Your top tales...
Just come off air after an exhilarating hour. Even before the show started we were swamped with your suggestions of great story songs. The stuff we played on air was just the tip of the iceberg and as Russ and Jenn in Aberdeen have just said 鈥淲hen you think about it, there are so many too choose from鈥.
It鈥檚 a theme I really want to return to. Do you fancy doing this one again next Thursday instead of summer songs?
I promised that I would put DJ Mac鈥檚 list of suggestions on the blog so folk can see the effort our listeners put into their e-mails. It鈥檚 a great list, and I hope one that makes you want to go and listen to them.
"We now need a whole series of programmes just to accommodate this idea!!
Maybe when the summer Thursday series ends, we can have a 'songwriters' series??
Anyway, some suggestions:
You just cannot get away from the wonderful Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie and I challenge Radio Scotland to play the full version - at what some 20 mins long. Well, I did hear it first on commercial radio where the deejay broke all the rules and played it without interruption!!! Give us even 5 mins!!??
Then there are some real classics that you may have already:
Bobbi Gentry: Ode to Billie Joe;
Billy Joel: New York State of Mind;
Billy Joel: Scenes from an Italian Restaurant;
Don Maclean: Miss American Pie;
Don Maclean: Vincent
Plus the great songwriters offer any choice you may want to make:
Bob Dylan; Maggie's Farm; Highway 51; Highway 61 Revisited; Subterranean Homesick Blues;
Gordon Lighfoot; Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful song, but maybe too heavy?? Try Canadian Railroad Trilogy!
Randy Newman; (Maybe the quirky Beach Cleaning Machine?)
Janis Ian; Carole King; Laura Nyro
Rita MacNeil's tribute to the miners: It's a Working Man I Am - play this and the whole country will sing along to the chorus) etc;
Susanne Vega: My Name is Luka;
Plus some oldies:
Battle of New Orleans - Johnny Horton
Lonnie Donegan; Battle Hymn of the Republic/John Brown's Body!!;
Alan Price: Geordie Lad;
The Animals: House of the Rising Sun;
Plus some Scottish:
The Proclaimers: Letter from America and Sunshine on Leith;
Dekes: Dignity;
Most Runrig!
Some less 'deep' but more pop:
Van Morrison: Cleaning Windows;
Michele Shocked: Anchorage, Alaska;
Robbie Robertson: Somewhere Down the Crazy River;
Paul Simon: Graceland;
Susanne Vega: My name is Luka;
Blood Sweat and Tears: Beware of the Naked Man and And When I Die;
Plus almost every blues record ever made, but let's just suggest Johnny Cash and Folsom Prison Blues (to curry favour with someone!!) but you get the idea!! Or even may I say Jeannine C Riley and Harper Valley PTA - tells a real story!!
And that still leaves
Jackson Browne;
The Bee Gees (Mass Mining Disaster)
Stevie Winwood;
The barrel has not even been opened - we need a full series of songs by songwriters!!
DJM."
Whether your contribution to the show is long or short, it is really appreciated. It may be a tough job it is trying to fit everything in, but you can see why there鈥檚 no job I鈥檇 rather be doing.
Posted @ 7:15
