June

Yep, it’s that time again when I remind you of everything from my blog last month that you enjoyed, endured, or just plain missed. I don’t know about you, but these seem to be happening ever more frequently – my life is going much faster than I’d like!

By my standards, last month was a busy one, with twelve posts. So buckle in for the ride while I take you through them all. As usual, the first one of the month was the previous review, in this case entitled Last Of May, which I had kind of adapted from a favourite Bee Gees song from my teenage years – i.e before they went downhill with disco. In keeping with my habit I summarised everything I posted in the merry month of May, and gave you a nice tune to finish off with.

All of the other posts were either of music or were related to it. As always, there were Tuesday Tunes posts every week: four of them. The first of these was Tuesday Tunes 107: Another Dance in which I gave you a second selection of songs with a dance connection: this was fertile ground. The music was by Love Sculpture, Roxy Music, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Tina Turner, Chris Rea, Jethro Tull, and Martha and the Vandellas.

I followed that with Tuesday Tunes 108: Sentiments, which was related to my first post in the Song Lyric Sunday series, of which more later. The songs featured a mixed bag of feelings, and came from The Rolling Stones, The Pointer Sisters, The Turtles, Foo Fighters, Caroline Jones, Paul Carrack, Keith Urban, and Taylor Swift. A little leaning towards country, perhaps, but they are all great songs, so why not?

Next up was Tuesday Tunes 109: Eyes. This was as much a surprise to me as it may have been to you: I found the word sitting all by itself in my notes on songs I’ve played in this series, and thought it might be an idea to try it. It is another one with a lot to choose from. For this first selection of eyes songs I played music by Survivor, the Small Faces, Kim Carnes, Don Partridge, Limp Bizkit, Audience, the Webb Sisters, and Crosby Stills and Nash.

For the final Tuesday I gave you more of the eyes songs I’d thought of, in Tuesday Tunes 110: A Pair Of Eyes. This collection came from Rednex, Van Morrison, a cover of Van’s song by Caroline Jones, Richard and Linda Thompson, Bobby Vee, James Taylor and Carly Simon, Steeleye Span, The Rolling Stones, and Jackson Browne. Some of my usual suspects in that lot!

I also gave you four posts last month for something I tried for the first time. A guy called Jim Adams runs a regular feature called Song Lyric Sunday, in which he gives us a theme and invites us to share a song and some of its lyrics which fits the theme and means something to us. I got a good response when I first tried it, and this encouraged me to keep going: you’ll see my next contribution to the series in a couple of days. The first one I did, which prompted a Tuesday Tunes post – as I said earlier – was Song Lyric Sunday: Hurt in which I shared the amazing cover version and video by Johnny Cash of a song written and originally performed by Trent Reznor with his band Nine Inch Nails.

The following week, Jim’s theme was to share a song about excitement, pleasure, sentiment, spirit. As I said in my post, I didn’t get any further than the first of those, as I chose Song Lyric Sunday: Good Vibrations as my contribution. I guess I’m not the only one who likes that wonderful song by the Beach Boys, as this was the most liked and commented of my posts last month.

The theme for the next Sunday was to share a song about ‘amaze, astonish, curious, shock, surprise.’ Again, I didn’t get beyond the first of those words, with Song Lyric Sunday: Maybe I’m Amazed, one of the most heartfelt love songs I know, which was written by Paul McCartney for his first wife, Linda, and appeared on his debut solo album which was called, appropriately enough, McCartney. Like a great many others I was spellbound with Macca’s nearly three hour performance at Glastonbury last Saturday evening, and will admit to having slightly moist eyes when he fulfilled my wish from the post and played this one.

Last Sunday we were invited to play a song that we felt should have topped the charts but didn’t make it. The one I chose did actually reach #1 in several countries, but not here in the UK, where it had to be content with getting to #2. The song was in my post Song Lyric Sunday: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet – still to my mind one of the greatest rock songs ever to make our chart, and one which brings back happy memories of my uni days.

That leaves three more posts for me to cover. Taking them in chronological order, the first was prompted by something which had never happened before, and probably never will again: I received a comment on one of my Tuesday Tunes posts from an artist whose song I had played. The post was A Star Is Born (Or Perhaps Not). The artist in question was a guy called Dax, and the song was Run And Hide. He isn’t well known but I really think he should be. He seems a really nice guy, too, and he took the time and trouble to write a long comment on this post which gave a lot of background to what had been going on with his musical career. If you haven’t seen this piece I recommend it – if you can’t be bothered with my words it contains several of Dax’s songs, and they are all superb.

The two remaining posts were both reissues and updates on previous pieces. The first of these was for Father’s Day, and was Family And Music: A Revisit. This one means a lot to me, as it brings together some wonderfully meaningful and beautiful songs with my thoughts on the importance to us of our families. It is quite possibly the most heartfelt post I have ever written.

I mentioned earlier that the Glastonbury festival took place last weekend, and I thought I’d mark it by reissuing a piece I had, in fact, reissued before from its first incarnation, back in 2017. This was a piece which told how I felt about life and music passing by: Glastonbury For Geriatrics: Updated was my cry in the wilderness for good music in the face of a load of what to me is absolute shite. Sadly, this year’s event didn’t really improve things for me: Macca was fantastic, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were great, and I watched a couple of other sets, too. But, sadly, the BBC in its infinite wisdom had decided that the five live streams it gave us wouldn’t include the Acoustic Stage, which is where most of the acts I wanted to see were playing. Thanks, guys, for nothing!

So, that is the end of my recap of a busy month. I always end these pieces with the song which inspired the title, and as you can see I didn’t have to look far this month! Have a listen to this lovely little song:

You may be asking who Amy Wadge is. Her page on Wikipedia will enlighten you on her musical career, which to date includes ten solo albums, a couple of EPs, and a whole load of songwriting credits for other people. She has written a lot with Ed Sheeran, whose own EP Songs I Wrote With Amy is a collection of their earliest collaborations, which have gone on to include his mega hit Thinking Out Loud. She is also one of the writers of Sam Ryder’s Space Man, the UK’s entry in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, and wrote and performed the music for all three series of the BBC’s excellent drama Keeping Faith. This is a track from her third album, back in 2004, and it is lovely, like a lot of her songs. The album also tells you how to pronounce her surname.

So that was my June. I hope you enjoyed at least some of these posts, and maybe have even found one or more here that you might have missed first time round. I’ll be back on Sunday with the next Song Lyric Sunday – it’s a good one, but I would say that, wouldn’t I! – and I hope to see you again then.

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