April Eyes

Another month has passed us by, which must mean that it is time for me to give you a further review of the past month here on my blog. April matched the pattern of what has now become my regular schedule, of a Tuesday Tunes post followed by another around the weekend as a second post each week. This gave us a total of eight posts last month, most of which were music-related, though one of them branched out into my other main theme – mental health. The odd one out was the first post of the month, though it also followed a regular pattern for me: it was my review of the previous month.

Last month’s review was March On, March On, and it gave you the usual round-up of what I had posted. As always, I took the title from a song, in this case a newish one by Vince Gill, which has been released as a YouTube video but hasn’t yet appeared as a record. I guess being in the Eagles is keeping him busy!

There were, of course, four Tuesday Tunes posts last month. The first of these was Tuesday Tunes 98: Heart, in which I borrowed my theme from a fellow blogger, Carol, who had chosen the word as the topic for one of her lovely Saturday Snippets series. I gave this a moment or two of thought and realised that I was on very fertile ground for one of my posts, too. For this first one I gave you music from Led Zeppelin, Yes, Gerry Rafferty, Warren Zevon, Ry Cooder, America, Erma Franklin, and Tom Petty.

As this proved to be such a good theme I revisited it the following week, in Tuesday Tunes 99: Two Of Hearts. This time, the musical selections were from the Isley Brothers, Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt, Bryan Adams, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Buddy Holly, and Don Henley. A pretty star-studded cast, I think, and I’ll be returning to this theme very soon.

The following week saw the series bring up its hundredth episode, so there was really only one theme I could choose for it, wasn’t there? Tuesday Tunes 100: Century duly appeared to mark this momentous occasion. The music for this special edition was by T.Rex, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, Sheryl Crow, Steeleye Span, Haircut One Hundred (ok, so I cheated a bit), Al Stewart, and finally from Paul McCartney and Wings. Again, there are some well known names here, but in most cases these weren’t among their best known songs – I like going for the more obscure, sometimes.

I closed the month’s Tuesdays by taking a walk back down memory lane to the earliest days of the series with Tuesday Tunes 101: Retrospective, which revisited some of the songs I played in the early editions. I was working on the assumption that many of you wouldn’t have seen these before, or would probably have forgotten if you had! The music was by Jackson Browne, Merry Hell, Richard Thompson, Del Amitri, The Beatles, The Band, Frank Turner, and Pink Floyd. I enjoyed playing them again, and recounting the stories I told you at the time – it was interesting seeing again how my mind was working in the earliest days of the pandemic, out of which this series grew.

There were a further three posts last month, two of which combined music with another theme. The first of these was Musicians And Health, which took its prompt from an article by the American organisation The Mighty, which provides support and advice for those with mental health and other health issues, such as migraine. Their piece wasn’t new – it came from 2019 – but I thought it worth sharing some of the musicians they featured in a piece about how their health had affected their music. The music came from Roseanne Cash, Lana Del Rey, Lady Gaga, and Lewis Capaldi: their stories are worth reading if you haven’t already seen them.

For Easter weekend I gave you some Songs For Easter, though they weren’t necessarily of a particularly religious nature. What would you expect from me, anyway? The first one was by Murray Head, with his version of one of the songs from the Jesus Christ Superstar musical. The remaining choices contained an Easter-related word in their titles, and came from John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, Norman Greenbaum, Joan Osborne, Alison Moyet, and a clip of Fred Astaire and Judy Garland from the Easter Parade movie.

The remaining post is the one which I think is the most important from last month. As usual, I marked an event with some very relevant songs and a little homily of my own: this event was Earth Day. The older I get, and as I see my granddaughters growing, I am ever more aware of the damage we are doing to our planet and the legacy we may be leaving for today’s youngsters. The songs I chose were, in my view, very appropriate: as well as the official Earth Day song for this year, which is very powerful, there was music from Cat Stevens, Queen, and the Eagles. With this post, I hoped to get you thinking.

As is my custom, I’m leaving you with the song which gives this piece its title. This is by a guy whose music I like a lot. I have all of his albums and have seen him in concert, which was a great evening. This is rather lovely:

That was a track on Seth Lakeman’s debut album, The Punch Bowl, which was released in January 2002. I’m a little surprised that I haven’t played him before – you may well be seeing him again! Some of his later albums have been quite successful in the UK charts, but this one didn’t trouble the scorers. I still think it’s a rather nice album, though.

That’s a wrap for now. I’ll see you again soon – on Tuesday, in fact. I couldn’t miss that, could I, and I hope you won’t either. Take care of yourself and those you love 😊