I am going camping next to water, just like the title of the Badly Drawn Boy song. Can you suggest some more songs to take with me?
The Doctor has just returned from the Cheltenham jazz festival, and my ears are ringing with Wilko Johnson, Gregory Porter, Martha Reeves, Jamie Cullum and the extraordinary Norman Watt-Roy on bass. Glastonbury shimmers on the horizon. Yes, festival season is upon us. Soon there will be Mondays when you find yourself gawping as comrades return to the office from fields of gold, with dirty nails, glassy eyes and sunburnt faces. Oh, the glamour.
Water is key to a summer of festivals: too much and the site becomes a mud sink, too little a dustbowl, and don’t forget the priceless water for those under-canvas-false-dawn-hangovers, water carried in thousands of plastic bottles (and the lack of it in those eco-friendly toilets). It’s precious stuff and has inspired countless songs – there’s a theory that every album has a reference to it somewhere.
So you will not go thirsty for water songs on your waterside camping trip. Anything by McKinley Morganfield aka Muddy Waters (or Creedence Clearwater). Start with Muddy’s Rollin’ And Tumblin’ (Pt 2), with its jumping rhythm, and Creedence’s Lodi from the Green River album. You’ll need a fireside singalong, so hit Van Morrison’s And It Stoned Me (“Oh the water”), swiftly followed by Dylan’s High Water (“Don’t reach out for me... can’t you see I’m drowning too?”) and a beauty by Percy Sledge: Blue Water, for sunsets on the banks of the river, whiskey and a drop of water in hand. Sláinte!
• Post your queries to Cerys below.
.png?w=600)
