What music are you listening to?

This is a version from the BBC series The Detectorists – which I'm guessing is not available in the US, either.


If it ever pops up (BBC America?) do give it a look – I think it's quintessential British TV, a very sweet and lightweight 'comedy' (it's a million miles away from 'Friends') ... just two odd-ball friends who go metal detecting together.

Mackenzie Crook wrote it – he of Pirates of the Caribbean fame, and the UK The Office before that – an all-round really nice guy.

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This is a link on another account:


and this one


and if they don't work ... I'll keep looking!
 
While on the subject of my latest celebrity crush ... this is The Unthanks' cover of "Shipbuilding"


"Shipbuilding" words by Elvis Costello and music by Clive Langer.

Written 1982 during the Falklands War, the lyrics highlight the irony that war brought prosperity to the traditional (and failing) shipyards of Clydeside, Merseyside, North East England and Belfast, to build ships to replace those being sunk in the war, whilst also sending off the sons of these areas to fight and, potentially, lose their lives in those same ships.

The popular consensus is that the Robert Wyatt cover was the best, Costello, Langer thought so.
 
Thomas said:
Written 1982 during the Falklands War, the lyrics highlight the irony that war brought prosperity to the traditional (and failing) shipyards of Clydeside, Merseyside, North East England and Belfast..
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My father worked for "the firm" .. an officer in the Royal Navy.
We didn't get on too well .. diverging paths in life .. "good Lord, youv'e gone native!" :D

Since the WW's, the Navy (and shipbuilding) has dramatically declined .. 'what goes up,
must come down'.
 
Thomas said:
This is a version from the BBC series The Detectorists – which I'm guessing is not available in the US, either.


If it ever pops up (BBC America?) do give it a look – I think it's quintessential British TV, a very sweet and lightweight 'comedy' (it's a million miles away from 'Friends') ... just two odd-ball friends who go metal detecting together.

Mackenzie Crook wrote it – he of Pirates of the Caribbean fame, and the UK The Office before that – an all-round really nice guy.

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This is a link on another account:


and this one


and if they don't work ... I'll keep looking!
Click to expand...

At least for now 😯⏳the videos linked in this entry seem to work!:cool:
 
@Thomas were/are you a fan of Fairport Convention by any chance? A friend, appalled by my ignorance, took me home and played the album "Liege and Leaf". A life-changing event. That was fifty years ago, and I still listen to it. The tracks Tam Lin and Matty Groves can almost bewitch me.

 
rocala said:
@Thomas were/are you a fan of Fairport Convention by any chance?
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LOL.

I was playing Fairport's "Full House" album back in the day when my dad (Irish & Scots traditional fiddle virtuoso – All Ireland Fiddle Champion as a young man) walked by and then popped his head round the door. "Who's that?" – referring to Dave Swarbrick who was then playing fiddle.

I explained. He listened. "What's that track called?" "Flatback Caper,"I told him.


"Is it?" He laughed. "That's a traditional Irish tune, it's O'Carolan's Concerto." (The track is a medley, O'Carolan's comes in at 4.12.)

From then on, dad would always play O'Carolan's whenever I went to see him play with the Irish Folk 4-piece he was part of. A family tradition is that I took prospective girlfriends to see dad play, and if their response was less than enthusiastic it was a "Thank you, and goodnight" from me.

(I took my partner of 47 years to see him early in our relationship. He making 'Irish eyes' at her all night, she grinning back at him, and he did a version of O'Carolans that brought the place to a stop, and not for the first time.)

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The 'Fairport' came about because Guitarist Simon Nichols lived there, and he's teamed up with bassist Ashley 'Tyger' Hutchings and they invied friends to rehearse in a spacious 8-bed corner-house called "Fairport", on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill, North London. (Ray and Dave Davis of The Kinks lived on the same street.)

Screenshot 2025-01-05 at 12.09.12.png


Simon Nicols's parents were doctors and ran a practice from the house. Half a mile up the road, in Queens Avenue, one of their patients was the delightfully eccentric Pat Lacey, by then divorced from the British Artist, Inventor and latterly Pagan Performer Bruce Lacey. Pat was my mum-in-law.

The album "What We Did On Our Holidays" has the track "Mr Lacey":

In which Ashley talks about the 'strange house' down the road. Not sure if he means the Queens Ave house as Bruce never actually lived there, but was a frequent visitor. The house featured in the Bruce link was before Pat moved to Muswell Hill. My beloved never lived there either, but we lived quite close by.

I first met Bruce at a party at Queens Ave. I washed my face (behind my ears and everything), combed my hair, put on my best clothes, and when I heard he'd arrived, went out onto the landing to meet a 6-foot rubber chicken making it was up the stairs ...

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Various musicians who did a stint in Fairport crop-up in a who's-who of the British folk-rock scene.
 
Steeleye Span was founded by Ashley Hutchings after he left Fairport, and a later song of theirs (after Ashley had left the band) is Two Magicians

 
Thomas said:
The 'Fairport' came about because Guitarist Simon Nichols lived there, and he's teamed up with bassist Ashley 'Tyger' Hutchings and they invied friends to rehearse in a spacious 8-bed corner-house called "Fairport", on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill, North London..
Click to expand...
Indeed .. and I have to mention that Simon of 'Fairport' plays annually in my neck-of-the woods to this day. :D

Fairport's Cropredy Convention (formerly Cropredy Festival) is an annual festival of folk and rock music, headed by British folk-rock band Fairport Convention and held on the edge of the village of Cropredy in Oxfordshire, England. The festival has taken place in August annually since 1976.

Fairport's Cropredy Convention attracts up to 20,000 people each year. The festival features a single stage at the lower end of the sloping arena field. There are also ancillary events, such as Morris dancing in the streets and live music at the village's two pubs
Fairport_Cropredy_Convention - Wikipedia

Cropredy is roughly between Banbury and Stratford-on-Avon .. the Shakespeare connection.
..and of course .. Ride a cock horse to Banbury cross, to see a fine lady on a white "hoss" :)
 
I do not know much about the Chieftains but thanks for the link. I can see how that could be very moving. I have always loved O'Sullivans March.
 
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