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colin randall

London/France

Salut! Live reflects my passion for folk and related music - I'm a journalist and lifelong Sunderland supporter, based in France and London, from where I write about most things under the sun and the rain

Interests: film, football, france, badminton, folk music

Recent Activity

Dylan near or Dylan beat: (4) Bob and Sandy, two giants clash again and she wins

Earlier this week, I confessed to having changed a view held for decades. Listening again to Bob Dylan's very early Percy's Song original, I conclude that I had been wrong to consider Fairport Convention's cover, excellent as it was, superior.... Continue reading

Posted 1 hour ago at Salut! Live

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Dylan neat or Dylan beat: (3) covers from Emmylou Harris, Miley Cyrus and Olivia Newton John

Well, I asked for contributions to this mini-series on Dylan at 80, especially covers of his songs, and they have come a-plenty, here and at Salut! Live's Facebook group, which I urge you to join if you haven't already. Malcolm... Continue reading

Posted yesterday at Salut! Live

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Dylan neat or Dylan beat: (2) Percy's Song, Bob, Sandy and a battle of musical giants

As my interest began to flag a little while watching the good-in-parts but excessively long Hemingway and Gellhorn, a thought occurred to me. In later stages of the film, some of the antics of the two heroes (played by Clive... Continue reading

Posted 2 days ago at Salut! Live

4

Dylan neat or Dylan beat: (1) Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

When or perhaps just before Bob Dylan turns 80 on May 24, Salut! Live will publish a special article by the noted Anglo-Canadian journalist Bill Taylor, a good friend, former colleague and fellow Sunderland supporter. Since he attended the Newcastle... Continue reading

Posted 3 days ago at Salut! Live

7

Derek Jolly RIP: from Shildon and Bishop to Bulgaria with his grandfather's ferret

Just a few months after the death of Phil Steele, I learnt that another fixture of the folk scene of South West Durham from the late 1960s had also died, some months earlier. And there are links. I was alerted... Continue reading

Posted 5 days ago at Salut! Live

5

Cover Story: (64) Here's the Tender Coming. Mighty Doonans, Unthanks, Dave Burland or Frankie Armstrong

I have said often enough that the Cover Story series is not intended primarily as a competition but aims to alert readers to different treatments of the same songs and instrumentals. Inevitably, however, whether an item is written by me... Continue reading

Posted Apr 29, 2021 at Salut! Live

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Cover Story: (63) Hard Times of Old England. Steeleye Span, the Coppers, Chumbawamba, Band of Hope or Billy Bragg and Imagined Village

We could get very, very political about this one. Indeed, some versions of Hard Times of Old England do just that, replacing tales of woes afflicting the working class of the 18th century with waspish commentary on modern deprivation and... Continue reading

Posted Apr 26, 2021 at Salut! Live

6

Instruments of Pleasure: (7) Simon Mayor's Man on the Plane and America's grim gun fetish

What goes through your mind with news of each mass shooting in the United States? Shock, I suspect, no longer comes into it for most of us. Beyond sadness for the victims, my thoughts are dominated by sheer anger at... Continue reading

Posted Apr 23, 2021 at Salut! Live

1

Francoise Hardy: the song she hated and her fans loved

When I was the Paris-based correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, I interviewed Françoise Hardy, whose 1962 single, Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles, was a smash hit in France (15 weeks at No 1 in four separate runs between late... Continue reading

Posted Apr 21, 2021 at Salut! Live

2

Cover Story: (62) Me and My Uncle. Grateful Dead, Judy Collins or its writer, John Phillips

Now that Cover Story is sixtysomething instalments old, it feels right that Bill Taylor should dig out a song of which I was unaware, written by the Mamas and Papas' late John Phillips during a boozy session in 1963. He... Continue reading

Posted Apr 19, 2021 at Salut! Live

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Music of the West Country: (2) Show of Hands, Kitty MacFarlane, Jenna Witts, Cyril Tawney and Brenda Wootton

For my second look at the Music of the West Country, I have chosen a blend of youth and experience from Devon and Somerset. Folk has its ghosts, too, prominent figures no longer with us, and I shall also mention... Continue reading

Posted Apr 7, 2021 at Salut! Live

1

Music of the West Country: (1) We are Family - clan Lakeman and sounds from Dartmoor, Derry and Barnsley

Crossing England diagonally as far as can be travelled on land from the North East takes us to the West Country, the setting for my second series on regional folk and related music. Music from North Eastern England - see... Continue reading

Posted Mar 31, 2021 at Salut! Live

1

Cover Story: (61) Underneath the Stars. Kate Rusby, Voces8 or Western Illinois University Singers

