The repeat of my Amazing Songs & Other Delights # 18 – The Wintry Songs edition by António Cunha & Raquel Pinheiro airs Monday 13, 3-4pm (gmt) on Yé Yé Radio: yeyeradio.com (or on the app).
Tracklist: 01 – Bobby Womack – California Dreamin'(John Phillips & Michelle Phillips’ song) (Tó) 02 – Belle & Sebastian – The Fox in the Snow (Raquel) 03 – Clinic – I Can’t Stand The Rain (Tó) 04 – Billy Mackenzie – Winter Academy (Tó) 05 – Pink Floyd – Goodbye Blue Sky (2011 Remastered Version) (Tó) 06 – John Parish – How Animals Move (Raquel) 07 – Taylor Swift – Forever Winter (Taylor’s Version) (Tó) 08 – Zeca Afonso – Canção de Embalar (Raquel) 09 – The Decemberists – January Hymn (Raquel) 10 – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow (Raquel) 11 – Finneas – A Little Closer (Finneas’ Version) (Tó) 12 – Manic Street Preachers – Die in the Summertime (Remastered) (Raquel) 13 – Lianne La Havas – Starry Starry Night (Loving Vincent OST) (Tó) 14 – The Doors – Wintertime Love (Tó) 15 – Zoot Woman – Grey Day (Tó) 16 – The Beatles – Here Comes The Sun (2019 mix) (Raquel)
Tracklist: 01 – The Beatles – While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Raquel) 02 – Dillard and Clark – Don’t Let Me Down (Bill) 03 – George Harrison – My Sweet Lord (Raquel) 04 – Junior Parker – Tomorrow Never Knows (2024 remastered version) (Bill) 05 – Bryan Ferry – Jealous Guy (Raquel) 06 – George Harrison – Try Some Buy Some (2024 mix) (Bill) 07 – Suede – A Day In The Life (MTV intro (Raquel) 08 – The Beatles – You Can’t Do That (Bill)l 09 – John Lennon – Gimme Some Truth (Bill) 10 – Paul McCartney – Waterfalls (Bill) 11 – George Harrison – Wah-Wah (2014 Remaster) (Raquel) 12 – The Beatles – Octopus Garden (Raquel)p 13 – The Carpenters – Ticket To Ride (Bill) 14 – The Beatles – Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (Raquel) 15 – The Beatles – Yellow Submarine (Raquel) 16 – Robert Wyatt – Love (Bill) 17 – Ringo Starr – It Don’t Come Easy (Bill) 18 – Lucinda Williams – While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Raquel)
Amazing Songs & Other Delights # 74 – The Beatles edition by Bill Rivers & Raquel Pinheiro airs Monday 16, 3-4pm (gmt) on Yé Yé Radio: yeyeradio.com (or on the app).
Amazing Songs & Other Delights # 74 – The Beatles edition is, once more a collaborative programme between me and Bill Rivers. We both love The Beatles. As a child, around Christmas tv would show The Beatles films and I would be taken to see Yellow Submarine on the big screen. Bill and I picked Beatles songs, assorted covers , songs from solo fab four. You can see who picked out on the tracklist below the text. I love to do shows with Bill. He always comes up with songs, covers, I either didn’t knew or had forgotten.
The first record my parents to me dance to was a German Beatles compilation. The Beatles were mum and her sisters band. Like me, mum is partial to George (Harrison), having a special place in her heart for the by all, myself included, beloved Ringo. Bill’s favourite Beatle is also George. Paul comes second for Bill. No wonder there’s so much George being played on the show. 🙂 Solo George, Beatles George. While My Guitar Gently Weeps by The Beatles opens the show, While My Guitar Gently Weeps covered by Lucinda Williams closes it. I’ve been fascinated by Lucinda’s version since I heard it a few weeks ago.
Interestingly, my favourite Beatles song is Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) that was written by Lennon. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) wasn’t always by favourite Beatles song. As a child it would be any from the mentioned German compilation. Or from the first album. Or a few from Yellow Submarine that, for years, for me was only an animated film. Rubber Soul ended up become by favourite Beatles album. Bill’s favourite Beatles current album is Magical Mystery Tour.Why is George pretty much everyone favourite Beatle? I don’t know. I always loved George and Ringo. I’m the person who plays bass and forgets Paul McCartney plays bass. I see Paul as a songwriter, which he, of course, is.
