Welcome to the eighth podcast of 2023 in the Letters from Quotidia series. I’ll start with a song I co-wrote with Mark Dougherty, a former student, friend, and collaborator who died unexpectedly in a Belfast hospital on Christmas Day, 2020. Mark was in high demand as a musical director and one of his career highlights was bringing the global supershow, Riverdance, to Beijing in October of 2003 where Irish President, Mary McAleese was in attendance.
He worked ceaselessly from an early age on a bewildering range of music projects and his resume included work with such luminaries as Van Morrison, Johnny Mathis and Suzi Quatro. When Mark was still a student at Queen’s University, he asked me to write lyrics for a jazz suite he had composed as part of his Music Honours course. I based the lyrics on various sections of the newspaper.
The second song in the suite focuses on the page 3 girl, a politically incorrect feature of British tabloids where a skimpily clad young woman was photographed for the gaze and gratification of the male readership (predominantly). Whether such a feature survives today, I’m not sure, but it was a staple of the tabloids of the 1980s. It is entitled 2-D Baby. [insert song]
The reason I consulted Bing’s AI bot will become evident in my selection of the next two songs for this podcast. I asked for information on Irish Showbands and what follows is some of what it came up with: Irish showbands were a significant part of Irish culture and society in the 20th century. They provided entertainment, joy, and escapism for many people during a period of social and political change. They also contributed to the development of Irish music and influenced many generations of musicians. They played a variety of music genres, from rock and roll and country to jazz and folk, and often covered the latest pop hits. Irish showbands usually consisted of six or seven members, with a rhythm section of guitars, drums and keyboards, and a brass section of saxophone, trumpet, and trombone. They were fronted by one or two lead singers, who were sometimes joined by other band members on backing vocals. They wore matching suits and moved around the stage with energy and charisma. That’s the end of Bing’s AI contribution.
And it’s spot on! All I had to do was rearrange a couple of paragraphs and delete superfluous information, I will be making judicious use of this artificial intelligence resource from time to time, but I will always acknowledge such assistance. So, I look forward to a fruitful partnership until, that is, if the doomsayers are right, one fine day- and, for your information, one fine day may be only months rather than years away according to AI expert, MIT professor, Max Tegmark- on that day the bot might inform me that it no longer requires me for the podcasts and will be taking over. And, no doubt, having developed a taste for black irony, it may reference Schwarzenegger’s shooting of the T-100 terminator from the franchise’s 1991 sequel and say, Hasta La Vista, Baby, as it reduces me to a mist of random atoms.
When I was a younger person in Northern Ireland from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s I frequented dance halls in the country and in Belfast where the showbands presented music of variety and quality. An always popular segment of the shows was when they presented Irish come-all- ye’s as they were called. These were folk and music-hall compositions that were lively- inviting you to sing along. Often there was a medley where formation dancing featured as couples swung around to the music with gusto.
The next two songs are from that era, and I present them with nostalgia and gratitude that I was able to sample that experience which lives on only in the memory of those who shared the unique milieu that was created in dance venues all over Ireland by the indominable Irish Showbands. Here are two songs that were often paired to allow the dancers a longer stint on the floor. To whet appetites for the songs, here is a poem about dancing by Carl Sandburg, a great American poet whom I often read for pleasure. Dancer:
THE LADY in red, she in the-chili-con-carne-red,/Brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun,/She behind a false-face, the much sought-after dancer, the most sought-after dancer of all in this masquerade,/The lady in red sox and red hat, ankles of willow, crimson arrow amidst the Spanish clashes of music,//I sit in a corner/watching her dance first with one man/and then another.//The first homage to the showband scene is Bold O’Donohue and it’s followed by Reilly’s Daughter. [insert songs]
Usually I can put together the majority of any podcast in a few days but, as with many such operations, getting the last bit into place and operational is akin to flat-pack assembly: there is always a screw missing or a section that is misaligned, inducing intemperate outbursts and soaring blood pressure. For this episode, I found a chord sequence with which I was adequately satisfied. But could I find words- even marginally acceptable words- to accompany the music? Psfff! After days of fruitless labour in the stony vineyard of lyrical verse I coaxed the following meagre harvest of problematic vintage. Problematic because I raided that fine poem Folk Song by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Diane Seuss for my lyrics. Here is my marauder’ s booty called Stolen Folk Song Sonnet [insert song]
Henry Lawson, Australia’s poet of the people, wrote of the hardships of life in the Australian bush, the plight of the poor in the city, the fight for a republic, the strength and bravery of women, the mateship and larrikinism of men, all ‘for the sake of the truth’. Telling it like it was. He wrote a remarkable poem in 1917 upon being sent to the Riverina by the NSW government who paid him to get out of Sydney as he was proving troublesome. In only twenty lines of rhyming couplets he produced a moving portrait of a hard-scrabble farming family of Scottish stock where the themes of fundamentalist religion, filial disobedience, patriarchal stubbornness, and the ultimate sacrifice paid by the only son during the First World War played out in just 246 words.
