Roger Moore outdouble entendres Big Sean in Moonraker ten years later delivers the line “Bollinger? If it is a ’69 you were expecting me” to Dr. Holly Goodhead in the lavish Suite del Doge.
London calling
Get dressed: Daniel Craig
Now we all know that James is a man for all seasons so it’s probably little surprise that like us he is a fan of the Four Seasons.
And whether you’re keeping the red flag flying here, celebrating the Internationale or just twirling around a maypole it’s Mayday Bravo today.
It was, of course, an Irishman, Jim Connell, who came up with the emotive words in 1889 to go with the tune O Tannenbaum.
He had been travelling by train, where you can do a lot of your thinking, in London.
So to mark May Day we’ll revive our Rainy Days and Songdays occasional series with these May Day tunes.
Way to go, Joe
Folk champion: Joan Baez
Joe Hill – Joan Baez: And this workers anthem relates to a union leader, framed on a murder charge and executed in Salt Lake City.
But the organiser stands for everyman and of course returns to the narrator in a dream.
And in typical American storytelling style it covers the geography of the whole country… from San Diego up to Maine.
Lennon doctrine
Comrade Lennon: And Jimmy in Prague
Working Class Hero – John Lennon: They were more Lennon than Lenin in Prague during Soviet rule.
When they would congregate at the Lennon wall to protest.
Lennon, the Working Class Hero from Liverpool, has influenced as many if not more around the world from Hamburg to New York and beyond.
Tennessee tunes
Music town: Memphis, Tennesse
Sixteen Tons – Tennessee Ernie Ford: This ditty of a song with the catchy refrain derives from Kentucky’s Merle Travis in 1947.
And the line ‘You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt” came from a letter written by Travis’s brother John.
We’ve taken Tennessee Ford’s 1955 version which hit the top of the Billboard charts and was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.
The New Boss
Something to say: The Who
Won’t Get Fooled Again – The Who: And the Cockney Four whose shows were as much about menace as music nail it here.
And they captured the working class fascination of the Mods in Quadrophenia in their odyssey to Brighton.
But it’s this anthem against The Man and its clarion call: ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’
Lady Donna
Summer time: Donna Summer
She Works Hard For The Money – Donna Summer: Now you might not associate the Queen of Disco with a societal message.
But the New Yorker penned this after seeing a toilet attendant asleep on her shift at a post-Grammy event in West Hollywood.
And a reminder too for all that while music is replete with messages of working men, working women have had it just as bad and worse.
If my school had had a more liberal attitude to wall art, folks would be talking now about Banksy, Murtsy and a history of graffiti.
After all I was only following in a Classical tradition that dates back to the Romans and Pompeii.
For yesterday’s lewd diagrams to denote their red light district think today’s cock and balls.
Whether the graffiti great of the Classics world had the same celebrity though as Banksy has been lost to history.
An exhibition of yourself
Banksy’s capital: The Flower Thrower
But the shadowy scribbler’s notoriety is richly deserved and are celebrated at a special exhibition in Covent Garden, London.
The Art of Banksy is the world’s largest touring collection of Banksy artworks, boasting over 100 original works.
And it has already been shown in Melbourne, Tel Aviv, Auckland, Toronto, Miami, Gothenburg, Chicago, San Francisco and Sydney.
Whether they have the rat and briefcase piece he drew when I took la famiglia to New York for the first time I’ll have to go along to Covent Garden to discover.
The exhibition highlights works made for charities all over the world.
From the Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation to international activists Greenpeace.
Showing pieces from private collections, The Art of Banksy showcases his most iconic pieces.
Alongside rare works never seen by the public before.
American Graffiti
With bells on: Liberty Bell, Philly
Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, lays claim to being the modern-day home of graffiti.
Although, as in most things, New York contests this and insists the City that Never Sleeps is an upgrade.
If you’re a city break fan and seek out the places where the ragged people go then you’ll always glory in graffiti.
Graffiti always explodes where repression reigns and the Berlin Wall was probably the most graffitied surface in history.
Czech this out
Imagine: Prague
We saw it too elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe and particularly in Prague.
Where the John Lennon Wall came to represent the uprising against the Soviet invasion of the Czech capital in 1968.
Put the boot in
The bad guy: Putin
Of course these challenging times have inspired an outpouring of creativity to reflect our support for Ukraine.
And our revulsion at the invasion and our belief that the writing is on the wall for Putin.
The good guy: Zelenskyy
So you have my permission to make your mark on history.
And maybe I’ll get my spray paint out and get my name out there.
It’s got a ring to it, doncha think for the next exhibition…
Banksy, Murtsy and a history of graffiti.