Back to George. George brought many Innovations to The Beatles. He was always on the look out for new things. It was George’s idea of having Eric Clapton play the guitar solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. George has the best solo album of the four Beatles, All Things Must Pass. There’s a great documentary about George as well, George Harrison: Living In The Material World.
Tracklist: 01 – The Beatles – While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Raquel) 02 – Dillard and Clark – Don’t Let Me Down (Bill) 03 – George Harrison – My Sweet Lord (Raquel) 04 – Junior Parker – Tomorrow Never Knows (2024 remastered version) (Bill) 05 – Bryan Ferry – Jealous Guy (Raquel) 06 – George Harrison – Try Some Buy Some (2024 mix) (Bill) 07 – Suede – A Day In The Life (MTV intro (Raquel) 08 – The Beatles – You Can’t Do That (Bill)l 09 – John Lennon – Gimme Some Truth (Bill) 10 – Paul McCartney – Waterfalls (Bill) 11 – George Harrison – Wah-Wah (2014 Remaster) (Raquel) 12 – The Beatles – Octopus Garden (Raquel)p 13 – The Carpenters – Ticket To Ride (Bill) 14 – The Beatles – Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (Raquel) 15 – The Beatles – Yellow Submarine (Raquel) 16 – Robert Wyatt – Love (Bill) 17 – Ringo Starr – It Don’t Come Easy (Bill) 18 – Lucinda Williams – While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Raquel)
words: Paulo Carmona (edited by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Telma Mota
I knew that Bernard Butler was a guitar genius due to his creativity and originality.
I confess I didn’t knew he was such a communicator. He is very humorous, entertaining and truthful in his discourse, not even shying away from self-deprecation.
His pop rock is of a singular richness and his ease in transposing it on stage is, to say the least, appreciably comforting. I can feel colours from all shades of the rainbow in Butler’s songs, coated in intense, personal and introspective lyrics. It’s not hard to see yourself in one song or the other, and that’s why it’s easy to navigate his world.
In this concert at Casa da Música, Bernard’s first ever in Porto, he presented Good Grief, his new album in 25 years, gave us songs such as Deep Emotions and Pretty D, and obviously iconic songs from People Move On, such as My Domain, and the closing Not Alone.
From his collaborations with other artists he brought songs like Although (McAlmont & Butler) and Shallow The Water (Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler).
A solo concert so intimate, just the man and his guitar(s), that you could talk to the musician and sip the stories from his Gibson ES-355, which, in his hands, almost speaks.
I was delighted by the riffs, sometimes intense, sometimes soft, but all of them imbued with charismatic melodies. Butler is a storyteller and a speaker of the sensations that come from those stories. What’s impressive is the way in which those same sensations fit, in a perfect symbiosis, with the dynamics of his songs. It’s a gift.
words: Paulo Carmona (edited by Raquel Pinheiro); photos Telma Mota
Temples are a band of dreams. The magic feeling is constant throughout the band’s performance. Atmospherically very rich and diverse in the structure of their songs, they take us to rest in meadows that stretch far as the eye can see. An immensity of nostalgia and divine emotions that, in fact, can only be reached in temples of sound in which music is the supreme divinity.
You almost feel a cool breeze on your skin that gives you goose bumps, a constant throughout the concert. In Move With the Seasons I almost levitated, in The Guesser I dreamt and in Fragment’s Light I almost cried. What more could I ask for?
As the songs flowed, bodies moved to the rhythm of the band’s sound, applause was effusive and appropriate for the marvellous setting. The band felt that the audience was with them and James Bagshaw, the band’s singer, ended up saying that this was thee crowd of the tour. I bet it was.
I dare say that Temples are one of the best bands of the last 20 years, for its originality and musical creativity, and that Sun Structures is a masterpiece of musical art.Outside, the city is perfectly suited to what was experienced and witnessed indoors. Perhaps because its the city of temples. I still feel it all very much alive and present in me. Thank you, James, Tom, Adam and Rens. Don’t make us wait another 10 years for your return to Portugal and, in particular, to Porto.
words: Paulo Carmona (edited by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Telma Mota
The preamble serves to highlight the aesthetic evolution of the band at all levels. Whispering Sons developed well and got a place in their type of European rock.
