Two weeks ago reader and internet friend Spencer sent me a message abut a track with some enthusiastic words. In the past Spencer has been the starting point of several posts and for a while as eries of songs/ tracks he sent me became a series. The one he sent two weeks ago was more than enough to prompt a guest post. Here it is...
One of the 'Old School Balearic Classics': Originally released in 1986, it became a regular final tune of the night on the White Isle...
In 1990, the piano instrumental part of the song used to run on a loop while Bob Wilson reflected on how the scores of the day had impacted the League Tables towards the end of the Grandstand Saturday afternoon programme. Men and boys hung around electrical shop windows while their wives/mothers wondered where they'd got to...
More recently - in July 2024, in fact - it got a Balearic update courtesy of those cheeky Psychemagik chaps, who produced a dubbed out calypso instrumental version... https://psychemagik.bandcamp.com/track/the-way-it-is For me, there's no topping the original extended mix. The tune itself manages to combine melancholy, joy and nostalgia in a gloriously simple roller of a tune that just keeps going and you never want to end!
Psychemagik's edit was new to me and I love it too- a gloriously chilled end of night version with steel can drums carrying the melody. Maybe there will be more from Spencer on an ad hoc basis.
The Way It Is is as ever lyrically topical, Bruce Hornsby's song about the civil rights struggle by African Americans in the 1960s. The third verse goes like this...
'Well, they passed a law in '64To give those who ain't got a little moreBut it only goes so far'Cause the law don't change another's mindWhen all it sees at the hiring timeIs the line on the color bar, no, no'
The USA and the UK are both facing a massive right wing backlash at the moment with racial issues front and centre. No matter what the so- called 'patriots' say about the reasons for hanging flags and painting roundabouts it seems pretty clear to me that it's actually about defining Englishness and Britishness as white and that it's also designed to intimidate those people who aren't white, to make them question whether they belong. The march in London on Saturday was the 2020s successor to those by the National Front and BNP in the 70s and 80s, racism dressed up as patriotism. Patriotism is always a dangerous game to play, flags are always a dangerous piece of cloth to hide behind. They almost always lead to nationalism- and English nationalism is always racist. These things have ebbed and flowed over the last half century and previously. Bruce Hornsby's line, 'That's just the way it is/ Some things'll never change', is maybe not enough right now.
As someone who had a summer job in a high street branch of Curry's in the early 90s, we used to take a remote control out into the street on a Saturday afternoon and put Ceefax p303 up on the biggest TV in the window, so it would scroll through the footy scores for those men and boys you mention. I thought of it as a public service.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Spencer, for sharing a version that was unknown to me. And thank you, Adam, for your wise words about the current state of our society. In Germany, too, there is a rampant tendency for ultra-right-wing ideas to spread under the guise of so-called patriotism. We should not stop fighting against this, wherever it may be.
ReplyDeleteWhat a brilliant post. I remember that used of The Way It Is on Grandstand so clearly, it was the perfect end to a Saturday afternoon and fitted so well.
ReplyDeleteAs for the events in London at the weekend, you simply can't go on a March organised by the far right thug Yaxley-Lennon and then claim you're just a "concerned citizen." It's just not a position that stands up.
What all the above say, ditto. One more thing that will never change, the quality of this blog. Keep up the great work Adam, excellent post. This is true Balearic gem. ✊
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