TOM PAINE'S BONES

3 CHRISTMAS SONGS

8 January 2025

1. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (traditional) 0:00

2. Bells Over Belfast (The Irish Rovers) 2:59

3. It's a Terrifier Christmas (Dave Eggar, Jon and Al Kaplan) 6:50

Many people have played "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", which is an English traditional Christmas carol, listed as n°394 in the Roud Folk Song Index (thanks Wikipedia for the info), but here are my main personal references as far as this song is concerned: Nat King Cole's version (1960); The Chieftains' version (1991); The Irish Rovers' version (1999); and the version by Dave Eggar, Quilted Lunchbox and Teni Rane from the EP Blood Before Pride Presents: Tidings of Macabre Joy (2024), which is also featured in Damien Leone's movie Terrifier 3 (2024).

"Bells Over Belfast" comes from the album Songs of Christmas (1999) by the Irish Celtic folk band The Irish Rovers.

"It's a Terrifier Christmas" is a funny, Art the Clown-themed fake Christmas carol, by Dave Eggar, Jon and Al Kaplan, which is part of the soundtrack of Damien Leone's movie Terrifier 3 (2024).

The font for the titles is Lucida Handwriting (© 1991 Bigelow & Holmes Inc.).

TWIN PEAKS THEME

27 March 2025

Obviously, lyrics byPaul Simon, music by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (1964). The cover is dedicated to Maëlle Tessier, who "commissioned" the video.

31 March 2025 

The actual original version (or the "original original") of this song was created by Tears for Fears (1982), with words and music by the lead singer and lead guitar player Roland Orzabal, but sung by bassist Curt Smith.

However, I really don't like this version at all.

The song was covered in 2001, as part of the brilliant, eerie original soundtrack for the brilliant, eerie movie "Donnie Darko", with vocals by Gary Jules, while the music was arranged and is performed by Michael Andrews (who also created the rest of the movie's score). I feel like these two guys took a lackluster song by a band I admittedly don't care much for, and changed it into a magnificent piece of heartbreaking perfection.

Obviously, it's the Jules/Andrews cover, rather than the Tears for Fears original, that inspired me to learn this song.

4 April 2025

My favourite song by Bob Dylan (1964) (with a bit of a borrowing from the traditional Scottish ballad "Mary Hamilton" (Roud Folk Song Index 79) for the melody of the chorus).

A beautiful, tragic indictment of the horrors of segregation as well as the privileges of rich, connected criminals (and not much has changed in that regard, don't you think, Donald? Elon?).

The Dylan portrait in the background is a replica, by my good friend Maryse Bellenger, of Malika Favre's New Yorker cover for 13 October, 2016 (the day when Dylan got the Nobel Prize for Literature).

And my Dylan Dog T-shirt is no more than a fortunate coincidence.

Here's a little tune specially for you on your special day! 😉



Also, it's supposed to be a mixture of a melody for a song called "Good Morning to All" (1893) by Patty and Mildred Hill, and lyrics that were then put to it at an indeterminate time, but the first actual copyright registration was made in 1935 and credited Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R. R. Forman for the lyrics.

20 April 2025

It's not St Patrick's Day, but it's Easter, and for those who are interested in Irish culture, Easter means Easter Rising (the 1916 insurrection that was among the first events in the revolutionary shift leading to the Irish War of Independence), and Easter Rising means "The Foggy Dew", the famous song that recounts the insurrection.

The song was written in 1919 by an Irish priest named Charles O'Neill, in a part of the country that was later to become Northern Ireland. The melody is borrowed from another, older Irish traditional song entitled "The Moorlough Shore" (Roud Folk Song Index 2742). One of the most famous late 20th century performances of "The Foggy Dew" is probably the 1995 Chieftains/Sinéad O'Connor collaboration (on the Chieftains album The Long Black Veil), and the good ol' Dubliners obviously killed it, when they did that song, but I'm particularly fond of two French versions, Gilles Servat's collaboration with The Dubliners'  Ronnie Drew Servat's 1996 album Sur les quais de Dublin, and the version by Tonynara, from their 1992 album Vagabondages.

24 April 2025

I have happily received in the mail my DVD of Takashi Yamazaki's excellent movie Godzilla Minus One (2023), and so, as a tribute to the King of Monsters, to the fountain of joy first unleashed in 1954 by Ishirō Honda and Shigeru Kayama, I give you my "unplugged" version of the Godzilla-themed song "Trampling Tokyo" (1994), written by Alan Moore (the comics writer and novelist who wrote Swamp Thing, Watchmen, the 1980s reboot of Marvelman, From Hell, Halo Jones, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Lost Girls, Voice of the Fire, Neonomicon, Jerusalem, The Great When and countless other formidable works), with music by Patrick Huntrods, aka Pat Fish (aka the Jazz Butcher).

The lyrics were initially published (with illustrations by Arthur Adams) in the anthology comic book series issue Negative Burn #18 (1994) and the song was recorded in 1993 with Alan Moore singing, Pat Fish singing along and playing the guitar and the organ — but it was only released in 2011, as part of a CD compilation of Alan Moore's songs, sold along with Gary Spencer Millidge's biographical book Alan Moore: Storyteller.

I don't know if the guitar chords I'm using are the right ones. I deduced them from the melody. Likewise, my harmonica ramblings are a very approximate approximation to what Pat Fish does with the organ in the original recording. Hope this is all enjoyable enough.

The background to the video is beautiful fan art by Noger Chen, inspired by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi's magnificent movie Shin Godzilla (2016).