This week's most visually appealing video goes to Cold Play's the scientist. I quite like the way they play some of the video in reverse (Chris Martin rising from the matress, basket ball going back through the hoop etc), although now I have thought about it, they must have actually filmed Chris Martin walking backwards while singing since obviously it would not be possible to sync his lips with his voice if they had truly reversed the film at all points. Also without the time symmetry breaking of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I guess this video would be hard to distinguish from the reality in which we find ourselves.

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

So before I return to my 21^st century music theme, yesterday I posted a video animation under the title "Bad Moon Rising" which showed what the moon would like from earth if it was the same distance as the international space station . This song where I got that phrase from.

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.

A fun song from the 1990s. This is actually a remixed version which is significantly faster than the original. This version reached number one in both the UK and USA charts while the original version (also on this post) reached number 60 on the UK charts in 1997.

Norman Cook Remix

Original Version

So on Sunday I cited my first Beach Boys song California Girls. That song stimulated the Beatles to include a little bit of beachboy-style musing over lovely Russian woman.

Covid Island Discs: The final Song

So 69 weeks after the UK first went into lockdown I am finally bringing Covid Island Discs to an end. In theory the last lockdown restrictions in the UK were meant to be lifted on 21^st of June 2021 although the new delta variant of the virus, which is incredibly contagious and is leading to a new increase in hospitalisations in the UK, delayed the final removal of restrictions until the 19^th of July. This final release is occurring despite the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the UK being driven by the delta variant. It looks like we will be in for a 3^rd wave this summer but hopefully it will be less lethal than previous waves due to the over 50s now being mostly vaccinated.

Anyway, for better or worse, whatever the outcome, it is just a simple harsh truth that we must now get used to living with this horrible virus in our presence because clearly it is so widespread throughout the world that it is never going to go away. Even if we do get a new lockdown in the future, I shall not restart Covid Island Discs as I did last summer because at some point things must return to a new normal.

So choosing the song to close Covid Island Discs was not difficult because Jesus Christ Superstar was one of the first pieces of music that I fell in love with as a very young child when my sister Julie took me to see the rock concert in Sydney in the early 70s. I can't remember how old I was but I could not have been much older than 5 or 6.

I was a crazy child and so began learning and singing the whole rock opera. My family still have photos of me with my arms stretch out in a crucifix position such was my obsession with the Musical and gospel story of Jesus of Nazareth. Not only did I fall in love with the musical, but this also led me to the Christian faith and I was about 8 years old when I committed my life to Jesus of Nazareth who was born around 4BC and who was crucified around AD 33 under the reign of Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas who would die some 6 years later. So I guess when all is said and done, Jesus Christ Superstar as a piece of music has had the most significant effect on my life out of all the music I have cited in Covid Island Discs

It is my hope that someone reading this final post in the future will find joy looking through the 484 songs (very early on in covid Island Discs I did a Midnight Oil bonus track) I have collated during the 69 weeks of this twilight zone living in some form of lockdown due to Covid-19. In some ways this song also captures that universal longing when things go horribly wrong of wanting to rerun history so we could have a better outcome. In relation to Covid-19, if we could start again then obviously the thing we would do differently is lockdown much harder and sooner before the virus became so ubiquitous in the human population. Once the virus had spread far and wide in the human population, the chances of new more virulent and contagious variants of the virus arising was only a matter of time and such variants are now preventing us ever being able to completely eradicate Covid-19, even with a widespread vaccination program. Whoever you are reading this, as I say when I sign off in my Youtube videos: ""I hope your body and mind are in a good place".