Singles Released This Week Years Ago

 

Without further ado, here are some of the songs released this week.

1967: Jimi Hendrix

1967: Nancy & Frank Sinatra

1967: The Who

1977: The Clash

1985: Tears For Fears

1971: Richie Havens

1973: Jim Croce

1969: Simon and Garfunkel

1970: Guess Who

1977: Peter Gabriel

Sixty Five

 

Today I turn 65 and another year has passed far too quickly and I reflect on everything that has happened in these years. We are getting older and that is inevitable. And transience is a theme that crops up in every genre of music, from rock n' roll to country and blues. And songs that have dealt with getting older, the past and everything in between. It's impossible to pick a favourite, especially when you consider how much choice is out there. That's why I limited myself to the songs that came to me spontaneously and that have stayed with me over the years.

Saturday Moon

During the past weeks I have pursued many games of the handball world championship. Not only because the German team was very successful in this tournament but because the game fascinated me in itself. Compared to football it is faster, more body-emphatically and exciting. Most of the games I watched were very close and often the one will win that have a bit more luck. Yesterday the dream of the German team for winning the competition died by a very strong and effective team of Norway. Congrats to them and to our team because they played with full passion. After watching the game I switched to a French-German cultural canal ARTE because since a few weeks there was series running about the moon to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first landing on the moon. The series running with movies, documentaries and cultural relations according to the main theme moon. Yesterday's feature was about how the moon captured pop/rock music. Watching this collage of music, animated clips and time-historical archive material I thought by myself that music history is full of songs linked to the moon and space. Here are some songs that was featured in this documentary and probably this could be the start of a new series.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising
Neil Young - Harvest Moon
Frank Sinatra - Fly Me To The Moon

Jacques Brel

From time to time I'm in sentimental mood and I listen to some old singers/songwriters singing their chansons in French. In former times I was fascinatet by singers like Jacques Brel and Charles Aznamvour which made fantastic songs that they mostly arranged by themselfs. Jacques Brel is on that I often listened because of his smooth voice and the his catchy tunes. I am far away to understand the meaning of the chansons so I could focus just the singer and the song. Nowadays it's easy to get a translation of this songs and my respect to the artist grows more and more when I listen to songs I used to play and understandig the meaning of this songs.

Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer/songwriter who had a great influence in modern chansons. Although he recorded his songs in French, he became a major influence in English-speaking songwirters like David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Marc Almond and Alex Harvey. Translations of his songs were performed by Ray Charles, Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra. This song is recorded live during a show in Paris in the early 1960s. I never heard warmer words of the land he loves.

Enjoy and have good days

With its cathedrals as a single mountain,
With black spiers equal to climbing poles.
Stone on which depend the devil clouds
With the sequence of days as the only movement
Because as the only country with a rainy evening greeting
With its northeasterly winds. Hear him as he desires it
The flat land that's mine.

Jaques Brel - Le plat pays