The Monkeys' Tunes - a music blog, by writers who love to listen

Canterbury - Diamond Head

22

May

by John Doyle

Listening to Diamond Head’s most enduring of epics (although forgive the mild misnomer “epic” as it happens to be under 5 minutes long), offers the chance to discuss exactly why Stourbridge’s hairiest, most underground rockers never quite grasped the glittering prize of major league renown. As the title track of 1983’s critically mixed Canterbury swaps range from [...]

Top Seven Songs Namechecking Jesus

19

May

by Phil Murphy

Words launch other words, and names have a way of establishing themselves as footholds - nothing could be truer than with the name Jesus, which -  thanks to the centuries of teaching, tradition, imposition and imperialism which have used him as currency - has come to mean whatever you earnestly wish. The devil may have [...]

Beautiful World - Colin Hay

25

April

by Clovis

April is the cruellest month - always has been, and always will be, just like tuesdays never come out right; but there is hope at the end of the tunnel, glimpsed briefly through the showers. In those long northern winters, when you’re cooped up, it seems natural to think ahead, to dream - more often [...]

Tell Me - Terry Kath

24

April

by John Doyle

Wailing “God Bless America…” is not the selling point on which you can convince someone of a song’s cathartic merits, even if this song magnifies in grace over one of the most astounding cinematic closing sequences ever, James Guercio’s wirey, disillusioned, Electra Glide In Blue. Tell Me, also written by Guercio, and delivered as a [...]

Lo Scudetto In Sardegna - Serafino Murru

23

April

by John Doyle

Serafino Murru passed away in 1994. It would be difficult though to accept the terminal shockwaves of this roughly sketched street balladeer after the scraping acoustic spears of Lo Scudetto In Sardegna rip through any dustclouds gathered in the decades since Luigi Riva and the Rossoblu last ran rings around mainland hierarchies. Murru is the archetypal everyman, [...]

Ballo di San Vito - Vinicio Capossela

16

April

by Monkey Man

St. Vitus Dance - what does it conjure up in your musical mind? Probably visions of doom-metal bands, either the original gloom merchants Black Sabbath, or various Scandinavian cardboard copycats. Maybe it’s the medieval buzz, and visions of Brueghel, but the title always brought to mind frigid northern metal more than anything else.
How wrong can [...]

Heads Roll Off - Frightened Rabbit

23

March

by Phil Murphy

“Jesus”
And that’s the way the song starts, leaving a man-god hanging as an insistent but quiet guitar chisels rythmically in the background. All the more potent for the Scottish accent blunting the edges of the singer’s troubled voice.
“Is just a Spanish boy’s name”
And that’s the bit when the chisel breaks off a large bit of [...]

Paul Brady - The Island

21

March

by Monkey Man

Though it’s officially springtime, celebrating the sunshine I find myself paradoxically listeing to Paddy Casey’s Ancient Sorrow (rather than the more appropriate Sunnyside of the Street by the Pogues) - a song that, with a brave production that highlights the voices of Casey and the real foundation given by the soulful singing of Terry Sutton. [...]

You said something - PJ Harvey

09

March

by Michael OConnor

This waltzing photograph of a song is hard to resist. Listening to it you’re brought in front of a scene pregnant with possibilities, and left to your own devices to make sense of it.
The setting is ‘a rooftop in Brooklyn, at one in the morning’. Everything is seen through this frame or filter. Brooklyn [...]

Shake The Devil - Antony and the Johnsons

05

March

by Phil Murphy

Slouched hidden beside a fire-exit, Antony Hegarty looked neither courageous or a star, clutching his notebook and looking nervous as he waited for his driver to arrive. This was back in 2005, backstage at a festival in Italywhere Antony and the Johnsons were due to headline that night. He averted his gaze from all passers [...]