David Harley Words & Music & Pictures &...

Posted by: David Harley | July 21, 2012

Index to Words & Music Pages

Verse and music on this page are slowly being transferred to different blogs, imaginatively entitled David Harley’s Songs (which opens to an index of the songs) and David Harley’s Verse, and in fact there’s already a whole more information there. However, it might start to find its way back as I try to rationalize my output. :) If you’re only interested in the security-related stuff, you might want to shoot over to my Small Blue-Green World page.

Contact email: info[at]dharley.com

Here’s a close-to-full list of the other Small Blue-Green blogs:

Anti-Malware Testing (AMTSO, anti-virus product testing, the universe and everything…)
Check Chain Mail and Hoaxes (Information and commentary on hoaxes, spam and scams.)
Dataholics: the IT addiction (Ravings of a security-obsessed internaut, with the occasional cartoon…)
David Harley Photos
David Harley on Wikipedia! (Surprisingly accurate. But I have corrected a few things since I realized it was there. I suppose I ought to check it again at some point…)
David Harley’s Songs (Song lyrics, recordings and demo recordings, related info.)
David Harley’s Verse (This site is going from bad to verse.)
Earth laughs in flowers Flower photos from Heyjude
ESET blog (This is my primary outlet for security blogging.)
Geek Peninsula Primary resource for papers and articles: also some old PR stuff.
Mac Virus (Focused on Apple – Mac and iOS – malware and security, and by extension other mobile platforms.)
Old Timey-Wimey (a musical project that should kick off shortly)
Parodies Regained (Parody and pastiche.)
Postcards From (travel stuff from Heyjude)
Sabrinaflu (a (mostly) music-related resource publicizing folkie venues and events in the area around the Severn (and beyond). Maintained as a cooperative venture with Felicity Burke.
Shropshire Blues (miscellaneous Shropshire-related stuff, some of it musical)
Small Blue-Green Photos (Small Blue-Green Photos mostly from Heyjude)
Small Blue-Green World (A business-oriented view into the Small Blue-Green empire…)
Urbanicity (Architectural photos, mostly from Heyjude.)

I suppose you could call this my vanity site. It’s maintained as a resource for my music and for writing that isn’t (usually) directly connected to my ‘real’ job as an IT security author/consultant. (If you’re actually interested in the security stuff, see the links at the end of this post.) Just to be clear, none of this material is in the public domain, and all rights are reserved. I hope you enjoy listening to/reading it but if you actually want to use it in any commercial context, unlikely as that may sound, you are honour-bound and legally required to ask me first: you can email me at info[at]dharley.com. Or via Small Blue-Green World, which is me wearing my business head.

Recording Sessions:

Diverse Brew Sessions:

Scriptwrecked Sessions

Sheer Bravado Cassette:

More recent recordings (not commercial quality): as of 12th May 2014, the listings for this are somewhat out of date.

Songs Without Music:

Over The Hill
Thomas Anderson (now includes MP3: not commercial quality though)
Let Me Lie Easy (now includes MP3: not commercial quality either)
Snowbird
Odd Job Man

Demo Recordings

Quick and dirty recordings of songs I hope to revisit and spend more time on a better version. Home-recorded on BOSS digital gear which I hope to have time to learn to use properly Real Soon Now. Just one song – Bootup Blues – there at the moment, though two of the recordings added to the Songs Without Music page also qualify and will probably get moved shortly:

Settings of poems (unaccompanied demo versions)

Bredon Hill (Housman-Harley)
The Carpenter’s Son (Housman-Harley)
When I was in love (Housman-Harley)
Farewell to Severn Shore (Housman-Harley)
The Pilgrim (Yeats-Harley)
A Ballad for Katherine of Aragon (Causley-Harley)
The Seasons in North Cornwall (Causley-Harley)

Other Writing

Miscellaneous Prose

A Fairy Tale (and not, therefore, anything to do with AV testing)
Vanity Press (or The Glass Bead Game Revisited) (the joys and sorrows of working with major publishers)
A Front Row Seat in the Security Theatre
24/7 Ranting

Verse or Worse

Folk Resources

At the moment, this page consists of a floor-singer’s tipsheet a number of us compiled in the late 1990s, and a reference to a later version – not sure where that comes from, but it wasn’t me. As I seem to spending a lot of time with old folkies these days, it may be that other things might find their way onto this page in due course.