The band is instrumentally cohesive with a very remarkable and secure well-structured rhythm section. The symbiosis between bass and drums works perfectly. In the melodic section, the guitar delivers sharp, strident and melodic riffs and knows how to respect the silences and dynamics that characterize the songs of Whispering Sons. The keyboards work as a safe network in a nostalgic tone that gives all that fog, at times thick, at times soft, sailing between chilling breezes. Up there, on the trapeze, Fenne Kuppens’ voice, dense, semi-hoarse, deep and disturbing makes the difference and imprints the stamp that characterizes the Belgian quintet.
Whispering Sons’ performance at Hard club presented a growing and coherent setlist starting with Balm, Something Good and Surface, moving on to Walking, Flying and Try Me Again. It was a concert in crescendo that left everyone, myself included, satisfied. The Great Calm, the band’s largest record is to be heard from beginning to end. And it was with a feeling similar to the album title that I set out on my way home.
My Amazing Songs & Other Delights #72 – The Ecosystem edition is now on mixcloud.
Of late, I’ve been coming upon the word ecosystem from different sources. Or happen upon lyrics, or otherwise that mention the concept that we’re all one, we’re connected, that we depend on each other.
That concept is part of Body Count’s Comfortably Numb version of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb the song that opens this edition. Ice-T writes and says: “Listen… ’cause I’ve been on both sides of the gun As you stand before me we’re all here as one We gotta come together or our chances are none Maybe I’m just a dreamer, too many obstacles” (full lyrics here)
An ecosystem implies environment and those in it interacting, forging connections, relationships, one thing leading to another. That is how both Mondo and Yé Yé came to be. The longer text about My Amazing Songs & Other Delights #72 – The Ecosystem edition can be read here.
Tracklist: 01: Body Count – Comfortably Numb (feat. David Gilmour) 02: Raveloe – Passing Place 03: 12 Roads – Waiting For JB 04: Rowland S. Howard – Shut Me Down 05: Ned Swarbrick – Somebody, Something, Somewhere Else (live York City FC) 06: Mick Harvey – October Boy 07: Johnny Marr – New Town Velocity 08: The Birthday Party – The Friend Catcher 09: Saint Sappho – Grass is Gold 10: Oh Bobby (Bill Rivers and Simon Hayward) – Are You Still There 11: Sorry Monks – One Rule For Them 12: Paradise Lost – The Last Time 13: Harry Howard And The NDE – Sensitive To The Cold 14: Mark Robin White & Adam Lato – Rabbit Hole (Tranquility mix) 15: The Courettes – Shake! 16: A Resistência – Maré Alta
The Blues is a 2003 seven episodes documentary film produced by Martin Scorsese. In each episode a different different director goes into a step of the history of the Blues. It’s worthy every second of footage, stories, music.
01: Feel Like Going Home. directed by Martin Scorsese, featuring Ali Farka Touré, Corey Harris, Salif Keita, Son House, Taj Mahal, John Lee Hooker, Keb’ Mo’, Willie King
02: The Soul of a Man. directed by Wim Wenders with music by Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir.
03: The Road to Memphis. directed by Richard Pearce, featuring B. B. King, Bobby Rush, Rosco Gordon, Ike Turner.
04: Warming by the Devil’s Fire. directed by Charles Burnett, featuring: Tommy Hicks and Nathaniel Lee Jr., and performances by Big Bill Broonzy, Elizabeth Cotten, Reverend Gary Davis, Ida Cox, Willie Dixon, Jesse Fuller, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Vasti Jackson, Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Victoria Spivey, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Dinah Washington, Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
05: Godfathers and Sons directed by Marc Levin, featuring Marshall Chess and Chuck D.
06: Red, White and Blues. directed by Mike Figgis. This episode is focused on the blues in Britain and the British Invasion effect on American blues.
07: Piano Blues. directed Clint Eastwood, featuring Marcia Ball, Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Pinetop Perkins.
The Blues A Musical Journey is a cd box-set companion of the documentary with recordings from August 10, 1920 to April 9, 2003. It’s over six hours of all sorts of blues! It goes from Othar Turner & the Rising Star Fife & Drum to Bonnie Raitt through Sun House, Jimmi Hendrix, Blind Willie McTell, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Robert Johnson Howlin’ Wolf with dozens of blues players. The Blues A Musical Journey is more standard and geographically confined than my Amazing Songs & Other Delights #71 The Desert Blues and Not Just edition, but it’s an absolute joy.
