The Year In Music: 1st/2nd May

The Bee Gees (1969), Saint Etienne (2000), Trad. Arr (forever).

Yes, I’m late. Time does this to you as you get older: rushes, crashes, crushes. Yesterday – May Day, mayday – was a rush to finish work, travel to London, finish work, sort a DJ set, play a DJ set, head home to a friend’s, fall asleep, Lisa Knapp’s May Day songs ringing in my ears, hopefully one of them having landed in your inbox, from me, late the night before, and taken some of you on a trip in the May hours that followed.

Although the precise time has passed, I can’t not write about the other May songs I always think of at the beginning of this month. There are many other folk songs, of course, performed by people other than Lisa Knapp. My favourites include the Watersons’ version of Hal-an-Tow from Frost and Fire (an album I wrote about for The Quietus), all guts, heft and heart as it welcomes “in the May-o”. Up there too is The Cambridgeshire or Bedfordshire May Carol, my favourite take being by Shirley Collins *although I’m also partial to this cover by Jack Sharp, and this twisted version by Belbury Poly, although don’t tell Shirley).

I also can’t forget another early May song that is far less folkish, less pagan, more icily European in its pre-electroclash electronica (although Saint Etienne will be getting more time on this blog next month).