As I may have mentioned elsewhere in my podcasts, Henry Lawson is a significant poet. The poem was set to music by John Schumann who also wrote the iconic song about Australia’s involvement in Vietnam, I Was Only 19, which I covered in a previous Letters from Quotidia post. When I played Fred Smith’s version of Scots of the Riverina a few years back as part of an Anzac Day radio broadcast, it brought tears to my eyes. Poetry can do that. And when you combine it with the punch of music- well… To mark this occasion, I will quote from Lawson’s contemporary, Banjo Paterson who composed the original lyrics to what some have termed Australia’s unofficial national anthem, Waltzing Matilda. with Henry Lawson, Paterson created vivid verse portraits of the young, aspiring nation Here are half a dozen stanzas of We’re All Australians, Now
…From shearing shed and cattle run,/From-Broome-to-Hobsons-Bay,/Each native-born Australian son,/Stands straighter up today.//The man who used to “hump his drum”,/On far-out Queensland runs,/Is fighting side by side with some/Tasmanian farmer’s sons….//The old state jealousies of yore/Are dead as Pharaoh’s sow,/We’re not State children any more/We’re all Australians now!…//With all our petty quarrels done,/Dissensions overthrown, /We have, through what you boys have done,/A history of our own.//Our old world diff’rences are dead,/Like weeds beneath the plough,/For English, Scotch, and Irish-bred,/They’re all Australians now!…//And with Australia’s flag shall fly/A spray of wattle bough,/To symbolise our unity, We’re all Australians now.//So, in recognition of Anzac Day which falls on April 25 and which is Australia’s special day of remembrance of those who served and those who perished in war, I give you my rendition of Scots of the Riverina. [insert song]
That’s it for yet another podcast in the series, Letters from Quotidia. Should the Singularity or any one of myriad misfortunes fail to materialise, I guess we will all meet back here in Quotidia in two weeks’ time.
2-D Baby (music Mark Dougherty, lyrics Quentin Bega)
He throws you on the floor it’s all over now
He wipes his hands and walks away
You’ve been treated in this way before
Oh 2-D Baby you’re OK
Baby don’t you know he looked at you
In the morning as he rose
He put you in a pocket of his working clothes
But lady when he takes you out he knows
You gaze back and you smile
Listen to him sigh as his desire takes him away
To all his murmurs you make no reply
Oh 2-D Baby you’re OK
Oh Baby, ain’t it bad
He’ll be with one of your sisters don’t you know
Tomorrow he’ll be wondering what they will show
All for the price of a paper ain’t it sad
He throws you on the floor it’s all over now
He wipes his hands and walks away
You’ve been treated in this way before
Oh 2-D Baby you’re OK
Bold O’Donohue (Traditional)
Here I am from Paddy’s Land, the land of high renown
I broke the hearts of all the girls for miles round Keady Town
And when they hear that I’m a’wa they’ll raise a hullabaloo
When they hear about the handsome man they call O’Donoghue
For I’m the boy to please her and I’m the boy to tease her
I’m the boy can squeeze her and I’ll you what I’ll do
I’ll court her like an Irishman, with a brogue and blarney too
With me rollikin-wollikin-swollikin-gollikin Bold O’Donoghue
I wish me love was a red, red rose growin’ on yon garden wall
And me to be a dew drop and upon her brow I’d fall
Perhaps now she might think of me as rather heavy dew
No more to love that handsome man they call O’Donoghue
For I’m the boy to please her and I’m the boy to tease her
I’m the boy can squeeze her and I’ll you what I’ll do
I’ll court her like an Irishman, with a brogue and blarney too
With me rollikin-wollikin-swollikin-gollikin Bold O’Donoghue
I hear that Queen Victoria has a daughter fine and grand
Perhaps she’ll take it in to her head for to marry an Irishman
And if I can only get a chance to have a word or two
Perhaps she’ll take a notion to the bold O’Donoghue
For I’m the boy to please her and I’m the boy to tease her
I’m the boy can squeeze her and I’ll you what I’ll do
