Oddbits

As I was driving to Dublin last Thursday…..trying to put the tedious motorway miles behind (Yea! I cribbed about the bottlenecks too !!!!), the Beatles song Love Me Do came into my head. I didn’t dwell on it too long…there’s not a lot to dwell on. So as an exercise, I began to review the content. I discovered the following………(I suspect that Beatle geeks have long known this….this is for the mildly interested?)
The song that launched the greatest musical 4 piece in the world……Love Me Do…has only one verse.
That verse is repeated four times. It has a four line bridge which is sung only once and a harmonica solo. In all there is a total of 18 different words and the word LOVE is sung 24 times.
On Friday morning I started back into the lyric of a song that I started 6 months ago……..where did I …….etc,

Here’s a review of Homeland by Sean Smith of the Boston Irish Reporter:

Homeland Mick Hanly Celtic Collections CCCD 1070
Hanly’s fascinating career stretches back to the 1970s Irish folk/trad revival, playing with the likes of Andy Irvine, Mícheál Ó Dhomhnaill, Donal Lunny, Matt Molloy and Paddy Glackin, and succeeding Christy Moore (briefly) in the seminal Irish rock band Moving Hearts; he also released two superb albums, “A Kiss in the Morning Early” and “As I Went Over Blackwater,” that captured his understated yet powerful singing and crisp, melodic guitar. And then, in the mid-1980s, Hanly became a country-style singer-songwriter, penning “Past the Point of Rescue,” a major hit via covers by Mary Black and American country singer Hal Ketchum. “Homeland” is Hanly’s first release since 2004’s “Wish Me Well,” and is in many respects a return to his roots: Irish mainstays like Lunny, Triona Ní Dhomhnaill, Mick McAuley, Kevin Conneff, Steve Cooney, Ray Fean, and the Voice Squad appear at various junctures, and there are echoes of Hanly’s earlier body of work. But “Homeland” also represents a further evolution of his music, and shows him to be both a singer and songwriter of considerable depth, range and adroitness. Hanly exemplifies the limits of music labeling, specifically as to his being categorized a “country” singer-songwriter. To be sure, the strains of Nashville are discernible in a lot of his songs, but this isn’t the cowboys-pickup trucks-and-hound dog type of country; it’s more rarefied and panoptic. Nomenclature aside, Hanly’s stuff makes for very satisfying listening, whether he’s describing the experiences of Irish expatriates and émigrés, as in the post-Celtic Tiger bitterness of “We Won’t Miss the Rain” (“We thought this was over we dared to believe/In the promising lies we were thrown/Dared to believe that we could hold our own”) and the family chronicle “Patrick’s Hill” (part of which is set in Boston); or musing on compelling social issues such as environmental perils in “Endgame?” (“Antarctica weeps, Amazonia sighs/As scientists we’re wonderful, but truth to tell/As gardeners we’re not doing too well”) or a controversy over a country club’s use of barbed wire to block public access to an adjacent beach (“Razors on the Hill”). But Hanly has a fine self-deprecating wit as well, which he displays in two songs of farcical maritime adventures, “The Good Ship Delirious” and “Attention Sous.” Lunny’s bouzouki and Conneff’s bodhran provide some of the thrust on the former, a bouncy 6/8 number that reads like a parody of Joseph Conrad; “Attention Sous” is less fanciful but no less fun, describing life as a cook on a French fishing ship (made more interesting when you don’t speak the language) – “I look to the other basket men for clues/Then something takes my eye/They have fingers but believe me they’re in very short supply.” Hanly’s special guests are a welcome presence throughout, but there are a few particularly memorable contributions. High up there would be O’Dhomhnaill’s harmonies on the traditional “Lord Franklin” and on Hanly’s sweet, tragic parable “The Birdcatcher” (his vocals here are reminiscent of his 1970s portfolio), which is further enriched by Keith Donald’s soulful clarinet. “Endgame?” is sparked by a burst of brass and James Delaney’s tour-de-force organ solo, while McAuley’s pulsing accordion provides a dandy groove for “Razors on the Hill.” The title track begins and ends the album in different incarnations, first as an anthemic rouser with The Voice Squad and two choirs joining in; in comparison with the other material, it seems more simplistic and trite– something not out of place on a Celtic Thunder TV special. But the brief low-key reprise, a solo by Hanly, redeems the song with a quiet, personalized dignity that resonates in a world where too many people are far, very far, from their homelands. [mickhanly.com]
Reviewed By: Sean Smith Boston Irish Reporter

Also looking forward to solo gig in The Punchbowl, Booterstown on the 7th Oct…..I might even have the song finished?https://www.facebook.com/events/218029681933310/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A%22null%22%