#sydhvo

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Sentences You Don't Hear Very Often #90: Say goodbye to Alexandra lost

John Cale, one of those who contributed to making Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah much more famous than Cohen ever did, chose this extraordinary song as one of his Desert Island Discs. It’s called Alexandra Leaving and was co-written by Leonard Cohen and the woman singing with him here, Sharon Robinson. She has often sung it on her own in Cohen’s live shows, where it is a lot duller than this original studio version from the 2001 album Ten New Songs. (It’s a Cohen album, but Robinson co-wrote all the songs, sang lead on some, and is pictured with him on the front cover.) 

The lyrics are somewhat based on a poem by Constantine P Cavafy (or Kavafis,) The God Abandons Antony. The Antony of that poem is Mark Antony and it’s about the Egyptian city of Alexandria - where Cavafy was born. He lived in many places, including Liverpool, but was of Greek descent and is thought of as a great Greek poet. Like Shakespeare, he died on his birthday. (29 April 1933, aged 70.)

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Sentences You Don't Hear Very Often #89: Please wait at the gate of heaven for me

This record was one of a few in the 60s that were banned - or just caused a furore in the papers - because they were about teenagers dying. As far as we know, a trend for dying in motorbike and car accidents was not triggered, so the bannings and moral outrage must have worked.

Twinkle got her chance, aged 16, because she was the girlfriend of a popstar - one of The Bachelors. He passed her demo of this self-composed song to his manager and lo and behold, she had a hit. Jimmy Page played on the single, but is not in this live clip. Her follow-up hit Golden Lights - also written by her - would years later be one of the few covers recorded by The Smiths.

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Sentences You Don't Hear Very Often #88: I miss my beautiful friend

It’s hard to imagine this exquisite, heartwrenching song, crammed with beautiful lines of words and music as it is, being improved on; but it may have been if it had ever been recorded properly. This is Morning Theft, one of several tracks from Jeff Buckley’s unfinished second album that might have improved his first, Grace. That’s not a very popular opinion, so don’t tell anyone I said so.

The posthumous album Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk is a mixture of demos and proper studio tracks, partly produced by Tom Verlaine. This particular song sounds here pretty much like it did on a live solo recording from 1997 that can be found on the internet. There may be more than one guitar in this one, and/or a drum or two in the background, it’s hard to tell; but basically it’s a solo demo.

The flow of Buckley’s songs is unusual, and unpredictable. But it always reveals itself to be perfectly logical once he gets through it, and there are stretches of beautiful melody scattered around like confetti. In the early 70s there were some British bands - Henry Cow in particular - whose tunes meandered something like this, but they never really had the knack of making them still sound focused. (Largely because they just weren’t, and weren’t trying to be.) Some of The Smiths‘ and Morrissey’s solo stuff is comparable, melodically; but the only songs that really occupy the same territory are some of Kate Bush’s most intense ballads, such as The Kick Inside and This Woman’s Work.  

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John Cooper Clarke bemoaning how he wrote a load of songs with slightly-wrong titles that could have been classics. The song/poem's called I Wrote The Songs.