Another blues song for my upcoming Blues album

When You Get The Blues.WAV

Feel the warmth of enduring love with "In Your Light," a powerful anthem of resilience and connection. This heartfelt song celebrates the unbreakable bond that guides you through life’s challenges, offering hope, strength, and clarity in each moment.

Perfect for those who find their light in love, it’s a song to inspire and uplift.

Feel the spark. Press play and let "In Your Light" brighten your day! ❤️

In Your Light

This song appealed strongly to both of us. The supercharged emotion conveyed through a storm of many vivid details (like an imagist or concrete poem) each detail sparse and understated but diamond clear, the plucked heart not given to displays of emotion here shattered by heartbreak recollected in tranquility; the hard glittering edges of naked female vulnerability; holding a smashed mirror up to Dylan and giving the counter story to the one we usually hear. 

"You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
'Cause I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes, I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid"

plus of course the throat-throbbing Baez vocal. The two protagonists were both brilliant performers and the rapport they still had together in the 1974 rematch (Baez managing to be even cooler than Bob) after their glorious early 60s partnership is well worth looking up. Apparently she has performed the song every decade since - including a fabulous recent reinterpretation with Judy Collins (both still sound amazing) - but has decided to stop updating the "Ten Years Ago..." once she got to "Fifty Years Ago...".

Maz's first venture into finger plucking guitar.


Well, I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
Well, you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes, the girl on the half-shell
Could keep you unharmed
Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling all around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there
Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
'Cause I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes, I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid

Diamonds And Rust

On January 17, 1712, after a furious and partisan Parliamentary debate, the British Secretary of War in a whig ministry (Robert Walpole) was committed to the Tower and expelled from the House of Commons. In a pre-democratic/post-democratic mirror reverse image of our own time, Britain’s future Prime Minister was imprisoned for corruption even though he wasn’t found guilty whereas the incumbent President of the United States (in Walpole’s time a British colony) hasn’t been imprisoned even though he was.

“The Ballad of Sir Robert Walpole” was originally written to mark the bicentenary of Walpole’s return to Parliament in 1714 and published in “Doin’ Different”, a collection of new folk ballads about  Norfolk notables the following year. Walpole was larger than life in every way, seeming to belong naturally to the Hogarth cartoons in which his era is preserved and extravagantly embodied in Houghton Hall, Norfolk, the immense and palatial neoclassical stately home – a “Neptune and Britannia Rampant Counting House as Castle” - he built in the West Norfolk woods. We have tried to convey something of Walpole’s formidable largeness of life and Hogarthian cartoon spirit, the latter most especially in the choruses (which in the film the feminine side of our duo sings live to a bucolic audience of horned cattle in the January grounds of Houghton Hall.) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpYbaw4g3X4


Knight of the slightly drooping Garter,
King of Bankrupt Hall,
Lord of the Backstairs Tower Tryst,
Stout Adam of the Fall.

Richeldis, Julian, Sawtrey, Nelson,
Boleyn and Boudicca tall,
Margery, Fanny, Turnip, Kett,
Old Tom Paine and all-

Norfolk and good our heroes stand
With something pure about ’em
But none more Norfolk nor more good
Than Dodgy Bob of Houghton.

Sir Robert Walpole, King of Sink,
The Pharaoh of the Flaw,
The not so bumpkin nor so dumplin’
Loophole in the Law.

The first Prime Minister and still
Unequalled in that office;
The backwoods front-man, laughing loud,
The Prince of Peace – and Profits.

The Age he named is hero-free,
No children need to know.
They keep it off the syllabus,
No killers boldly go.

No Bonnie Charlie anthems, saints,
No bagpipe calls to arms;
Just German Georges 1 and 2,
Enlightenment and farms.

The beau, the rake, the dandy, fop,
The mistress-paying knights,
The hypocrite with itchy palm:
‘All thesemen have their price.’

Sir Robert Walpole, Count of Cash,
The Pharaoh of the Flaw,
The not so bumpkin country speakin’
Loophole in the Law.

His Babel built ‘too far from London’ 
Under a Norfolk bushel
The Neptune and Britannia Rampant
Counting House as Castle.

His bust and Caesar hairdo placed
A British cut above
The classic Mantle he assumed
Of Wisdom, Justice, Love.

Removed the timber duty while
He ordered his supplies,
Avoided Finished Buildings tax
With one unfinished frieze.

Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Ease,
The Pharaoh of the Flaw,
The ruddy cunnin’ Norfolk rulin’
Loophole in the Law.

Our burly boisterous backhand Bob
Was bawdy in his cups
Had heart-to-hearts with kings and queens
Yet kept the common touch.

And when the South Sea Bubble burst
And drowned both Whig and Tory,
He saved the country with a speech
And rode the tide to glory

Avoided War for eighteen years
Of Profit weighed with cost,
‘They ring the bells, they’ll wring their hands,’
He said when Peace was lost.

Sir Robert Loophole, Laughin’ Bob,
The Prophet of the Flaw,
Three hundredweight of Killed Cock Robin
Loophole in the Law.

Warwick Jones composed the tune and plays it.

