December 27, 2022
December 23, 2022
December 14, 2022
Saints and Singers; Our Christmas LP
First released in 2021 as a 6 track EP and now expanded to showcase all our Christmas material including new recordings for this year.
The whole attempts to be greater than the sum of its jolly parts by evoking a journey Eastward - part mediaeval/allegorical orientation, part benighted rural Look East of England- culminating in an arrival at Whatever Christmas Promises around track 13.
https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/saints-and-singers-our-christmas-album
https://youtu.be/xdBI4GQp-eY The video
Herewardi Up Front For England v France ( For the Soul of England by P...
This video and sound-world remains oddly relevant. I wasn't sure what I meant when I put together a film before the game linking Harold's (Harry Kane, Harry MacGuire etc) close defeat through the South Gates of England (Hastings) and the subsequent unconquered resistance of Hereward with a football final soundscape that (if you listen carefully) spookily narrates a 1-2 defeat in exactly the order the game took. Of course I wanted it to mean we would win and go on to conquer the world in the Final but the weird prescience now feels more like "well we narrowly lost that one but some unconquerable spirit is unbroken this time and remains to fight another day" I have never felt so represented by and proud of an England team; as well as being fabulously talented with an abundance of young players they are also the first England football team I can remember who actually model and promote a better English society than the predatory one we have. And it played better than it did as semi-finalists of 2018; it just met the world's best earlier. As one Gareth to another, Gareth (a) please don't go and (b) just add someone to your tactics team who can help with the biggest game changing substitutions at the highest level.
November 25, 2022
A Mass of Carols For Margery by Peacock’s Tale folk indie duo
Imagine. It is Christmas Day 1443 and Lynn mystic Margery Kempe’s 70 year life is being celebrated in a remembrance service of words and music in her beloved parish church of St Margaret’s Lynn, with a dozen songs about her and her contexts as the carols and with dramatic readings from her Book as the Lessons.
Premiered in 6 You Tube episodes, beginning today with ‘Anchorless and Quite Alone’ (featuring Julian of Norwich) and every Sunday from now to Christmas at 3 pm:
1. https://youtu.be/ajVfKAQeLWg Anchorless and Quite Alone Tuesday 22 Nov 3 pm
2. https://youtu.be/VViwn4ytM64 Heaven and Hell Fire! Sunday 27 November 3 pm
3. https://youtu.be/0JeMQewaJg4 The Mortification of Mr Margery Sun 4 Dec 3 pm
4. https://youtu.be/-afa3sDavDU Pilgrim, Mystic Sunday 11 December 3 pm
5. https://youtu.be/D2VBx8CHJ2c Roaring Margery Sunday 18 December 3 pm.
6. https://youtu.be/WIsA1J0r-hU A Lynn Carol Sunday 25 December
Peacock's Tale folk indie duo evoke Margery in a musical duet of female and male voice and through various perspectives: in the context of her fellow female contemporary Norfolk mystic Julian of Norwich; her Merchant prince of Lynn father and the Hanseatic League; of her husband John Kempe and her role as mediaeval wife and mother of 14; her semi- unauthorised pilgrimages and mysticism; her famous weeping and her and often disputed claims to ('kitchen sink'?) mysticism; her status as a homely carol icon - carols being originally not just for Christmas but holy songs written by the common people rather than by professional clerics, this homeliness most charmingly embodied by her auditory vision of the English robin redbreast in place of the traditional dove of the Holy Ghost; her relationship with the Lollard heresy (notably its promotion of holy writ in a vernacular language); her loving kindness, attacks on clerical hypocrisy and dereliction of duty and her status as the (illiterate) mother of English autobiography. Kitchen sink mysticism from https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com
The soundtrack album as a one hour digital download with full lyrics, commentaries, historical, theological and literary analysis, credits, track art, links, photography and much else besides, becomes available with the premiere of A Lynn Carol the final episode. https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/a-mass-of-carols-for-margery
A pocket guide to Margery Kempe https://bitternbooks.co.uk/product/the-book-of-margery-kempe-of-lynn/
October 24, 2022
September 22, 2022
September 05, 2022
August 13, 2022
August 05, 2022
August 04, 2022
August 02, 2022
July 14, 2022
July 02, 2022
May 12, 2022
Lucinda (EP) by Peacock's Tale Folk Indie Duo
https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/lucinda-ep
We were quite close to Lucinda Williams for a while. About ten feet for the duration of her concert at the last-but-one Cambridge Folk Festival before the pandemic in August 2018. This is because Maz is very nippy when it comes to pushing through a crowd to the front. It was a terrific gig (despite a profoundly pissed/off guy on the bus back into Cambridge haranguing everybody it wasn't) but we probably feel closest of all to Lucinda when joining in on her albums (Car Wheels On A Gravel Road; World Without Tears etc) on vocals and dashboard percussion on our way back from the Duck at Stanner in the car.
All The Way To Jackson. Lucinda's original interpretation cleverly hints that maybe she's protesting too much about not missing him. We've gone for a simpler 'yay I'm free of that schmuck' version.
Lake Charles. This elegy reminds us of an old stager we knew at folk clubs, now sadly passed away. We sing it in loving memory of him. We thought about singing 'He had a reason to get back to King's Lynn' but didn't. It might not stop us singing the famous Cash-Carter duet 'as I'm Going To Thrapston.'
Concrete and Barbed Wire. Lucinda's signature take on the self-imprisoning barriers men erect in their relationships with women, much more effective than stone walls (which, as the Cavalier Prisoner of Civil War Richard Lovelace affirmed to his beloved Althea 'do not a prison make'.)
