The Best of Clint Mann

This song combines a reflection of the consequences of warfare for the people of Afghanistan and Ukraine with the titles of 50 or so songs and albums which form the lyrics. You might like to listen and guess which ones you recognize but here below are the lyrics:

Refugees in transit on the road of bones
Searching for an exodus from a game of thrones.
Exile on a main street, exit just in sight
The fearless must endure a hard day’s night.

Living in a glass house on the eve of wars
Human desperado, clutching at straws.
Night spent in absentia, too late for the sky;
Days of future passed, ready to die.

Too late registration, doomsday afternoon,
Living in the past upon the dark side of the moon.
So here come the warm jets, brothers in arms
Ranks of Eden louder than the bombs

The power and the glory, the end of innocence,
There’s a riot going on, things stop making sense,
In a downward spiral, lost in search of space,
Rock bottom where the hand cannot erase.

MPs talk of queues and cures with images and words,
Hot rats, midnight vultures – evil nightbirds.
We’ll talk about it later – you can dig me out
Meddle in a foxtrot roundabout

In a misplaced childhood, many nursery crimes,
Car wheels on a gravel road, sign of the times,
False romantic warrior stirs a bitches brew;
Violator turns a baby blue.

Pawn hearts of betrayal, each a talking head,
Blind faith that all things must pass when the queen is dead.
Once progressive forces see their passion play:
On the road to nowhere, in a silent way.

Window for the World

Progressive Forces

The title track of the Chasing Shadows CD, written and recorded in the year 2000 about the 1999 eclipse and the celebrations for the Millennium. The version I currently perform live has replaced Essex locations (ie Crouch & Blackwater) with those in Gloucestershire (ie Severn & Wye) and now refers to the 2015 eclipse! 

Chasing Shadows

This is a remixed version of Oceans of Plastic, a song I wrote a year or so ago about the dreadful way we are polluting our seas and endangering species. The original recording was made by Dave Stephens at Mitcheldean Festival and I have remixed it and dubbed some vocals and effects.

Oceans of Plastic

A song written for the Tall Ships Festival which is held in Gloucester every two years. I've just come back from this year's event (2019) in which we performed on the main stage and in the Waterways Museum.

Clint Mann Live

Tall Ships Festival

A song from 2019 to join in the clamour for action to combat climate change.

A song written to protest against the use of fracking in the Forest of Dean, and celebrating the men and women of the past and present who have fought to preserve the identity of the forest.

Hello, New Life

Iron Trees And Coal

CMC 10 Shadows and Forest

WYSIWYG

Mathematics

A kind of Forest of Dean meets The Blair Witch Project

The Wicked Gate

Tells the story of Westburybrook Iron Mine (aka Edgehills Mine) which was managed by William Henry Medland Phillips in the second half of the 19th century. It was the scene of a number of fatal accidents. When we moved into the house where he lived we researched the history of the area and facts and people we learnt about feature in this ballad.

The Ballad of the Plump Hill Miners

Betablockers

A song about coronavirusisolationsyndrome

Chinese Whispers

Using mainly material from the audio-cassettes, in 2017 I evolved into the world of CDs and digital technology, employing Audacity as a tool to edit and remaster some of the older scratchy material. It allowed me to enhance the music if not improve the tonal quality of my singing. The end product was the collection of CDs of which ‘Light and Shade’ encompasses many of the songs from around 1987 to 1996, mostly songs about relationships, love, loss, pastimes and entertainment.

CMC 07 Light and Shade

After Supper

CRIMSPON RED: In the second half of the 1990s I found myself involved more actively and passively involved in the music scene. Passively as a consumer of many CDs and attendee of many gigs and festivals. And actively as a performer for a while in Bushes and Briars, and as a recorder of a range of songs. Some from this period were inspired by discovery of new horizons: the musical influence of Pooka and the learning of a wider range of guitar techniques, with more use of plectrum style, experiment with DADGAD and other tunings, and honing the techniques in sessions and gigs. Burnham’s annual Festival which thanks to Tim Aves and others grew out of National Music Day was a great local success. At Cambridge Folk Festival I appeared in the club tent sandwiched between Sinead Lohan and Davy Graham, but sadly I don’t have a photograph of the performers’ list to certify this, and the crowds of journalists thronging around the green room before and after my set were only interested in them and not me. Nonetheless these were good times, and the music was also rather more outward looking and mostly cheerful, even if songs like Death of a Dream focused on the events surrounding the death of Princess Diana. Most are more imaginary that autobiographical, based on what things might be like rather than what they are.

