Salut! Live

In my constant campaign to draw attention to gems from the Salut! Live archive, now that the site attracts a more respectable number of readers, here is piece of music that combines compelling artistry and painful social history. It recalls an age when young children, girls as well as boys, were sent into the mines of Britain to endure the laborious, disfiguring process of helping in the production of coal. As a reporter, I met men in the 1960s who, on the closure of their own pits, could hardly be happier that their fully grown sons would not have to work in the conditions they had known for decades. My friend and Salut! Live contributor Bill Taylor was mesmerised when he first heard the song while visiting my home in France.

I have added a couple of other Unthanks clips to show just how good they are (or how good I think they; there are dissenting views). One is another of the press gang songs I mentioned yesterday, the very moving Here's The Tender Coming, and the other is a grittier rendition of Annachie Gordon than you will encounter from most of the artists who have recorded the song. This is how I wrote about the Unthanks back in 2014 but you will also find a footnote with links to an interview conducted longer ago .. .

Not Song of the Day, since most of what you'll find here is instrumental as Salut! Live spreads wings and look west across the Atlantic. You will have to be patient - or cheat and scroll down - for the hospital reference

This started life as an attempt to devote an edition of the Song of the Day series to the music of one corner of Canada.

After I posted a video of Eric Clapton playing Rambling on My Mind, a brief discussion took place at Facebook. My colleague Brian Kerrigan - declaring himself more a Jeff Beck man - welcomed the clip but expressed surprise that Clapton was paying a Gibson Explorer and not the familiar Stratocaster.

The road between Le Lavandou and La Seyne-sur-Mer is straightforward. Finding the campsite where inlaws were staying in La Forêt de Janas was a little more complicated, enough to confuse my out-of-date SatNav on more than one occasion.

But the twists and turns, and even the traffic jam coming back through Toulon (west-east, so no tunnel), were made all the more bearable by reacquaintance with a few pearls from my vast garage collection of old CDs.

When I looked before starting to write, this clip of the Isle of Avalon Irish dance ensemble had attracted 2,969,130 views, which had risen to 2,969,283 by the time I finished a moment ago. It seemed fair to assume they would not be relying on Salut! Live to find 30,717 more clicks needed to pass three million.

With thanks to Georgiansilver, who posted this quite beautiful - visually as well as musically - clip at Mudcat.

Salut! Live wishes all readers a happy or, as I put it in a gloomy piece due to be published by The National on New Year's Eve, resilient new year.