There are some songs that, for one reason or another, over the years garner an historical and cultural significance that extends way beyond the song itself. One such song is Daisy Bell by Harry Dacre (pictured left, on his bicycle), […]
I’m not sure whether this song falls a little too late in history for Radio Days or a little too early. No matter–we like it anyway, and it’s a good time for us to take a short musical holiday from […]
What a happy find today! In our recent workshop on political songs of the seventeenth century I had drawn attention to the recurrent trope in writings in this period of “the world turned upside down”, and its numerous sources in […]
Still busy and semi-obsessed with the Protest Song workshops we’re running at Brompton Cemetery, I’ve been mulling over in my mind whether it makes any sense at all to look to music-hall for protest songs. The Music Hall was of […]
Walter Kino is a music-hall name I don’t come across very often. Maybe a couple of times this past year, and I can’t now even remember the context. (And though I recall reading that ‘Kino’ was not his real name, […]
Little by little, week by week, we’ve been adding new topics and new content to our education programme, with 12 topics now offered. One of the new topics has taken me joyously back to an optional course I took while […]
I admit it–I’m a huge fan of Marie Lloyd. A kind of real-life Betty Boop in some ways, she was by far the greatest and most charismatic singer of her era. A few days ago, Radio Days performed an online […]