Needles In Suburbia

CMC 08 Crimson Red

Action God Lagerman

Reach For The Sky

Over the years I was fortunate enough to perform with a number of talented musicians and CMC 11 is a collection of recordings made at four different times. It has been christened “The B Sides Folk” because it features folk with the names of Button, Broad, Bushes and Briars and the Bogdogs!
Tracks 21-25 are five traditional folk tunes that feature John Button on the violin. John was a teacher and colleague at The Vale of Ancholme School in the late 1970s.
Tracks 18-20 are three tunes that I recorded with my wife Liz Broad, another talented violinist, who also features on some of the Rizlahead recordings. 
Tracks 9-17 were recorded live by Bushes and Briars during our rehearsals and gigs in the mid 1990s. The band was based in the Maldon area and featured Paul Kiff (violin), Marianne Kiff (keyboards), Matthew (Lead guitar) Andy (bass guitar), Jeremy Naunton (drums), Cathy Naunton (caller) and myself (rhythm guitar). Our gigs would take us to a variety of places around Essex varying from several wedding ceremonies, institutions for the mentally unwell, clubs and festivals, and larger venues such as Chelmsford’s Chancellor Hall. 
Tracks 1-8 were recorded by The Bogdogs, a band in which I played alongside Kevin Bassett who played 4 string banjo and mandolin. We performed at a number of events, clubs and festivals in the first decade of the 21st century, often accompanied by Caroline Whalley on violin and Steve Pender on bodhran. In July 2007 we recorded a CD which features many of the mostly Irish jigs, reels and polkas which were staples in our set, traditional tunes given a lively contemporary twist.

04 Balquidder Lasses  Bear Dance

Nowhere As Grand

Originally by Caravan but reworked acoustically with a folky ending.

Disassociation

Tells the story of the 1872 tragedy at Dolomite Quarry on Plump Hill when four local men were killed by poison gas following the detonation of a charge, watched on the surrounding hillside by hundreds of onlookers.

Lyrics:
There lies a limestone quarry, not far from Mitcheldean
Where pampas grass and purple orchids grow.
But in the crags above, traces may be seen,
Tragic scars of many years ago.
At Quarry House, carved in stone, initials can be seen:
The name of Aaron Symonds set on high.
A quarryman who made a plan and told all Mitcheldean
He’d blast the limestone face into the sky.

Set the chamber charge and blast the quarry stone
Witness there a great explosion loud!
Dynamite and sulphur, four men overthrown,
Poisoned by the gas before a crowd

People came from miles around to see the great event
And sat upon the hillside far and near,
They waited long past six o’clock, impatient and intent
Until they saw a flag of red appear.
The chamber fuses then were lit and some men moved away,
And fifteen minutes later came a sound;
A mass of rock was lifted up, from side to side was split,
Limestone boulders crashing to the ground. 

CHORUS

A great Hurrah was shouted out from folk up on the hill,
Who to the quarry hastened then to go,
The quarryman who lit the fuse lay fallen down and still,
His body down among the fumes below.
Three men attempted rescue but were cut down by the gas
And in a lifeless state their bodies lay.
Remedies attempted on the four without avail,
Relatives and women cried away.

CHORUS

The jury at the inquest gave a verdict that the gas
Had caused the deaths of all four men the same.
The coroner Mister Carter after witnesses were called
Exonerated Symonds from the blame. 
John Griffiths, William Tomlin, Hiram Bayliss, Thomas Goode,
The heroes of the Dolomite we name;
Working men and rescuers who did the best they could,
Whose lives were lost so needlessly in vain.

The Best of Clint Mann

User 891024725