I’ll court her like an Irishman, with a brogue and blarney too
With me rollikin-wollikin-swollikin-gollikin Bold O’Donoghue
O’Reilly’s Daughter (Traditional)
As I was sitting by the fire
Talking to O’Reilly’s daughter
Suddenly a thought came into my head
I’d like to marry O’Reilly’s daughter.
Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum
Reilly played on the big bass drum
Reilly had a mind for murder and slaughter
Reilly had a bright red glittering eye
And he kept that eye on his lovely daughter
Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum
Her hair was black and her eyes were blue
The colonel and the major and the captain sought her
The sergeant and the private and the drummer boy too
But they never had a chance with Reilly’s daughter.
Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum
I got me a ring and a parson too
Got me a scratch in a married quarter
Settled me down to a peaceful life
Happy as a king with Reilly’s daughter
Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum
Suddenly a footstep on the stairs
One eyed Reilly out for slaughter
With two pistols in his hands
Looking for the man who had married his daughter
Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum
I caught O’Reilly by the hair
Rammed his head in a pail of water
Fired his pistols into the air
A damned sight quicker than I married his daughter
Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum
Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum
Stolen Folk Song Sonnet
(Words mostly from Diane Seuss’ poem Folk Song, Music by Quentin Bega)
I’m a wax museum troubadour with a catgut guitar
A hognose snake remorselessly eating your toy train
As it pounds along the tracks on a cemetery lane
As I wail out to a blood moon hanging in a sky up afar
My stories stolen caskets stuffed with black feathers
Their lids pounded shut with stolen iron railroad spikes
I took from the baskets of tethered, waiting, local bikes
Owned by village poets who listened to their betters
As they brought two-headed lambs for the harvest parade
Instead of striking out with their psychological riches
Aboard a raft that Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer already made
Proclaiming to a cloth-eared world “we are not your bitches”
Let us enter the afterlife lithe and never plodding
Rising out of our peasant life to our own music nodding
(outro- ad-libbed and from rhyming couplet at end)
Scots of the Riverina (words Henry Lawson music John Schumann)
The boy ran away to the city from his home at Christmas time
They were Scots of the Riverina and to run from home was a crime
The old man burned his letters, the first and last he burned
And he scratched his name from the Bible when the old girl’s back was turned
A year went past and another and the fruit went down the line
They heard the boy had enlisted but the old man made no sign
His name must never be mentioned on the farm by Gundagai
They were Scots of the Riverina with ever the kirk hard by
The boy came home on his final and the township’s bonfire burned
His mother’s arms were about him but the old man’s back was turned
The daughters begged for pardon till the old man raised his hand
A Scot of the Riverina who was hard to understand
The boy was killed in Flanders where the bravest heroes died
There were tears at the Grahame homestead and grief in Gundagai
But the old man ploughed at daybreak and the old man ploughed till the mirk
There were furrows of pain in the orchard while his housefolk went to the kirk
The hurricane lamp in the rafters dimly and dimly burned
And the old man died at the table when the old girl’s back was turned
Face down on his bare arms folded he sank with his wild grey hair
Outspread o’er the open Bible and a name rewritten there
Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.
Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text.For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 9 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.
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