Month: April 2023

More Great Telly – Guilt, Daisy Jones & The Six and “Dancing Barefoot” by Patti Smith

As this place seems to act as my web diary nowadays I no longer keep a paper diary. I did get a small one from a neighbour at Christmastime however (think it was surplus to requirements) and I’ve been using it to record the films and TV dramas I’ve watched this year, plus the books I’ve read. Time to share some of my favourites here I think.

I’ll start with the telly – I last did a roundup of what I’d been watching 10 months into the pandemic, and although it was a well-received post, I did feel a tad guilty about having had so much free time for boxset binging, especially when many of us were really struggling at the time, what with home-schooling kids and remote working. Hopefully this time, the divide between the time-rich and time-poor who visit this place will be less pronounced. Also, I’ll not admit to all of it, just the ones that have really made an impact.

Well, we didn’t dilly dally with this one and have finished it already, but if you haven’t yet watched BBC Scotland’s dark comedy-drama, Guilt, I would thoroughly recommend it. Think Better Call Saul relocated to Edinburgh, or Fargo on the Firth of Forth. Here is the trailer.


You really need to watch the first two series before embarking on the latest (and final) series, but only four episodes in each so very doable. I have always liked Scottish actor Mark Bonnar who seems to pop up on our screens regularly, but in Guilt he really is the lead actor and gets a chance to shine in the role of Max, a Leith boy done good, but a Leith boy whose charm and lawyer shenanigans don’t always get him out of a fix. I won’t offer up any spoilers but I would urge you to watch it. For the music bloggers who visit here, Max’s brother Jake runs a record shop very much like the one in the film High Fidelity, so lots of musical anecdotes interspersed throughout the show. Catch it on the BBC iPlayer.

But this is a music blog, so next up we have the Amazon Prime show Daisy Jones & The Six. Regulars who visit this place will already know I have a real fondness for the music that came out of Laurel Canyon in the late ’60s/early ’70s, so it was a no-brainer that I would watch this drama set in that very place. It charts the rise and fall of a fictional rock band made up of an amalgam of real-life characters from that time (we spotted Fleetwood Mac, Ringo and George, plus many more).


One of the lead actors, who played the titular Daisy Jones, was Riley Keough who interestingly is Elvis’s granddaughter. Both she and British actor Sam Claflin, who played Billy Dunne in the band, provided the vocals and if this is indeed the case they both did really well. Again I don’t want to give away any spoilers but the format they used, with documentary style footage included of their future selves, worked really well I thought. Oh, and Daisy’s extensive wardrobe of hot pants and diaphanous garments felt right for the times. There is a soundtrack album, and a couple of the songs from it have been released as singles. Here is a clip of Look At Us Now (Honeycomb). Wonder what Elvis would have thought. He would have been a proud grandfather no doubt, but that was never going to be.


Looking at my little diary, here are the other dramas I’ve really enjoyed so far this year: Happy Valley final series (BBC iPlayer), The Gold (BBC iPlayer), Dead To Me (Netflix), You (Netflix) and Blue Lights (BBC iPlayer). The common factor amongst really memorable telly is the writing, and there can’t be many people in the UK who didn’t watch the final series of Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley. It was going to be tough coming up with an ending that tied up all the loose ends and left viewers satisfied, but I think she managed it. What a fine young man Ryan had turned into too. As for Neil Forsyth, the Scottish writer who gave us Guilt, it seems he also wrote the screenplay for The Gold, the mini-series centred on the Brink’s-Mat robbery of 1983. It makes sense now that I enjoyed both so much and it was good to see the talented actor (with a wonderful voice), Emun Elliot, pop up in both. Blue Lights, set in Belfast, follows the trials and tribulations of three probationary police officers and it was so well-received a second series has already been commissioned. More synchronicity here in that one of the police officers is played by the same actor who played Max’s wife in Guilt.


From across the pond came the black comedy, Dead To Me, very much centred around the bond of friendship between two women (in amongst all the death!). It reminded me of the days before I met Mr WIAA when I was lucky enough to have a series of very close female friends, the kind you do everything with and can depend on entirely. These kind of friendships are by their nature short-lived, especially once a boyfriend or partner comes along, but I have fond memories of those days and this drama reminded me of how important it can be to have such a friend. My last pick, You, was also from across the pond, although in the final season the action moved to London. It’s a psychological thriller and although I thought it lost its way a bit in the second season we persevered with it and enjoyed the twists and turns along the way.

