Tag Archives: The Song Bar

This Week on The Song Bar

Song-BarThis week’s topic on The Song Bar is songs with misheard, nonsense or inaudible lyrics. So far I’ve nominated Blue Öyster Cult’s Workshop of the Telescopes with its “silverfish imperetrix with uncorrupted eye” along with some classic 70s Jon Anderson and Budgie.

Nominations as usual in the comments section over there (not here!), and get them in by Monday!

Posted in Music Opinion | Tagged | Comments Off

This week on The Song Bar: Upbeat Breakup Songs

The third topic on The Song Bar is upbeat breakup songs The theme is songs about the end of relationships or band breakups that still have a positive note. Another poster has nominated Peter Gabriel’s “Solisbury Hill” in which he celebrates his new-found freedom having left Genesis.

My choice is Mostly Autumn’s “Violet Skies” from Olivia Sparnenn’s first album as lead singer. It’s a tribute to Heather Findlay who had just left the band to go solo, and fits the topic perfectly.

Posted in Music Opinion | Tagged | 1 Comment

The first week of The Song Bar

Under the Guruship of Treefrogdemon, The Song Bar has its first playlist, Songs about moving oo.

I’m honoured to get one of my nominations in the very first A-list of our community’s new home, Karnataka’s “The Gathering Light”.  Treefrogdemon reports that the chorus became something of an earworm. I’m not surprised; I remember seeing the band before they’d recorded the album but were playing a lot of new materal live, and woke up one morning with that chorus in my head, several days after the gig.

It’s also appropriate that the first playlist for a Guardian column in exile contains a song by a band snubbed in the Readers end-of-year poll.

This weeks’ subject is songs that trigger dancing. I have nominated something by King Crimson, which isn’t an obvious dance number. You will need to read the comments thread to find out why.

Posted in Music Opinion | Tagged , | Comments Off

The Song Bar

Song-BarThe situation with The Guardian’s Readers Recommend has got unpleasantly messy, and we’ve ended up with in a position where the vibrant music-loving community risks being split into two rival camps.

After weeks of prevarication, the Guardian have relaunched Readers Recommend in cut-down form, run by the community section rather than anyone from Guardian Music. The launch appears to have been handled very clumsily, so it’s got off to a rather poor start.

Meanwhile, an enigmatic figure known only as “The Landlord” has launched a new music blog The Song Bar as a Readers Recommend in exile, with “Songs about moving on” as the first topic.

I am sure I’m not the only person who doesn’t know which way to jump. Is it better to keep a foot in both camps and see how things pan out, or is best to throw our lot in with The Song Bar on the grounds that Guardian Communities have demonstrated that they can’t really be trusted? My gut instinct is to go for the latter, provided the site can draw in a critical mass of people.

Anyway, for Songs about moving on, I’ve nominated the superb title track of Karnataka’s “The Gathering Light“. It’s a song about moving on from a broken relationship, but it’s also by the band who appear to have been cheated out of appearing in The Guardian’s end-of-year reader’s poll for reasons that have never has a satisfactorily explanation.

Posted in Music Opinion | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment