Loneliness

The last year's leaves are on the beech:
The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
To deeps byond the deepest reach
The Easter bells enlarge the sky.
O ordered metal clatter-clang!
Is yours the song the angels sang?
You fill my heart with joy and grief -
Belief! Belief! And unbelief...
And, though you tell me I shall die,
You say not how or when or why.

Indifferent the finches sing,
Unheeding roll the lorries past:
What misery will this year bring
Now spring is in the air at last?
For, sure as blackthorn bursts to snow,
Cancer in some of us will grow,
The tasteful crematorium door
Shuts out for some the furnace roar;
But church-bells open on the blast
Our loneliness, so long and vast.

John Betjeman

No more carefree laughter

This track, heard by chance in a cafe, may well be the best cover version I've ever heard.

Abba were a pop phenomenon, and one that keeps on being revived and revived. When on the radio they played the original back to back with this version, even Belgians sang along. That's how universal Abba became.

But their huge rise to fame came with the price of the break-up of the two relationships that formed the four-piece. Being consummate songwriters, they ploughed the stubble of their broken lives back into their work, and some of the later lyrics are among the most melancholic ever produced by mainstream pop.

The words of this song are an example. Despite the cheerful upbeat music, the feeling of loss, regret and finality is palpable. The very first line sets the tone:

No more carefree laughter

A simple statement of fact you may feel (I do) relates to most of our lives, those of us who have reached a certain age, or a certain level of disillusion.

The rest of the lyrics repeat the sense of hopelessness:

Here is where the story ends, this is goodbye

There is nothing we can do

Now there's only emptiness, nothing to say

This time we're through, we're really through

What Arno has done in his version is to stress that sense of melancholy which pervades the lyrics, but was hidden by the Abba arrangement. He's pared it right down to a spare accompaniment, dominated by an organ to give it a real funereal touch. He's stripped out the backing vocals, and his own raddled voice is all that's left to communicate the song's sentiment.

When I heard it just now, I had to race back home to find a version I could post, so as to share it in a post on this blog which I've neglected for so long. That's how powerful the effect was. So powerful, in fact, that when the radio played Abba immediately after, I was already listening to the song in a whole new way, filtered through the consciousness that Arno had brought to the song, of things I'd always known but never realised were there.

Here's Arno's version.

Carrickfergus - Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem 7/14]

Aokigahara forest

SSC

If it wasn't for Elvis Costello, my entire MP3 player would be women (Joni, Emmylou, Bonnie), gays (Rufus) or transgendered (Anthony). I don't know what that says about me, or about music, but it's probably not all that shameful.

Here's a picture of Anthony, who writes and sings the most ineffably beautiful songs, whatever they're about.

Ben Jonson

On My First Sonne
Ben Jonson

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy;

Seven yeeres tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

O, could I loose all father, now. For why

Will man lament the state he should envie?

To have so soon scap'd worlds and fleshes rage,

And, if no other miserie, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say here doth lye

Ben. Johnson his best piece of poetrie.

For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be such,

As what he loves may never like too much.

One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)