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

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

OK so thanks to my friend Emma Willson, who kindly told me about an opportunity to do an Open Water Swim, Covid Island Discs is about to come to an end. I said that I would finish CID when I was able to do my first swim since lockdown began (as lockdown has no definite end but will just be gradually eased) and tomorrow I'm booked in for open water swim at 8 pm. I will finish this week off so my last CID will be Day 77. So here come the final three. This will be the last of my 21^st century songs because I have two final ones which I decided to leave to the very end so will post tomorrow and Friday. Norah Jones is good artist to listen to if you need some music to relax.

Staying on Shania's money theme, I wonder if she got the start of her Ka-ching song from this all time Pink Floyd classic?

"All you did was wreck my bed and in the morning kicked me the head." Such romantic lyrics. This is a live version of the song which begins with a slower melody than the origin album version. Another cool thing about this version is having Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones playing a 6 sting acoustic.

A very dark song by Genesis taking a very appropriate dig at the false prophets of Christianity that use the things of Jesus to make a shed load of money by conning the gullible out of their hard earned cash. I have always surmised that these religious charlatans must truly be atheists. The reason I think this is simply because if they really did have any concept that the underlying gospel, on which they have built their lies, was actually true they surely would worry about a future date when they must stand before Jesus and explain why they used his atoning work for humanity to rob people through their religious scams.

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.