You’ll probably see ads under and possibly incorporated into articles on this blog.
I don’t choose them and I don’t approve them: that’s the price I pay for not being able to afford to pay for all my blogs…
If lots of people suddenly start viewing this blog, I’ll find some money for this one. (I already pay for dharley.com and whealalice.com!) But I’m not expecting a sudden rush of visitors after all these years.
David Harley
This is very much a work in progress: a single verse and a tune that may well change over time. The verse will almost certainly not be expanded, but it will probably constitute just one section of a larger piece with quite a lot of instrumental music, though the verse may be left a capella.
For a rather different approach to a similar visualisation, see Philip Larkin’s An Arundel Tomb.
I’m not sure if it’s coincidental that while I was posting this LinkedIn suggested that I might be interested in a post as Obituaries Editor for a medical journal…
Effigies
Once more they lie together
Not an atom’s width apart
Where none disturb their slumber
For there is no beating heart
Backup:
Nothing to do with the Spice Girls or reality TV: I’ve had the basic idea for this kicking around for at least 30 years, but I finally put the words into something resembling a final version. This is a single take recording: I’ll hopefully come back to it when I’ve learned it properly, but this is Harley in country blues mode, so it’s never likely to be particularly polished… The guitar is a D’Angelico archtop, but it doesn’t sound particularly jazzy because, since it was done in one take, the acoustic sound is mixed in with the DI-d electric sound. I rather like it, but your mileage may vary.
Words and music, such as it is, by me.
Backup:
I came home last night, just about the break of day
She’s got her suitcase packed, just about to make her getaway
She said, well now baby, who do you think you are
You stayed out all night, don’t know what you came back for
Five long years my baby walked the line
Now she’s gone, long gone, since she found out I was playing double time
She said, well now baby, who do you think you are
You stayed out all night, don’t know what you came back for
Down at the courthouse, fell down on my knees
Said I love you babe, won’t you forgive me please?
She said, well now baby, who do you think you are
You stayed out all night, don’t know what you came back for
Wrote her a letter, wrote it on my knees
Babe I learned my lesson, won’t you come back please?
She wrote back,
Well now baby, who do you think you are
Got my eyes wide open, don’t know what I’d come back for
David Harley
It’s always nice to get radio play (thank you again, Ian Semple, for playing ‘A Rainy Day Blues’ today on Coast FM!), but I’m particularly looking forward to being played on this one, just because of the name of the show.
I hope no one will expect me to go all punk…
David Harley
I know it’s hardly five minutes since the last album, but I’ve actually been working on this one since last year.
Brookland Voices started as another vaguely folky album, but somehow Messrs Yeats (subsequently moved to the ‘Swan Songs’ album) and Housman elbowed their way in. Then I found myself with all these improvised or semi-improvised guitar pieces, some of them played on electric rather than acoustic guitar, and they do seem to dominate the album. In fact, while I would never claim to be any sort of jazz guitarist, this is probably as near to a jazz album as I’ll ever get. To be fair, ‘South Wind’ and ‘The Water is Wide’ are instrumental versions of traditional songs/tunes.
‘Severn Years In The Sand’ is a version of a song that seems to have arisen during World War II among units that saw service in the Middle East. ‘The Knocker Up’ and ‘It Ain’t Gonna Rain are actual folk songs. ‘When I Was In Love With You’, ‘Far In A Western Brookland’, ‘When I Was One-And-Twenty’ and ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ are settings of verse by Housman. The song ‘A Rainy Day Blues’ and the other instrumentals are my own, including ‘Chivalry’, which is an instrumental based on my own ‘Song of Chivalry’.
I’ve put this up before, but this is a version with electric guitar that I quite like. More jazz than blues, perhaps: I even played it on an archtop guitar.
Some days are like a melody
But I can’t seem to hold the key
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose
So I spend my day trying to keep myself amused
Sitting here picking at a rainy day blues
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose
It seems the road to fortune never ends
You play God all week and golf at weekends
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose
And if we quit the rat-race we could have a ball
But you know those big wheels grind so small
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose
You say you love me but it seems sometimes
You stuff my mouth with kisses and my ears with lies
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose
Backup:
David Harley's Songs 