God Save the Queen

On this Jubilee weekend, an eclectic musical mix with a royal theme…

“I was there at the Coronation” claims Young Tiger in his 1953 Calypso hit and to back up this claim the Trinidadian lists the things he saw at the ceremony in painstaking detail. There’s a pleasing McGonagallishness to the unpoetic fact-listing of the lyric, and I Was There is a fascinating period souvenir…

…As is the footage of the Beatles at the 1963 Royal Variety Performance, not least because it offers a chance to hear the poppy Moptops playing live without being drowned by the screams of crazed teenage girls. I considered a Royal Variety special for this Sunday, but a Youtube trawl suggested that, Beatles apart, the poor royals haven’t been offered a single worthwhile musical thing ever. I hope they enjoyed the Fab Four then (the performance including of course Lennon’s legendary one-liner: “Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery …”)

Fairport Convention singer Sandy Denny will be immortal for the peerless Who Knows Where the Time Goes? and this song – The King and Queen of England – contains something of that song’s sad beauty…

The British national anthem – soon to be played, Seb hopes, with great frequency beside Olympic cycling tracks and rowing rivers – is much-criticised as a dreary effort in comparison to the Frog and Kraut themes, but at least it’s short. It also has a remarkable musical pedigree. Composed by Thomas Augustine Arne and first sung in 1745, some 140 composers, including Beethoven, Haydn, Liszt, Brahms and Elgar have written variations. This is Paganini’s Variations on God Save the King, played by German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann…

The alternative national anthem is, of course, the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen. It is brilliant, but a bit too obvious a choice for The Dabbler, so here’s Lemmy with Motorhead’s version. The London bus tour shows the once-menacing track for what it now is: just another lark in the great British tradition of irreverent patriotism. Happy holidays…

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