Song of the Day: Show of Hands ... Cousin Jack
August 11, 2011
Show of Hands - Steve Knightley and Phil Beer, these days found in the excellent company of Miranda Sykes - have cornered an important rural market: championing the countrydwelling people of Britain who so often feel stripped of an effective voice.
The causes they adopt are not so much those of the landed, hunting gentry - who have more than enough scope to air their views - but ordinary people who see their jobs, amenities and public services destroyed in the name of progress and rationalisation.
A lot of these concerns are felt with particular force in the English West Country. Cousin Jack deals with the tin miners (and others) driven from Cornwall in search of employment wherever in the world opportunities may exist.
Suffice to say it is a powerful, moody blast of protest, but also a thoroughly good song with a magnificent chorus, a perfect addition to Salut! Live's Song of the Day series.
At Longdogs, an impressive Show of Hands discussion forum, I wrote this:
Somehow, probably because I live in France most of the time, I missed Jon Boden's folk song a day project.Only when I launched my own Song of the Day series at Salut! Live did a friend mention that Jon's had just finished. I pressed on, not least because I have a very small but reasonably loyal readership and the choices I intended to make reflected my own 40+ years of listening to folk, folk-rock and offshoot genres.
Show of Hands have given me huge pleasure in a variety of venue from the Albert Hall (but not the Albert Hole, even though I once lived on Bristol) to Cropredy.I am in the company of SoH experts here, and others would have selected other songs to represent Steve, Phil & Miranda at their best. It was a close-run thing for me, and I could easily have gone for The Blue Cockade (white as it was when I first encountered it decades ago) but I never tire of this.
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* Buy Show of Hands albums at this Salut! Live Amazon link. Please!
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