Blind Willie McTell
My beloved Blind Willie McTell titles my favourite Bod Dylan song on Dylan’s voice because “… no one can sing the blues / Like Blind Willie McTell. Dylan is on piano and voice, Mark Knopfler on acoustic guitar. Blind Wille McTell, the song, has been providing endless hours of conversation with a musician friend. Is it a song? A poem? A criticism? A critique? An observation? What are the lyrics really about? To me, they’re about America and its History and ways. It’s also a testament to Dylan’s lyric brilliancy.
Blind Wille McTell I seen the arrow on the doorpost Saying this land is condemned All the way from New Orleans To Jerusalem Well, I travel through east Texas Where many martyrs fell And I know no one can sing the blues Like Blind Wille McTell
Mmm, I heard that hoot owl singing As they were taking down the tents The stars above the barren trees Was his only audience Them charcoal gypsy maidens Can strut their feathers well But nobody can sing the blues Like Blind Willie McTell
See them big plantations burning Hear the cracking of the whips Smell that sweet magnolia blooming See the ghosts of slavery ships I can hear them tribes a moaning Hear that undertaker’s bell And I know no one can sing the blues Like Blind Willie McTell
There’s a woman by the river With some fine young handsome man He’s dressed up like a squire Bootleg whiskey in his hand There’s a chain gang on the highway I can hear them rebels yell And I know no one can sing the blues Like Blind Willie McTell
God is in His heaven And we all want what’s His But power and greed and corruptible seed Seem to be all that there is I’m gazing out the window Of that old Saint James Hotel And I know no one can sing the blues Like Blind Willie McTell (Bob Dylan)
Stealing from The Legendary Tiger Man – the blues, like folk, is all about inspiration and ideas passed around – don’t firetruck Christmas, but I’ve got the Blues!
Amazing Songs & Other Delights #71 is the The Desert Blues and Not Just edition is now on mixcloud.
This edition opens with Imajighen by Mdou Moctar and closes with Tom Huddleston singing a live version on Hank Williams’ I Saw The Light. Once more, I’m travelling through connections, details, inspiration. I’ve wrote an essay for it that can be read here.
Imajighen means free men in Berber. Although the lyrics specifically, or more specifically, address the free men of the Desert, the song’s words can be transposed to encompass us all. The chorus goes: “Imajighen, we can’t afford to be divided Imajighen, We can’t afford to be divided Imajighen We have no time for hate Imajighen Calling on you all wherever you are! We are all Imajighen” Full lyrics in English, Tamasheq and Tifinagh can be read here. here.
What do Mdou Moctar and Hank Williams have in common? Everything, I venture. My essay about the programme further speaks about it.
Tracklist: 01 – Mdou Moctar – Imajighen 02 – ANOHNI & The Johnsons – Breaking 03 – Tiwiza – At u Azeka 04 – Bombino – Mahegagh (What Shall I Do) 05 – Rui Veloso – Sayago Blues 06 – R.L. Burnside – See My Jumper Hanging On the Line (live at home, 1978) 07 – Tarwa N-Tiniri – Taryet 08 – Tom Verlaine – 5 Hours From Calais 09 – Dead Combo – Lisboa Mulata 10 – Fatou Seidi Ghali (Les Filles de Illighadad) – Telilit (live from Story of Sahel Sounds) 11 – Manu Chao – Tu Te Vas Feat. Laeti 12 – Felt – The Stagnant Pool 13 – Boubacar Traoré & Ali Farka Touré – Duna Ma Yelema 14 – Buzz Ayaz – Buzzi Ayazi 15 – Soledad Brothers – This Guitar Says I’m Sorry 16 – The White Stripes – Suzy Lee 17 – Etran de L’Aïr – Imouha 18 – Ben Watt with Bernard Butler – New Year of Grace (Upstairs at the De La Warr Pavilion Bexhill 5th April 2016) 19 – The Legendary Tiger Man – Keep it Burning 20 – Majid Bekkas – Daymallah (feat. Rachid Zeroual, Khalid Kouhen, Paolo Radoni, Marc Lelangue) 21 – Tinariwen – Sastanàqqàm 22 – Tom Hiddleston – I Saw The Light (with Mark Kermode on double-bass, live in the Wittertainment studio)
Amazing Songs & Other Delights #71 is the The Desert Blues and Not Just edition airs Monday 7th, 3-4:30pm (gmt+1) on Yé Yé Radio: yeyeradio.com (or on the app). This a longer, special edition.
