Category: video

Drunk Last Night

As if I ever…

Fairly recent video version of a relic of the times when I aspired to be a hardass blues player…

Words & Music (c) David Harley I don’t do a lot of real country blues, but from time to time I try to write something in that idiom. Though I probably wouldn’t go for anything as badass as this, at this time of my life…

I was drunk last night, drunk the night before x2
I’ll be drunk again this evening, but I won’t be drunk no more

I don’t mind coffee, milk or even tea
But water without whisky is just too strong for me

Feeling tomorrow like I do today
I’ll break your hard-rock head and make my getaway

If you quit me baby, tell you what I’ll do:
Drink a quart of whisky and let it out all over you

I was drunk last night, drunk the night before x2
I’ll be drunk again this evening, but I won’t be drunk no more

Also published on Substack

Hosanna In Extremis

Something a little different from me on the Poetry Archive YouTube channel. Yes, it’s a poetry video.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) YouTube has done its favourite trick of keeping the volume as low as it can get away with, and I think I rushed it a bit. However, I suspect it will be on the forthcoming poetry and music project in some form.

Fortunately, there are plenty of videos on that channel worth listening to and not requiring tweaking of the volume control.

Meanwhile, here’s the poem.

Born in freefall, oppressed by gravity;
Cutting the harness and falling free
In the last days of the human race,
The last few metres of the Fall from Grace.
The gods look down and cannot change a thing:
No miracles, no more psalms to sing.
The rich men take the seats that they reserved;
The rest fight for a place on Dead Man’s Curve.
Somehow the human race is hanging on,
But humanity’s already dead and gone.

There’ll be no singing in the lifeboats,
Unless it’s in the Captain’s praise.
The countdown started long ago,
The last days of the human race,
But the chaos we’re creating cannot wipe
The smirk from the rich man’s face.

This is your last call:
The countdown to freefall.
The coming gale will shake the earth’s foundations,
And most of us will perish in the flood,
The poor and unseaworthy lie abandoned,
Buried somewhere deep within the mud.
Survival of the fattest; trickle-up economics;
Fact and fiction, fear and faith, despair and desire;
Politics and science, bigotry, morality:
We’re choking on the smoking and you can’t see the fire
.
Cold turkey voting still for Christmas
Season of myths and moral fruitlessness –
Break those habits, not the habitat,
Or you’ll take the whole world with you when you choke on the excess.
This is the very last last chance:
Let’s face down the muzak and dance.

David Harley

Christmas video set

All three of the songs I performed last week for the Kettle & Wink virtual Xmas session are now up on YouTube. NB these were try-outs, not the actual set: you’d have to go to the Facebook group page for that. If you were really that desperate…

It’s an unusual set for me in that none of the songs are completely original, though the third is a parody.

The first was written in the late 19th century by Charlie Case, and learned way back in the 20th century from the late and very great Diz Disley. Which is why it’s a bit jazzier than you might expect from me… ‘The Fatal Glass of Beer’.

The second is a song by Ewan MacColl that I haven’t sung in many decades: ‘Ballad of the Carpenter’. MacColl’s view of the story of Christ reflects his own leanings towards communism rather than a traditional religious view: while that’s fine with me, I’ve followed Phil Ochs’s adaptation and somewhat softened the Politburo resonances.

Somehow, I’ve never quite felt that ‘The Snowman’ quite reflects my own experience of Christmas.

David Harley

Christmas(-ish) video

I haven’t paid that much attention to Christmas in recent years except when besieged by children and grandchildren, so it’s probably not going to surprise you that this is closer to Scrooge in spirit than to the current rash of feel-good seasonal movies…

Anyway, participating in some solstice-ish live video projects has actually got me back into the home studio for the first time in a while, so there’ll probably be some of the more serious stuff also turning up here and on Facebook in the next few days.

David Harley

Adventures in Video – Young Hunting (Trad2Mad version)

 

This is an unaccompanied version of ‘Young Hunting'(Child 68) I found when I was still at school in the 1960s, though I’ve undoubtedly changed it since. I didn’t have a tune for it, so I cobbled one together. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I found the words, though I’ve come across a fairly similar American text (unattributed) since.

I don’t always sing it unaccompanied, though.

Light down, light down my own true love
And stay with me the night
For I have a bed and a fireside too
And a candle that burns so bright.

I can’t light down and I won’t light down
Nor spend the night with thee
For I have a love and a true true love
Would think so ill of me

But he’s bent down from his saddle
To kiss her snowy white cheek
She’s stolen the dagger from out of his belt
And plunged it into him so deep

She’s taken him by his long yellow hair
And the maid’s taken him by the feet
They’ve plunged him into that deep doleful well
Full 20 fathoms deep

And as she’s turned her round to go home
She’s heard some pretty bird sing
Go home, go home you cruel girl
And weep and mourn for him

Fly down, fly down you pretty bird
Fly down and go home with me
And your cage will be made of the glittering gold
And the perch of the best ivory

I can’t fly down and I won’t fly down
And I’ll not go home with thee
For you have slain your own true love
And I’m feared you’ll murder me

I wish I had my bent horn bow
And drawn with a silken string
I surely would shoot that cruel bird
As sits in the briars and sings

I wish you had your bent horn bow
And drawn with a silken string
I surely would fly from vine to vine
And always you’d hear me sing

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David Harley

Adventures in video – Paper Tiger

https://youtu.be/ZsnrnMPNKFI

Audio capture:

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Paper Tiger (words & music by David Harley)

Oh, you paper tiger,
Now see what you’ve done
You made your stand on shifting sand
And now begins the fun

Your bluff’s been called at last
So what do you do now?
Now someone got the drop on you
And finally faced you down

Oh, you paper tiger… (x2)

Oh, you paper tiger
Now see what you’ve done
Every chamber emptied
And nowhere left to run

How could you forget
The only code that you lived by
To move so fast and talk so soft
And keep your powder dry?

Oh, you paper tiger… (x2)

Oh, you paper tiger
Now see what they’ve done
They’ve picked you clean and strung you up
To dry out in the sun

Oh, you bigshot bankrupt
You flamed-out flat-lined fake
They’ll bake you in the ashes
Of your latest last mistake

Oh, you paper tiger … (x2)

Adventures in Video – Now How Long?

The first version of this goes back to the late 60s or early 70s, but I’m not sure if I ever performed it in public. An attempt to write something blues-y that wasn’t a 12-bar.

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Heard some lonesome whistle blow
How long Lord?
Now I know it’s time to go
How long?
When you get those hard luck blues
All you need is walking shoes
How long Lord?
Now how long?

Empty pockets, empty bed
So long Lord?
Empty dreams in an empty head
How long?
When you get those walking blues
Radio just plays bad news
How long Lord?
Now how long?

When you feel those cold winds blow
How long Lord?
You know the way you have to go
How long?
Thought I heard the DJ say
Got no reason left to stay
How long Lord?
Now how long?

Waiting by the railroad track
How long Lord?
Heading out with no way back
How long?
Standing in the pouring rain
I must have missed that Gospel Train
How long Lord?
Now how long?