That Was March

It seems hard to believe but we are already in April, which means it is about time for my monthly recap of what I did on the blog. The overall picture was amazing: in terms of page views, it was the biggest score for well over a year, two of the posts are now in my all time top ten for likes, and four others passed fifty. I’ve had worse times here!

There were fourteen posts in total, the first of which was February, which as its title suggests was the previous month’s review. This was the usual trawl through what I had given you, all with clickable links in case you’d missed anything, and I played a lovely song by Dar Williams, who it seems was new to most of you. I mentioned in that piece that one of the posts had already gathered enough likes to take a place in my all time top ten: after just five days it was at #8 on the list, and has continued to add to its total, such that it is now at #4. My top ten has taken a new shape in the past two months!

The regulars were there of course, starting with Tuesday Tunes. There were four of these, which completed the theme I was following for the Five Ws And H of journalism. The month began with Tuesday Tunes 189: Why?, which gave you music by The Beatles, Travis, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ry Cooder, and Mark Knopfler with Emmylou Harris.

Then came Tuesday Tunes 190: How? which should have completed the theme, but didn’t. The tunes came from Ace, Lewis Capaldi, The Waterboys, Tim Hardin, and Marvin Gaye – a bit of a mixture!

I said in that piece that I had a second set of five tunes that I wanted to play, and might revisit it at some point. In the absence of any further inspiration that came sooner than I had intended, the following week, with Tuesday Tunes 191: How Two. Not much imagination in the title, but the music was great, from Gerry & The Pacemakers, Richard Thompson, Sherbet, Yusuf/Cat Stevens, and Nickelback, and I added in an additional track not on theme, to mark the passing of Steve Harley.

Carolyn, a regular reader, liker and commenter told me that her husband Brad had suggested a possible theme of thunder and lightning, as that would give me an opportunity to play some AC/DC. It seemed like a plan, so I split them over two weeks (and over the month end). So March came to an end with Tuesday Tunes 192: Thunder, which of course started with AC/DC, and also included Bruce Springsteen, Wanda Jackson with a great Bob Dylan cover, Jackson Browne, and Marc Cohn. Not a bad way to end the month, I think.

My other regular set – my contributions to Song Lyric Sunday – also continued, and there were five Sundays in the month. The first of these was to play a song based on a true event. I eschewed big historical matters and gave you Why Not Come Dancing? which was based on one of my favourite songs. The song is called Come Dancing, which Ray Davies was inspired to write in memory of his older sister, Rene, who died suddenly when Ray was just 13 – on his birthday, actually. She had given him a gift of a guitar, and he feels she played a part in how his career in music began. It’s a great song, full of nostalgia and memories of bygone times, made poignant by its backstory. This post is currently at #10 on my all time list.

The next theme was to play a song about God or the afterlife. I chose another long time favourite, for What Is Your Alibi? – it is a much recorded song entitled The Long Black Veil. My main version was by The Band, from their debut album Music From Big Pink, which is a superb record, and I also gave you the one recored by The Chieftains with Mick Jagger on guest vocals, from their album of the same title.

Following that, the task was to play a song about war and/or peace. I went with Give Us Peace In Our Time, which was based around a song by the Scottish rock band Big Country, called Peace In Our Time. It is a catchy tune which carries an important message: I played the official video supporting its single release and an acoustic version by the band which really highlights the power of the lyrics.

Next week we were onto songs about children and families. I shared Princesses And Pirate Ships, with two beautiful songs by Taylor Swift and Lee Ann Womack. A couple of real tearjerkers there, both with gorgeous videos.

The SLS month came to a close with a song written for a movie. I went with Pick Up Your Crazy Heart, which featured two songs from the movie Crazy Heart. This a lovely film, starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall, and Colin Farrell. I played the theme song, sung by Ryan Bingham, and another from the movie itself, sung by Jeff and Colin.

Two further posts last month were music-related. The first of these was R.I.P. Karl, one of my occasional tribute pieces. This was to mark the passing of Karl Wallinger, who was for a time in The Waterboys and then branched out on his own, forming the band World Party. I have all of the latter’s albums, and feel that he is one of those musicians who deserved more success than he achieved. There are some great songs among the seven I played in this post.

I did my seasonal bit for a third year with Easter-ish Songs. This was a collection of eight tunes which I posted on Good Friday, though I can’t really claim that many of them were particularly religious. They appear to have gone down well, though, as this was another high scorer (by my standards, that is – my numbers are much lower than many of you!). The songs were from Norman Greenbaum, Joan Osborne, The Byrds, Depeche Mode, Lady Gaga, Murray Head, Yvonne Elliman, and America. Spot the true themed ones!

That just leaves two more to cover. Having had a successful start in February with my first post for John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop series I had another couple of goes last month. The first of these was picking up John’s suggestion of telling you about a favourite childhood toy. I did this in Sub-what? which was about my Subbuteo game. This was a table football game which was hugely popular with schoolboys in the Sixties – if you didn’t have a set and play it you were nobody! I think I shared my enjoyment of it well enough!

The other Writer’s Workshop contribution was the one where things went crazy. For this one my main choice of John’s suggested themes was my first airplane trip, with a side order of foods I would gorge on. The piece was called Leaving On A Jet Plane, and it went ballistic right from the beginning: you could say that it took off in a big way if, like me, you were given to poor puns. As I said just now, I’m not a blogger who attracts huge numbers of readers and likes for my posts, but I do ok and am happy with the responses I get. This was only the second post I have ever written which has exceeded more than a hundred likes, and it is still adding to its total most days, even though I wrote it two weeks ago: it is at #2 in my all time list. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to that – I’m really touched that something of mine has appealed to so many. Who would have thought that a post about a holiday in Sorrento and the search for a late night pizza could do that well?

So, that was my blogging month, which ended on a real high. This is the point at which I usually play you a song whose title I have purloined for my review, but I’m doing something a little different this time. As far as I know there isn’t a song that shares today’s title, so how about a little bit of fun with a March tune:

That was, of course, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra with Strauss’ famous Radetzky March, a closing encore to their annual concert for New Year’s Day. The usual form is for the conductor to manage both the musicians and the audience, by directing their clapping along. This was the 2014 version, in which the inimitable Daniel Barenboim chose to acquaint himself with the members of the orchestra, and finally got around to the audience near the end. If you’ve ever wondered what a conductor actually does, this might have fed that: they seemed to have been doing pretty well without him waving a stick at them!

That’s all for this review. I hope it reminded you of some things you enjoyed here – and if you haven’t yet seen that last post I covered, where the heck have you been! I’ll see you again on Sunday. Take care 😊