October Passed Me By

Actually, October didn’t really pass me by, but that’s what you get for ‘borrowing’ a song title for a post. It’s something I do for, you guessed it, my look back at what I did on my blog in the previous month. Just in case you missed anything or have some strange desire to want to see one of them again. I live in hope!

I visited your inbox fourteen times in October, so strap in for the ride, as we have a lot to get through. And for a change not all of them were music-related – just to show my versatility. Or maybe not. I’ll start with the music ones, though, as they have become the staple part of my blogging fare. As usual, I contributed every Sunday and Tuesday, so let’s begin with Tuesday Tunes, shall we? There were five Tuesdays last month, and I began these with Tuesday Tunes 169: Water which, as its title suggests, featured songs with water in their title. These were kindly provided by Deep Purple, Oysterband, Free, I’m With Her, and Artists For Grenfell. My usual mixed bag, two of which were cover versions of other people’s songs, though you may not have known one of them before.

The Deep Purple song that I played – Smoke On The Water – has one of the best known intros in rock music, and this gave me an idea for the next week. Well, the next three weeks, really, and I still have more up my sleeve. This became Tuesday Tunes 170: Intros, which featured Derek and the Dominos, AC/DC, Oasis, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Meat Loaf. A heavyweight selection, whichever way you look at it.

Next came Tuesday Tunes 171: More Intros – you can really appreciate the time and effort I put into these titles, can’t you! The music was from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, and Guns ‘N’ Roses. Some obvious ones, perhaps, but no denying their quality.

I rounded off that little mini-series with Tuesday Tunes 172: Intros 3 – running out of title inspiration by then. Even if I say so myself, they were another great selection, from Steely Dan, R.E.M, Pink Floyd, The Who, and Queen. A pretty good way to leave that for now but, as I said, there are loads more I could play for that theme and no doubt I will.

For the final Tuesday in the month the calendar obligingly gave me my theme for Tuesday Tunes 173: A Spooktacular, my offering for Halloween. This was my now annual selection for this event, and in a six tunes piece I gave you music by Warren Zevon, Bobby “Boris” Pickett, Jethro Tull, Michael Jackson, Steve ‘n’ Seagulls, and Faun. Some old favourites for me there, but I think they were worth revisiting.

As with Tuesdays, there were also five Sundays in October. At the start of the month we were invited to play songs about food, which for me became Song Lyric Sunday: Cake, Anyone? This included songs by Crowded House and Def Leppard. I kept it sweet-ish!

The following week saw Song Lyric Sunday: Who Wants A Young American? The brief for this was to play something of the Philadelphia Sound, which left me struggling, as that isn’t really my thing, but I was saved by the mention in Wikipedia’s list of artists of that genre of David Bowie, for his Young Americans album. That had two hit singles on it, so I played them both.

We were done up like kippers again the following week, with another theme that would have meant much more in the States than it did here: Chicago Sound. But I did eventually work out that a song I liked when it first came out fitted the bill, and I shared Song Lyric Sunday: Taking You Anywhere, with a one-hit wonder by the long-forgotten band (here, anyway) The Ides Of March. As one of the band went on to be a founder member of Survivor that gave me the excuse to play one of their songs too. Yes, THAT one!

We came back to terra firma the next week when invited to play songs about change. I didn’t go for the obvious, though it did get a mention in my title Song Lyric Sunday: Changes. Just to ring the changes, the two songs I played came from Frank Turner and John Hiatt with the Jerry Douglas Band.

For the final Sunday of the month we were asked to play something by a band with a colour in their name. As my title suggests, Song Lyric Sunday: Three Times Blue gave you three songs by bands with the same colour. These were Blue Öyster Cult, The Moody Blues, and Deep Blue Something – the last one being where most remembered the song but not the band’s name!

That leaves the four midweek posts. In chronological order, these began with an annual piece for me, in World Mental Health Day 2023. As I occasionally remind you, I started this blog on a mental health theme and have never lost sight of that, so I take opportunities to focus on it whenever I can. The theme for this year is “Mental Health is a Universal Human Right.” That shouldn’t really need to be said but, sadly, it does. As usual, I gave some background and some links for further information on support, in case they were needed. Pleasingly for me this was by a distance my most viewed and liked post of the month.

I continued the mental health theme into the following week with Music Can Help. This was a sequel to a couple of pieces I wrote earlier in the year about the singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi. I really like his music, and I played a couple of his songs in this post. The real intent was to share the story of his current struggles with mental health issues, and my hope that he can get through these. This is one of the songs I played, which gives a very good feel for what someone with mental health issues goes through:

I then went for a post in one of my occasional series, in Friday Funnies 4. This featured appearances on chat shows. There were a couple by Billy Connolly, both here and in the States, and several from the Graham Norton Show, which included Matt Damon, Michael McIntyre, and Seth MacFarlane, amongst others. I also sneaked in one with Lewis Capaldi, to show him being his usual sweary but funny self.

The final midweek post, and the last one for this review, was Way Back When. In this, I played the first songs I recall hearing from artists who have since become favourites of mine. No real surprises here, but I shared music by Frank Turner (again), John Hiatt (again), The Beatles, Oysterband (again), and John Mellencamp. You can see some of the usual suspects there, can’t you!

So, that was my October, and I hope there was much for you to enjoy in them. All that remains is for me to play you that song I ‘borrowed’ for today. October isn’t a particularly popular month for song titles, but I found this, by someone who was previously unknown to me – though that is probably more a reflection on how out of touch I am than on her! It’s a lovely little song:

girl in red, as she styles herself, is the performing name of Marie Ulven Ringheim, a 24yo singer-songwriter from Norway. As the song may have told you, she is gay and reflects this in her songwriting. This one was co-written with Aaron Dessner who, amongst the many strings to his bow, has been a member of the band The National and was a collaborator with Taylor Swift on the two folk-based albums she released in 2020, folklore and evermore. There seems to be a common absence of capital letters here! October Passed Me By was released as a single in October 2022 and reached #28 in New Zealand, and #45 in the US Rock chart. girl in red’s only album to date is if i could make it go quiet, released in April 2021, getting to #2 in Norway, #7 in both the UK and the Netherlands, and #67 in the US. She has more than 2.5m YouTube subscribers with some phenomenal viewing figures, and is currently opening shows for Taylor Swift on her The Eras tour, so expect to hear much more of her shortly.

That’s a wrap, and I’ll see you again for Song Lyric Sunday, for which I will be managing to combine my own theme with the official one. Watch this space!