Lemon

This song came to me a week ago via a compilation cd a friend's husband made for me. He's a native of Sheffield and opened with a local act and their song Lemons And Limes. Not only is the song ace but is perfectly timed for my Friday series, a round up of songs named after foodstuffs that I have on my hard drive, which started with honey, then sugar and then wine. Today we do lemons (and limes).



Hiem are/were a duo made up of Nick Eastwood and David Boswell, both former members of Sheffield groups from the late 90s- The All Seeing I (who had 2 hits in the late 90s with The Beat Goes On and Walk Like A Panther) and Venini (a group containing a post-Pulp Russell Senior). Hiem recorded tracks with Phil Oakey and Roots Manuva and put out an album in 2014 called Escape To Division Street (a local reference). The album included Lemons And Limes, a spoken word plus synths track about wanting to open a nightclub that played 'half dance music and half indie' which would have lemons and limes dangling from the ceiling dripping juice on the dancers below. The version above is a remix by Fitzroy North.

Also sucking lemons were Birmingham duo Free School who really hit the spot with this 2011 12" single, a cosmic dive into the warmth, ten minutes well spent in very calming company. I'd forgotten how good this is.

Lemon (Original)

A few decades earlier Syd Barrett left Pink Floyd and famously recorded a couple of solo albums before retiring form the music industry and retreating to Cambridge. Baby Lemonade was the opener to his second solo album released in 1970. Baby Lemonade is whimsical and nursery rhyme-like, with loud acoustic guitars and wandering vocals and, like  most of Syd's solo songs, it doesn't really sound like anybody else at all except Syd.

Baby Lemonade 

That's it for lemons (I know there's that Led Zep song, but I'm not feeling Led Zep today).  Beyonce's global smash, husband trashing album Lemonade unfortunately doesn't have a song called Lemonade on it. The album was named after her mother's advice to make lemonade when handed lemons. John Squire decorated The Stone Roses' debut album with slices of citrus, a reference to the fruit's ability to counteract the effects of tear gas and they wrote a song about it (Bye Bye Badman) but again, no lemons in the title. And it appears I own no songs about limes. Apples on the other hand...