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“There’s an altar on my street / I lay my wages at its feet / Gold and diamonds neighbours bring / It is the bird that winds the spring …” Whether it be that, or a temple, a church or somewhere else, here are your songs about places of worship. If you have an Earworm you’d like to share, please send it to [email protected], together with a few words about why you’ve chosen it. Next week’s theme will be footwear. Thanks very much to all contributors.
Boone Creek – Little Community Church – tincanman: This is gospel bluegrass so a few y’all may want to skip this one. It’s a lovely little song and the harmonies and the instrumentation – by a 23-yr-old Ricky Skaggs and bluegrass vets Terry Baucom and Jerry Douglas – are stunning.
Kevin Hewick (with The Sound) – Scapegoat in a Country Churchyard – severin: I know very little about Kevin Hewick except that he was born in Leicester in 1957 (thanks Wiki), that in the eighties he was signed to Cherry Red Records and that he was a friend of Adrian Borland. The latter two facts led him to record an EP with The Sound in 1983. It was called “This Cover Keeps Reality Unreal”. The four tracks were included in a box set of Sound recordings which is why I have it now. This is not a song I play very often but I probably should. He has an intense and compelling style and voice and is well worth a listen if you don’t know his work.
Chuck Prophet – Temple Beautiful – tincanman: What better place to start a tour of San Francisco than the former site of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple, and who better to narrate than Chuck? Walk around with him HERE: http://bit.ly/2uMdFQT
Trichy Loganathan – Velli Panimalayin – Ravi Raman: A poet’s dream for India. “We’ll conquer the peaks and roam the seas/ Make all the schools into shrines”… Apologies for the slightly scratchy sound.
Lau – The Bird That Winds The Spring – AliM: From their totally brilliant album “Race the Loser”(2012).
Kadri Gopalnath- Kaadu Malai Kadanthu – Ravi Raman: My favourite sax player on the Sabari Temple deep down south nestled in a forest reserve. The title means Crossing Jungles and Mountains which is literally the case. It was also in the news last week as the Supreme Court struck down a restriction on women pilgrims and opened it up for all. The percussion is from molas, handheld drums, and a distinctive feature of music there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabarimala
David Holmes & Jon Hopkins ft Stephen Rea – Elsewhere Anchises – DsD: from David Holmes’ Late Night Tales album. I had Jon Hopkins’ Singularity album streaming on YouTube in the background whilst I was working at my PC late one evening. This song came in unnoticed via the autoplay function. Stopped me dead in my tracks to such an extent that cramp kicked in to the fingers I was holding above the keyboard mid-typing! (Technically off-topic but very spiritual: from The Aeneid Book VI, about Aeneas’s journey to meet the shade of his father Anchises in the land of the dead).
Crosby Stills & Nash – Cathedral – AliM: From their fifth album, CSN, released in 1977, written by Graham Nash, apparently about an LSD experience in Winchester Cathedral. The thinking behind the lyrics seems pretty clear to me.
Hope of the States – The Church Choir – vanwolf: From the album Left (2006). Sadness is never far away with these guys and this is true to form though in a fairly sweet way.
Darkside – The Only Shrine I’ve Seen – vanwolf: From the 2013 album Psychic, which could be described as down tempo electronica, though this has an almost dancy element to it in the middle part at least.
Little Community Church
Scapegoat In A Country Churchyard [Kevin Hewick]
Temple Beautiful [Temple]
Velli Panimalaiyin
The Bird That Winds The Spring
Kaadu Malai Kadanthu
Elsewhere Anchises
18 Cathedral
The Church Choir
The Only Shrine I’ve Seen
Image Copyright: samot / 123RF Stock Photo
