This week all the videos are worth watching. I think there are at least 4 which are visually evocative:

1. Road to nowhere, Talking Heads
2. Mad hatter, Melanie Martinez
3. Be Good Johnny, Men at Work
4. One of us, Joan Osborne

Out of these four, the "Be Good Johnny" video really captures in the rather negative pressure that was put on my generation of Australian males to be good at sport. I really like the caricature of the older Australian male asking the boy "are you going play cricket this year Johnny? Nah, Nah, Nah... So tell me, what kind of boy are you Johnny?"

Melanie Martinez song is of course really out there in terms of visual imagery fitting the LSD-type altered reality of the Mad Hatter.

The video for "One of us" goes really well with the lyrical content of this song. The video switches back and forth from Joan Osborne singing to images of humanity living their lives in the strange reality in which we all find ourselves. The images have been purposely red colour-shifted so the whole thing has a more observer-like quality as one watches the various scenes unfolding in the video.

Yet this week my vote goes for Talking Head's video "Road to nowhere" as the imagery in this video consistently matches the theme of the song reflecting on the apparent meaninglessness of life's progression. I particularly like the sequence from 1 minute to 1 minute 21 seconds capturing a couple going through their whole life's events and ending in a dancing kiss — what a cool way to resolve life's apparently meaningless paradox!

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

I quite like the way Sinéad kind of flattens the "to you" at the end of the chorus. Sadly, I heard recently she was suffering from severe mental health problems. This world certainly is enough to break people sadly.

In this song, Alan Parsons adopts Egyptian mythology and imagines a conversation between a man who is at the point of death and the boatman who has been charged with taking his soul across the river of death. I have written below the beginning of verses 1 and 2.

"Well I sympathise completely, but there is nothing I can do, I am just a humble servant with a message here for you. And I know you have good reasons and there's things you have to do but the boatman won't be waiting and he's leaving here with you."

"Well I sympathise completely, but there is nothing I can do, I am just obeying order, I'm a simple soul like you. Well you really are persuasive but I heard it all before.."

That final line of verse 2 I have always found striking as the image is so powerful. Yes imagine the most powerful richest man or woman in the world trying to argue with death that it is not their time. I love the way death (the boatman) is so polite softening the blow with feigned praise; "yes you really are persuasive .... but I heard it all before: wow what an understatement when one thinks of the number of people in the history of the world who have died.

Back in the days when I was a St Paul's fellowship leader, I used this song in an Evangelistic play I put together. A girl who attended our fellowship group at the time, who was a dancer, put together a really cool choreographed dance sequence for me. Once more all distant memories of long lost days.

So one final thing, about this clip. It features the late comedian Robin Williams playing the part of the protesting traveller. Somewhat sad and ironic because, as with so many comedians, in reality William's life was much more towards this melancholic end of the scale rather than the funny man of many of his movies and of course in the end he embraced the boatman through suicide — RIP.

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.

Another classic from Kate Bush. I remember when this song was released as the radio track for her "Never for Ever" album. Certainly this song tells an interesting story of a woman "who wanted to test her husband's fidelity". The word "babooshka" means an elderly Russian or Polish woman especially one who is a grandmother.

Well it is my lovely wife's birthday today and I have the perfect song for this day. "Happy Birthday Helen" by Things of Stone and Wood. Sadly, the audio quality of this video is very poor so I have put two versions of the song one so you can see the Aussie band members of Things of Stone and Wood performing, the other so you can hear the song with decent sound quality. It is always gratifying when one can find the perfect song for an occasion (slightly more aligned than the song I chose for our 20^th wedding anniversary (Covid Island Discs Day 26) 😀.

Video of the band performing but poor sound quality

Audio of song with no video

So far I have only cited one song from the Rolling Stones as I'm not a great fan of their music. However, my daughter was watching a seventies hits cable TV channel and the Stone's classic song "Angie" came on. This is another song of the Stones I particularly like because it reminds me of the wife of one of my closest friends who still lives in Australia.