This programme opens with Imajighen by Mdou Moctar and closes with Tom Huddleston singing a live version on Hank Williams’ I Saw The Light. Once more, I’m travelling through connections, details, inspiration. And writing an essay.
Imajighen means free men in Berber. Although the lyrics specifically, or more specifically, address the free men of the Desert, the song’s words can be transposed to encompass us all. The chorus goes: “Imajighen, we can’t afford to be divided Imajighen, We can’t afford to be divided Imajighen We have no time for hate Imajighen Calling on you all wherever you are! We are all Imajighen” Full lyrics in English, Tamasheq and Tifinagh can be read here. Tom Hiddleston plays Hank Williams in the film I Saw The Light.
What do Mdou Moctar and Hank Williams have in common? Everything, I venture. Amazing Songs & Other Delights #71 the The Desert Blues and Not Just edition could be said to be part of my “self taught” guitar schooling, mostly related to what Grupo Operário do Ruído, of which I’m part of, have been working on music wise.
Desert and African blues often have clapping. Clapping, including Arab clapping, a dry, hand palm against hand palm, clap, along with the fat clapping, is also something we have been exploring on Grupo Operário do Ruído. The same goes for rhythm, space, speed, rests, tone, intensity, ambient, emotions, silence, continuous, abrupt or smooth changes.
Since I elected the electric guitar as my main instrument in Grupo do Ruído, I have been paying a different kind of attention to the many faces, possibilities, approaches of the instrument.
This year, on Grupo Operário do Ruído we even created our own blues. A not so standard one, nonetheless, a blues.
Which take us to, what is the blues, what is a standard blues? The answers may require a many volumes encyclopedia. Or music theory explanations. I’ll leave both aside. As my choices for this Amazing Songs & Other Delights show, the blues is many things, everything, often not what a rigid blues school would call blues. Yet, it’s precisely the richness, the uniqueness, the emotions, feeling, sentiment that make the blues. Not being a never-miss-a-note-i-can-play-it-at-1000-miles-per-second master of the mimor blues pentatonic scale, proper chords progression, and on. If that’s all you got, you don’t have the blues, you have technique.
On these blues choices of mine we go on a journey with stops on Niger to Portugal, through the United States, Argelia-France, Marocco, United Kingdom, France-Spain, Mali, Cyprus, Algeria. Or, as sang Mdou Moctar’s Imajighen “We can’t afford to be divided”. Therefore, let’s have, sing and play the blues!
Tracklist: 01 – Mdou Moctar – Imajighen 02 – ANOHNI & The Johnsons – Breaking 03 – Tiwiza – At u Azeka 04 – Bombino – Mahegagh (What Shall I Do) 05 – Rui Veloso – Sayago Blues 06 – R.L. Burnside – See My Jumper Hanging On the Line (live at home, 1978) 07 – Tarwa N-Tiniri – Taryet 08 – Tom Verlaine – 5 Hours From Calais 09 – Dead Combo – Lisboa Mulata 10 – Fatou Seidi Ghali (Les Filles de Illighadad) – Telilit (live from Story of Sahel Sounds) 11 – Manu Chao – Tu Te Vas Feat. Laeti 12 – Felt – The Stagnant Pool 13 – Boubacar Traoré & Ali Farka Touré – Duna Ma Yelema 14 – Buzz Ayaz – Buzzi Ayazi 15 – Soledad Brothers – This Guitar Says I’m Sorry 16 – The White Stripes – Suzy Lee 17 – Etran de L’Aïr – Imouha 18 – Ben Watt with Bernard Butler – New Year of Grace (Upstairs at the De La Warr Pavilion Bexhill 5th April 2016) 19 – The Legendary Tiger Man – Keep it Burning 20 – Majid Bekkas – Daymallah (feat. Rachid Zeroual, Khalid Kouhen, Paolo Radoni, Marc Lelangue) 21 – Tinariwen – Sastanàqqàm 22 – Tom Hiddleston – I Saw The Light (with Mark Kermode on double-bass, live in the Wittertainment studio)
Mondo Bizarre Magazine 