He's not even the most famous musician from Stourport-on-Severn (that would be Ray Thomas from my beloved Moody Blues) but Clifford T. Ward was responsible for this nicely soppy song, Home Thoughts from Abroad. Ward had a dodgy haircut (a lot of us did in the seventies) but anecdote has it that he was good at his day job as an English teacher so I thnk we will forgive him that.
You've got to have a bit of corn in there. This song is uber-corny (or should that be tres corny). This is Charles Aznavour's rendition of She. A song made fashionable again by the use of the Elvis Costello version in the film Notting Hill - which, by the way, is, in the opinion of this critic, better than its close cousin Four Weddings and a Funeral. Just saying.
I think I must have been channelling my Andy Williams vibe when this track came up. That's the way it works - I always have music playing when I am working and if something really grabs me I add it to my 'Liked' list.
Sierra by Boz Scaggs. This is a seriously haunting piece of music. I came across it when exploring Spotify for tracks suggested by a liking for Ry Cooder. Not sure the link makes any sense other than in my untutored manner - perhaps it's even the similarity of their names (that probably doesn't make any sense either) but what I do know is that my great mate Big Willy, who strums a mean guitar himself, approves of both.
Joan Baez has a voice of crystal clarity. Perhaps most famed as an interpreter of others' songs, this is one of her own compositions. Some commentators liked to imagine that Diamonds and Rust was a bit of a swipe at her former lover, Bob Dylan. Baez has always denied that. Why let the facts stand in the way of a good story. A rather beautiful noise.
Hey man you're sooo avant-garde. Dude I know. I even liked the Velvet Underground before they were acclaimed. This last boast is a false one - I'm not quite that old. Rock and Roll. Enjoy.
And now for a bit of prog-rock. Manfred Mann's Earth Band should not be confused with 60s pop band, Manfred Mann, though their common inheritance is the keyboard skill of Manfred Mann himself.
Enough of that. I can't quite remember what got me listening to this track once again (I usually put these things down to Spotify serendipity and I do listen to a lot of prog-rock - it's an age thing) but here it is, unashamedly riffing on Holst's Planet Suite (Jupiter), Joybringer.
Welcome to December, the month of hope and expectation. Also the month of long nights and generally uncongenial weather. So let's start with something uplifting. It's a cover version so might have found a place in last year's calendar. But it didn't. So deal with it.
In fact it's much covered, the first notable edition being by Mama Cass in 1969. This is Paloma Faith's 2018 rendition of Make Your Own Kind of Music, commissioned for a Skoda advertisement of all things. Written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Well. Nice.
