Sunday, January 22

Come all you ramblin' boys of pleasure... and ladies of easy leisure/(lesure)!

 We must say "adios" until we see Almeria once again!

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* Here's one of my favorite, joyous secular songs, perfect to sing to ring in a new year.  (Joy is where you find it... ;-)

I am Francisco Vasquez GarciaI am welcome to AlmeriaWe have sin gas and con lecheWe have fiesta and feriaWe have the song of the cochonaWe have brandy and half coronaAnd Leonardo and his accordioneAnd Kalamari and macaroni...

Come all you rambling boys of pleasureAnd ladies of easy leisureWe must say Adios! until we seeAlmeria once again...

~Pogues, Fiesta

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* but don't be fooled and think this one just a nonsense song... 

There's a history behind the phrasing too, based on an old song that supposedly inspired Yeats:

An Old Song Resung
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

DOWN by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
 
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,        5
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
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Added:  And come full circle then we do:
An Old Song Re-Sung, or Down by the Salley Gardens, is a poem by William Butler Yeats. It was published in 1889 in his book The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. Yeats indicated in a note that it was “an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Ballisodare, Sligo, who often sings them to herself”. This “old song” is very probably You Rambling Boys of Pleasure.

"Gonna be a beautiful..
Gonna be a beautiful year..."
Apologies, again, to Prince:
It's gonna be a beautifulIt's gonna be a beautiful nightYou got your world togetherEverything's looking alright… 

*Click these Prince links for his live performances, and tell me in his prime he wasn't only a better musician, but a better dancer and LOVER too than Mr. Michael Jackson, the poor boy from Gary, Indiana... robbed of his childhood by the musical industry. (Oh-we-oh-oh...)