Salut! Live

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Only rarely do I reopen discussions on the respective merits of different versions of songs featured in the Cover Story series.

This is not such an occasion. It is intended simply to bring to your attention a thoroughly uplifting choral interpretation of Bells of Rhymney, a powerful song from the South Wales coalfield with lyrics by Idris Davies, a miner who became a poet and teacher, adapted by Pete Seeger.

. You can buy this at Salut! Live's Amazon link. Click anywhere on this caption

The Auld Triangle is a mournful Irish ballad, one of so many that call to mind the G K Chesterton lines:

'The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,

For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad'

CR writes: when it comes to that well-known folk group, Pink Floyd, I am in two minds.

Young, I loved lots of what they did. But these days, the track I hear on French radio almost to the exclusion of any other is Another Brick in the Wall, which I loathe for reasons I hope the National Union of Teachers would understand. RTL2 does sometimes play Dave Gilmour's Rattle That Lock, based on the four-note signature French rail users hear before platform announcements, and I am grateful that it does.

Christy Moore and I go back a long way. If you were adventurous enough and even wanted to know, you'd find plenty of evidence in this site's archive of our personal and professional relationship and my great appreciation of his music.

If he appears more often than other artists in this series, Cover Story, it is for the simple reason that he has an uncanny knack of choosing just the right song, from whatever source, for his style.

My old pal Bill Taylor explains all below as he compares versions by Floyd and Moore of the same song ...

By admittedly low standards, Salut! Live's series comparing, contrasting or merely drawing attention to different versions of songs has attracted decent levels of interest. Readers have even been been moved to post comments.

It's called Cover Story and can be found here. 

When the site entered one of its "is it really worth the bother?" periods of inactivity, I wondered whether 40 was a good a number as any on which to bring the series to a close. But I think it is worthy persevering, at least until we reach the half century and possibly beyond.

I had not intended to re-open the debate on Beeswing. But it is possibly my favourite song - a choice that changes from time to time - and this comment might otherwise be lost in the undiscovered, though eminently discoverable, archives of Salut! Live.

More importantly, the version I reproduce above is from a wonderful figure of the British folk world who has just died, Roy Bailey (see my report on his death).

Image: Jim Pietryga via Wikipedia

Salut! Live limps back into life with another entry in the Cover Story series comparing and contrasting different versions of the same song.

Many years ago in Paris, maybe 2006, I paid a fortune for tickets to see the Rolling Stones at the Stade de France. I can enjoy stadium rock - Coldplay in Nice and Lyon were superb and I've seen impressive clips of other bands in other places - and the Stones' concert was excellent.

I have not seen them live since but a review in my local paper when I'm in France, the Var-Matin (ahead of a Marseille gig, but based on a London show attended by the writer), noted that Ronnie Wood was getting better and better with the passing of years, while Keith Richards was not.

See the entire Cover Story series at this link