Love the 3 you say - and this one always does it me big style. Hairs on end etc.

Following on from Mr Hepworth's post, the songs which, in my opinion, capture a 'romantic' sense of Englishness include;

Grass - XTC
This is a Low - Blur
Love on a Farmboy's Wages - XTC
Autumn Almanack - The Kinks

There's a wonderful nostalgic tinge to each of the above, apart from the Blur song which, instead, makes effective use of our piss-awful weather as a metaphor for inner-turmoil (so I thought it a worthy inclusion).

It's true there are few songs about England, but there are even fewer about English towns and cities which is the exact opposite of the US. How many songs can you name about New York or California or LA or Chicago or Nashville or tonnes of other American cities? It sounds so cool when someone says they 'going down to Texas' or 'heading off to Philly'. Even singing about Irish tonws sounds great, but singing songs about visiting Telford or Norwich is always going to sound mightily naff.

However...

London Calling - The Clash
Seasons of Espionage (in London Town) - Lewis Parker
Streets of London - Ralph McTell
I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea - Elvis costello
Eton Rifles - The Jam
Elvis impersonator on Blackpool Pier - Manics

...errr Long Haired Lover from Liverpool - Little Jimmy Osmond

Fotheringay - Sandy Denny
Historical intrigue and personal tragedy entwine as wicked English monarch imprisons then tops unfortunate widow of French noble who happens to have become Queen of Scotland. Or, one conniving bitch has another locked up and subsequently chopped. Overtones of religious intolerance, feigned or actual, and the rise of the English secret intelligence spooks.

Grantchester Meadows - Pink Floyd
Semi-rural idyll by languid waters with birdsong and distant noises off. Indolent sons of the merchant classes rub shoulders with fops while reflecting on the glory of a summer afternoon.

England's Glory - Ian Dury
A namechecking of great things English across the centuries, majoring on icons of the postmodern world. Billy Fury gets a mention along with Biggles and Long John Silver, amongst others.

England's glory

"Woodbines, winkles, walnut whips
Vera Lynn and Stafford Cripps"

Genius!

That's Richard Thompson taken care of, now for the Bonzos:

...but I did find this clip of Roy Harper and Jimmy Page being interviewed by Mark Ellen, as mentioned in the HORA a while back.

"And sometimes when the music stops
I seem to hear the distant sound
Of waves and seagulls
Football crowds and churchbells
And I want to go back to my hometown"

Old England. All together now 'and children stare with heroin eyes, heroin eyes, heroin eyes'.

Hmmm, that's not really what we're after is it?

All great English characteristics best summed up here, I’d say. A parochial song, in a sense, not to mention a much-ridiculed one, but I think it speaks for England. Cricket and warm beer may be on the wane but there are still “people around every corner” all over the country. It’s the only song that’s ever made me feel patriotic: it’s not a tub-thumping rabble-rouser, just a simple gentle hymn of praise to mundanity, i.e. very English.

That's Entertainment. Highly evocative warts-and-all celebration of english life I feel.

is writing and talking about this issue a lot. Check out 'England, Half English'

'My mother was half English and I’m half English too
I’m a great big bundle of culture tied up in the red white and blue
I’m a fine example of your Essex man
And I’m well familiar with the Hindustan
Cos my neighbours are half English and I’m half English too'

There's something very English about both Sundays and The Sundays:

Not 3-0. Can be found by typing kirsty maccoll columbia if this link doesn't work -

and 1952 Vincent can be found here

Uncanny - England 3 Columbia 0 came up on the mp3 player this morning. And I'm off to see Billy Bragg in Gateshead next week...

So there's most of The Village Green Preservation Society by the Kinks, unless that should be filed under "sardonic". Works for me though.

Then there's the updating of "Hard Times of Old England" by the Imagined Village (Sir William of Bragg again):

with all this village nonsense have grown up in village I'm not sure they are all they are cracked up to be and all the music we love was mainly written in towns and cities

On those odd occasions when he clears the bile from his throat, Luke Haines can write as good a song of national celebration as anyone.

