This will hurt me...

The view east of the bay of Geilston Bay. October 2010. Rain, rain, rain. Rain all night and it's still raining this morning. Which leads me to today's Sunday Top Five: My Top Five Songs Featuring The Word 'Rain' In The Title ! Rain , by The Beatles Have You Ever Seen the Rain , by Creedence Clearwater Revival Rainy Days and Mondays , by The Carpenters I Can't Stand the Rain , by Ann Peebles It's Raining Again , by Supertramp Just missing the cut (and in no particular order) were Blind Melon's No Rain , Garbage's Only Happy When It Rains , The Be Good Tanya's Rain and Snow , Here Comes the Rain Again by The Eurythmics, Walking in the Rain by The Ronettes and Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain by Willie Nelson. All right, what have I missed?

Four on one. I don't like those odds. Here is a little gang warfare, Geilston Bay-style. Even though this image is a universal one, every time I see it I think of Leonard Cohen. Well, I always think of Leonard Cohen, but I usually hear Kris Kristofferson. Or Willie Nelson. Or Johnny Cash. Or Rita Coolidge. Or Fairport Convention. And sometimes - just sometimes - I hear good old Leonard himself. You know it's a good track when there are so many decent covers.

Autumn morning sunshine can't be beaten for colour. Here is the sun coming up over the river, as seen from Franklin Square. Yesterday I erred in judgement and taught Henry the Queen song We Are The Champions . Now I can't stop him from yelling it at me (well, his version goes " Me Are The Champions" ). This brings back a number of horrifying memories of my older brother besting me in some kind of sporting endeavour, to then pummel me and sit atop my chest sing the above song. Do you have a song that evokes similarly terrible memories? I'm not counting anything by The Osmands, as they just don't count.

Here you can the the little bloke crossing the vast expanses of the living room in search of water. Callously, both Henry and Jen refuse to help. I - in a rather pale imitation of the moral quandary of Kevin Carter's shocking image from Sudan in 1993 - am the photojournalist, intervening would destroy the authenticity of the shot. It's a tricky notion, the idea of objectivity and photojournalism, as I'd imagine that the presence of another person armed with a camera is going to undermine the notion of "real life just ticking along". Carter's story is well worth following up, the HBO documentary The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club is one I've been wanting to see for a while.

Here's a cool little thing to try. This website records the #1 song in the United States - according to Billboard magazine - on any given date. I've already  touched upon  the songs that were playing during Henry's birth, but here are the charts! Of course, me being me, I've had to check my own birth date out, and compare it with the other mugs loved ones in my family to see who's song best matches them, and more importantly, who is the best , and who are the losers ! First, we'll do Henry, as he was born last and is the weakest. Number one when he popped out was the hit by that dirty southern rapper, Ludacris - featuring Pharrell (Colin Pharrell?) - "Money Maker". In this song, Mr Ludacris claims that he is a "bedroom gangsta”. Well, Henry does like to make noise in his bedroom, I've yet to see any gunplay, but it's early doors yet! The song also has a touch of the oldest profession about it with the line: "Shake your moneymaker. ...

I stumbled up this concept on the blog Not Too Crazy , and think that the concept is a very sound one, even if I can't agree with every example offered up ( Journey , Styx or Chicago are a little light on the 'genius' for mine)! Broadly speaking, ‘the Lindsey Buckingham Paradox’ is what happens when clearly brilliant musicians decide that they are better off away from their bandmates and venture out into solo "careers", only to somehow never again grasp their own genius in the way demonstrated by earlier efforts. I can think of a few examples of my own, and would differ on my choices. For example, she includes Paul McCartney. If I were to list a Beatle, it would be John Lennon. Lennon’s solo work from ’69 until ’71 was pretty good, but the rest ( Mind Games the single aside), well, meh. I mean really, Some Time in New York City ? Try listening to that not off your nut. Give me any of the Wings albums ahead of that. I wouldn’t include Lennon though, as there ar...

I was wondering what to post on the blog, and I thought that maybe I would do something music-related. Now I love music, and am prepared to listen to just about anything. But what to write about? There's so much to choose from. So I've been thinking about this for a while and then yesterday a song that I like came on the ITunes shuffle (with somewhere around 14,000 songs, it could be just about anything), and I found myself dancing around the living room along with Henry, singing out aloud the words to one of my all time favourite tracks. Let me make it clear: I've loved the song Cecilia for as long as I can remember. It's a happy, jaunty little number that was released as a single off the mega-selling 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water , and reached #4 in the US charts. Given that I have known the song for my entire life, I'm not really sure when the lyrical content first struck me as, well, interesting . Now, I can remember that the shift from referring to key...