Salut! Live

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

Image: by Appalachian Encounters (Rhiannon Giddens) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Why has Salut! Live been silent? It is a long story but can be told briefly. I was pleased with the way things were going here but the number of visits to the site (ie its readership) simply did not seem commensurate with the time and effort devoted to it.

To be listed at newsnow.co.uk, as two other sites of mine are, would have made a difference. Newsnow collects and categorises headlines at websites and blogs. It has a large readership so, for example, Salut! Sunderland's hits are massively enhanced because its articles are shown there in headline form. I value and appreciate that help. Salut!, the parent site, is more difficult to categorise but still benefits significantly from appearances at newsnow.

I was naive enough to feel we were doing more than enough at Salut! Live to justify acceptance by newsnow. It was not to be. The reasons for rejection were certainly debatable but that's not a debate for here. I do wish to keep the site alive and I do believe it has lots to offer lovers of folk and folk-related music, with a strong archive of material and endless scope for discussion.

For now, I will just allow a great friend Ian Evans, first met on holiday in Peru but a kindred spirit on so many levels, to revive the popular Cover Story series. Here, Ian compares versions of Richard Farina's powerful song about one of America's many shaming incidents, the bombing by Ku Klux Klan lowlife of a Baptist Church that killed four girls ...

Author: Colin Randall

For once, I really have no strong opinion.

I love Mary Black's singing and I love the McGarrigles (Anna and the sadly departed Kate). Linda Ronstadt has a great voice. It's just that I have no special love for the song Heart Like a Wheel; it's pleasant enough but doesn't do for me for what it clearly does for so many others. That's the nature of individual musical tastes.