Green Shirt

The song was written by the poet Elvis Costello and appeared on his corruscating third album "Armed Forces".

There's a smart young woman on a light blue screen
Who comes into my house every night
She takes all the red, yellow, orange and green
And she turns them into black and white

[Chorus]
But you tease, you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it

[Post-Chorus]
Better cut off all identifying labels
Before they put you on the torture table

[Verse 2]
'Cause somewhere in the Quisling Clinic
There's a shorthand typist taking seconds over minutes
She's listening in to the Venus line
She's picking out names, I hope none of them are mine

[Chorus]
But you tease, you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it

[Bridge]
Never said I was a stool pigeon
I never said I was a diplomat
Everybody is under suspicion
But you don't wanna hear about that

[Chorus]
'Cause you tease, you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it

[Post-Chorus]
Better send a begging letter to the big investigation
Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?

[Chorus]
You tease, and you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it.

It's a brilliant lyric. Describing a female newsreader distilling all the impossible conflicts of the world (red, yellow, orange and greens- note the Irish reference of the last two colours) into an acceptable BBC 'black and white'. Then the green shirt which is both the British army and the Irish Republican one. But it's also seething with sexual energy; the news a kind of flirtation with a gagging public. Plus he puts this poem - which I prefer to almost any actual contemporary 'proper' poem - to blistering sound-poem music. That classic Buddy Holly channeling Costello combination of a ravishingly melody with an infuriatingly teeth-clenched delivery.

duplicitous vocals, bullet bodhran and punk harp - Gaz

The Keeper

https://youtu.be/z7ToRgsL8RU

‪@PeacocksTaleMusic‬ for all our videos We performed this at our recent summer solstice party expecting our pagan friends to know it and join in. They didn't and didn't, citing a Christian-indoctrinated primary schooling. My class in Milk St Primary School Frome (the one before the 11 plus year) used to sing this with hip, miniskirted Miss Millington who possibly got it from the Pete Seeger version and worldview. Seeger was deeply involved in the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King and no doubt enjoyed the progressive implications of the song, the keeper freeing the doe into the woods (among the leaves so green-o) rather than killing her or holding her captive. In the early 70s, as the English folk rock band Steeleye Span took Irish Republican folk songs like "All Around My Hat" ("I will wear a green willow) and McCartney singing "Give Ireland Back To The Irish" up the charts, I assumed "The Keeper" was a similarly progressive song about the changing relationship between England and Ireland. It could be though I'm not sure it started out like that. Apparently, it's just one of those eternal hunter/hind songs about sex, "under his cloak he carried a bow for to shoot a merry little doe." I prefer the green 1965 version with miniskirted Miss Millington where, despite our incipient pubescence and a propensity for innuendo, Class 7 thought it was about a keeper hunting and then releasing an elfin doe among the trees into a semi-magical wood, like the ones we knew in Somerset. (It was a progressive school but also marked by the limitations of its time : when the whole year group sang together, the 'remove' class was always and only given the percussion instruments. Pic of me as the Keeper by Bhas Allan.

Cruel

@PeacocksTaleMusic for all our videos. Our take on Kate Rusby's "Cruel". Traditional folk but also a deconstruction of it, as is Rusby's thoroughly contemporary way; the 'female' side of all those 'heave away, haul away' shanties, revealing a tender human story of cruelly divided lovers. Nowadays, they'd probably stay and build a home together... Cruel were my parents, to tear my love from me Cruel was the pressgang that took him to the sea Cruel was the little boat that rowed him off the strand And cruel was the big ship, that took him from the land Haul away, boys, haul away Haul away, boys, haul away Cruel was the water, that ship it sailed upon Cruel was the fair wind, for now my loves he's gone Had you blown a roaring gale they'd have left him on dry land Where he would walk besides me and I would hold his hand Haul away boys, haul away Haul away boys, haul away The ring beneath my pillow, is the ring he gave to me I'll wear it on my finger, for all the world to see But cruel was the captain, the bo'sun, and the men For they didn't give a farthing if I saw my love again Haul away, boys, haul away Haul away boys, haul away Cruel were my parents, to tear my love from me Cruel was the pressgang that took him to the sea Cruel was the little boat that rowed him off the strand And cruel was the big ship, that took him from the land Haul away, boys, haul away Haul away, boys, haul away from Poachers on the Common (LP), released September 8, 2022 https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/poachers-on-the-common-lp Song by Kate Rusby

In An English Country Garden (Peacocks' Photoshoot with Bhas Allan)

  https://www.tiktok.com/@peacocktale/video/7511661056788303126 for Bhas's film of the performance

“I tried to save The Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.” (Frodo in LOTR) Tolkien wrote that during World War Two (and with his own front line memories of friends lost in World War One) and it probably sums up how many survivors felt; as well as summing up the plight of those who didn't survive. Recording this in an English country garden in Lancelot's own Norfolk parish - the bee loud glades, the tidal wave of birdsong - it really did feel like this was what Flight Sergeant Pilot Lancelot Percival Wiliamson fought 5 years, aged 19-25, to save. What he HAD helped to save in July 1945, on home leave from a year in the Burma campaign (after 4 years in the skies above Europe winning two mentions in despatches and not getting shot down, winning those existential battles) But not, alas, for him. A fatal training flight on the early morning of Friday 13 July above Little Eaton in Derbyshire meant he never got the chance to enjoy the 'Shire' we are sitting in here. This is our thank you. We'll be playing this homage (with our neighbour and musical friend harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies on harp) at the church in which Percy is buried on his 80th anniversary, Sunday July 13 2025 as part of a special memorial service starting at 9.30 am. Three generations of his family will be present. I landed a crocked plane, when still just a fitter, 5 years derring-done, never shot down in flames, In a cloud of unknowing, I flew for the sunrise And came down to Earth but lived up to my names. Six knights of Logres to carry my coffin, Six Logres ladies to walk by my side, Through hellfire and slaughter to a wheatfield of poppies And a home hedge on Friday the 13th of July. Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only, Play up the dead march as we go along And bring me to Fring All Saints and lay me down easy, I lived in the free air that breathes through this song. Instrumental break Repeat first verse. Lyric © Gareth Calway 2023