So this week I suggest checking out the following videos. Heart of Gold by Neil Young is quite good as his introduction to the song is quite fun and shows his funny side. Also Panic at the Disc's Gospel video is also visually provocative given the strong theme of death running through the song (if you love me let me go).

The Radiohead and REM videos have surprisingly similar feels to them both being shot in black and white. The REM video is pretty cool especially towards the end when Stipe walk's into a bar and random people are singing the lyrics of the Man in the Moon song. What is interesting is dispersed amongst the bar goers are members of REM. For instance the guy playing pool is Mike Mills, the base guitarist who plays the double base in Shiny Happy People (Covid Island Disc day 12).

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.

A little bit of alternative British music

Time for some more Elton John. This song reminds me of a holiday we had when I was about 5 years old at the Hydro Majestic in the Blue mountains, Australia.

In that hotel there was a jukebox and this was one of the songs that you could select. My brother Mark and I used to spend the evening putting 10 cent coins into the jukebox and playing various songs including this one. The other thing they had in the hotel were some really cool pinball machines, which reminds me of another song by Elton John (see tomorrow's post).

Staying on a fairly dark theme I am afraid there are times when I can relate to this song. While intellectually I am a Christian and emotionally I shall never surrender my final hope in goodness ultimately triumphing over evil, sometimes the darkness of the world feels quite overpowering as we witnesses the suffering of millions and the constant seeming success of wickedness, in the form of mostly evil men who hold the reigns of power. As the Chinese curse says (and boy does the Chinese church suffer under President Xi) we live in interesting times.

"The day before the music died!" We go all the way back to 1957 for this classic. Holly of course would influence lots of 60s rock and roll including the Beatles

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 this song is really classic Norah Jones. This is the sort of song that you imagine putting on after a hard day at work when all you want to do is chill out and wow this song has maximum chill out factor. The piano also reminds me of the sort of song you would hear in an upmarket restaurant where there was live entertainment consisting of a pianist and a woman like Norah belting out this little number while the restaurant guests enjoy their food, wine and conversation with their fellow diners.