All The English Devils (from Off My Rocker At The Art School Bop) celebrates the kind of rogue who is invaluable in a war or a time of national crisis, but otherwise a complete nuisance to polite society. On the same album Here’s To Old England is an updated version of The Kinks’ - Village Green Preservation Society with the rose-tinted spectacles taken off and smashed. It begins: “God bless football hooligans and 1966, the three day week and half-day Wednesdays, the spirit of the blitz” and goes on to name-check garden gnomes, Enoch Powell, rickets & milky tea.

...filled with Englishness to the brim. This was sadly lost in their later years, but the albums from 1970-77 have many gems in this strain; see 'Blood On The Rooftops', 'For Absent Friends', 'Entangled', 'Dancing With The Moonlit Knight', 'I Know What I Like'.

XTC's 'Skylarking' is a masterpiece and definitely agree with the inclusion of 'Grass'. That whole album is really summery, so to speak.

Early Pink Floyd has a few gems like 'Fat Old Sun', 'Summer '68', 'Grantchester Meadows', 'Paintbox', 'Brain Damage' and almost everything Syd Barrett did with the band.

Caravan's whole career has always been delightfully English; check out their first three albums in particular.

I feel no interest or enthusiasm for any of the songs mentioned. The only lines that come to mind that ignite me in any way are "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way". Am I a bad person?

grass, the last balloon, chalkhills and children, wonderland, the mole from the ministry, the whole of "apple venus" in fact all xtc, partridge is as english as a custard cream....john martyn's "spencer the rover", richard thompson's "beeswing", steeleye span's "hark the village wake", nick drake's "northern sky", the smiths "half a person", chris wood's "one in a million"
Not altogether celebrations of englishness but most definately english in "feel".

Ebury Down-Brinsley Schwartz plus the whole of "Do It Yourself"
Ian Dury, the funkiest English record ever made. Not forgetting dear old Stackridge, OK i'll stop now. Oh and "New Brighton"- Its Immaterial and Virginia Astley "From Gardens Where We Feel Secure"

The Divine Comedy, e.g. National Express.

can do it too! Early Aphex Twin and Orbital both have a uniquely English melancholy, but Ultramarine are the real gentle electronic poets of Englishness - even without the help of Kevin Ayres or Robert Wyatt, both of whom have vocalled their tunes.

Here's a few more from Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding

Harvest Festival
Harvest festival
What was best of all was the
Longing look you gave me
That longing look
More than enough to keep me fed all year

Fruit Nut (about the joy of sheds)
Tending my fruit, tending my fruit
Ah you've got to have a hobby
A man must have a shed to keep him sane

Frivolous Tonight(about office parties)
But theres always one
Who wants to talk shop
Well drive him through the door
With a broom or a mop

Respectable Street
It's in the order of their hedgerows
it's in the way their curtains open and close
it's in the look they give you down their nose
all part of decency's jigsaw I suppose

And Ronnie Lane's Faces tune 'You're So Rude'
Why, it looks as though theres nobody in,
They've all gone out to see my Auntie Renee.

and his two glorious instrumentals

Harvest Home and Just For A Moment

Here's mine:

• Dirty Old Town: Ewan MacColl
• Waterloo Sunset: The Kinks
• Billericay Dickie: Ian Dury
• Parklife: Blur

That's it for now.

It's strange that the English love St Patrick's Day but seldom do St Georges Day. We had a English day at work today and I won a food hamper full of English food, which included a bottle of Daddy's brown sauce. Two I can think of are:

English Trees-Crowded House
Village Green Preservation Society-Kate Rusby

My ex-friend would be proud of me since one year he put together a radio show exclusively English one week:

England My Home - The Levellers
Blood Red Roses - The Oysterband
Hal-Al-Tow - Albion Country Band
Home Thoughts From Abroad - Clifford T Ward
At A Chime Of A City Clock - Nick Drake
Little Britain (does it count?) Dread Zone
Harvest Festival - XTC
Lionheart - Kate Bush
Roots - Show Of Hands
Selling England By The Pound - Genesis

