Welcome to Letters from Radio Quotidia the NYE2023 program where, on New Year’s Eve, we look back at the things that, at times, we wish weren’t and forwards to what we wish might be. I opened calendar year 2023’s account back in early January with Route 66 written by U.S. Marine Bobby Troupe in 1946- which I first heard in 1964 off the Rolling Stones’ first LP. I followed this with a tribute to the late Christine McVie by covering a song I heard her sing in 1970- I’d Rather Go Blind.
The month of October I dedicated to the Blues– but more of that later. February saw me paying homage to the Old West of America and March found me acknowledging my debt to my forbears in a rollicking rendition, The Ballad of Ian Chell which I freely confess owes more to imagination than to certified facts! April was consumed, in part, by anxiety over the potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence and I resorted to consoling writings of one sort or another. I discussed the parable of the wheat and the tares found in the Gospel of Matthew, but I did wonder if, in a future ruled by superintelligent computers, we would, at the end of the season, be gathered into an hospitable barn like the wheat or, like the tares, be swept up and burned in a raging fire.
The first song of this podcast, Along the Shore borrows from the well-known poem Footprints in the Sand written by 14-year-old Mary Stevenson in 1936 and, also, a contemporary parable by American Loren Eiseley whose writings combined scientific enquiry with literary sensibility. The story features a child throwing a starfish back to the waves. A sceptical adult asks, Why Bother? There are thousands of these creatures, and you can’t possibly make any real difference. The child picks up another starfish and throws it back to the sea, I made a difference for that one! Here, then, is my song, Along the Shore which seems a fitting way of opening the account for this New Years’ Eve celebration. [insert song]
In May, I devoted podcast 11 to my involvement with Irish music and musicians. I had collaborated for years with Mark Dougherty, a fine musical arranger and composer, until his unexpected death in a Belfast hospital on Christmas Day 2020. In April and May our collaboration, The Paper Suite, a jazz composition written in the mid-1980s featured in six of the podcasts. I also paid tribute to Irish folk music which has been a part of my life since I listened to the LP my parents purchased of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem’s Hearty and Hellish!
Recorded live at the Gate of Horn nightclub in Chicago in November 1961 and released the next year, this may well have kickstarted my love of Irish folk music. One of the songs on that LP was Whiskey You’re the Devil which I am recording here for the first time, a mere sixty-two years after the boyos regaled the patrons at the Gate of Horn, in the windy city. However, I must confess that it is far from the first time I have had reason to echo that line of the chorus which goes, Whiskey you’re the devil you’re leading me astray! So, sing along, if you are in the mood, on this day which almost requires a spirituous libation of some sort! [insert song]
June, in the topsy turvy land of Quotidia, is the first month of winter and I selected, Remember, by Christina Rossetti written in 1849. Oh, the 19-year-old poet hooked my soul with that poignant poem. As I read her wonderful sonnet, I picked up my guitar and started to strum in a stately bluegrass waltz time and within a few minutes I had the template for the song – chiefly because that amazing 19-year-old poet supplied me with the lyrics! Readers of Christina Rossetti’s verse will note that I have used her words virtually unaltered. Throughout the three years of Letters from Quotidia I have valued poetry of all kinds, referencing, literally, hundreds of poems. And, as Emily Dickinson observed, and I concur with this observation- poetry is when she feels physically as if the top of my head were taken off. I must say that I have always been attracted to Carl Sandburg’s mischievous definition- one of 38 he offers- and the antepenultimate definition is quoted here: Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. [insert song]
In August, towards the end of winter in Quotidia, which is mild by day and pleasantly cool by night, I wrote about a supernatural near-miss at a church fete, where two young girls escape the clutches of evil- but it is too recent to reprise here. I elected instead to find another song about such matters to record and found The House Carpenter, a traditional folk song that… delves deep into the complexities of love and the consequences of betrayal. It showcases the internal struggle the protagonist faces as she weighs her love for her family against her desires for freedom and passion.
My thanks to Amanda Phelps writing in the Old-Time Music site for this interpretation. The song has been covered by artists such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Pentangle. British and Irish versions tend to favour The Demon Lover as the title of choice for this song, whereas American versions generally favour The House Carpenter. In the denouement, the young mother sees the high hills of heaven but is told that they are not for you and I, by her lover. Whereupon her gaze is drawn to hills that are so dark and low and she learns that these are the hills of hell, my love, where you and I must go. [insert song]
Springtime in Quotidia, like everywhere else is the season of promises- of good things to come, of regrowth and memories of homemaking. So, September’s offerings included Scarlet Ribbons and The Green Glens of Antrim. In October, I revisited my lifelong love of The Blues, recording 10 classic songs, and immodestly, added one of my own. In November, Last Things was the theme. December is the first week of summer in Quotidia and while the northern hemisphere battens down for winter, here sunscreen, surfing and wildfire precautions feature even as holiday preparations proceed.
Let me conclude this NYE podcast with a couple of songs. I’ll reach back to December 2022 for the first of these, The Shoals of Herring written by Ewan McColl, one of the most gifted songwriters and performers to have graced the British Isles. I had the pleasure to watch him perform with his wife Peggy Seeger at Wollongong town hall in the mid-1970s. The Dubliners with Luke Kelly on vocals recorded, in my opinion, the best version of this great ballad about those hardy fishermen of the 1950s. McColl said, I recorded all the old fishermen up and down the east coast of Britain and knit together their words with rhymes of mine to produce a true song of the people. Here’s my version, [insert song]
To conclude 2023’s podcast, I present one of my shortest songs, clocking in at two minutes twenty seconds. I wrote this back in late 1982 at the end of a trying week and a trying term when I was bogged down at work and my wife was home wrangling three kids, two at primary school and a toddler underfoot with a washing machine on the bung and clothes that needed washing piling up. And, of course, the car needed either the last rites or a mechanic we couldn’t afford. Today in Quotidia the pain of the rising costs of living, especially on couples with kids as we were 40 years ago, resonates. In several past posts I have dissed AI in its attempts at poetry but as I was searching for an appropriate poem by a human person, my Bing AI offered the following lines:
Goodbye to the old year,/The time has come to part./We’ll miss the memories we shared,/And the love that filled our hearts.//We’ll say goodbye to laughter,/And the tears we shed in pain./We’ll say goodbye to all the moments,/That we’ll never see again.//But as we say goodbye to the old/,We welcome in the new./We’ll make new memories and new friends,/And start our lives anew.//So let’s raise a glass to the old year,/And all that it has brought./And let’s welcome in the new year,/With hope and love and thought.//
Mm, I’m impressed, and experiencing a tingle of apprehension, too! So, before Artificial Intelligence usurps my role as a journeyman songwriter, let me conclude with this song to my wife which I wrote over 40 years ago. It’s entitled, Just for You and Me. [insert song]
Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (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 10 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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Best wishes