Blue Monday, Blue Melody

 This day, the third Monday of January, is, we are told, Blue Monday – the unhappiest day of the year, as calculated by 'an equation' devised in 2005 (and applicable only in the Northern Hemisphere). Well, we all like a bit of pseudoscience to start the day, don't we, and this one is harmless enough. 
  An idle train of thought led me from Blue Monday to Blue Afternoon, one of the best albums of Tim Buckley's musical maturity (after he'd moved on from his early folky stuff into the more jazz-infused musical landscapes that he made entirely his own). Tim's posthumous reputation sometimes seems in danger of being eclipsed by that of his son Jeff – so, to keep the flame alive, and as a reminder of what an extraordinary singer Tim Buckley was, here is 'Blue Melody' from the Blue Afternoon album. Enjoy...

Fred Neil: A Legacy

The singer-songwriter Fred Neil died 15 years ago today. Though he never made it commercially as a performer, he will always be remembered for at least two classic songs. One is the number that everyone thinks of as Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin' (just as we always think of Without You as Nilsson's song, rather than Badfinger's). The other is a song that reflects Fred Neil's passion for dolphin conservation, the cause for which he effectively gave up his musical career. I first heard Dolphins on Tim Buckley's Sefronia album, and can't help but think of it as Tim Buckley's Dolphins - it's certainly a song he was born to sing, a perfect vehicle for his extraordinary voice: here he is performing it on Old Grey Whistle Test (complete with Whispering Bob Harris intro). Dolphins was also put to brilliantly effective use in The Sopranos (the greatest TV drama ever made) - and this time it was not Buckley's but Fred Neil's own performance. Sad to reflect that Tim Buckley was dead of a heroin overdose a year after that OGWT performance.