Happy New Year - 2018

Jacques Brel, 1963

Six wasn't a bad turn-out for the first Dragon Folk Club session of 2018. Everyone sang and there was a reasonable number of seasonal songs, whether that was New Year, Twelfth Night or the sequence of the year. Next week's session (12 January) will be without a theme but be ready later in the month for 26 January which is our nearest session to Burns Night.

Back to last Friday, Colin was MC and he started us off with Bob Zentz's At The End Of Another Year.

Mike's first contribution was Richard Thompson's We'll Sing Hallelujah (at the turning of the year).

Terry C made his first appearance at the club for a while and very welcome it was too. He said he didn't have any seasonal songs but Brown Photographs (John Meeks, Colin Radcliffe) certainly acknowledged the passing of time.

Derek took us to Orkney for A New Year's Carol (Roud 4584). Simon was afraid of stepping on toes with one of his two appropriate songs, but sang it anyway and Mike said he had had no intention of singing Dave Goulder's January Man.

Geoff's performance on the theme was to present Michael Flanders and Donald Swann's A Song Of The Weather as a a poem. This turns out to be somewhat ironic since the song is a parody of the 1834 poem, The Months by Sara Coleridge.

Shortly before the interval it came time for Mike to make his exit but it coincided with his turn to sing. Colin managed to get one more song out of him and for that he requested Serafina.

Geoff brought back some memories with Seasons In The Sun (Jacques Brel, Rod McKuen) but what's this; the music is credited to Jacques Brel, the famous Belgian singer? It turns out that the song is an English adaptation of his song, Le Moribond.

Derek asked whether Mike had sung many wassail songs at our Christmas session, a session Derek missed, but in fact although Mike was present, he wasn't singing that week. Derek therefore offered us The Gower Wassail (Roud 209).

It fell to Geoff to round off the evening, which he did with Tom Paxton's Last Thing On My Mind.

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

(Number of people present - 6, of whom 6 performed)