Happy Independence Day, for those who are celebrating. And Happy General Election Day for those of us in the UK – though after fourteen years of this incompetent, corrupt rabble maybe we should name it Independence Day too? Anyway, I’m not here to pass inane political comments, I have something much more important in mind: it is time for my review of last month’s posts, in case you missed anything.

I posted thirteen times in June, all but one of them being music pieces. That’s a fairly heavy concentration, even by my standards! But the number was down by one from the norm, as I posted last month’s review on the final day of the month. So let’s get going on all of that music, shall we?

As usual I had a full month of Tuesday Tunes posts: four of them, starting with Tuesday Tunes 202: Alcohol, which included music by Chumbawamba, Planxty, The O’Reillys and the Paddyhats, Rod Stewart, and Dr Feelgood. Not the most familiar of selections, but that didn’t stop it becoming the most ‘liked’ post of the month.

I followed that up with a second set of inebriation, in Tuesday Tunes 203: More Booze. This gave you dArtagnan with Candice Night, Oasis, UB40, Brad Paisley with Alison Krauss, and the epic from Thin Lizzy.

Having perhaps imbibed a little too much I then went for the antidote, in the shape of Tuesday Tunes: Coffee, which I somehow forgot to number in sequence. What can I say? It happens! I spotted the omission almost as soon as I had hit the ‘publish’ button but couldn’t face the thought of changing it and mucking up all of the links. The music? That came from Mike + The Mechanics, Squeeze, Frazey Ford, Trisha Yearwood, and Dire Straits. The usual mixed bag!

I restored the numbering for the final Tuesday of June, for which I returned to a theme which has served me well, in Tuesday Tunes 205: Intros – 7 Up, and played songs with great intros by The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Steely Dan, The Moody Blues, and Bruce Springsteen. I felt like giving you a set of well known names for a change!

There were five Sundays in June, and I posted for all of them – as usual – in Song Lyric Sunday. For the first of the month we were invited to play songs with the lyrics “eerie, ghost, haunting, paranormal or spooky.” My offering for this was Song Lyric Sunday: It’s Watching Me, Watching You in which I dipped into English folk music with two of my favourites: Merry Hell and Pentangle.

Next week the invitation was to play songs that have been preserved in the National Recording Registry. As this is American I began from the position of zero knowledge and learned a lot. I was very pleased to see that the guardians of the Registry recognised many contributions from outside the US as having contributed to American culture, and played three of them in Song Lyric Sunday: Let All The Children Boogie. With a title like that my lead song had to be David Bowie’s Starman, didn’t it, and I also played songs by Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, though the latter was the astounding cover version of Stairway To Heaven by Heart and an assembled multitude. The Led Zep original cropped up in the final Tuesday Tunes post of the month, for anyone who might have felt short changed.

Jim then struck a balance for us the following week, when the invitation was to play a song that was played on the UK shows Top Of The Pops (TOTP) or Ready Steady Go! I never saw the latter but watched TOTP every week from its very first show on 1.1.64 until I went to uni in 1972. I then had a three year hiatus with no access to a tv but caught up again during holidays and after uni, so I had a lot of room for choice! I gave you three in Song Lyric Sunday: You’ve Been Caught, which led with the Boomtown Rats, followed with songs by The Equals and Deep Purple.

The next week saw the beginning of a run during which we are being invited to play songs which feature a particular instrument. The first of these was the saxophone, which led me to offer Song Lyric Sunday: A Lot Of Sax – yes, I had to go there, didn’t I! For this one I led with Lulu’s remarkable cover of David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World, which was heavily influenced by the man himself, who produced it and played the sax on it. I also played a classic by Roxy Music and an almost unknown song by Audience, from an album I loved in the early Seventies – and still do.

The final SLS for the month was focused on the keyboard as its instrument. From my title you may well be able to guess the song I featured, if you know it – Song Lyric Sunday: Blue Jean Baby. That was of course the opening words to Elton John’s beautiful song Tiny Dancer: I played a video specially created for it in 2017 as part of a set of three to mark Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s use of California as an inspiration. I also included a clip from the movie Almost Famous, with a lovely scene featuring the song, and then dropped in a brief clip of the other Elton John song used in the movie, Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters.

Away from the regulars I tried something different with a music post in A Classic Album, which as its title suggests concentrated on a particular record. Having started my Listen To The Band occasional series with The Beatles it felt right to return to them for this, and from a difficult selection – so many good ones! – I finally settled on Rubber Soul. I played seven of the tracks on the UK version of the record and gave links to the other seven. It is a great record, though Revolver ran it very close! The response to this, both in terms of ‘likes’ and comments, was very positive, so I now have this in mind as another of my occasional series – it will be back!

Speaking of my occasional series, another of those got a run out last month, just five months after its previous appearance: define ‘occasional!’ No prizes for guessing who I featured in Listen To The Band: Jethro Tull. I have loved the band right since they first started and whilst I have played several of their songs over the years there are so many others to choose from. As I said in a comment, I could probably have done three posts for them! I normally reckon on a maximum of nine songs for one of these in-depth posts, but couldn’t decide between two on the final one so I played both. Ten songs made for a long post, but I think Tull deserve it, and it was well received so for me that justifies my choice!

The other music post was a special to mark a particular day, in the shape of Summer Solstice Songs. I have posted a few times before for this, but updated the selection this time around to add in some new ones. The music came from Mungo Jerry (who else?), Don Henley, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Cochran, Bruce Springsteen, and The Beatles. A fun set which I enjoyed putting together.

That just leave one post for a reminder – the non-musical one. This was another offering for John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop, and was Don’t Try This At Home. In this I reworked some of a post I originally wrote in 2012 which took a less than serious look at some of the stupid things I had tried to overcome sleep problems. It is a far from frivolous topic but we often use humour to fight back against things which trouble us, and this was my attempt. And as a bonus, I added in a song, of course – a great one by an underrated band, Semisonic.

That concludes the review, and I hope it has given you a good feel for my June, and has shown anything that you might have missed. For these reviews I have often adapted a song title to give the post a name, and have then played that at the end. I have also played repeats of some of my favourite tunes from the month, among other ways to close. but this is the first time that I have cheated so blatantly. The tune I am closing with today has absolutely no connection to the month of June, but it is sung by someone of that name:

June Tabor is a stalwart of the English folk music scene, who has been singing for more than fifty years. She has released a catalogue of solo albums, and amongst many has enjoyed a couple of special collaborations: firstly with Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span, with whom she released two albums under the name of The Silly Sisters, and as here with one of my favourite bands, Oysterband. They released two albums together, the second of which, Ragged Kingdom, came out in September 2011 and was named Record of the Year by fRoots magazine. June was named as the 2012 Folk Singer of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and the video shows her performance with the band to mark the occasion. Her celebratory fist pump at the end shows her pleasure at receiving such a well-merited award after what was at that point a 40 year career. The song they played – Fountains Flowing – is on that album, and is a variant on a traditional song known as Our Captain Cried All Hands, which has been recorded in several versions, including by Steeleye Span. You may recognise the tune – this is the traditional version, but it was adapted in 1906 by Ralph Vaughan Williams to accompany the hymn To Be A Pilgrim (aka He Who Would Valiant Be). That was a favourite of mine at school, but I had no idea that I was singing words put to a traditional folk music tune!

That explanation turned out longer than I had anticipated, but I think it was worth it! See you again on Sunday 😊