Anna Begins is possibly the greatest love song ever written. The album version sucks enormous ass, so that’s why we return, time and again, to this live, acoustic version from the Jools Holland show in…I don’t know. Before you were born, anyway.
I am not worried,
I am not overly concerned
Yes you are, Adam Duritz, and that’s the reason you wrote the song.
She’s talking in her sleep
It’s keeping me awake
Well, that’s what you get for falling in love with a woman. You can’t say you weren’t warned.
Maybe I should just snap her up in a butterfly net and just pin her down on a photograph album
…
I’m not ready for this sort of thing
It is with sadness that Threehundredsongs notes the loss of of the legendary musician, multi-instrumentalist and all-round good guy, Mr. David Lindley.
David’s contribution to our musical lore does not need to be retold here. But Martin Scorcese knew it. Not for nothing was David’s guitar solo, coming in after the tense, silent break in Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky, used as the crushing moment in Taxi Driver. The moment when Travis Bickle finally breaks:
I’m not sure a finer guitar moment has ever been put to record.
How long have I been sleeping?
How long have I been drifting alone through the night?
How long have I been dreaming I could make it right?
If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might
To be the the one you need
Sometimes we all seem to close our eyes, yet we try and try again with all our might.
An inspiring day out. A day of love and kindness, confusion, collusion and conspiration, topped off with a beautiful live music show involving Eliza, Ralegh Long, Anna Pancaldi, and the utterly fabulous Douglas Dare.
Eliza didn’t play this song that evening….
…because it hadn’t been written yet. But the passion and love and intimacy and heat and honesty she shares with you are palpable. You’ll hear a great deal more from Eliza in these pages.
As a music lover, and occasional general-purpose Monday-night layabout at Colchester Arts Centre, I’ve had a lot of time to overthink this question: what is folk music?
The easy answer would be to suggest that, if someone plays an acoustic guitar, then that is folk. If it has Morris dancing, that must be folk too.
That’s bullshit. The implication would be that if you pick up an electric guitar, you ain’t folk. Dylan at Newport in 1965 may argue with you there.
I guess the clue is in the name: folk music is the music of the folk, in other words the people.
That’s you and me, humans.
Any time you can sit, stand, dance, share a musical moment, laugh, cry, tease the dogs, tease the children…maybe raise a glass, but mainly feel that warmth and love that only humanity and shared experiences can do for you, that is folk.
If, somehow, the music can get you through the best of times and worst of times, then that is folk.
Forget the chord progressions or the scales or the modes or the instrumentation: they don’t matter.
Once a song passes into the public domain, it is now folk. That isn’t using the legal definition, because fuck that. Folk music is written, adopted and loved by the people. It changes and it changes at will, and you all get involved. Getting involved is the whole point of folk.
Take the iconic riff from Seven Nation Army by White Stripes. Is that an acoustic guitar? No. Does that mean it isn’t folk?
Jack White’s seven chords have passed into the public domain: visit any football ground on a Saturday afternoon and you will hear the humans singing that riff. Every club has their own version. At SUFC it was Oh! David McGoldrick. At Labour rallies it was Oh! Jeremy Corbyn.
Whatever your sporting or political allegiances, this is about us. Folk is the music of the people. If we all sing along to Rick Astley & Foo Fighters…
…then that is folk music. It is our music. We own it.
It’s midnight o’clock round Threehundredsongs’ house, and that can mean only one thing: miserable music.
Kieran Scragg formed Buffseeds in Devon in 1999, just 23 years after your author was formed, also in Devon. Something about their breakout single Sparkle Me always hit home on an emotional level. Yet when you read the lyrics now, they’re a bit odd and don’t make a great deal of sense:
Suzy was a winner
At every end of year dinner
Drinking the sea and then laughing loudly
Her eyes were made of sequins
They lined up just like penguins
To flap their wings and then kiss her feet
It isn’t clear who Suzy is, but we assume her to be terribly annoying. A lady named Alice later puts in in appearance:
Alice was a poser
The kind who’d take her clothes off
And sit in a room full of frozen faces
I heard she went to find God
In the Indian sub-continent
Usually, Threehundredsongs would fall instantly in love with anyone named Alice. Especially if she’s naked. But this one sounds pretty annoying too. Kieran is clearly a sucker for punishment.
Still, he later went on to become Iko and make even more beautiful music. We’ll be hearing more from them in these pages in due course. In the meantime:
Fall on me
Smash the TV
Rip out the stupid phone, we need a conversation
Quite correct, Kieran. But the redemption:
Your eyes they always sparkle me with love
And, most importantly:
Shake the world alive
Regardless, the album from whence this song originates—The Picture Show—is a thing of beauty from start to finish.
Memories of sitting out on the balcony with the Official Threehundredsongs Ex-girlfriend. Long autumn evenings, we would sit and talk as the sun set over the river, then play this song. Eventually we’d get drunk and sing along.
But we don’t have the spirit for that now. 4,000 miles of distance between us made sure of that.
I believe that when you love someone, you never can possibly stop loving them. Sometimes the world just gets in the way.
How do you write a song about accompanying a close friend who is in the process of dying of cancer, yet retain a sense of humour—albeit it a dry, gallows humour—about it?
Well, if you’re Jason Isbell, this is how. It is the opinion of Threehundredsongs that Jason is among the very finest living songwriters. And it’s my site, my rules so you’ll have to deal with it.
When she was drunk, she made cancer jokes
Made up her own doctors’ notes
Surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone
It’s difficult to select a lyric, let along to add many of my own words, since the song is basically perfect in every possible way from start to finish, but:
If I’d fucked her before she got sick
I’d never hear the end of it
She don’t have the spirit for that now
We just drink our drinks and laugh out loud
And bitch about the weekend crowd
And try to ignore the elephant somehow
You’ll just have to listen to it yourself I guess.
There’s one thing that’s real clear to me
No one dies with dignity
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow
