March 29, 2023
March 05, 2023
March 04, 2023
March 02, 2023
February 25, 2023
February 20, 2023
Come Together
One of countless 'underground' Beatles tracks (typically on the B side of the agile or the final track of the side of the albums) that too-cool-for-school listeners don't seem to have heard when they dismiss the Beatles as 'merely' a very good pop band. Did the genuinely and studiedly cool and groundbreaking (and at times quite poppy albeit with an edge one a Pale Blue Eyes=Dear Prudence sort of way) Velvet Underground make anything even in 1967 that was more 'underground' than 'Walrus' and 'Strawberry Fields' in that iconoclastic year or 'Rain' and 'Tomorrow Never Knows' the year before or even 'Ticket To Ride' (which was an 'A' side number one single AS WELL) the year before that? And I'm not even going to mention 'Revolution 9' (or 'The Inner Light') in '1968. Just because 'Come Together' is lifted into rock heaven by McCartney's stunning and intricate bass part doesn't make it any 'underground' 'progressive' or 'experimental.' It (and all these others mentioned) just rocks its way into the ear of everyman and woman as well as the dilettantes.
Lyrically, 'Come Together' is daringly new - and I would even use the F word (feminism) in the traditionally macho sex-objectifying world ofrocknroll.
On the subject of which, Lennon's lifelong weakness for naughty boy sexual innuendo in his lyrics - from 'Please Please Me' through 'I'll Get You ( In The End)' and 'A Hard Day's Night' to 'Come Together' (where it, is it were, grows up and comes out with it) was possibly at work in the original title of the track that dominated Side 2 of 'Abbey Road' which was originally known as 'The Big One'. Rather beautifully, these innuendos are never single entendres as they tend to be with Stones lyrics but contribute an earthing giggle out of the side of a heavenly kiss in the total effect of a Beatles record. It would be perverse and reductive to insist on them but it is funny in a boyish sort of way, part of their subversiveness and refusal quite to be squeaky clean National Treasures. (like getting stoned in the Buckingham Palace toilets before receiving their MBSEs).
Here all that grows up into a very Sixties celebration of a consummation in which the love object is no longer separate and 'other' as in a conventional pop song but merges with the love subject in a revolutionary union. Our take was never likely to challenge the glorious perfection of the original but its author would hopefully approve this male/ female fusion/ revolutionary love anthem, sung, played and recorded after co-cooking/imbibing our Covid Christmas dinner, on 25 Dec 2020.
On the subject of which, Lennon's lifelong weakness for naughty boy sexual innuendo in his lyrics - from 'Please Please Me' through 'I'll Get You ( In The End)' and 'A Hard Day's Night' to 'Come Together' (where it, is it were, grows up and comes out with it) was possibly at work in the original title of the track that dominated Side 2 of 'Abbey Road' which was originally known as 'The Big One'. Rather beautifully, these innuendos are never single entendres as they tend to be with Stones lyrics but contribute an earthing giggle out of the side of a heavenly kiss in the total effect of a Beatles record. It would be perverse and reductive to insist on them but it is funny in a boyish sort of way, part of their subversiveness and refusal quite to be squeaky clean National Treasures. (like getting stoned in the Buckingham Palace toilets before receiving their MBSEs).
Here all that grows up into a very Sixties celebration of a consummation in which the love object is no longer separate and 'other' as in a conventional pop song but merges with the love subject in a revolutionary union. Our take was never likely to challenge the glorious perfection of the original but its author would hopefully approve this male/ female fusion/ revolutionary love anthem, sung, played and recorded after co-cooking/imbibing our Covid Christmas dinner, on 25 Dec 2020.
lyrics
Here come old flat top
He come grooving up slowly
He got joo joo eyeball
He one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please
He wear no shoe shine
He got toe jam football
He got monkey finger
He shoot Coca-Cola
He say I know you, you know me
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together, right now, over me
He bag production
He got walrus gumboot
He got Ono sideboard
He one spinal cracker
He got feet down below his knee
Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease
Come together, right now, over me
He roller coaster
He got early warning
He got muddy water
He one mojo filter
He say, "one and one and one is three"
Got to be good looking 'cause he's so hard to see
Come together, right now, over me
Oh
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Oh
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
credits
from It Was 60 Years Ago Today, track released January 1, 2021
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February 17, 2023
February 12, 2023
February 10, 2023
February 06, 2023
February 01, 2023
It Was 60 Years Ago Today ( Beatles celebration)
To mark the 60th anniversary of the Fabs making their landmark debut LP in 24 hours (Feb 11 1963) Peacock’s Tale old married woke folk indie duo have made a 14 track EP of Beatles stories, covers and pastiches charting that real life rags to riches fairy story 1960-1970 and its impact on Factory girl Cindy. “It Was 60 Years Ago Today.” https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/it-was-60-years-ago-today-ep
Essentially it's a 60s kitchen sink magical-realist rags to riches real life fairytale in which Factory Girl (expelled from Grammar School at 14) Cindy gets to the Beatle Ball (a ticket to ride, leaving home, getting the word Love, going to India etc).
The gay colours; the sumptuous costumes; the irreverent majesty. The moment Cinders got to the ball and became Lucy. In the Sky. With Diamonds. The moment khaki became satin; Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali; Van became the Man; frogs became princes; pumpkins turned to bubble cars; guitars became wands; school became art school; Satan became Santa; guns became flowers; the artisan became the artist; George Eastham became George Best; the Black GI wielding his Master’s axe became Jimi Hendrix; the Stone Age came in colours; Brian Epstein came as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; the Hollies became King Midas (on their way to becoming Crosby, Stills, Nash and Jung); the Wurzels became Jeff Beck; the council estate got through the generation gap in the barbed wire and up up and into the Milky Way, heading like that “they think it’s all over, it is now” Geoff Hurst counter-attack over the Gates and into Heeeeeevennnnn!.
...until the 60s midnight knell tolls (At the end of Abbey Road was a crossroads. John turned left; Paul turned right; Ringo turned back and George...kept going.) A bucket of cold water over her Sixties bed. Paul’s lyrics stop meaning anything. John cuts off a decade of Beatle growth, gets a short, back and B sides, and stops being funny. England lose the World Cup. Wales never have it. Pan’s People become Legs and Co. The Stones emigrate. Legs disappear. The Mersey Sound and the Internationale become Standard English and National Service. Jesus Christ Superstar becomes Andrew Lloyd Weber.
Johnny went West. And Cindy went East. And maybe she is still there. Will her baby brother James, armed with her old copy of 'Pepper' clutched like a Cinderella slipper, be able to find her again?
This YouTube of one of the tracks (She’s Leaving Home) is proving popular. https://youtu.be/Z9p9tpucPnc
News story https://townandaround.net/prev
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/