A happy Christmas from Salut! Live and that inspired reworking of Streets of London
December 25, 2017
Not me in the photo but my friend from boyhood, Pete Sixsmith, who each year forgets the decades he toiled in the classrooms and serves the children of the North East as Father Christmas.
Pete has contributed superbly to Salut! Live just as he does week after week at Salut! Sunderland. I decided his image should be used to convey seasonal messages of goodwill to readers of each of my sites: Salut! Sunderland, this one, Salut! North and the one that launched this little empire, Salut!.
Please check out the other sites and use the search function and sidebar links to explore the vast catalogue of writing on folk music, folk-rock and various related forms.
This year has been a better one for Salut! Live, readership interest encouraging me to keep up the flow of new content.
The Cover Story series - same songs, different versions - has been largely responsible for driving up "hit" rates and I am grateful for the support and the feedback it has generated.
If you have a song in your head and want to write about two or more versions of it, say so. It is an open house, a jam session if you like.
But whatever your motivation for coming here (within reason), please accept my warm festive greetings.
I shall leave you with a remarkable clip of Streets of London as you may never have heard it until recently: Ralph McTell kicking off his own song, produced by my friend Frank Gallagher and intended to raise funds for the homelessness charity Crisis, followed by Annie Lennox as a guest singer and the uplifting Crisis Choir.
Nothing against Ed Sheeran, a talented and seemingly likeable artist, but wouldn't it have been heartwarming to see this as the Christmas No 1?
Read about it here (I have done my bit and bought a copy) and now enjoy the clip ...
And happy Christmas ...
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