May(be)

Today sees the end of the merry month of May in traditional English style – cold and wet. But that makes it the perfect day for staying in and catching up with what you may have missed in my posts during the month, or to remind yourself of some that you especially enjoyed (he said, hopefully).

Counting today this is the fourteenth time this month that I have landed in your inbox. As always, I played you a lot of music, but there were some diversions too. Having said that, I began on the 1st May with some tunes for May Day, which I celebrated with a little bit of a history lesson, a lovely video of May Day celebrations in days gone by, and some music from Oysterband and Faun.

Chronologically, my next offering was my previous month’s review, Bye Bye April, which gave you the usual rundown of April’s posts, plus a bonus of two of my favourite tunes that I had played during the month, from Jackson Browne with David Lindley, and Roseanne Cash with her Dad, Johnny.

As always there was a full set of my two regular musical series. Starting with Tuesday Tunes, the month began with Tuesday Tunes 198: What? More? which was a reprise of one of the themes that had featured in my mini series of the Five Ws and H of journalism. The music came from Status Quo, John Mellencamp, R.E.M, The Monkees, and Boz Scaggs.

Next week saw another revisit to that mini series with Tuesday Tunes 199: When? Again in which I gave you some tunes from McGuinness Flint, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, Alison Krauss, and The Searchers.

I followed that up with a special bumper post with a landmark for the series, in Tuesday Tunes 200: A Milestone. As its title suggests, this was for the 200th Tuesday Tunes post, something I could never have contemplated when I played the first set back in March 2020. This was a set of seven of my favourite tunes from the previous 199 episodes, and they came from the Playing For Change Organisation, Soul Asylum, The Kinks, Jethro Tull, Mike + The Mechanics, Frank Turner, and Led Zeppelin. Needless to say, I enjoyed that one!

The closing one for May was another theme reprise: a fourth set of dance songs, after three previous visits in 2022. This was Tuesday Tunes 201: Some More Dances, and the music was by Chris Montez, Stevie Nicks with Vanessa Carlton, David Bowie, Little Feat, and an absolutely beautiful live performance by Leonard Cohen.

On to Song Lyric Sunday now. There were also four of these, starting with one in which we were invited to play a song by a performer on the tv show American Idol. I was at a bit of a loss for this, as I don’t like or watch those so-called talent shows, and that one is only broadcast here on one of our minor channels and gets next to no publicity. I eventually found my answer in the shape of someone who had been a judge on the show, not a contestant, but who had returned to play on it. This was in Song Lyric Sunday: Saved By Mr Kidman, in which I played the official video of the tune Keith Urban sang on the show, plus my favourite of his songs.

The next challenge was much more up my street, as we were asked to play a song which had reached #2 in the charts but never got to #1. I played three, starting with the one which gave me my title for the week: Song Lyric Sunday: Talkin’ ‘Bout My G-g-g which I’m sure most will recognise as being from the classic Who song My Generation. That was an easy one for me, as it is a fairly well known stat here that The Who have never had a #1 single, and only got as far as #2 twice. I also played Wild Thing, by The Troggs, which did get to #1 in the US but stuck at #2 here, and one by Manfred Mann.

This was followed by playing a song about a toy. I gave you Song Lyric Sunday: A Dream Passing By, and played two tracks: the lead one by The Small Faces which was backed up by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound.

For the final May Sunday the theme was to play a song which incorporated whistling. There are many more to choose from than you might expect, and I went for tunes by Paul McCartney, Noah Cyrus, and the New Vaudeville Band in Song Lyric Sunday: Everybody Gonna Dance Tonight. Feeling generous, I then threw in a link to what for a Brit of my era is the obvious choice for this, the classic one hit wonder that was Whistling Jack Smith’s I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman. They don’t make them like that any more. Thankfully!

That just leaves my three midweek posts. The first of these was a full music piece, in the shape of “Irish” Music in which I played a set of tunes which might at first appear to be by Irish acts, but weren’t. Two were from Germany, and there were one each from Australia, Slovakia, Transylvania, and the US. I then played a lovely tune by real Irish folks to add some balance.

The final two are the ones which so far have been awarded the most ‘likes’ during the month. I am always pleased when a mental health post is well received, as I like to do my little bit to remind everyone of the need to look after ourselves and each other. I marked Mental Health Awareness Week 2024 in my usual way, and have been delighted with the response, both in terms of those likes and the comments that have been made.

The one which has generated most ‘likes’ – by a margin of one at the time of writing – is one in which I played a set of tunes by the remarkable Lewis Capaldi, in Music Doing Good, which gave me an opportunity to reprise the mental health message, as well as to highlight the way in which he was using his music to support people doing good things. There were five videos in the post, and all are inspiring. If you haven’t yet seen the post, do take a look, but take a tissue with you, as there are some moving moments amongst them.

That’s all for the review, but regular readers will know that I usually close with a tune. Having just talked about Lewis Capaldi it was an obvious choice to give you another of his songs, as this one kind of helped me with the title for this piece:

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did: I think he is incredibly talented and has a great voice. Maybe was on Lewis’ first album, Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent, which made #1 in the UK and #20 in the US, but it wasn’t officially released as a single: as Official Chart Company rules only permit three songs by the same artist to be included at the same time and he already had three there, it could only be on the UK Streaming Chart, where it got to #31. I still like it, though!

That’s all for today. I’ll see you again for another of these at the end of next month, and will of course be back on Sunday. Take care 😊