I will finish with the song that was used as the opening theme to Daisy Jones & The Six, one that formed an earworm when we were watching the show. Dancing Barefoot by Patti Smith was recorded for her second album Wave in 1979 but was the perfect fit for this new drama released in 2023. Something timeless about it I think and the lyrics really did work for the character of Daisy.

Dancing Barefoot by Patti Smith:


So, a lot of telly there but not as much as I admitted to during the long periods of lockdown. What have you been watching of late? If you have anything you think I might like, please do share. I’d love to hear from you and as you know by now, I always reply.

Until next time…


Dancing Barefoot Lyrics
(Song by Patti Smith/Ivan Kral)

She is benediction
She is addicted to thee
She is the root connection
She is connecting with he

Here I go and I don’t know why
I fell so ceaselessly
Could it be he’s taking over me…

I’m dancing barefoot
Heading for a spin
Some strange music draws me in
Makes me come on like some heroine

She is sublimation
She is the essence of thee
She is concentrating on
He, who is chosen by she

Here I go and I don’t know why
I spin so ceaselessly,
Could it be he’s taking over me…

She is re-creation
She, intoxicated by thee
She has the slow sensation that
He is levitating with she …

Here I go and I don’t know why,
I spin so ceaselessly,
’til I lose my sense of gravity…

(oh god I fell for you …)

The plot of our life sweats in the dark like a face
The mystery of childbirth, of childhood itself
Grave visitations
What is it that calls to us?
Why must we pray screaming?
Why must not death be redefined?
We shut our eyes we stretch out our arms
And whirl on a pane of glass
An afixiation a fix on anything the line of life the limb of a tree
The hands of he and the promise that she is blessed among women.

(oh god I fell for you …)

Months Of The Year In Song: April, Time for Things to “Open Up”

Thank goodness for this series, as I seem to have lost my blogging momentum. I return with the latest edition a bit earlier than usual this month in the hope it will kickstart things. Watch this space as they say.

We’re now well through the month of April and at last it’s starting to feel quite springlike with record temperatures around here this week. It hit 23 degrees on Tuesday so there was a mad scramble to find some summery clothes. As ever, such unseasonal temperatures are more a cause for concern than joy nowadays, but still nice to see blue skies again after a long winter (of discontent).

Yet again I suspect the naming of the month of April will have something to do with the Romans, as has every other month since I started this series. I haven’t checked yet but let’s have a look. Yep, although the derivation is not certain it is thought to come from the Latin verb aperire, to open, it being the month when trees and flowers begin “to open” for spring. Thankfully my garden is indeed now looking a lot more interesting as trees and shrubs start to flower, making them a lot less stick-like. Roll on summer I say.

My Forsythia shrub now in full bloom

The great thing about these series where we ask for song suggestions is that they almost write themselves. This might not be the series I’ve enjoyed researching the most, but I have really enjoyed making new musical discoveries courtesy of those who drop by the comments boxes with their contributions. As I always say, I couldn’t do this one without you, so thank you.

One of the first suggestions last time came in from Martin and it was April Come She Will by Simon & Garfunkel. Considering they have their own category on my sidebar this was a welcome contribution as I love the music they made around the time of The Graduate film soundtrack which this song was on. Although I re-watched the film recently after carrying out a clearance of old DVDs (The Graduate was definitely a keeper), I wouldn’t have specifically remembered it – but next time I’ll know when to look out for it. The song was written in 1964 when Paul Simon was living in England. The lyrics apparently use the changing nature of the seasons as a metaphor for a girl’s changing moods. Girls…, Changing Moods…, don’t know what you’re talking about Paul.

April Come She Will by Simon & Garfunkel:


As ever there was a fair amount of overlap when it came to suggestions, and Khayem and Rol both came up with these next two songs.

First we have April Skies by The Jesus & Mary Chain. I really should know more about this band as they are Scottish, but somehow they weren’t on my radar in the late ’80s, possibly because they didn’t pop up on shows like TOTP very often. This song seems to have been the one that achieved their highest chart placing, reaching the No. 8 spot in 1987. I did like this comment attached to the clip on the video sharing website. “My hometown band – it can be a bleak and desolate place, but so glad that East Kilbride gifted them to the music world.” A proud fan from Scotland’s first New Town, designated in 1947.


Secondly, we have that musical genius from Minneapolis, Prince, with his song Sometimes It Snows in April. Again it’s from the soundtrack to a film, this time Under the Cherry Moon. I’ll have to admit I’ve never seen this film but it was very much Prince’s baby as he both directed it and starred in it. His character in the film was someone called Christopher Tracy, and deeply affected by the character’s death, the singer expresses their desire to rejoin them in heaven. Understandably it received much attention after Prince’s sudden death in April, 2016. I had only been blogging for a few months and after researching him for a tribute post realised I had totally underestimated his talent over the years – the man could do everything – but burnt out at far too young an age.


