Last week I played a set of tunes to mark Halloween, even though I don’t really celebrate the event and its rampant commercialism, and this week I’m returning to another event for which I have often played tunes. Tomorrow is November 5th, which is marked in the UK as Guy Fawkes Night, or more colloquially Bonfire Night. For those outside these shores who might not know of this, we are celebrating the failure of a plot in 1605 to blow up the Houses of Parliament, which we do with bonfires on which we place an effigy of Guy Fawkes, the fall guy for the plot, accompanied by fireworks. A ‘penny for the guy’ was a part of the tradition when I was growing up, when we took our effort out in Dad’s wheelbarrow in an attempt at demanding money with menaces from the local  population. We never made much, though.

If you want to know the full story Wikipedia has a very detailed page about the Gunpowder Plot, which you can find here. And I do mean very detailed! It might help explain the cartoon above, too. I’ve used it before, but I like it, so you’re getting it again – at least the substitutions I get from my grocery delivery orders aren’t that far wide of the mark!

As before, I am sharing a clip from the excellent Horrible Histories tv show to give you some more background, but I’m not counting it as one of my quota of tunes for the day:

I never tire of watching that!

Having done a number of these posts down the years I have accumulated a selection of songs which have fire in their title but have absolutely nothing to do with Bonfire Night. But I enjoy playing them! I’m trying to avoid a simple repeat of what I played last year, as I don’t want you to feel short-changed – not that you’d remember them, anyway! This first one is a perennial favourite of mine, which I do seem to play often:

This is a typical 60s English pop song, from a band which eventually morphed into two parts – Jeff Lynne (who joined after this song) turned his bit into the ELO, and Roy Wood turned his into Wizzard. This is nutty but I love it still – I bought the single when it was released, in January 1968, and am still word-perfect on it now, even to my timing for Carl Wayne’s ‘oohs!’ Like I said, this has absolutely no influence from Guy Fawkes, but it’s still a great song. It was one of a string of hits The Move had here in the UK, reaching #3, but it didn’t chart in the US. In fact, they only ever had one US ‘hit’ – with their final single before the band broke up in 1972: that was California Man, which got to the dizzy heights of #93!

I thought I’d play the other one of last year’s repeats next, as it is another that I have loved for many years:

Rock music fans will probably tell you that I should have gone with Eric Burdon’s excellent version of the song, but I still love this one! Johnny Cash, of course, with Ring Of Fire. I first heard it some sixty or so years ago – I was nearly 10 when it came out. Nothing says ‘fire’ quite like a quasi-mariachi band, does it? And the song is nothing to do with curry either, in case you were wondering. Though that video is from 1968 the track was released in April 1963, and made #1 in the US Country chart and #17 on the main Billboard listing. It wasn’t a hit here, though – he hasn’t had much chart success with UK singles, though his albums have fared better. I am still a fan of much of his music, particularly the six American albums he recorded near the end of his life.

Considering how big a fan I am of this next guy, it surprises me that I have only ever played this next tune once before, and that was five years ago. Time for a replay, I think:

John Mellencamp, with Paper In Fire. If you don’t know his music, you really are missing out. He began as Johnny Cougar, then John Cougar, via John Cougar Mellencamp into just using his real name. This was the opening track of his 1987 album The Lonesome Jubilee, which reached #6 in the US and #31 here. It was released as a single, peaking at #9 in the US but only staggering to #86 here. We can, as a nation, sometimes be remiss with our musical taste!

How about another that I haven’t played very often for this theme:

The events we are remembering tomorrow night took place 420 years ago but there are, sadly, echoes in modern day life: religion as the basis for differences and even violence; a threat to democracy from those who want another form of government and are prepared to go to illegal and destructive ends to attain it. Sound familiar? We don’t learn as much from history as we would like to think, do we? For a potted history lesson, we could all do a lot worse than listen to this song and take note. But even as I say that, the US has chosen to re-elect a president who is incapable of learning anything from history, and has probably never read a book without pictures anyway. We Didn’t Start the Fire was released as a single in September 1989, and reached #1 in the US and New Zealand, #2 in Canada and Australia, and #7 in the UK. It sold 6m copies in the US, going 6x Platinum, and went 2x Platinum in the UK for sales of more than 1.2m. It was then included on his eleventh album, Storm Front, which came out that October, also making #1 in the US, as well as in Australia, and peaking at #4 in Canada and #5 in the UK. Like the single it went Platinum – 4x in the US for sales of 4m, 2x in Canada for 200,000, and single Platinum here in the UK for 300,000 copies.

I’m going back into classic rock mode for this one:

Fire and Water was the title track of Free’s third album, released in June 1970 and peaking at #2 in the UK and #17 in the US. The success was down to two main factors: firstly, the single All Right Now spending six weeks at #2 in the UK, and on the strength of that the band’s appearance at that summer’s Isle of Wight Festival, which turned them into megastars. It is a superb album, one of my all time favourites: just the seven tracks but they are all brilliant. If you like blues-based rock then this is the album for you!

I’m playing six tunes today, as there is another that I haven’t played for a few years, another bit of classic rock that I didn’t want to leave out:

Light My Fire was first released as a seven minute track on The Doors’ eponymous debut album in January 1967, which reached #2 in the US and went 4x Platinum. Despite only making #43 in the UK it has gone on to sell more than 600,000 here, for which it has gone 2x Platinum. It was also a big success in Canada, where it has achieved 4x Platinum for 400,000 sales even though its initial chart placing wasn’t all that high. The shortened version I am playing here was the trimmed cut that came out as a single in April 1967, which got to #1 in the US, #2 in Canada  and #7 in the UK.

That’s my lot for today, with a bonus video and an extra tune. But Bonfire Night deserves to be celebrated – and I’m hoping to see plenty of images on tomorrow’s tv news of Nigel Farage’s face on burning effigies 🤣

However you are spending your week I hope you enjoy it. Our ‘celebrations’ got underway at the weekend when someone in a nearby flat launched what sounded like demolition charges rather than fireworks! Fingers crossed they aren’t saving any more for tomorrow. Have a good week, and I’ll see you again in a couple of days 👍