How to get there
Icons: The exhibition
The exhibition at 50 Earlham Street is on Thursday and Friday: 10.00 – 21.00, Saturday: 9.30 – 19.00, Sunday & Monday: 10.00 – 18.00.
And if you don’t know London, the nearest stations are Covent Garden (3 minute walk), Leicester Square (5 minute walk), Tottenham Court Road (8 minute walk) Holborn (8 minute walk) and Charing Cross (10 minute walk).
Tickets are priced from £14.50 and can be booked online at artofbanksy.co.uk or over the phone, on 08440 412001.
Sounds very English village hall, but mais non, Ding Dong Merrily On High is a French Joyeux Noel, ditty.
The tune was originally recorded in the 16th century by Dijon‘s finest Jehan Tabourot in his study of French Renaissance social dance called Orchésographie.
Ca va, English composer and campanologist George Ratcliffe Woodward updated it with the old ding dong that we all enjoy.
Although this doesn’t let UNESCO dumping Liverpool off its Heritage List or https://visitbelgium.comyears before the reconstructed Renaissance City Dresden.
They think it’s all Ova… it is now for a Czech tradition whose time is up because Czech women have rightly had enough.
Few of us will have bothered a jot when hearing the names of the wave of Czech female tennis players in the Seventies as to their derivation.
We did though smile at umpires stumbling over Martina Navratilova’s name.
Marvellous Martinas
They were soon to got lots of practice.
Fur Elise… in Czech Republic, and a Czech guide
The -ova suffix is given to Czech women to denote that they belong to their husband or father.
In English ova is plural for ovum, a female egg cell.
The good news for Czech women is that the Republic’s Ministry of the Interior is looking to push through a change as early as August.
The Astronomical Clock in Prague
I have been fortunate enough to have been hosted by a number of Czech women in the Republic.
And I would advise anyone who might think that because they have accepted this -ova anachronism that they might be happy to be subservient to men to think again.
Martina soon disavowed an American tourist of the notion.
When his son complained about the queues in the Astronomical Clock.
How they demonised Czech women in the past
Young Buck, or Brad, or whatever his name is, soon learned not to disrespect such an important part of Prague history.
Na Zdravi Czech women
The discarding of the -ova suffix will be long overdue.
And a last vestige of a repression dressed up as tradition.
Czech women run their society
Worth remembering though that here in the UK some still frown upon women who order pints of lager.
Try shooting a Czech woman lager drinker in Prague, Karlovy Vary or Hoptown Zatec and see where that gets you.
So we welcome the change in Czechland. They think it’s all ova…. it is now!
It’s one of those annoying Government buzzwords so let’s claim it back with a Rainy Days and Songdays Green Lighting megamix around the world. Our favourite songs with ‘green’ in the title and the countries where they transport us.
As a recruiting call for Ireland our pals at Tourism Ireland would have been proud as in true singer style Johnny namechecks everywhere on the Emerald Island.
Quite who the girl from Tipperary town with the lips like eiderdown is Johnny would never say, perhaps because June would have killed him.
The old rogue Burns was pure rock’n’roll and could pen a lyric and a tune which is probably why he is held in such high regard by the greatest singer-songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century.
With Bob Dylan, no less, crediting the Scot as his greatest inspiration.
The Milanese Verdi had the support of Gaetano Donizetti from nearby Bergamo whom he visited in Vienna which, of course, was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
And that included Bohemia, or the current-day Czech Republic where the thing to do when you’re in Prague is take in a production at the opera house.
Every nation sacrificed its most promising generation in No Man’s Land but for those from the furthest outposts of Empire… well, it just seems to be all the more pointless to modern sensibilities.
Eric Bogle, a Scots-born Australian, explores the pyschological cost to one survivor ‘young Willie McBride’. And it was all the more poignant after I’d seen the statue of the Scots soldier in northern France.
The story goes that the Stax house band were waiting around for the Sun artist and rockabilly singer Billy Lee Riley to turn up and developed the song.
And why Green Onions? Well Booker T. Jones self-deprecatingly said it was because green onions were the nastiest thing he could think of and something you could throw away. We never would.
Either way it’s flag-waving, Americana. And even if you don’t know the song you’ll recognise the tune.
Particularly if you’re a fan of Celtic FC who famously play in green and white hoops and who have adapted the song and lyrics into a favourite fans’ song With a Four-leaf Clover on My Breast.
The evergreen Cliff belts this one out from the Seventies.
The Peter Pan of Pop who was born in India, grew up in England, and has had homes in Portugal and Barbados, though he is selling up in Bim (and yes I’m interested).