Clash - This is England

I hear a gang fire on a human factory farm
Are they howling out or doing somebody harm
On a catwalk jungle somebody grabbed my arm
A voice spoke so cold it matched the weapon in her palm

This is England
This knife of Sheffield steel
This is England
This is how we feel

Time on his hands freezing in those clothes
He wont go for the carrot
They beat him by the pole
Some sunny day confronted by his soul
Hes out at sea, too far off, he cant go home

This is England
What were supposed to die for
This is England
And were never gonna cry no more

Black shadow of the vincent
Falls on a triumph line
I got my motorcycle jacket
But Im walking all the time
South Atlantic wind blows
Ice from a dying creed
I see no glory
When will we be free

This is England
We can chain you to the rail
This is England
We can kill you in a jail

The British boots go kick them
Got em in the head
Police aint watchin
The newspapers been read
Who cares to protest
A (? ? ? ) in the eye like a flare
Out came the batons and
The british warned themselves

This is England
The land of (il)legal dances
This is England
Land of a thousand stances
This is England
This knife of Sheffield steel
This is England
This is how we feel
This is England
This is England

xtc SENSES WORKING OVERTIME
Nick Drake River Man
Kinks Waterloo Sunset
Clash London's Calling
Singing Postman The cricket match

Most songs that define England tend to the bucolic or inner city breakdown. A game of two halves?

Roy Harper (again) - One Of Those Days In England. 'With the country going broke' - it was ever thus
Stackridge - Pinafore Days. Just gorgeous - Gilbert & Sullivan meets 70's whimsy
The Beatles - Penny Lane. Every line is quintessentially English
Elvis Costello - Hoover Factory. The musical equivalent of Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, full of hurt resignation at the loss of one of the symbols of England's industrial might.
Jake Thackray - La Di Da. Delivered in his sardonic Yorkshire accent, a song about getting married & putting up with stuff you don't want to do & being nice to people you don't like - what's more English than that? Lyric here http://elperrodepaulov.livejournal.com/81496.html, with the only (surely) recorded use of 'rupture'.

Try the whole of EPic45's 'May Your Heart Be The Map' for summer in England, plus 'British Summertime' by Everything But The Girl. Also, Chris Rea, true to his roots with 'Steel River' and 'Stainsby Girls' from his 'Sharock Diaries' album.

...by Squeeze.

Best holiday by the English/British seaside song ever.

Huge amount of The Smiths music are the epitomy of the industrial north to this Welshman's ears. Very English.

Has noone mentioned Sir Henry at Rawlinson End yet ? Okay, its not your tale of gritty urban life but a wonderful comic tale of eccentricity in the countryside that still stands up.

And Ian McNabb deserves another mention on these boards for Liverpool Girl. Okay, it may be focussed on the girls of one city, but its equally applicable to working class girls in any major British town or city. Up for a good time, loud, likes a drink, extended family, trying to find a man with cash, never wears a coat etc...

Summertime in England is one of Van the Man's top tunes. An Ulsterman's view of a romantic literary past - and a sexy epic, to boot (or is it just me?) There was a fantastic live version on a 12 inch single from Common One - can't remember what was on the A side, but I wish I still had it!

What about Seascape, from Tracy Thorn's first solo record, A Distant Shore?. Evocative melancholia of the first order. Or Richmond by the Faces.

And Rothbury Hills, on Kathryn Tickell's The Northumbrian Collection evokes such a sense of place it'll make you weep.

For the more jaundiced of view, John Cooper Clark's Beasley Street and Evidently Chicken Town at least match any of Mr Weller's and Mr Bragg's in a way that is more pithy than Dave Spart-y.

PINAFORE DAYS by STACKRIDGE. Dancing crinolines, mugs and buttercups, whimsy by the dewdrop pteal-full, orchestration and production by George Martin. As (the Americans) sang: who could ask for anything more?

Ade Macrow

Went to Billy Bragg's alternative St. George's Day celebration last night - Rachel Unthank and the Winterset were fantastic - but a version of this song would have been perfect for the event:
Hear here: http://www.myspace.com/maggieholland

I've always been deeply uncomfortable with the notion of patriotism. Are there more like me?

