All over the world, songwriters are beavering away every day producing new songs. I guess most of them never see the light of day, or get heard by a small circle of people before drifting off into the sea of forgetfulness. Occasionally, one will break the shackles of time and place and become immortal, like Amazing Grace or Knockin' on Heaven's Door. I've been thinking about the ones in between - the ones that reach the public sphere, experience a moment of adulation, then sink beneath the waves. What happens to these songs, and to their authors? I somehow managed to miss Pavlov's Dog on their first time around in the mid-1970's, although I remember seeing their records in the shops - who could forget that classic cover? It's surprising, because it's just the sort of music I would have loved at 15, with its metal-lite sounds, over-emotive lyrics and David Surkamp's ridiculously powerful falsetto. I recently caught up with their first two albu
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson