An Arboreal Playlist

Introduction

In the seventies, I knew of a band called Trees but dismissed them as another folk band, but recently one of the Facebook groups I am in posted one of their songs and I was so impressed that I bought the fiftieth-anniversary collection above, and have been mightily impressed by their work, and given the live songs on here they are still with us in some form (with more original members that the Human League).

There are a lot of famous tree songs that are not very good so they don't make this playlist.

So I will kick off this playlist with one of their songs and then branch out, so to speak.

Trees - "The Garden Of Jane Delawney"

This is drenched in dark magic and could almost be in the same world as "The Wicker Man" . I was sure that Jane Trelawney (as opposed to Delawney) was a witch but it could be either name. The name reminds me of a withc who summons Corum in one of Michael Moorcock's novels, but this is a great opener for this list.

Rab Noakes - "Branch"

I loved this when I first heard it in the seventies, and for me sounds just as good today as it did then, and this gives me and excuse to share it with you.

The Wonder Stuff - "Them Big Oak Trees" from "Hup"

This song just steamrollers you into submission in the beast way possible. I played a few Wonder Stuff songs with Spoon (Newcastle) though never got around to this.

Mary Coughlan - "A Leaf From A Tree"

A beautiful suggestion from my good friend Julie

Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens - "King Of Trees" from "Buddha and the Chocolate Box"

When he made this he was Cat Stevens but is now Yusuf Islam and still a wonderful man and great musician and songwriter.

The album's title was the result of a plane journey during which Cat found himself to be carrying a small Buddha statue in one hand and a box of chocolates in the other. He reflected that if the plane were to crash he'd be found between these two objects that represented the spiritual and the material.

Peter Gabriel & Youssou N'Dour - "Shaking The Tree"

There are a few versions of this available by these artists.

This is a playful duet between Peter and Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour, that hadn’t previously appeared on a Gabriel album, just on Youssou’s The Lion album. Here it reappears, albeit it with a new vocal from Peter.

The idea of the song is for women to go out and take control of their own destiny, shake up the male establishment.

Holly Golightly - "Christmas Tree On Fire"

I included this because it is very funny, and it has a tree in it.

Eddie Fontaine - Nothin’ Shakin’ (But The Leaves On The Trees)

This has been covered by The beatles, Billy Fury and many more but the original is pure class.

Gram Parsons - "Hickory Wind"

Gram Parsons was a legend, and this hits this playlist because it is a fine song and Hickory is a common name for trees composing the genus Carya. I also wrote up a review of the film "Grand Theft Parsons" about the what happened after Gram left this plane.

The Byrds - "Chestnut Mare"

It's about a horse, not a tree but has Chestnut in the title and we all know Horse Chestnuts don't we? This is another gorgeous song a favourite of me and my daughter Juliet's.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading this and I hope you have found a few songs that you like.

All of these are from my collection.