A Manchester & Liverpool folk sound as derived from British/USA Folk music.

11 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Folk-Rock, POP: Beatles-pop

Show all album songs: The Shark & the Crow Songs


Details:
The title song "The Shark And The Crow" is a recent song about irreconcilable differences in the Human family, at an individual, national and international level. I used my brother John's painting as a metaphor to illustrate the fact that in prehistory fish and birds were members of the same family, but are now separated by air and water, the very things that sustain human life on our planet.

"Cross in the Sky" is about the biggest desert island in the world, Australia and its itinerant workers. It was written in the early 1970's about people I met and became friends with over a period of seven years in the industrial city of Gladstone in Queensland.

"Love is the Thing" was written in the late 1960's about the Vietnam war. Forty years later a different war, same result. The cowboys are still looking for salvation down the barrel of a gun.

"Ned Kelly" is a song about Australia's Best known outlaw and Sydney Nolan, a great Australian artist, who painted a number of paintings that became known as his Kelly series which have become part of the Australian psyche. It was written as a folk song with an Irish jig but Marc's arrangement and playing gives it a sophistication that marries Nolan's paintings with the egalitarian struggle that Kelly said he was fighting for.

"The Shark Song" is a song about unrequited love and a friend of mine.

"Global Warming." The video says it all. I would like to think I was channelling Joe Hill
"Love it is our Fire." When it comes down to it nothing matters but love. All the power and riches in the world mean nothing without it, The opposite to love is suffering.

"Manchester." I grew up in Manchester UK, the world's very first industrial city and it's part of me. It shaped my view of Art, Music and Football. It's a good time song about a good time town. It used to be "A Dirty old Town" when I was a kid. I say that with respect. My family was and still is part of it, even though I am now an Australian half a world away.

"Failing Heart." Written 18 years ago. Hippie shit a friend of mine said, but Mark's arrangement changed that. Very personal about cardiomyopathy, self reassessment, love and riding the wheel of life.

"Passport To Love." We come from nowhere and return to nowhere. Or do we? We are all on our own individual trip. My apologies to the Indian gentleman for my dyslectic pronunciation of his name.

"Evilin The Football Star." I wrote for my sons twenty years ago. A children's story about the demon Mums of junior football. A cautionary tale for pushy Mothers.

The Shark and the Crow.
In reality this CD has emerged from a 40 year time warp. My style of writing and singing was established in the fifties and sixties. Between then and now, I hope I have gained wisdom along the way. But in my songs I have always aimed at reflecting life truthfully as it touches me. They are all about Love, the lack of it or the betrayal of it. I come from the dawn of the age of Aquarius. But this new sunrise shines on a dawn of greed hate and violence that is unprecedented in human history. Todays world is all about Money. When it should be about Love. I pose the question to the Christians among us? If Jesus was upset with the Money lenders when he kicked them out of the Temple. How would he feel about their counterparts in business today as their greed destroys the Planet?

Ted DeMaine
I was born in Manchester UK in 1945, ten years before Rock and Roll. Paul Robeson is the first singer I remember. I heard his version of JOE HILL pretty early on. I also heard Ewen MacColl on radio singing British Folk songs. In the middle fifties Calypso was huge and Harry Belafonte was the biggest star around. Everyone who could strum a guitar played a Calypso song and everyone knew the words to Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Of the Rock and Rollers, it was Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers that I tried to copy. But it was a guy called Lonnie Donnigan âKing of Skiffleâ who captured my imagination. He was the first British singer to have a number one in the USA with Leadbelly's Rock Island Line. By the time I was 14 years old I was fronting a skiffle band doing the Leadbelly and American folk songs Donnigan did, with Buddy Holly and Everly Brothers thrown in.

Towards the end of the fifties Rock and Roll lost its energy and became sanitized and I was drawn toward Folk music because I felt it was real and had meaning. In 1961 my family moved to Brisbane, Australia and music I was into was considered alternative but there was no alternative scene. I played if I could get an audience, but there was not much happening. I got into Dylan from his first album and had been collecting Leadbelly when I could find them. The first pop record I bought in the sixties was the Beatles. I was very impressed. These Guys were from Lancashire same as me and could really do it. But the hype was bigger than the music and the live performances were overrun by screaming teenyboppers. When Dylan came to Brisbane in 1966 I was one of the 200 people who turned up to see him at the 6000 seat Festival Hall that was packed to the rafters for the pop bands. So Its fair to say that in the middle sixties in Brisbane the alternative scene was about 200 strong. In the same year I moved up to Gladstone and over the next seven years played on and off at dances and parties around the area. My wife Johanna and myself built our own house out in the bush and it became a stopping off place on the Hippie trail that had developed up the east coast of Australia. It was at this time we decided we wanted to set up a pottery. So in 1973 we hit the Hippie trail ourselves and went to Europe to get more experience in making pots. We returned 2 years later and set up DeMaine Pottery and that's what we have done ever since, creating hand made tableware, and Johanna has become an artist of note. During this time I have continued to write poems and songs. It was my good fortune a few years ago to meet master guitarist Marc Monetti who collaborated with me on this project. The front cover art is a painting by my brother John and the back cover art was painted by my son Tobias.

Marc Monetti
Marc Monetti has been a professional musician for 40 years. He is a master Guitarist whose expertise covers Rock, Latin, Jazz, Classical and Pop. He has toured Europe, Australia, The Pacific Islands, and Asia with his own bands. He has several CDs out with his own bands and as a solo artist. He is also a record producer, sound engineer and session player who operates Flooding Studio at his home in Sherwood, Brisbane, Australia where this CD was recorded in January and February this year. He is at present working in France in all his facets as a musician, Playing Live, Touring, Recording and as a Producer.