looking for which brings back fond childhood memories as it is filmed in the streets of Las Vegas.

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

It will quickly dawn on people as I share my list over the next few weeks that I am still mostly stuck in the 20th century in terms of my music. So just to demonstrate that I have just about managed to make it into the 21st century with some of the music I listen to, this is a song released in 2003 (thought it was later than that).

From the time I was born until I left to come to England in 1992, I used to spend every Easter at Barrington Guest house. This was such a lovely holiday for a special set of families who would converge on the guest house every year for the Easter break. Over the years, these same families became great friends as we enjoyed each other's company. During the Easter break we would walk together in some of most beautiful rain forest in the world, ride horses, feed Rosellas that would eat out of your hand or land on your head, compete in a Davis cup tennis tournament, swim in crystal clear rivers (sliding down a natural rock face slippery dip) and attend one of the most amazing country Saturday bush dances complete with a diagonal couple "Strip the Willow" spin. The older teenagers and twenty somethings would then commandeer a tour bus after the dance and sing songs like "American Pie" until the early hours of the morning. It truly gave me many of the most memorable and enjoyable times in my life.

Yet it was always a downer when the holiday was over and we had returned to Sydney. Although there wasn't much sand at Barrington, sometimes you would find something (say mud or a bloody sock from an encounter with a leech) on your shoes that would make you think, "wow I wish I was back there". Over the years I wrote many silly lyrics to famous tunes sometime to perform at school formals or house parties. Yet the comedown from Barrington one year was enough for me to write my own song (I have only ever written two proper songs in my life) which I guess was along similar lines to this Dido classic. For what it is worth, my chorus went: "it's a matter of time, that drives us fast, pushing our future into the past, a holiday with you, passes too soon, leaving us to steal memories while staring at our room."

There is a sad postscript to this story. In 2006 Helen and I were booked into Barrington Guest House. I drove excitedly to the spot pulling up and getting out of the car to be greeted by someone. The conversation went like this:

Me: "Hi we are here to stay at Barrington"
Bemused person: "you not staying here mate"
Me (a little confused): "why?"
Person: "It burnt down last night"

Why did I not see that? Well the outer shell of the guest house was still standing (I now understand the full meaning of the term when they say a house has been gutted). It was only when you got closer you could see the smouldering smoke rising from the interior. Such a tragedy because the guest house was built sometime early in the 20th century which made it a valuable historical artefact by Australian standards.

Don't try this at home folks. A great song to dance to.

"Your name is Deborah, it never suited you." Another song about unrequited love.

Hope this sentiment holds for the USA and that they are never fooled again by a charlatan like Trump. For that matter, I also hope that our Trump-like prime minister's time is also short and we can finally rid ourselves of our aberrant nationalistic hard right wing Conservative Party.

This song always reminds me of the most amazing Elton John concert I attended with a good friend all the way back in 1986. This was a really special concert where Elton teamed up with the Melbourne Symphonic Orchestra. One of the songs that really stuck in my mind was this classic from the album Madman Across the Water. I was quite surprised to find an official music video for this song which appears to only be published in 2017. Anyway, the official video's soundtrack is of the original recording although I assume it has been remastered to improve the audio quality.

So this classic from Creedence Clearwater Revival reminds me of the Twilight Zone movie which was released in 1983. The Movie of course was taken from the classic series The Twilight Zone which originally aired between 1959 and 1964 (before I was even born). My good friend Robert and I used to watch repeats of this classic show in the late 70s and 80s. When the Twilight Zone movie was released in 83, we all flocked to the cinema to see it, however, I think for those who had watched the original Twilight Zone series, it was quite a disappointing remake. Yet it did feature this classic Creedence song as a guy driving a hitch hiker down a lonely country road has this song blaring out of his car radio. The driver starts playing with the headlights turning them off for thrills saying to the hitchhiker: "Do you want to see something really scary?" However when they pull up, the hitchhiker offers his own scary question: "hey do you want to see something really scary.." Well let's just say because it is the Twilight Zone it doesn't end well for the car driver!