I understand the distinction; but I have never felt proud to be English. I don't feel a warm glow in relation to my country. I live here, I was born here, and I call it home by default. If I ever miss it, then I attribute that feeling to one of the above factors, rather than to any inherent patriotic spirit.

For example, I don't watch football. Not interested. There are a few like me, but all the ones I've met will break that rule if England are playing in the World Cup: because, well, it's England, isn't it? Sorry. Not me. I don't know what it is, but I feel no pride; or really, any sense of belonging. There are places in the world where I have felt I belong but remarkably few in my own country.

Oh well.

...do the educated middle class agonise so much about whether they should have any patriotic feelings or not.
I tell a lie. There's Germany as well.

In my youth you rarely saw the cross of st george it was always the union flag in evidence. Since Euro 98 the English seem to have reclaimed their flag from the far right. I fully expect England to divorce Scotland rather than Scotland gaining independence.

Still, if England will let Scotland have her independance then I'm quite willing to let them keep Gordon Brown as a keepsake!

You can't get much closer to "ENGLAND" than the good Sgt Pepper.

Much of Julian Cope`s acid soaked mid 80`s work, which includes the cor anglais of Kate St John (sigh), evokes a pastoral village green atmos. Particularly `Lunatic and Fire Pistol` and `An Elegant Chaos`.

Much of XTC is majestically English, as you all say. You can smell the cut grass.

June's "A Quiet Eye" could be aptly described as a meditation on Englishness. Songs covered include The Gardener, A Place called England, Waltzing For Dreamers,The Writing of Tipperary, First Tme Ever I Saw Your Face, I'll Be Seeing You...it is a magnificent accomplishment and would definately fit the theme of this blog. Please as they say, check it out. Another album well worth seeking out is the follow up to this album "Rosa Mundi" where all the songs are, of course, rose themed.

"End Of The Pier" from Andy Partridge Fuzzy Warbles Volume 6 - more memories of seaside day-trips and holidays.....

Rock legs gammon garter kicking
trip week to the floor and
kiss me quick one last time

pinball plimsoll plaice and perfume,
vinegar the sweet fish
swims away from my line

what the butler saw was heaven
ice cream clam and legs eleven
what the butler saw was heaven
now the coin's dropped
it's clear
guess this is the end of the pier

you look saucy in the
Stetson beetle fringe and bingo!
we'll pretend we're newlyweds
postcards, home you went
the tide comes in
to melt our castle
built alone in sandy beds

what the butler saw was heaven
cat who got the cream in Devon
what the butler saw was heaven
now the coin's dropped
it's clear
guess this is the end of the pier

kiss me quick and squeeze me slow oh oh oh
out goes love and in comes woe woe woe

what the butler saw was heaven
ice cream clam and legs eleven
what the butler saw was heaven
now the coin's dropped
it's clear
we can go no further than here
(now I realize that I'm the souvenir)
so what the butler saw was heaven
cat who got the cream in Devon
what the butler saw was heaven
now the coin's dropped
it's clear

guess this is the end.........

Surely time for some new output from this genius

..but someone cleverer than me once said a patriot loves his country while a nationalist hates everybody elses. Sounds about right to me.

Virgina Astley's "From Gardens Where We Feel Secure" might not have any actual songs on it but it conjures up that wistful hazy summer country village in olde England better than most.

How about "Jets At Dawn" by Be Bop Deluxe? Not really about England as such, but this gets me all wobbly in a 'White Cliffs of Dover' sort of way every time:

Woke this morning the war was over
The radio was singing love songs
Saw the smiles upon the soldiers,
Coming home across the fields
The calendar said first of August
Romance and promises of summer days,
I strolled unclothed into the garden
To feel the warm sun on my face
The saving of the human race...

Jets at dawn, trail across the sky
Silver birds writing words for airmans wives
Who down below hang the washing out to dry
Frilly briefs and flying helmets in a line

Here's all you need to hear of Kevin Keegan's song "England":

It's on iTunes if you're thirsty for more.