David Harley Words & Music & Pictures &…

This is a song I haven’t really thought about since the 70s, but it turned up when I started to (try to) rationalize my boxes and folders of lyrics, verse and prose, so I put it straight down as-is.

Between the bar and the dance floor / Thinking that maybe
I might just catch up / To my accelerated lady

Why don’t you keep on dancing? / Dance on by

Watching you at a party / Too drunk to see
What it might take / To make you come and talk to me

But you’d better keep on dancing / Dance on by

What makes you think / I should apologise
For once drowning / In those bedroom eyes

Why don’t you keep on dancing? / Dance on by

Lights run hot / But the bottle’s not yet dry

With a little luck and whisky I’ll forget / even your name by midnight

Better keep on dancing / Dance on By

David Harley

I previously recorded a fairly polished version of this, complete with double-tracked vocals and bouzoukis. This is a quicker-and-dirtier version that has, however, the words as I sing them now…

Two isn’t company, three is a crowd
Two is a silence, three is too loud
Two is a silence gets harder to break
But three always leaves one left over

Three into two isn’t good for the head
It’s no problem in math, but it’s bad news in bed
And it’s one for an ace and two for a pair
But three always leaves one left over

When we’re alone somehow he’s always there
You say it’s the same when you two are the pair
So it’s one for sorrow and two for joy
But three always leaves one left over

All the shouting is over and dead
Somehow there’s nothing much else to be said
And it’s one for the money and two for the show
But three always leaves one left over

Two isn’t company, three is a crowd
Two is a silence, three is too loud
Two is a silence gets harder to break
But three always leaves one left over

David Harley

The Bonny Boy

Castles and Kings with rough gtr part

Better take of ‘The Bonny Boy’

Trying out two slightly different arrangements for The Pilgrim (setting of a Yeats poem)

Different mix:

3rd mix:

And another pass at ‘The Wild Swans At Coole’:

Revisiting ‘When I was’ (part 1) – a cappella harmonies

Something a little off-piste for me: a song collected by Cecil Sharp in the Appalachians. Sarah McQuaid does a version of this, I think from Peggy Seeger. This version comes from Guy Carawan – oddly enough, from an LP he recorded with Peggy Seeger. However, he sang it unaccompanied (though he did interpose some passages on recorder).

In making-the-tune-up-as-I-go-along mode. The lyric isn’t quite finished either. But going in the right direction.

We never will have Paris (Harley: ©2019)

 I know that this is going nowhere
But a honeymoon in Heartbreak Hotel
Yet it seems that all I’ve done is think about you
For longer years than I have words to tell

Sometimes I catch myself hoping
Just once more to see you smile
In spite of all the harsh words passed between us
And all these long and weary miles

Perhaps you’re on your own tonight
Somewhere out there in the rain
Caught between the raindrops, still hoping
You’ll never be this sad again

Again and again along the highway
We kissed at the turning of the road
Till somewhere I forgot to say goodbye
Walking down some sleepy highway on my own

I know we never will have Paris
Or even one more foggy day in London Town
I wonder if you ever wonder
If the going up was worth the coming down

David Harley

The Weekends [are the worst] (Harley)

The world has changed since I was born in 1902.
Two World Wars have swept away the world that we once knew:
Two brothers and three sisters , long dead and gone to earth
Our lives were often hard, but now the weekends are the worst.

My old man died just 20 years past.
His health was never good since the Kaiser had him gassed,
But in the end it was cancer that carried him off so fast
I miss him all the time, and the weekends are the worst.

You might say I was lucky, though we never had much cash,
But we had 50-odd good years, more than I’d dare to ask.
I brought up three lovely kids, though another died at birth:
I miss them all a lot, and the weekends are the worst.

I’ve a son in Melbourne, he’s been there since ’62:
I’ve never seen his wife or kids, just a snapshot or two.
My eldest died in the last lot, on a convoy to Murmansk:
It still brings tears to my eyes, and the weekends are the worst.

I’ve a daughter in Glasgow: she writes when she has time,
But that’s a long way off, and I’ve not seen her for a while.
She’s got a son in the army, just been posted to Belfast:
We worry all the time, and the weekends are the worst.

My friends are mostly dead, or else they’ve moved like me
When the street I was brought up in was pulled down in ’63.
Sixty years I’d lived there, child, girl and wife:
Sheltered housing’s not so bad but it can be a lonely life.
Especially since Jim died: we weren’t too bad at first
But now I’m on my own the weekends are the worst.

There’s the club once a week, though it’s just from seven till nine,
And since my fall they only fetch me down from time to time.
There’s my knitting and the TV, for what that might be worth,
But I miss the company, and the weekends are the worst.

David Harley