Category Archives: Waterboys

Waterboys covers Bob Dylan – Happy Birthday, Mike Scott!

Waterboys Haugesund 1
photo: alldylan

I love The Waterboys in all it’s incarnations and I’ve had a relationship with them almost as long as with Bob Dylan. I have seen them live a lot of times, many more than I’ve seen Dylan. I know that a Waterboys concert is always good, sometimes magical. Last time I saw them was when they opened for Neil Young in Bergen 2014, they were great! They have played several venues in Norway 2015.

I’m a sucker for good cover versions and Mike Scott certainly knows how to do that. Please check out his reading (from his own book, Adventures of a Waterboy) down in this post, it is a wonderful story.

All the pictures were taken at a show in Haugesund, Norway in 2012.

Let’s start with a phenomenal version of Dylan’s Girl from the North Country:

And a live version from Liverpool Philharmonic Hall 8th December 2013:

Continue reading Waterboys covers Bob Dylan – Happy Birthday, Mike Scott!

September 16: The Waterboys released This is the sea in 1985

this is the sea

This is the The Waterboys’ third album and, In my humble opinion, their best of the so called “big sound” albums (the first three albums).

I have heard the big music
And I’ll never be the same
Something so pure
– Big Music (from the album, A Pagan Place)

 

Photo: allmusic
Photo: AllDylan.com

It was the first Waterboys album to enter the United Kingdom charts, peaking at number thirty-seven. Steve Wickham makes his Waterboys recording debut playing violin on ‘The Pan Within’ and subsequently joined the band, appearing on the video of “The Whole Of The Moon”. This Is the Sea is the last album with contributions from Karl Wallinger, who left the group to form his own band, World Party.

Mike Scott, the album’s principal songwriter and leader of The Waterboys, describes This Is the Sea as “the record on which I achieved all my youthful musical ambitions”, “the final, fully realised expression of the early Waterboys sound”, influenced by The Velvet Underground, Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, and Steve Reich.[4] The album was recorded between March and July 1985, and released that October (see 1985 in music). A remastered and expanded version was released in 2004. This Is the Sea contains the best-selling Waterboys single, the song “The Whole of the Moon”.

Continue reading September 16: The Waterboys released This is the sea in 1985

10 Great Songs by Irish Artists

van morrison 1970

As with most musicoholics I need to create playlists associated with upcoming travel destinations. It is a mandatory part of the planning process.
I will travel to Dublin tomorrow and hence a playlist is created. Here are videos of 10 great songs from the list & the spotify playlist embedded.

Only one song from each artist

Van Morrison – Cyprus Avenue, 9/23/1970 – Fillmore East, New York, NY

Well, I’m caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue
Caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue

And I’m conquered in a car seat
Not a thing that I can do
I may go crazy
Before that mansion on the hill

Continue reading 10 Great Songs by Irish Artists