1. |
Artless
03:33
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The days are waxing longer. The summertime is nigh,
But lyre’s strings are silent, and the poets barely sigh,
And strutting, fretting actors perforce forego the stage.
Ah. Sumer is Icumen In – a guileless, artless age.
Lyric and music by © Dave Banks 2020
Traditional lyric:
Sumer is icumen in
Loude sing cuckoo
Groweth seed
and bloweth mead
and springs the woode nu
Sing cuckoo
Ewe bleateth after lamb
Loweth after calve ku
Bullock starteth, bucke farteth
Merry sing cuckoo
Well singest thou cuckoo
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2. |
Chocolate Box Eyes
02:50
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My five-year old eyes edge across the chocolate box chessboard;
slyly surveying alternate chequers: light and dark,
of cocoa depths, of milk, of soft and harder centres
of bittersweet and sugarsweet,
of nougat and of nut.
Each piece with its peculiar persona,
from pawn-like pralines, sacrificed en passant,
to key components, commanding diagonals,
king-slaying combatants.
Me. A prodigious grand master on this stage of strategy.
Kasparov against his nemesis: his pyjamaed Dad,
eyes Deep Blue, in Saturday morning lethargy;
Chocolates in bed, a ritual weekend luxury,
swept down from the Smoke on the Friday night train,
and served up with tea and a custard cream.
My move, by convention, is first.
I favour the lime barrel, its tangy, verdant drippiness
ideally crafted to infant tastes.
But. I also have a penchant for that creamy
half-moon segment. The orange fondant.
My daddy’s signature piece.
Dilemma. Do I secure my position?
Take the barrel while I may?
This spangly citrus bomb, viridian essence;
liquor from South Italy. A Sicilian defence?
Or do I play the gambit?
Swipe enemy’s orange from the tray?
And leave the lime to languish?
Vulnerable? Never! Non! Jamais!
I glance up. My father’s steely eyes,
inscrutable as seconds slip away.
A Nazi’s eyes - too alike mine own - capable of sacrificing
self, and pawns, and bishops to secure the day.
He is the New World Order,
Where fruity fondants are swept into the maw
without mercy, without quarter.
My mother, watching these rivals, dear yet fell,
has other tastes.
Her brown eyes covet coffee, hazelnuts, and cracknel.
For she can wait.
She knows when battle’s done and we have reached endgame,
the debris of the chocolate box will be hers to claim.
Poem: © Dave Banks 2019
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3. |
Quiet Flows the Don
05:10
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Quiet flows the Don, and green grows its valley
Born in Midhope, flowing down to the sea
Where fat cats and gard’ners rest, and lovers dally
Mine to forge to warping sluice and the slumbering estuary
Sprung from wells and coal pits on the flank of the Dark Peak
Iron-stained or limpid as uncloaked destiny
Woodhead and Townhead, Sheephouse and Bullcliffe
Innuendo, Penistone, out you wend to the sea
Wharncliffe and Oughtibridge and on to Philadelphia
Haunt of owl and warbler and Branson’s Cockertoo
Parkside, switchblade, caramel and nougat
The heart of steel city, the river running through
Deepcar Neepsend Not quite a Jaguar Deep end
Deepcar Neepsend Yorkshire caviar Best friend
Brightside, a hall of meadows running into Rotherham
Glades of cowslip, meadowsweet and honesty
Otters play, the halcyon dives: no man there to bother ‘em
The fifth river of Eden; God’s own hydrology
Greasbrough and Denaby; the viaduct and Sprotborough;
Savour Thorne’s breathing moor. This undinal jewel
then goes Dutch in the flatlands, feeling continental,
To the estuarine ooze and the dreaming spires of Goole
Sheffield Sex City Discover Mexborough
Deepcar Neepsend Sand bar Deep end
Lyric and music © Dave Banks 2021
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4. |
Mad
02:49
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We called you Mad Pat
We called you Mad Pat, on account of you disbelieved the events of ’69;
that Aldrin and Armstrong had somehow spun you some line
about moon dust and coke cans and flags in the wind of an Arizona studio.
Yet often you could be among the sanest that I know.
And smart. You knew life was fleet. To be spent in music, dance,
And care for the sick. And that money comes by happenstance
to be blown on halves of fizzy lager; tribute bands.
A saner mind is seldom seen; and so it’s somehow strange that
We called you Mad Pat.
We called you Mad Pat
We did… We called you Mad Pat, the lass from the ‘Pool - and though it’s always rude to quibble
We knew that we could rile you - saying that…well, actually… Birkenhead’s on the Wirral.
You loved Lennon, Lemmy, bikes, Asian tigers, and, strangely, you thought highly
Of ancient Sparta, 300 warriors and its victory at Thermopylae.