Peacock's Tale (Gaz n Maz) do the rest. From our double album of new Norfolk/East Anglian folk ballads  "Done Different" https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/done-different-2

The Ballad Of Sir Robert Walpole

Float Away

Before summer is a song from our youth, when love was as bittersweet as a midsummer’s night. It is a youthful pondering on the conditions of love and life – and how at a young age it all seems to call for an intensity as burning as the summer’s sun. All to the accompaniment of those endless summer nights when we were drinking and dancing our young and worried souls away.

The Early Fears is the debut album of nomadic one-man band Nervous City Nervous Self and it contains a broad collection of songs portraying a journey from youth to adulthood. The artist takes a firm grip by the listener´s ear and leads us through the bliss and gloom of a wandering singer´s delightful doom. We meet the struggle for recognition and the quest for purpose, the delusions of failure and the sense of betrayal, the loneliness and the longing for something unknown, paired with a spiritual thirst and a hunger for home. All elements – or fears – that seem to be the predicaments for this or any kind of life. But also, and hopefully foremost, we get to glimpse at an almost magical sense of wonder, fulfilment, and even joyfulness. And at the end of the day – or album – a thankfulness for being alive arises, along with a flourishing wish to do something worthwile and beautiful out of it. 


Before Summer

Written and produced by © Don Minolta // Minolta Records
Artist: Dylan Stiggler

Another day
and I’ll be fine
I’ll be leaving this behind
I can only stop and talk
For a moment

Remember when
We moved in
And we’d say
hey over the fence
And we would
take the time
To talk about
The song birds

Mister Sampson over there
How’s your garden?
How’s your hands?
How’s Betty Anne?
Man, old man
It’s good to know you

We load the car 
In the garage
The room I used
To play guitar
Where we washed
Our dirty clothes
Was now as quiet
As a roach

We raise the door 
It slides along
The idle motor
Hums a song
As we reverse 
Into the world
It fades to nothing

Mister Sampson over there
How’s your garden?
How’s your hands?
How’s Betty Anne?
Man, old man
It’s good to know you

Mister Sampson you take care
As we drive by
But he’s not there
The road is old
the pavement’s cold
The panes are busted

Mister Sampson

from the Human Voides album by The Tree People, originally released as a cassette in 1984, reissued as a vinyl record and CD in 2009 by Guerssen Records of Spain.

If That's Entertainment

Humanism raised to the level of sacred ("words of the prophets written on the subway wall") In another age, Paul Simon would have been Bach or Allegri. We used to sing this in the car on long road trips; never thought we'd actually record it. The three knells/chimes in the 'mortal man' verse took longer to get right than the basic track! The angel wings are Maz's harmonies.
credits
from Untied States of Americana (LP), track released May 12, 2021 https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/untied-states-of-americana-lp
Maz - lead vocal, harmony vocal; acoustic guitar.
Gaz- backing vocal, acoustic and electric bass, djembe drum, Spanish dancing shoes, industrial triangle.

Words and Music by Paul Simon

Thanks as always to Warwick "Just Around The Corner" Jones.

Slip Slidin' Away

This song is as old as us! Dusty Springfield's sprightly country folk version with the Springfields was the first British single to reach the top 20 in the American Billboard chart in 1962 (over a year before the 1964 British invasion). youtu.be/uz6HB9HYQz4 Written by Jack Rhodes and Dick Reynolds, it was first recorded by Wanda Jackson in 1956 and covered by Linda Ronstadt in a kick-ass country rock version in the 1970s. youtu.be/pmQpYSBkwag
Not to mention Dolly Parton's happy honky tonk take on it youtu.be/VO4SYPRa3pI
Ours is nearer the much slower, much sadder version by Sandy Denny on her 'Rendezvous' album. If the lyric really does have an arch reference to the recreational drug use of the rich ('silver threads' 'golden needles' 'dare not drown my sorrows in the warm glow of your '"wine"') it rejects it (along with all the other consolations of money) as actually solving anything. Only 'the love you promised' can do that.
lyrics
I don't want your lonely mansion
With a tear in every room.
All I want's the love you promised
Beneath the haloed moon.
But you think I should be happy
With your money and your name
And hide myself in sorrow
While you play your cheating game.
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
And I dare not drown my sorrow
In the warm glow of your wine.
You can't buy my love with money
Cause I never was that kind.
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
...
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
And I dare not drown my sorrow
In the warm glow of your wine.
You can't buy my love with money
Cause I never was that kind.
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
credits
from Untied States of Americana (LP), released September 8, 2022
https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/untied-states-of-americana-lp
Songwriters: Jack Rhodes / Dick Reynolds
Silver Threads and Golden Needles lyrics © Campbell Connelly And Co. Ltd., Campbell Connelly And Co.ltd.

Maz - lead vocal, acoustic guitar
Gaz - bass, bass drum, hi hat, tambo, tom, floor tom, bells, backing vocal.

Silver Threads and Golden Needles

PREMICES

BATAGAIKA CRATER

A marriage (and we are actually married, 45 years so far) of melody and rhythm. We do folk, indie, Americana, Norfolk noir, beat poems &  ghazals. Traditional tunes with contemporary beats. Music videos  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb8wV0-DNiFs1R5G2VSytBQ
Maz lead & harmony vocals, acoustic guitar. Gaz vocals, voice, bass, drums & percussion, harmonium, recorders, lyre harp, field recordings.

The Ballad Of Sir Robert Walpole

Peacock's Tale Musical Storytelling

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