Bonfire Night 2019

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Despite Halloween being well out of the way for another year, we were down to a skeleton staff for our Bonfire Night, or more accurately campfire themed session last Friday. Perhaps more will turn out for our Remembrance session this Friday, 8 November when songs, tunes, stories and other performances relating to remembrance, war and anti-war will be particularly welcome though as usual anything goes as long as it's acoustic.

Our MC, Colin started us off with the one Bonfire Night song of the evening, Guy Fawkes (Roud V18439).

In place of a campfire, Simon had us in a dark engine room, huddled round a Wee Pot Stove (Harry Robertson). Mike eschewed fires altogether in his first song, instead opting for a reference to "the fifth of November" in Spencer The Rover (Roud 1115).

Geoff also claimed to miss the theme but we thought he could probably use the campfire to cook the sausages and potatoes from his song Lidl And Aldi (Mickey MacConnell). Mike also wanted it to be known that garden equipment bought from Lidl is too resilient to be made fun of.

Simon's tenuous link was that The Ballad Of Patch Eye And Meg (Michelle Shocked) was first recorded by a campfire.

Mike drew from songs which he knew to have been sung at a campfire, at least some by him, including Martin Said To His Man (Roud 473) and Whisky Johnny (Roud 651).

Geoff also seemed to think he didn't have anything appropriate to the theme until Simon reminded him of Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (Allan Sherman, Lou Busch), a classic comedy song about an American summer camp which doesn't seem to be going too well until... - set to Dance Of The Hours (Amilcare Ponchielli).

One of Colin's songs from the second half was It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo' (Wendell Hall). Hall was known as the Red-haired Music Maker and the Pineapple Picador in his recording heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. The song seems to be classified by most people on YouTube as one for children but when released in 1923 it sold over two million copies in the United States, was awarded a gold disc, and was considered the first musical hit on the radio. Some of the vocal flourishes in the original recording (linked) are quite impressive.

Geoff closed the session with Courtin' In The Kitchen (Roud 1007, Laws Q16).

Here's a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 4, of whom 4 performed)