Ernie Goggins is another regular contributor to this series and one of his suggestions was April Anne by John Phillips, whom I know better as one of the Papas from the Mamas & the Papas. What a sweet sounding song this is from his first solo album, and although containing none of the harmonies we associate with his former group, it shows us what his solo work was like. Quite country-ish? I’m struggling with the language in the lyrics and sometimes wonder whether I’m just too naïve for the music blogging world, sharing things I sometimes don’t quite understand. Having just checked however, the (April) Ann in the song seems to have been based on a real person, and as I suspected, there are veiled references in there to real people such as Dennis Hopper, Michelle Phillips and Mick Jagger.


Time to mix things up a bit so we’ll now share something by an artist called April. Here is C from Sun Dried Sparrows in her own words:

I’m going slightly leftfield here but the first song thing that came to mind for me was Teach Me Tiger by April Stevens – if you’ll permit the bending of the rules there. It’s so kitsch you just gotta love it and once heard, never forgotten…


Indeed C, I won’t forget that one in a hurry, and I quite liked it. Lots of breathy wa wa wa wahs and even naïve little old me knows what April is getting up to.

Now that we’ve moved onto artists with April in their name, time to share another such suggestion. Here are a few words from Bill P:

As for April, since you chose the band name to carry March, I could offer April Wine as the band name for this month. They weren’t super famous, but they did have a few songs that charted rather high.

Thanks Bill P, a Canadian rock band from Novia Scotia it seems. Here is Roller from 1979. Very much of their time and didn’t get the recognition they deserved it seems.


For a total change in tempo here is Bill P’s other suggestion. It’s back to songs with April in the title, and as a fan of Ella & Louis, he tells us, “you can’t miss with April in Paris“.

I’ve never been to Paris in the springtime so maybe something to tick off the bucket list as it sounds as if it would be beautiful. This year the people were revolting on the streets of Paris in the springtime, but that’s their prerogative, and they’re not happy about having their pension age increased. We Brits are not ones for revolting so just take it on the chin, but I’m at the stage of wondering if I’ll ever make it to pension age.


There was an awful lot of overlap with suggestions last time and I hope I’m managing to cover them all but here is a song that both Khayem and Ernie Goggins came up with, April Grove by Chrysalis. Here are Khayem’s words:

I’d like to pretend I’m so cool that I knew about it first, but it was Martina Topley-Bird’s excellent cover version that alerted me to the song April Grove.

And here is Ernie’s reply:

Unlike Khayem I have long been familiar with ‘April Grove’ by Chrysalis. I don’t think that makes me cool, just old. (You’re in good company Ernie!)


Rigid Digit arrived a bit too late to the comments boxes this time and two of his suggestions had already gone. First one was the JAMC song but the second was this instrumental from Deep Purple, also suggested by Mr Sun Dried Sparrows who tells us it was the flipside to their Hallelujah single from 1969. Here is April Part 1 (there were also Parts 2 & 3).


Despite his main two suggestions having already gone, RD did wrack his brain, and his hard drive, to come up with these other picks. As he says:

Something to do with the month perhaps, but none of these choices could be described as upbeat.

Real Estate – April’s Song
Ron Sexsmith – April After All
Rufus Wainwright – April Fools

His final suggestion was this one by Three Dog Night – Pieces Of April. Very pretty indeed despite being quite sad. Thanks RD.


A final bit of mopping up to do with Khayem’s other suggestions (yes, there were even more – he was full of them for April).

Here are a few more for the pot:
April 5th – Talk Talk
April In Portugal – Les Baxter & His Orchestra

As for your Cocteau Twins suggestion KM, I’m going to save that one for May, as a bit of a twofer, but thanks as ever for your contribution. Before I finish I can’t let someone called Les Baxter go by without hearing what he has to offer. April in Portugal – wonder if they revolted there this spring?


Only four months left to go in this series but it does seem to be gaining momentum month on month. As ever, suggestions for May will be gratefully received. I had said recently I was feeling under the cosh having time-sensitive posts to write for series, but the flip side to that is that it gives you the discipline to sit down and put something together when you might otherwise not have got your ass in gear. Maybe I need more series and not less. Will have to revisit some ideas.

