May It Was

The merry month of May has been and gone, which must mean that it is time for my review of the month’s posts. There were eleven in total, so if you missed them you have a bit of catching up to do! But don’t worry, I’ll walk you through them gently.

May’s first post was the corresponding one to this, in which I reviewed my blogging April. It was called April, Gone She Has and gave you everything you could possibly have wanted to know. And probably quite a bit you wished to forget, as well.

As always, the month of May included Tuesdays – four of them, in fact, which meant that there were four Tuesday Tunes posts. These were:

Tuesday Tunes 55: Travel, in which you heard music from The Animals; Talking Heads; Peter, Paul And Mary; Creedence Clearwater Revival; The B-52s; Crosby, Stills And Nash; and Pink Floyd. It was one of my more indecisive weeks, in which I couldn’t get the choices down to the regular six, so I gave you seven tunes. No one seemed to mind, though.

Tuesday Tunes 56: Another Sixties Encore, in which I took another trip down memory lane with music from Jimi Hendrix; The Move; Donovan; Mary Hopkin; The Lovin’ Spoonful; and Aretha Franklin.

Tuesday Tunes 57: Nature, with songs by Bob Seger; The Beatles; Bob Marley; Jethro Tull; Otava Yo; Oysterband; and Louis Armstrong. This was another seven song week, but this time it was deliberate: I wanted to include my first ever Russian song, and didn’t want anyone to feel they had been short-changed. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried: several of you commented on the beauty of Otava Yo’s music and their wonderful video, so I may be tempted to include them again sometime. I was also very lucky to find a charming new animated video for the Louis Armstrong one, too – if you missed it, do take a look!

The last Tuesday post in May was a further visit to memory lane, this time to the Seventies: Tuesday Tunes 58: Back To The Seventies gave you music from Ashton, Gardner And Dyke; John Kongos; Jethro Tull (yes, again!); David Bowie; Lulu; and Dire Straits. Reliving my youth again!

I also added a third post to my new-ish series Listen To The Band, with Listen To The Band: The Eagles. This post has been a nightmare: The Eagles are known for their tight control of posts of their songs on YouTube, and I have so far had to revisit the piece four times to replace links that had been broken by the removal of the original that I shared. Fingers crossed: I’ve just checked, and they are all still there. For now. The same thing happened with the Aretha Franklin clip from a couple of weeks earlier, but I’ve replaced that one too. I never realised how busy this would keep me!

I gave you one of my mental health posts last month. This was for Mental Health Awareness Week 2021, which took as its theme the way that nature can have a positive effect on our mental health. This seemed a good lead to follow for a related Tuesday Tunes post, which resulted in the nature theme for #57 in the series – see above.

The month also featured a couple of posts that came out of my ‘random thoughts from the depths of my brain’ cupboard. The first of these was The Day I Changed The World. If you haven’t seen this, I should perhaps warn you that the change I made may not have a major impact, but I felt that I had done my bit to improve a little something. I probably haven’t solved the problem of climate change, though.

The other ‘random’ post was Blowing My Own Trumpet, in which I celebrated the fact that my blog had passed 100,000 total page views. I know there are many of you whose blogs attract far more viewers than I do, and it had taken me eight and a half years to reach that figure, but it seemed a milestone worthy of note – to me, at any rate! It also gave me an excuse to use the title for a couple of celebratory tunes which feature trumpets: these came from Love and Calexico, and both are great!

That just leaves two posts to cover. One of these was one of my occasional reworkings of an older post, which I do for two reasons: (i) I like them, and (ii) most current readers probably won’t have seen them before. In this case, it was Return To The Listening Booth, which was an updated version of a piece from 2016. This was my reflections on how our ways of listening to music have changed over the years, and it probably explains a lot of the background to my love of music.

My final post in May was written on a bit of a whim. I was watching some classic British comedy videos on YouTube, and thought that they might give others a smile too. So I posted Saturday Smiles. Several of you have commented that I could turn this into a series, so I may well be doing it again. This first one gave you some laughs from Morecambe And Wise, Yes Prime Minister, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and Only Fools And Horses. Not surprisingly, most – if not all – of these were new to non-British readers, but our sense of humour seemed to translate well, judging from your comments. I now have the happy task to enjoy of watching loads more videos to give you another selection!

In closing, I am as always giving you the song from which I kind of borrowed the title for this piece:

May It Be was the theme tune for the movie Lord Of The Rings – The Fellowship Of The Ring. It doesn’t appear on any of Enya’s other records, as far as I know, but it is no less beautiful for that.

That’s all for last month. I hope you enjoyed the review, and that it gave you the chance to pick up on anything you may have missed. See you again next time. 👍

Advertisement