This is my cover of ‚Get Lucky‘ by Mark Knopfler.

I own nothing of this music.

Written by: Mark Knopfler
Guitars, vocals and flute: Chris Vesper
Cittern: Detlef Neuls
Midi instruments (piano, B3 organ, bass, drums): Chris Vesper
Audio production: Chris Vesper

Thanks for listening!

Get Lucky (Mark Knopfler Cover)

This Has Gotta Stop

I was privileged to be a teenager during the seventies, a time in history when the best music was written, recorded and performed by the best musicians on the planet. Bands such as Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Queen, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd, to name but a few, were ruling the record stores and airwaves. And, oh boy, there was a lot of them and I ate it all up! I had an insatiable appetite for it all. Apart from being a qualified geologist during my working career, the subject matter I had the most knowledge about have always, and will always be, seventies music. I never learned it, I lived it.

I grew up in South Africa, a very conservative society at the time, and where music, amongst other things, was strictly censored. However, if ever you want to risk waving a red flag in front of a bull, you just have to tell a teenager not to do this or listen to that. Amongst these banned songs were Spanish Train by Chris De Burg and Sugarman by an unknown artist called Jesus (Sixto) Rodrigues - or something; nobody was sure but we were going to listen to it.

My generation was part of what happened to Rodrigues and his music in South Africa during the late seventies and is the stuff legends are made off. The full story was beautifully portrayed in the 2012 documentary film Searching for Sugarman, written and directed by Malik Bendjelloul.

The collection of Rodrigues songs I have recorded here will never compete with the originals by Sixto, neither was it the intention. I am retired now and have the time to indulge in doing the things I like to do. This is just my way to, and in my own style, re-kindle a past when music was great, but mostly to pay homage to one of the greatest song writers of our time. 
-	Quartus Snyman
        September 2023

Sounds of Sugarman

Hate Street Dialogue

My Brothers CD that I have only been able to listen to now, since his suicide in 2011. 

08 Southern Cross

"Amsterdam" is a song by Jacques Brel. It combines a powerful melancholic crescendo with a rich poetic account of the exploits of sailors on shore leave in Amsterdam.

Brel worked on the song at his house overlooking the Mediterranean at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, the house he shared with Sylvie Rivet, a publicist for Philips; a place she had introduced him to in 1960. "It was the ideal place for him to create, and to indulge his passion for boats and planes. One morning at six o'clock he read the words of Amsterdam to Fernand, a restaurateur who was about to set off fishing for scorpion fish and conger eels for the bouillabaisse. Overcome, Fernand broke out in sobs and cut open some sea urchins to help control his emotion.

This version was recorded by Quartus- (vocals and guitar) and Lara (accordion and cello).

Port Of Amsterdam

Kingdom of Gold was written and recorded by Mark Knopfler for his 2012 album Privateering. This version was recorded by Quartus in April 2017 doing all vocals and instruments.

Cover art “Drowning” by ash-night-k.

Kingdom Of Gold

Don't Know Why (Norah Jones Cover)

TASCAM DR-05

Jamaica Farewell Cover

"Father and Son" is a popular song written and performed by English singer-songwriter Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam) on his 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman. The song frames an exchange between a father not understanding a son's desire to break away and shape a new life, and the son who cannot really explain himself but knows that it is time for him to seek his own destiny.
This rendition was recorded by Quartus and Lara in May 2018.
Quartus: Guitars and vocals
Lara: Cello
Father and Son Painting by Lutz Baar.

Father & Son

Natural Beauty
Written by Neil Young and recorded for his Harvest Moon album in 1992.
This rendition was recorded by Quartus in September 2018. It was abbreviated from its original ten-minute length but still conveys the strong message on nature conservation. 
The dark sombre mood is created through “double drop D”-tuning enabling the use of a low D droning sound on one of the Taylor guitars used in this recording.
Quartus: Guitars and vocals

Natural Beauty

"Landslide" is a song written by Stevie Nicks and performed by British-American music group Fleetwood Mac in 1975. Nicks says she wrote this song while contemplating going back to school or continuing on professionally with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. She wrote the song while visiting Aspen, Colorado, sitting in someone's living room "looking out at the Rocky Mountains pondering the avalanche of everything that had come crashing down on us ... at that moment, my life truly felt like a landslide in many ways.

This cover was recorded by Lara (vocals) and Quartus (Guitar) in August 2020 at their studio in Stanford, Western Cape.

Cover photo by Izak van der Walt.

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