Week 14 - Talkin' Different Genre Blues

Now, don't let me mislead you from the start. This isn't about Blues. This is about songs with Blues-style titles that are anything but.

I'm never sure what to think of Cat Power. On the one hand, I admire her as an artist, but on the other I can't get into her style. I don't necessarily mean that with regard to different songs, sometimes it happens within one track. However, from her Jukebox album, Blue is a stunningly soulful piece. Lovely sounds complemented by, rather than topped off by, her vocals.

One female artist I do like is Joanna Newsom. Her voice isn't everyone's cup of tea. Some people may say it's like a cat being strangled on a washing machine, but I like it (the voice, not laundry-themed feline murder). The harpist's This Side of the Blue is a stunning dreamscape of sounds. One of the most beautiful songs I know of, plus it's about time I put a folky track on here. Trust me, there'll be a lot more to come!

The Coral are a great band. They burst onto the scene in 2002 with their eponymous album, containing tracks like Goodbye and Dreaming of You. Since then, they've had a mixed output. Magic and Medicine was a great album - Don't You Think You're The First, Pass It On and Bill McCai. However, Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker was a quite dodgy album. It was a modern psychedelic work, but a bit too piecemeal for me. The Invisible Invasion contained In the Morning, a quality song, but little else. Fortunately, their most recent album, Roots and Echoes, is possibly their best since their debut, containing She's Got a Reason and Put the Sun Back.

But enough of the biographical stuff, the song I've chosen this week is a beaut off Magic and Medicine.

It's called Talkin' Gypsy Market Blues and its lyrics go thus: Talkin' gypsy market blues, I was too late and I never got to choose.

As you may know, there are many Talking blah-blah Blues song titles throughout history - whether it's Woody Guthrie's Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues, Townes van Zandt's Talkin' KKK Blues or Bob Dylan's Talkin' Hava Negilah Blues.

Now, to try to tie this back together, when I first heard Talkin' Gypsy Market Blues, I imagined The Coral as a bluesman in modern times. I figured they wanted to do a song in the talkin' blues spirit, but because all the good titles had gone they were stuck with a song about a gypsy market. Hence "I was too late but I never got to choose".

A lovely story, but hopelessly inaccurate! Instead it seems like a holiday in Portugal gone wrong. A man wants some boots, goes into an Al Stewart Year of the Cat-style haze, then decides he doesn't want the boots anymore. But, it's still a cracking song.

Enjoy!