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Reflections on the Thames, Westminster - by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1880)
From inner London’s famous sites to the suburbs, its a melting pot of people, culture and music, of fame and fortune, fires, pioneers and history’s rebuilding. It’s time to go metropolitan and capture this great city in song
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Iran has a long and rich musical culture
It’s a country constantly in the news, but also portrayed through a western lens. This week, it’s time to search for another Persian perspective through the prism of music and poetry for some golden discoveries …
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Sakura saturation: a cherry blossom avenue
Their brevity very much integral to their beauty, they are simple yet also complex in their burst of colour. These flowers of stone fruit trees have been inspiration for artists, poets and songwriters for centuries
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The two-faced Roman god Janus, the inspiration for this month’s name
It’s a month of mixed feelings and perspectives, and can bring optimism as well as anguish. Songs about January, or set during it, so let’s see what settings, stories and emotions it inspires and produces …
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Where would stars be without the dark…?
It’s a vast spectrum of a topic that occupies half of Earth’s rotation, filled with emotions, stories, assocations, and styles. With the recent death of one famous rock figure, what other forms of darkness come to mind in song?
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Doubly horny
It’s a figure of speech in which two meanings, one obvious, the other less so, sometimes suggestive or sexual, though not always, hover simultaneously. But how do they come up in song lyrics?
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How my living room does not look
With spring cleaning possibly on the to-do list, practical and creative decluttering, not merely in the house, but all kinds of editing out, paring back, chiselling, sifting, trimming, shaving, scaling or downsizing, all expressed in song. Check out some experts’ tidy tips too…
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Dappled greys on a misty morning …
An unheralded hue between black and white, it’s the shade of ambiguity, subtlety, diplomacy and poetry. Dove, slate, mountain, pewter, flint, pebble, dawn, snail trail, bark, granite, graphite, bone, frost, smoke, mist, also in many animals and metaphors, so how does it work in culture and song?
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‘Fearful symmetry’? More to reflect on …
It’s pleasing to ear and eye, verbally, musically and rhythmically, so let’s seek songs with forms of lyrical antimetabole, the repetition of one or more words in successive clauses, but a transposed order
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Sleeve of Japrocksampler: How the Post-war Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock 'n' Roll – by Julian Cope (2007)
It’s a huge market for the industry, inspired by outsider music, and this extraordinary land also delivers much of its own, but what songs captures the essence of Japanese people and culture? Here’s a tiny dish of metaphorical sushi to get your tastebuds tingling ….
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Psych is always on the move …
Delay, fuzz, distortion, flanger, echo, sitars, and mind-altering drugs? It’s a style chiefly associated with the late-60s but what are it’s key characteristics and where else do they come up in the world of music? Let’s go on a journey through time and space …
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Hot-dog! Fingers ‘n’ everything …
This week, from a previous idea of nothing, we go to ‘everything’ not literally, but the idea of it, from big promises of love, all-encompassing importance, the the whole shebang, totality, the full caboodle, enchilada, the big ball of wax, all within the prism of song
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Sands of time …
It’s time to celebrate the Bar’s seven years with poetic inspiration for a topic that also endures – and songs about romantic love or friendship that’s perpetual through life, or forever enshrined in in the memory even if tragically cut short
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Guitar man: part of an illustration by Philip Pyke, aka philipphilip99, used for the cover of posthumously published collection his poems
This special tribute piece is to honour long-time Song Bar regular and contributor Philip Pyke, who sadly passed away a year ago today. Share you memories and thoughts of this witty, warm writer and friend
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The eyes have it: Great horned owl
Nocturnal, silent, spooky and mysterious, or curious, wise and cute? Owls represent richly contrasting associations in culture, but how are they used and portrayed in song, whether in lyrics or in sampled calls. Let’s explore and have a hoot
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One man’s personal paradise … what is yours?
What is yours? From Arcadia to Utopia, how can we create or find it? Where is it, and what does it look like? This week, after previously doing the impossible, we find the unfindable in the form of song, inspired my many books, art and films …
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Preface to a translation of Nostradamus’s Prophecies
From Julius Caesar feeling the sharp end in the Roman Senate to Nostradamus and his verse of things to come that will make the world worse. But what predictions will come from this week’s quatrains? Some playlists, for sure …
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The flurry of first light
Morning always comes, but how might you start it musically? This is a topic not about the morning and everything that goes with it, although those details may figure, but is one more about complementary mood, style, feeling and pace
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From 1920s speakeasy …
Even in the face of despair, it’s something in our DNA, focusing on the unknown immediate or distant future, where there's a feeling, a desire, a belief, or confidence that something good might happen that can be expressed in all sorts of lyrics and stories
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Forever falling upwards down MC Escher’s stairs
How to we capture or express it? Through love, art, death, heaven, hell or other forms? Particularly song. This week’s largely lyrical topic ponders on the forever, the permanent, the endless and goes to infinity and beyond …
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