More Info
Pandemic Songs is songwriter Robb Johnson’s chronicle in song of the unprecedented events of the first half of 2020. His critically-acclaimed family histories of the 20th Century Gentle Men & Ordinary Giants use song to dramatise past lives & narrate significant historical events & processes. Pandemic Songs uses songs to provide a media-free perspective of contemporary history, with thirteen tracks written between March & June of this year, that record & comment on the global pandemic, from Robb’s local UK perspective. The songs are angry, sad, affectionate, elegiac, satirical, anxious, & compassionate. They celebrate our lives in lockdown & the endurance of our keyworkers, & catalogue the vanities, incompetence, hypocrisy & failures of those in power. Pandemic Songs was recorded with a socially-distanced pared-down version of The Irregulars; John Forrester on bass & vocals, Arvin Johnson on drums, percussion & Spanish guitar, & Fae Simon on vocals. The result is a powerful, visceral album, a significant creative response to these very significant times. Robb Johnson is now widely recognised as one of the UK’s finest songwriters: “An English original”, - The Guardian... // “one of our best singer-songwriters ever” -Mike Harding, BBC Radio2… // “one of this country’s most important songwriters (no argument!)” – fROOTS
Tracklist
- Saint Mary (a fable about the origin of a virus)
- Monday Afternoon in the Paris House (March 16th, & a last gig before lockdown)
- 422 (lockdown has begun)
- One More Lockdown Day (lockdown continues)
- 5373 (the number of deaths from COVID 19 continues to rise)
- 89p (the government responds by promoting a Care badge)
- Disinfectant (President Trump promotes a cure)
- The Highlight of My Week (the weekly lockdown shopping)
- All the Bells Were Ringing (the nightly lockdown dreaming)
- Lockdown Jokes & Stories (three sad stories- Belly Mujinga, railworker, Mervyn Kennedy
- bus driver
- Louisa Rajakumari
- teacher, & one bad joke – (Dominic Cummings drives to Durham)
- Victory in Europe (May, & the UK achieves the highest rate of COVID 19 deaths in Europe)
- The Days We Don’t Forget (a proper remembrance)
- In Palmeira Square (June 17th, & lockdown is ending).
Soundwave
https://youtu.be/OC4qg7Ar_fY