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... and this is the second one. Even more joyous than the first (see previous post).

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First of a couple of reheated Christmas offerings. Enjoy you ungrateful fuckers.

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So, and as promised, our regular output resumes. A little ahead of schedule with this one, for reasons I’ll explain in a minute.

This is not the sort of song I would usually write, let alone release but I did write it, was pleased with the results and thought with the looming coincidence of dates and all, well why not.

How it came about went something like this: I visited London – from whence I derive – for the first time in many years during the summer. I met up with the few folks who still actually live there, hadn’t become social hermits or were no longer of this global parish and on the last night went out for a curry and some beers with the two remaining closest.

Post-pub two became one and I ended up back at my friend’s gaff with the promise of the spare bed and a nightcap. Resources were stretched and this manifested as a large G&T – when did I last have a gin and tonic? Decades possibly.

We nattered awhile with friend mostly itemising his unceasing social and cultural activities. I wasn’t entirely envious to not still be living the manic whirl of my younger years but it did make me realise that my equivalent activities were basically zero. I live in Skibbereen, what am I going to do? Sit down the pub by myself? My nearest equivalent was the week’s solo camping I’d endured enjoyed in Snowdonia prior to my London sojourn. And I’ve yet to meet anyone who has the slightest interest in that (well apart from my kids).

Anyway, in the standout in friend’s itinerary was attending the Nick Drake prom the previous month. Which he thought wonderful. Now friend has always been a bigtime music fan but Nick Drake is about as far as I could conceive from his core tastes. But... his girlfriend had got him a ticket and he had loved it.

He then goes directly from that to telling me the story which I describe almost exactly in my song. Yes I’ve added some environmental adornments and a little motivation but that apart every crucial aspect is as he told me.

This being one of the most extraordinary tales I’d heard in a good while, and being a songwriter who likes writing songs, I immediately asked him if I could write it up. As a song. ‘Yeah’, he said.

And the next night, stuck in a Travelodge on the outskirts of Telford before the next day’s ferry back to Ireland, and having nothing better to do, I wrote said song. I’d already figured it on the drive up. KEEP IT SIMPLE; it’s rich in complication as it is.

I sent a rough version to my friend asking what he thought. As I’d figured he had no recollection of having told me but seemed amused and was at least not discouraging.

It was around about this time that I realised that my friend’s fiftieth anniversary must nearly coincide with Nick Drake’s death and lo and behold on Wiki-ing his bio twas indeed true. And here we are, on 24/11. See what you make of it.

Christmas offering up next...

I forgot to mention the always splendid artwork contributed by Charli Daddorter - aka Urban V. I have now.

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OK I’m going back to posting songs regularly on here from now on whether anyone actually turns up listen to them or not. That’ll be once a month minimum but two or three before the end of the year.

This first one is a reheated oldie which I wrote in July 2014 as a supposedly wry response to the Israel assault on Gaza of that summer. Maybe less wry now than it was then. I adjusted the music a little but the lyrics are unaltered. You wouldn’t say the song has dated unduly. Why would it? Humanity has a ceaseless and storied history of organising itself thus. Whereby the winner gets to make the movie.

Don’t fret, the next songs on here won’t be political. At least not in the same way.

A historic week no? Or another marker in our inexorable decline. As if we didn’t know it already, liberalism is most grievously fucked. And it looks very much like the fully legitimised onset of Everypersonforthemselvesville.

A central hurt – apart from all the others – is that truly the emperor did have no clothes, but it didn’t matter a damn in any case. We rationalise it away as the future slips through our fingers.

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Overdue by three months or so we present a brand new Dadf@her offering. Though I accepted a little prompting with the chorus lyric. In fact the whole damn song is deeply indebted. But straight ahead and familiar seemed to be the way for what I had in mind.

Which was a) to provide something vaguely anthemic that people could belt out as appropriate, and b) hopefully raise a little cash for the cause along the way (see below).

That was the theory. The reality was that most people in the various Palestinian campaigns were deeply suspicious - or yeah, flat indifferent - and just wondered who the fuck we were and what were we about. (And hey, how the hell did you get this number?) So that was kind of dispiriting.

Then our other great mistake was in thinking that we could get it on Spotify from where it would obviously become an underground sensation. And eventually an overground sensation.

But the way that Spotify works is that if you're not on a label - which; as if! - you have to sign up to an intermediate agency who then place it on the site for you.

Urban spent two months with two separate companies who fucked around and prevaricated and asked for more information before finally giving the verdict we figured was coming all along: It was too political. And there's me thinking it wasn't political enough. Like have people just completely forgotten what protest songs were like?

To compound this we decided to delay 'releasing' the song until it was on Spotify so that we could give it a full global premiere. It's true I don't get out much and the world is a bemusing place (though I've been enjoying the Olympics well enough, our Skibb lads with their double gold and all).

Meanwhile Ol' Sleepy finally accepted that his wife and son might not be the most objective arbiters of his ability to vanquish the boy Trump in the least eagerly awaited sequel of all time. Or even in his ability to make it to the kitchen and back ('Hey hon, what's with these arrows we got in the hallway now?').

This unforeseen occurrence wreaked havoc with my first stanza and consigned significant elements to .... be continued (in the morning, I'm completely knackered)

So, to update, I went off camping in Wales while Urban wrestled with yet another company who said they'd happily put the song on Spotify cos a) yeah they dug it, and b) they had no problems with political songs. Of course after a while they just stopped responding to her posts asking what exactly was happening.

And by this time our hoped for popular anthem and fundraiser was essentially stillborn. Sure, the thirty or so people who heard it really liked it but they/you are a very select grouping indeed.

Oh well, we tried.

Meanwhile the atrocities, and western connivance, continue unabated.

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Before they bring in that anti-reverie technology.

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dadf@her hq header. Also b@g-zus hq. Why waste a great header?

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True tale. Written Two ten.

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Graphics from the original B@g-zus HQ blog. Back when Tumblr was bigtime.

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Lyric art for song provoked by 2014 Gaza invasion. I've reworked this musically. Probably put it out next.

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Still like this one. Daddorter does it proud.

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Havewehadthisonealready? Nope.

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Yet more artwork for absent songs showcasing the Urban (aka Popewoman) skillbox.

BTW it wasn't. Different that is. But that was the point of the song. Get back in the museum now.

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Written 2009. Woke up with it on another French home exchange. Got it written before the kids got up. Finally got it recorded.

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Green belt '12.

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Toxic giraffe.

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Yeah, always liked this one.