Marchin On

March has already marched on – where did it go? As usual, the end of the month is marked here by my recap of all of its posts, in case you missed anything – or are feeling particularly masochistic and want to read them again. In total, there were eleven posts last month: five Tuesday Tunes (there were a lot of Tuesdays), three further music posts and three others that somehow sneaked in there too.

Let’s get started with the Tuesday Tunes collection. First up was Tuesday Tunes 46: Winning which featured music from Chris Rea, ABBA, Bryan Adams, Santana, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Simon and Garfunkel, and Journey.

That was followed by Tuesday Tunes 47: Women (for IWD) which had tunes by The Eurythmics with Aretha Franklin, Cyndi Lauper, John Lennon, Shania Twain, Lady Gaga, and Aretha Franklin (on her own this time).

The third one of the month was Tuesday Tunes 48: Birthday in which I marked my elder daughter’s birthday with tracks by The Beatles, Altered Images, Stevie Wonder, Lesley Gore, Marilyn Monroe (yes, really!), and Neil Sedaka.

Then there came Tuesday Tunes 49: Anniversary which saw me noting the rather dubious anniversary of the day we were first placed in lockdown by the ship of fools allegedly running this country. The music was provided by Status Quo, Suzanne Vega, Al Stewart, Eva Cassidy, The Cowboy Junkies and I bookended the post with Status Quo again.

The most recent was this Tuesday’s Tuesday Tunes 50: Golden in which I marked the series’ golden anniversary of 50 episodes with a bumper edition of eight tunes from Linda Ronstadt, The Stranglers, The Tremeloes, Neil Young, Sting, America, Fleetwood Mac, and Golden Earring (spot the outrider!).

The three other remaining music posts included two of the three new series that I began last month. Firstly, I decided to build on the longevity of my post Under The Covers from November 2019 by turning this into an occasional series. So, the second post (ie the first new one) arrived a mere fifteen months after what had retrospectively become the first. Still with me? The new post was Back Under The Covers and as it seems to have been well received you can expect more of its kind at some point.

As it was St Patrick’s Day on 17th March that seemed as good an excuse as any for a post with some Irish music, so I took up the shillelagh and went for it with ☘️Songs For St Patrick’s Day☘️. This was a fun post for me, not least in the amount of music I listened to before making my final selections for it: there is something about Irish music that just says ‘happiness’ to me.

The remaining music post for the month was the first in another new series, which I’m calling Listen To The Band. Briefly, this is where I’ll be sharing several songs by a single band or artist that I like, rather than be confined by just choosing one of their songs as one of my Tuesday Tunes. This first in the occasional series was Listen To The Band: The Beatles and again, this seemed to have been well received. I had to start somewhere, and they don’t come much bigger than the Fab Four, do they?

This just leaves the three non-music posts. I began these with the opening post in my other new series, which I’m calling National Days. This is where I’ll be taking a less than serious look at some of the weird and wonderful days that someone has deemed worthy of noting and ‘celebrating.’ Many of these are from the US, but not all: we can be guilty on occasions too! The first of these posts was National Days: National Pi(e) and Chips (Crisps) Day which conflated two such ‘events’ taking place on 14th March. Compared with some of the others I might be featuring, these were relatively ‘normal’ – consider yourself warned!

I didn’t really count this next one as part of that series, but I could have done. Apparently it is mandatory for us to be happy on 20th March: in International Day of Happiness 2021 I begged to differ!

The other post during March was a re-blog of a post from a year earlier, on 22nd March 2020: Alone Again, Or…? A Year On. This one popped up in my Timehop feed and it seemed like a good way to take stock of how I was thinking and feeling a year ago, the day before we were put into that first national lockdown, and compare it with now. Plus ça change, peut être?

So that’s it for another month. I hope there was something among them that amused or entertained you – or did both, if I was lucky. As always, I leave you with the song whose title I ‘borrowed’ for this piece:

There’s nothing like a bit of anthemic pop-rock to perk up the day, is there?

See you again for the next review, I hope.