Parodies Regained

…could have been a separate page here, I suppose, but it isn’t, for historical reasons. Anyway, here’s a list of what’s there at present:

A Torrent of Abuse (Thoughts on passwording that Paul Simon may never have had)
Convoy II (60s hit re-imagined in a slightly different social context)
Make Mine A Snowball (what would Xmas be without The Snowman?)

Security-related publications

Security-related publications aren’t kept on this site now. Most of my recent papers are available or linked from the ESET resources pages including white papers, conference papers, and articles for external publications and sites. Mac and other Apple-related resources are mostly kept at the Mac Virus site. Some other papers and information on some of my security books can be found on the Small Blue-Green World blog page.

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Posted in David Harley, prose, security, Songs, verse

Posted by: David Harley | October 8, 2018

Wrekin [demo]

Neither the words nor the tune are quite set in stone yet, but this is nearer than the intended version.

Wrekin (words and music by David Harley)

The Abbey watches my train crawling southward
Thoughts of Cadfael kneeling in his cell
All along the Marches line, myth and history, prose and rhyme
But those are tales I won’t be here to tell

The hill is crouching like a cat at play
Its beacon flashing red across the plain
Once we were all friends around the Wrekin
But some will never pass this way again

Lawley and Caradoc fill my windows
Facing down the Longmynd, lost in rain
But I’m weighed down with the creaks and groans of all the years I’ve known
And I don’t think I’ll walk these hills again

The hill is crouching like a cat at play
Its beacon flashing red across the plain
Once we were all friends around the Wrekin
But some will never pass this way again

The castle dreams its humble glories
Glories that will never come again
Across the Shropshire hills, the rain is blowing still
But the Marcher Lords won’t ride this way gain

The hill is crouching like a cat at play
Its beacon flashing red across the plain
Once we were all friends around the Wrekin
But some will never pass this way again

The royal ghosts of Catherine and Arthur
May walk the paths of Whitcliffe now and then
Housman’s ashes in the Cathedral of the Marches
And he will not walk Ludlow’s streets again

The hill is crouching like a cat at play
Its beacon flashing red across the plain
Once we were all friends around the Wrekin
But some will never pass this way again

And I may never pass this way again

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Posted in David Harley, Songs

Posted by: David Harley | October 7, 2018

My Boy Jack [demo]

My setting of the poem by Rudyard Kipling. It’s often assumed that it refers to the loss of his son John, presumed killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915. The confusion was probably increased by the TV adaptation of David Craig’s play, which missed out the 3rd Act and finished with Kipling reciting the poem. However, while Kipling’s own grief did, no doubt, contribute to the overall tone of the poem, it was first published at the top of a series of articles on the Battle of Jutland, in which the British fleet sustained heavy losses, and it seems to me (and others) that, given the importance of ‘the tide’ in the poem, that the name Jack probably reflects the more generic ‘Jack Tar’. (While the earlier ‘Tommy; has a very different tone, it does use the generic name ‘Tommy Atkins’ in a somewhat similar way.)

‘My Boy Jack’
1914-18

“HAVE you news of my boy Jack? ”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

David Harley

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Posted in Songs | Tags: Kipling, settings

Posted by: David Harley | September 30, 2018

Song of Chivalry (live version)

Recorded during my recent ‘Live Lounge’ session with Ian Semple at CoastFM.

Originally published as a poem in Vertical Images 2, 1987. I waited 30+ years for the melody to turn up, and finally did a make-it-up-as-you-go-along job earlier this year.

And yes, I know that it’s unlikely that M’Lord fought both at Crécy (1346) and Agincourt (1415). While the Black Death subsided in England from about 1350, outbreaks continued beyond the first half of the 15^thcentury. I’m not sure how likely it was that M’Lord slept on silk sheets, but it’s a metaphor, not a history lesson…

When M’Lord returned
To his sheets of silk
And his gentle lady
Of musk and milk

The minstrels sang
In the gallery
Their songs of slaughter
And chivalry

The rafters roared
With laughter and boasting
Goblets were raised and drained
In toasting

The heroes of Crécy
And Agincourt
Or the madness
Of some holy war

The hawk is at rest
On the gauntlet once more
Savage of eye
And bloody of claw

Famine and fever
Are all the yield
Of the burnt-out barns
And wasted fields

The sun grins coldly
Through the trees
The children shiver
The widows grieve
And beg their bread
At the monastery door
Tell me then
Who won the war?

David Harley

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Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by: David Harley | December 28, 2017