Clive

  Steadier temperatures for most of this week – mid 20s C – but heatwave levels are forecast to return for the weekend, so I thought I’d go with just one more set of hot heat summer sunshine tunes. As this is the last, for now, I’m adding in a bonus sixth tune this week. I’ve played five of these before but one is making its debut – I don’t just copy these from old posts, you know! Let’s get…

  For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song that carries a message of empowerment, as he tells us in his post, Harness The Energy. For once, I’m sticking to the guidelines and just playing one song, and it offers a slightly different take on what empowerment might mean. I went through all the possible anthems I could be playing for this theme, and thought that others may…

I have on occasion posted about the connections between art and songs, the most recent of these being five months ago when I gave you Some Art, And A Tune. This was picked up by WordPress for their Freshly Pressed feature, and has gathered so many views and likes that it is way ahead at the top of my all time top ten list, so I think this is a popular theme that might be worth revisiting. The…

  At the risk of repeating myself – it’s still unbearably hot here, and this is forecast to last for the whole week, though we might her getting rain to go with the heat on Thursday. A small relief! But I thought I’d ‘celebrate’ with another set of tunes, four of which have hot in their title and an outlier with summertime. Almost all have appeared in previous years, but as they are all good it…

  For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song written or performed by someone who was born in the month of July, as he tells us in his post Mid-Summer State Of Mind. I have found a good website for these monthly posts and having consulted it I realised that I was really spoilt for choice: July is the birth month for Nanci Griffith, Cat Stevens and Linda Ronstadt, among…

  It’s been a couple of months since I last did one of my round ups of new videos I have been watching on YouTube, and that means that I have plenty from which to choose – far too many for one post! I’ve managed to whittle them down to a respectable number, though – I try to keep these to a maximum of six songs but I think I might make that seven this time. And they are all well worth a listen,…

I thought it would be right to complete my set of posts commemorating the 250th Anniversary celebrations of US Independence by devoting this week’s Tuesday Tunes post to songs from that country. In a classic case of not re-inventing the wheel I’m doing this by replaying a previous Tuesday Tunes post. I have on occasion reprised these, but never before within the same series! Call it cheating if…

  In honour of the fact that this weekend sees the 250th anniversary of American Independence from the UK, Jim is inviting us to play a song for Song Lyric Sunday that is included in the Great American Songbook, as suggested by Nancy of the Elephant’s Trunk aka The Sicilian Storyteller. Jim’s post, Great American Songbook, tells us more, and is where I ‘borrowed’ my header image from. My first…

Rather unsurprisingly, WordPress’ new reminder thingy came up with several posts I have made on this date in previous years. I actually did this three times, from 2020 to 2022, but for some reason haven’t done it again. Many of you have joined me since then so you won’t have seen my previous offerings, so I thought I’d share the most recent with you again. It is exactly as written back then,…

As regular readers will know I occasionally write something in response to the prompts offered to us by John Holton in his Writer’s Workshop, and one of this week’s is a good one for me. You can find his post here, and the one I’ve chosen is his option 4: ‘Talk about your favorite radio station when you were in high school.’ In the latest episode of “Divided by a shared language” that translates…

  As temperatures here have been unpleasantly high, and I know the same is true for many other parts of the world, I thought I’d go again this week with some appropriate tunes. Three are heat songs, two are hot: I’ve played three of them before, another in a different version, and one is new here. But all feel right for today. Just remember though: we have it on ‘good’ authority that these ever…

  For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song about enjoying the outdoors, as he tells us in his post Spend More Time Outdoors, which marks one of those days so beloved by the Americans – the Great American Campout, which is today, and is a great theme for a special day. I went through quite a few possibilities for this, and in the end have settled on three which I’m…

  Like many of us I have a ‘Contact Me’ page, which gives readers the opportunity to email me away from the public gaze of commenting on a post, and this usually throws up some interesting thoughts when people use it. On Monday Colin McQueen, whose blog is Getting On, used this to email me a suggestion for a post. He had been looking back through his older offerings and found one which he thought…

  In case you hadn’t noticed, this past Sunday was the Summer Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere, and Winter Solstice in the Southern. Also known here as the Longest Day, as it is the one on which we get the most hours of daylight – 16 hours, 41 minutes, to be precise. I have for a number of years marked this with sets of suitable songs and thought I’d do it again this year. Over that time…

  For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song “that relates to Dads or Grads.” This is to reflect the fact that today is Father’s Day in many parts of the world, including the UK and the US, and also that this is the season for university and college graduation ceremonies. His post explains further. Having in the past played some tunes for fathers I thought I’d concentrate…

The new WordPress feature of giving us a reminder of posts we had made on this date in previous years has given me another good one. This one takes a trip down Memory Lane, to those less complicated days when I was still at school and was having a whale of a time exploring all the exciting music that we were being treated to. I’ll drop back in again at the end for a quick final comment, but for…

  Yes, I know the movie has five, but this is only my fourth post of easy songs! I have something different planned for next week so I thought I’d finish off my collection of easy songs with a final set. I had difficulty deciding on the final five so in the end I was my usual indecisive self – you’re getting a bumper edition of seven tunes this week, as I couldn’t leave any of these out! I’m…