Choirs can work wonders with songs created for other settings. In St Bride's, just off Fleet Street in London and commonly known as the journalists' church, I have attended several moving memorial services for former colleagues. And I remember in... Continue reading

Posted Mar 27, 2021 at Salut! Live

7

'What's the news, what's the news?' Christy Moore asked the reporter

News has dominated my working life in the half century since I escaped the humdrum of clerical employment in railway construction, doomed livestock and diesel engines in County Durham. Music has dominated Christy Moore's life since he escaped the humdrum... Continue reading

Posted Mar 15, 2021 at Salut! Live

1

Lily Langtry: candlelit campfire folk and a small-town trio better than the New Christy Minstrels

Friday's stats for visits to Salut! Live carried a sharp message. There had been exactly 100 in 24 hours. Every one of them is appreciated (I'm told I should even be grateful for the 'Google bots' among them though I... Continue reading

Posted Mar 13, 2021 at Salut! Live

1

Maddy Prior, Steeleye Span and variable winds for Sails of Silver

Maddy Prior entered my life in the downstairs snug of the Golden Cock pub in Darlington, County Durham. The earth may not have moved but it was a brief pleasure and its memory, if doubtless long forgotten by her, remains... Continue reading

Posted Mar 8, 2021 at Salut! Live

8

I Dreamed a Stream/I Streamed a Dream. Kate Rusby's new lockdown antidote

From an old folk PR friend, Claire Horton, comes news of Kate Rusby's plans to stream her album of pop covers, Hand Me Down No,the song from Les Miserables is not among the 12 tracks on Kate's most successful album,... Continue reading

Posted Mar 3, 2021 at Salut! Live

2

In honour of Vin Garbutt, in support of a venue he loved

Live music may still be a distant dream but from a battered and bruised sector some of us regard as vital to humanity has come a stream of virtual events to ease the pain of Covid-driven deprivation. I am luckier... Continue reading

Posted Mar 2, 2021 at Salut! Live

0

Who Knows Where the Time Goes - or where it went? Sandy Denny's song and its covers

March 2021 update: My tribute to Who Knows Where the Time Goes?, a great song by an even greater departed heroine of folk and folk-rock, Sandy Denny, first appeared when I was living in Abu Dhabi in 2008. It was... Continue reading

Posted Mar 1, 2021 at Salut! Live

12

The Byrds: when folk-rock got higher and higher

"John and Michi were getting kind of itchy, just to leave the folk music behind." As every 1960s schoolboy probably knew, the line opened Creeque Alley, a quirkily pleasing Mamas and Papas song which, when not bidding farewell to folk,... Continue reading

Posted Feb 22, 2021 at Salut! Live

9

Cover Story: (60) The Apprentice's Song. Ian Campbell Folk Group or the Johnstons

In my first job, I laboured with tedious clerical duties in the offices of the railway wagon works in my home town of Shildon, County Durham. After starting in a small office deep into the yards, in the “new construction”... Continue reading

Posted Feb 17, 2021 at Salut! Live

1

Hands across the water: Valentine brings Salut! Live's new Illinois ally, WEFT-FM

Feb 15 2021 update: WEFT-FM's Valentine playlist can be found here https://spinitron.com/WEFT/show/116412/Celtic-Music-Go-Bragh-Go-Bragh. It's a two-hour programme so the list is long but expect to run, for example, into Siucra (as described below), Altan, Karen Matheson, the Tannahill Weavers and, um,... Continue reading

Posted Feb 14, 2021 at Salut! Live

5

Photography and folk music: Roger Liptrot's life in focus

The power of photography is well known. From the Northern Echo's curmudgeonly old Bill Oliver, with his huge box camera, to the brilliant men and women who capture war, humanity and style on film, probably every photographer I have worked... Continue reading

Posted Feb 8, 2021 at Salut! Live

4

Cover Story: (59) The Curragh of Kildare. A hanged highwayman and a hung jury

As we approach the 60th edition of Cover Story, here's something of a novelty for the series, a song that was among the first I found seductive as I become interested in folk music but for which I recently struggled... Continue reading

Posted Feb 6, 2021 at Salut! Live

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Cover Story: (58) Sweet Thames Flow Softly. MacColl & Seeger, Christy Moore, Wainwright siblings or many others

Kissed her once again at Wapping After that there was no stopping Those lines, which delight some listeners and strike others as embarrassing, were not to be found in the original lyrics of Sweet Thames, Flow Softly. Arguably one of... Continue reading

Posted Jan 26, 2021 at Salut! Live

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