Remember her? April Merroney from The Brothers, an early 1970s TV Drama

Until next time…

April Come She Will Lyrics
(Song by Paul Simon)

April, come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain
May, she will stay
Resting in my arms again

June, she’ll change her tune
In restless walks she’ll prowl the night
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight

August, die she must
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold
September, I’ll remember
A love once new has now grown old

Lost Mail and Trashed Houses: A Mini Rant (and A Couple of Great Songs)

Like many of us at the moment, I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time waiting in call centre queues, or more commonly nowadays chatbox queues (where you eventually find out you’re communicating with a robot), trying to fix some error or problem that really shouldn’t have happened. It can be very frustrating and I have a few ongoing situations that just never seem to get resolved. So, rather than moan about the fact that HM Customs are now charging us a hefty fee to have some of our bespoke items lost in the mail returned to us (they were sent abroad so we missed the delivery deadlines)…, rather than moan about the fact my last guests at the holiday hideaway pretty much trashed the place…, time to think of some songs to share.

The recent cyber-attack affecting International Mail seriously impacted small businesses

I wrote about him around here once before, but our regular postman has sadly now retired. At the time everyone seemed shocked I knew my postman so well and spent time shooting the breeze with him of a morning, but when he took on the job later in life he decided to approach it that way. When he retired there was an outpouring of good wishes on our local neighbourhood Facebook group and in some streets Happy Retirement banners were put up. Things have not been the same since he retired and although there is nothing he could have done about the missing international packages, I do think he might have been able to help with my current returns issue.

In that last post I shared the song Please Mr. Postman and I featured the versions by the Beatles and the Carpenters. This time let’s go way back in time to 1961 and listen to the original by The Marvelettes. These girls formed the very first successful all-female group and this song was the first No. 1 single for Motown. As we all know, the hits from that label then kept on coming, but despite their early success The Marvelettes were soon eclipsed in popularity by their rivals The Supremes. The song seems to have been written by a veritable committee but one of those committee members has a very familiar surname, Brian Holland, he who went on to write many of Motown’s hits during their peak hit-making period with his brother Eddie and Lamont Dozier. Between them they helped define the Motown sound in the 1960s. (Music clip the Carpenters version.)

Please Mr. Postman by the Carpenters:


As for my last guests trashing my lovely wee holiday hideaway in The Highlands, pretty much everyone experiences it at some point and we just have to suck it up. The booking platforms’ systems are flawed (people book under ‘borrowed’ accounts), and as they get the lion’s share of the fee from the guest, not the host, that old adage about the customer always being right generally holds true.

Not my actual place but shocking what some some people will do

A song that came to mind when I thought of houses, was this one, A House Is Not A Home written by my favourite songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. We lost Burt recently so the BBC dedicated a large chunk of it’s weekend schedules to him, one of the shows part of a BBC Electric Proms concert Burt gave at London’s Roundhouse in 2008. Burt was aged around 80 at this point so the voice is not what it was but when I watched this performance on Saturday Night I was quite moved. Oh and for the record, when it comes to holiday lets a house is most definitely not a home, however hard we try to please. Some guests treat it simply as a product to be used and abused, which I still find shocking as I would always leave a place as I found it (and sometimes in better shape).

A House Is Not a Home by Chris Golfer:


Anyway, apologies for the mini-rant, but sometimes our blogs are the best place for such outpourings. Everything will be resolved in due course I’m sure but goodness me, just so time-consuming (and less time for blogging). I shall return no doubt in a better frame of mind.

Until next time…


A House Is Not a Home Lyrics
(Song by Burt Bacharach/Hal David)

A chair is still a chair, even when there’s no one sittin’ there
But a chair is not a house and a house is not a home
When there’s no one there to hold you tight
And no one there you can kiss goodnight

A room is still a room, oh, even when there’s nothin’ there but gloom
But a room is not a house and a house is not a home
When the two of us are far apart
And one of us has a broken heart

Now and then I call your name
And suddenly your face appears
But it’s just a crazy game
When it ends, it ends in tears

Pretty little darling, have a heart, don’t let one mistake keep us apart
I’m not meant to live alone, turn this house into a home
When I climb the stairs and turn the key
Oh, please be there, sayin’ that you’re still in love with me, yeah

I’m not meant to live alone, turn this house into a home
When I climb the stairs and turn the key
Oh, please be there, still in love
I said still in love
Still in love with me, yeah

Are you gonna be in love with me?
I want you and need you to be, yeah
Still in love with me
Say you’re gonna be in love with me
It’s drivin’ me crazy to think that my baby
Couldn’t be still in love with me

Are you gonna be, say you’re gonna be
Are you gonna be, say you’re gonna be
Are you gonna be, say you’re gonna be
Well, well, well, well
Still in love, so in love, still in love with me?
Are you gonna be
Say that you’re gonna be

Still in love with me, yeah
With me, ohh
Still in love with me, yeah

Bowie, Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and ‘Forbidden Colours’- RIP Ryuichi Sakamoto

If you are a music blogger and check your stats regularly, you soon sense something is amiss when one of your really old posts suddenly gets a lot of traffic. As it turns out I had already heard the news of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s death on the car radio, but true to form, once I got home and checked, a post I had written in my first week of blogging back in 2016 was already the most visited of the day.