We’d often find you, comfy in the Peacock’s nook, engrossed
In earphone heavy metal reverie. But from your observation post
You’d sally forth and talk in pleasant company. And your innermost
Solitude was a strength - yet vulnerability. It really makes me wonder that
We called you Mad Pat
But…We called you Mad Pat
Mad “Ringo” Pat, demon of djembe, tom and tambourine
With bags of percussion beneath your stool, secreted unseen
Yet somehow heard. Of the two qualities required for timpani
(enthusiasm and a sense of timing), you had at least one, and that’s fine by me.
For you taught me to play to a counter-rhythm. It’s a thing that’s called “jazz”.
Pat, You deafened the room with your laugh and pazazz
And there’s a hole in the band and our hearts and the pub as
We sing for you.
Mad.
Epic Spartan Galahad. Heavy-metal Ironclad.
Indomitable Stalingrad. Moonshot Saturn Five Launch-Pad.
Sail safe, Pat, at daylight’s end.
Woman. Dancer. Stranger. Friend
Poem © Dave Banks 2019
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5. |
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1. My name is Zazza and I come from Al-Kairouan
I left my home and family for Nanterre; Rue de la Garenne
I left for Bidonville
I left for Bidonville
They promised flushing cisterns and bathrooms bright and clean
But we just share a faucet and a cold outdoor latrine.
And the colours of the rainbow were just leaking gasoline
In Bidonville
2. Zazza dreamed a Zazza dream of Parisian haut cuisine
Of fine ragout de Mouton, instead of lamb tagine
Vive la Bidonville
Yeah, Bidonville
They promised us good wages and the glamour of the silver screen
A dream of golden paving stones, and electric washing machines
But the dream of the colours of the rainbow, was just leaking gasoline
Down in Bidonville
In Bidonville
3. My mum was in the theatre, my father I’d never met
Born by a bonfire on a tourist beach just outside Hammamet
Allons à Bidonville
Allons à Bidonville
They promised us salvation by the Grace of St Augustine
But we were damned to a bit part in a tragedy by Racine
And the promise of the colours of the rainbow was just leaking gasoline
In Bidonville
Bidonville
4. A product of the workshop of Jeanne Petitbois
Rich girls playing Bidonville. The art of the petit bourgeois.
Jouons à Bidonville
Jouons à Bidonville
The promised us a starship ride to a universe unseen
But all we got was a film set in the deserts of Tataouine / Tatooine
And the promise of the colours of the rainbow was just leaking gasoline
In Bidonville
Bidonville
Lyrics and melody © Dave Banks 2021
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6. |
Icebound
01:55
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When I was young. In the days of my youth
We’d skate about on the ice of friendship.
Sliding, whooping and joyful.
Sure – sometimes we’d collide, bobble hats flying
And collapse on the ice in a tangle of limbs.
But always safe, knowing that the pond was solid.
Full inches five of frozen floor, separating us
From the mulchy pike-filled depths.
And we’d pick ourselves from the shards of our fall,
Brush each other down and head off home for
Horlicks and to dry our sodden mittens on the stove.
But now that I am grown, the evil days have come.
The weather is awry and the climate is a-changing.
The ice of friendship has waned thin. And
Now it seems to creak and glint alarmingly.
I dare not venture from the shore. For fear
A wayward step or misplaced blade will shatter all.
And the murk will take me, and frozen floor become a roof
Of glass and bubbles and embedded leaves from autumn’s oaks.
We skate around the issues, not the ice. Our glory days behind,
Iron Lotus unfulfilled. The air is damp with unuttered truths
That we dare not tell. It looks like rain and soon the
Hyperborean realm will become just pond life.
And the pike rise to the surface.
© Dave Banks 2020
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7. |
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Jacob’s Black Dove was singing today
Under the shade of the broad apple tree
and down by the bench with the view of the Vale
Andy was calling out harmony
to Jacob’s Black Dove’s sweet melody
to her song
to her melody
to her tumbling, diving melody
And the world stopped still for a moment apart
and the cows looked up and the drone of the bee
was the chant of a bass and the cords of my heart
found a counterpoint that pinioned me
on the bars of the Black Dove’s sweet melody
of her song
of her melody
of her spinning, her soaring melody
Jacob’s Black Dove - a sweet summer vagrant
swooping into our minds and our ears.
In the Green Garden, ‘neath blossom all fragrant,
or sharing our table, our laughter, our tears.
And she spun
and she dove
and she left us her feathers of rhythm and rhyme
and to us she was Jacob’s Black Dove.
And the world exhaled and turned on its axis
precisely aligned with the neck of her lyre.
Dandelion clocks like frozen explosions
were swept away like ash from the fire
of Jacob’s Black Dove’s sweet melody
of her song
of her melody
of her aerial acrobat’s melody.
Melody: © Sue Jones and Dave Banks 2014
Lyrics © Dave Banks 2014
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Dave Banks Chesterfield, UK
Dave Banks is a songwriter and musician from Chesterfield, UK. He has also played in "The Sedatives". "Me and Mr Jones" and "Poke O'Swedgers"
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