So this week there are some great videos in my music list. Ones which are really worth checking out are:

1. I send a message, INXS
2. Come as you are, Nirvana
3. And she was, Talking Heads
4. Call me when you're sober, Evanescence

All the videos are great for different reasons. The INXS video has a cute little black toy robot juxtaposed into a Japanese Geisha girl's hangout, the Nirvana song has the iconic baby in the water with the dollar bill which of course was the album cover to Never Mind. The Talking Heads video is classic Talking Heads with surreal cartoon paper cut out images in the same genre as the Monty Python animated sequences and, as usual, the Evanescence "Call me when you're sober" song is just completely intense both musically and visually.

Yet when you have finished looking at this list, you might as well also check out the Cold Chisel video "Forever now" and Australian Crawl's "Reckless" as these two videos are also very visually appealing: the former with the drummer keeping time on café cutlery while the latter has car indicators in time with the strong beat of the song. I guess if I had to choose one video that was the best out of this strong set, I would probably go with "I Send a message" (mainly because of the robot) although "Call me when you're sober" is also at the top of this list.

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

There is a song on Kate Bush's album Never for Ever called blow away. In the song she sings the line:

"Hello Mini, Mooney, Vicious, Vicious, Buddy Holly, Sandy Denny"

And here is the long lost Sandy Denny, another tortured soul who suffered immensely from alcohol addiction and mental illness finally losing the battle with both in 1978 at the age of 33. "Who knows where the time goes?"

So today I was sitting in my living room and my daughter had the TV on and it was playing some 80s music and this classic came one. A song that I very much enjoyed listening to all those years ago and which until now had completely slipped my mind. A song that captures the pain of a love that has died.

Now five years later on you've got the world at your feet
Success has been so easy for you
But don't forget it's me who put you where you are now
And I can put you back down too.
Don't. Don't you want me?
You know I can't believe it when I hear that you won't see me
Don't. Don't you want me?
You know I don't believe you when you say that you don't need me

So as I write these words the USA state capital has just been stormed by pro-Trump supporters trying to organise a coup to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as the 46^th president of the United States. A good German friend of mine wrote the following on my Facebook page:

It’s not over, and this is symbolic. The Munich Beer Hall putsch was the first (and neither the first, nor the most significant) sign of the young Weimar Republic being in trouble. Security forces and parts of the army colluded. Why was there no police, no national guard in Washington? Because they collude.

In response to his comment, this song came to mind as it obviously reflects the hope of I have for the USA. All I can say is the world would be a safer place is DJ Trump was not a free man.

To open week 60, I shall start with probably one of the most famous Neil Young songs of his very large repertoire which is Heart of Gold. This concert was recorded for the BBC all the way back in 1971 when Heart of Gold was just fresh of the press; hence why he says it is a new song. Now it is only a mere 50 years old!! How time flies when you're having fun hey.

In this final week of Covid Island Discs I am citing bands that should really have been cited during the 65 week disruption we have experienced in the UK. Amazingly this is the first time I have cited a Smiths song and this one reminds of my late best friend Jonathan Higgs. Jonathan had what one could describe as an avant-garde personality and this was a song that he particularly liked. I still have such distinct memories of him singing the lines: "if a ten ton truck should kill the both of us" as if it was only yesterday; yet it was when we were both at Sydney University back in the 1980s. Sadly poor Jon died of liver cancer in 2017 just a few months after my Mum passed away at the age of 87. I guess the one thing that life has taught me is that it is brutal. I guess Jon's appreciation of this fact made him connect to the Smiths in a way that passes most of us by. God bless you Jon, I miss you 😥.

So I cite this song because of Youtube video I saw by Rick Beato who analysed the chord progression of the song and concluded it is probably one of the most complex pop songs (definitely pop!) ever written. Below the youtube clip I include Beato's analysis of the song which is fascinating to watch.

Analysis of the chord progression in this song by Rick Beato