Some more music links on MySpace and YouTube

Billie Holiday: The Very Thought of You, I'll Be Seeing You, Strange Fruit, God Bless the Child. (Strange Fruit is one of the most solemn and unforgettable songs, could be a theme tune for Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin. The other tracks here are also outstanding like all of Billie's recordings.)

Bessie Smith: Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out plus Give Me a Pigfoot (one of her last recordings, when "rediscovered" by Benny Goodman etc), Backwater Blues

Charles & Eddie: Would I Lie to You? (can't get this brilliant one-hit-wonder on iTunes, but it's here on MySpace)

Francoise Hardy: J'Ai Jete Mon Coeur (just a very sweet old record found on somebody's profile, a great way to hear excellent and unusual music, singled out by each MySpace user. I'm a sucker for this sound and mood, even "All Over the World" - no link for that yet.)

Jacques Brel: Ne Me Quitte Pas, La Fanette, Les Desesperes. (I wish I could find Au Suivant and a couple of others.)

Leonard Cohen: Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye, One of Us Cannot Be Wrong, Suzanne

I was going to post a link to The Stranger Song, but it's been removed (a hazard of this kind of bootleg access). There are several more Leonard Cohen tracks on there. Click Music, enter Leonard Cohen and click Search. You can find all sorts of things this way.

Christy Moore: Ride On (notable for the most sublime bit of slide guitar ever at the end), Don't Forget Your Shovel, Biko Drum, Delirium Tremens.

By the way, here's Christy singing Viva la Quinta Brigada on YouTube, with some interesting newsreel and fleeting pictures of some of the Irish volunteers for the International Brigade etc. "The bishops blessed the blueshirts at Dunleary".

That's Donal Lunny on the bouzouki and Declan Sinnott on the other guitar. Donal Lunny and Christy Moore were in Planxty almost at the start of the Irish folk revival. Here's Donal Lunny duelling bouzouki vs. mandolin with Andy Irvine in a great old clip of Planxty on the Late Late Show, with Liam O'Flynn on uileann pipes. (Andy forgets the words and almost doesn't restart, till Donal gives him a prompt: still brilliant/live/exciting.)

Jacintha Pucka