Like week 35, the choice for the best video of week 36 was also an easy decision to make. While Michael Jackson's music is not always my cup of tea, his videos are incredible because the dance sequences in them are amazing.

The video for the song "Beat It" is not an exception. In fact, I think it is one of the best ones he produced in terms of a dance sequence. It was such clever choreography to get men from two opposing gangs to perform a dance which represents a stylised fight, ending with Michael Jackson making peace between the two gang leaders. The video concludes in a single co-ordinated dance with dozens of male dancers (gang members). Very clever indeed!

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 firstly I am late because we are redecorating Grace's room. Took the radiator off and then over the day noticed a slow leak. The washer on the pipe had failed. Long story shot, had to drain the central heating system so no central heating or hot water tonight. Need new washer or compression joint (can you get these during a shutdown)? Guess I will find out tomorrow.

OK so the Beatles is one of those bands where choosing a single hit is just about impossible. I really have come to consider them the greatest rock band of all time. What do I choose: Let it Be, Hey Jude, A Day in the Life, Elanor Rigby, Strawberry Fields, Norwegian Wood, The Long and Winding Road, A Hard Days Night, Penny Lane, Revolution 1, Ticket to Ride, Yesterday, For no One, Tomorrow Never Knows, Nowhere man, Michelle, The Fool on the Hill, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club band, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, She's leaving home? Incredible that one band consistently produced so many iconic songs that have stood the test of time.

So why did I choose Twist and Shout? Well it is a song that I think most of us associate with great teenage parties and late nights where this song is played to get everyone on the dance floor. Given our current depressing time, I thought this song might be good to cheer you all up and get you on your living room floor with your families dancing. You know what to do.

One final dilemma do I put the link to the album version or to a live concert version? Given it is Youtube, I decided to choose the latter but sadly that means you got to put up with screaming teenage girls.

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

Another great concert I was able to see back in the 80s. I remember Phil Collins opening his concert with synchro drumming (Phil Collins is a very accomplished drummer so he was on stage with another drummer). They then went into this song.

I thought this song was about a broken relationship but Thomas Chaplin actually introduces it by saying the song was written by his band mate about him because he was so bad at getting girls. However the original Youtube video that has this introduction has sadly been taken down by the original poster so I have had to replace the live performance of this song with the official video.

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.

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).