I was still reeling from the death of David Bowie when I wrote it (so most of it is about him) but back then the whole raison d’être of this blog was for me to revisit favourite songs from the past, and all these years later, Sylvian and Sakamoto’s Forbidden Colours was still a favourite. Here is that post again from seven years ago.

First Posted 17th January 2016:

Inevitably I got to thinking a lot about David Bowie this week and like many of us, have ended up spending a fair bit of time online looking back at his many guises. One that has thrown me a bit is the early ‘80s Let’s Dance phase. Early ‘70s David Bowie hid behind bizarre “spaceman” characters but by 1983 he had gone seriously mainstream. Or was he playing another character? I heard him say in an interview that he felt far more confident on stage playing a character such as Ziggy but by 36, as he would have been by this time, it looks as if he was confident enough to be himself. Amazingly, after looking pale, thin, malnourished and let’s be honest, a tad weird a decade earlier, he had turned into one of the best-looking guys in the industry (we’ll ignore the teeth). This was the post-New Romantic period and he was very much adopting the sharp, elegant look that bands such as Duran Duran, ABC and Japan favoured.


I am still unsure who copied who, but in 1983 there were a series of events that seemed to tie in and feed off each other. He released the Let’s Dance album that year and a string of hits came from it starting off with the title track in March. He had approached Nile Rodgers to act as producer on it, and his brief was to “give him hit singles”, which is exactly what he did. A massive world tour followed and I remember my flatmate of the time heading downtown with her sleeping bag in order to queue all night for tickets (no computers or Ticketmaster in those days, we were old school).

We knew that Bowie had a film coming out later that summer, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and leading the advance party were David Sylvian (ex of the band Japan) and Ryuichi Sakamoto, a musician who acted in the film but who had also produced the soundtrack album. The beautiful song Forbidden Colours was released in July 1983 and looking at a picture of David Sylvian from back then, there is more than a passing resemblance to ‘83 Bowie (although he is not as suntanned as he hadn’t been on location in a tropical rainforest).

Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian

The lyrics again are a bit bizarre but the theme is a forbidden love, which is also reflected in the storyline of the film. I do remember going to see it when it came out the following month and Bowie turned in a really good performance. A male colleague from that era had also been to see it and when I asked his opinion he decided that there had been something lacking, in that there were no women in it. That would of course have been because it was set in a male prisoner of war camp.

Forbidden Colours by David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto:


So, unlike with his earlier creations, David Bowie in 1983 was very much part of the zeitgeist making highly commercial pop music and looking and dressing very much like his younger counterparts. He was back acting, and feeding off the people he worked with. Happy memories of those days – the real start of big ’80s hair (perms and bleaching were de rigueur), bold bright earrings, tanned skin, and lots of white shoes and clothing. Those of us who got on board with the whole look have probably ruined our hair and skin in the process but boy did we feel good when stepping out for a “night on the town”.

Scene from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Not very much about Ryuichi himself in this repost for which I apologise, but other than the soundtrack to the film mentioned, I didn’t really know much about him. I have just discovered however that he also composed the soundtrack to another film I really enjoyed from the 1980s, The Last Emperor, for which he won an Oscar. He won a BAFTA as recently as 2015, for the soundtrack to the film The Revenant. A respected composer, record producer and actor who, like Bowie, sounds as if he was taken far too soon.

Until next time… RIP Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Forbidden Colours Lyrics
(Song by David Sylvian/Ryuichi Sakamoto)

The wounds on your hands never seem to heal
I thought all I needed was to believe
Here am I, a lifetime away from you
The blood of Christ, or the beat of my heart
My love wears forbidden colours
My life believes

Senseless years thunder by
Millions are willing to give their lives for you
Does nothing live on?

Learning to cope with feelings aroused in me
My hands in the soil, buried inside of myself
My love wears forbidden colours
My life believes in you once again

I`ll go walking in circles
While doubting the very ground beneath me
Trying to show unquestioning faith in everything
Here am I, a lifetime away from you
The blood of Christ, or a change of heart

My love wears forbidden colours
My life believes
My love wears forbidden colours
My life believes in you once again