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Greta Garbo - a singular inspiration for many a song
Welcome to the special Song Bar Singles Night, where, with the help of many special guests who chat freely on the subject, we seek songs on the ups and downs of the single state, from loneliness to blissful solitude, dating and even giving yourself a helping hand …
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The Fab Four at Pier Head
To the five boroughs! … of Merseyside, Liverpool city and beyond, this week it’s not about bands from the area, but those who reference its streets, buildings, landmarks, districts, history, the people, accents, broader culture and more
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But … who’s the ace?
Queens, kings, aces and jacks, jokers and dealers, tricks and games, winners and loses, gambling, risk, and making the best of the hand you’re dealt, this week it’s time to shuffle the musical pack and see what’s in hand on this theme
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JJ Johnson
From classical to Dixieland to New Orleans early jazz, swing, big band, bebop to modern jazz, pop, funk, rock and more, it’s time to bone up, slide in and have a blast with your suggestions on this great, often unheralded instrument
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Hum that tune …
Birds to insects, bats and angels to Icarus and aeroplanes, myth and reality, metaphor and literal, it’s time to let your musical imagination take flight and soar with the senses in songs that feature these supreme super-limbs in lyrics
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Ice work if you can get it …
Things are really hotting up, so it’s time to lower the temperature a bit. Whether that involves cooling off on your insides or outside, physical, visceral, mental or metaphorical, let’s cool off with some songs on the subject
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Stereo-typing
Which type are you? Portraying or satirising, explaining or exploding, this week we explore these social generalisations about race, gender, age, nationality, class or profession as expressed in song lyrics or even musical style
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Airing the sound: MOMA’s Music Gallery
It’s a private view where all are invited. Led by our expert guest curator EnglishOutlaw, chosen from a range of musical hanging fruit, welcome to the grand tour reopening of an entirely unique grand expo - a canticular spectacular
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Some of the Horniman Museum’s many musical instruments
It’s time to show off your best and most collectible nominations about venues of art and artefacts, whether that is the building, the people, or the interacting with the items within, from grand palaces to tiny garages
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Heavy metal: American guitar pick coins
Penny for your thoughts? Spare a dime? Money may often be on anyone’s mind, but this week we’re spinning a theme in particular all about coins, incidentally or centrally in a song lyrics. Will your suggestions come up heads or tails?
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Very fruitful: Little Richard
It’s time to come out with our own Song Bar gay parade – songs exploring, expressing the experience from confusions and problems, all the way to coming out and celebrating gender, difference across the sex spectrum
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Don’t adjust the dial. Stay tuned. All the buttons and songs are on this week’s Song Bar radio
Click! Radio to romance, computers to transport, even death and destruction, those switches are primed for all occasions, so stay tuned for super songs picked by guest Marco den Ouden from nominations that push all the right buttons
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Slide away …
Literal or metaphorical, mechanical, electrical or psychological, it’s time to switch your attention to these sorts of manual controls referred in song lyrics, and see what turns on and pushes those buttons …
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Rising and setting …
Distant hillsides to sea sunsets, skylines and vapour. trails to massive events, this week’s playlists are a thing of timeless beauty, picked by guest ajostu from an ocean of nominations, stretching far and wide across the musical globe
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The open road … all the way the vanishing point …
It’s the inspiration for so many album covers, not to mention songs, and also an idea of infinity we never quite reach. From literal or metaphorical and lyrical, this week we reach for that imagined line where land, or sea, meets sky
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Enter a dome of mesmerising drone ….
You’ve got your ticket, now click to enter this special event, a festival of continuous sounds, otherworldly music that crosses the realms of pop, folk and other forms filling five special fields and domes, curated by guest organiser MussoliniHeadkick
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Velvet Underground, including John Cale and Lou Reed
It can be minimal, relaxing, and meditative, or disturbing, loud and challenging, but in its purest form or within any genre, drone music, played or sung, centres on a single sustained note or long chord that dominates the entire song or piece
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