April 19, 2022
Half God Half Nelson the steady version
This hero ballad was the Ringo track on our
peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/not-quite-the-kings-shilling-ep
(a reminder of the shanty form Kate Rusby deconstructs on 'Cruel') but it's not quite the 'Not Quite' mood so it's here as a standalone track. The tune is based on an old Liverpool shanty (brilliantly disguised by Admiral James Paul McCartney as a psychedelic pop song) which I'm sure all members of our island nation will recognise with a shiver of pride.
lyrics
Heave away! Heave away!
His empty sleeve’s the flag we fly.
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.
He hunted polar bears, the lad
Heave away! Heave away!
‘To fetch a white rug to my dad.’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.
Mosquitoes bit him half to death:
Heave away! Heave away!
‘I’ll die a hero’s life instead’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.
Heave away Horatio’s boys
Heave away! Heave away!
Heave away and make a Victory noise
We're gone tomorrow but we're here today.
Off Corsica, his eye foresworn,
Heave away! Heave away!
‘I got a little hurt this morn.’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.
Off Cape St Vincent, breaking ranks,
Heave away! Heave away!
He won the day and England’s thanks.
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.
Our king’s right hand at Santa Cruz;
Heave away! Heave away!
A night to seize; an arm to lose.
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.
Heave away Horatio’s boys
Heave away! Heave away!
Heave away and make a Victory noise
We're gone tomorrow but we're here today.
‘A peerage or Westminster crypt!’
Heave away! Heave away!
He sinks the French from here to Egypt
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.
‘You’ll discontinue!’ flagged his Admiral.
Heave away! Heave away!
‘My blind eye does not see your signal!’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.
‘Redoubtable’ sharpshooters spy him
Heave away! Heave away!
‘They’ve done for me at last. I’m dying.’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.
Heave away Horatio’s boys
Heave away! Heave away!
Heave away and make a Victory noise
We're gone tomorrow but we're here today.
Heave away Horatio’s boys
Heave away! Heave away!
Heave away and make a Victory noise
We're heroes tomorrow but we're gone today.
credits
Thanks to Warwick J as always for the musical advice. COYB.
Carola Oman's massive tome "Nelson' was my main reading for this and each verse distils an enormous amount of meticulously considered biography. Introducing it (and the entire Doin Different combined arts project) with a brief summary of Nelson's character at a folk club, I was infuriated to hear a smug guitarist in the third row chunter "Wikipedia' like he had my number.
license
April 06, 2022
Wordsworth Comedy Night
https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/wordsworth-comedy-night AUDIO
Every month or so, a group of disreputable West Norfolk wits meet to get drunk and read uproariously funny PG Wodehouse passages at each other. In March, we made it a Wordsworth Comedy Night instead. A challenge as, for all his beauties and Miltonic grandeur, there are no jokes in Wordsworth.
No intentional jokes that is. His first draft of 'Daffodils' really wandered lonely as a 'cow' until Coleridge - "if I might make a suggestion, Sir"- recommended the more aptly sublime 'cloud'; and the hysterical measuring of a muddy pond and a weed in the notorious 'The Thorn' will bring a snigger to the stoniest face. If I've improvised a couple of parody lines, they are much in the spirit of these and not necessarily distinguishable from the Great Man's own.
This track is a sample of a rip roaring evening. We are only sorry we don't have a record of the 1950s comic turns, recitations, jazz poems, daffodil excursion (see picture) complete with tape measure and other treats. Not to mention the beef bourguignon. (I told you not to mention the beef bourguignon).
lyrics
My heart leaps up when I behold
My heart leaps up when I behold
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky!
So was it when my life began
So is it now I am a man
The child is father of the man
Is married to his sister.
I wander lonely as a cow
That floats on high o’er dales and hills
The Spring has sprung the grass has ris,
I wonder where the birdies is?
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Ear-lie in the morning.
And to the left, three yards beyond
On a moss hill half a foot in height
Not five yards from the mountain path
I see a little muddy pond.
I’ve measured it from side to side
Tis three feet long and two feet wide
And six feet deep and stood beside
A grave man looking like he’d died.
A poet could not be but gay
In such a jocund company
For then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Ear-lie in the morning.
Oh a slumber did my spirit seal,
I had no human fears,
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force,
She neither hears nor sees,
Rolled round in Earth’s diurnal course.
With rocks! And stones! And trees!
She died alone and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be
But she is in her grave and oh!
The difference to me.
And when she was up she was up
On a hill above the town
She was three feet four, five stone, but now
She is six feet underground.
credits
For a more Romantic view of Wordsworth, visit peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/weirdsworths-lucy
license
March 28, 2022
Waiting for the Man by Peacock's Tale
March 01, 2022
February 27, 2022
February 11, 2022
My Phoney Valentine
February 08, 2022
In the golden footsteps of Wanda, Dusty, Linda, Dolly and Sandy....
https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/silver-threads-and-golden-needles
In the footsteps of Wanda, Dusty, Linda, Dolly and Sandy... a song as old as us. It was the first ever song by a British act that got into the American top 20. We're hoping to crack Cambridge North with it...
February 02, 2022
January 25, 2022
Burns Night Medley
#BurnsNight #burnsnight2022 #Burns #BurnsSupper A brief medley to get the party started.
Click on the link above to access the fun!
January 24, 2022
Marie Mouri by Peacock's Tale folk indie duo
