SOUL SURMISE

STOCKI'S BOB DYLAN COVERS FOR HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY

A HARD RAINS A-GONNA FALL - BRYAN FERRY

(from These Foolish Things)

 

My introduction to Dylan as a 12 year old. The lyrics and imagery grabbed my attention in a world of Slade and T.Rex.

 

BLOWING IN THE WIND - NEIL YOUNG

(from Weld)

 

An electrified, rocked up and very loud version of an acoustic protest song.

 

IT’S ALL OVER NOW BABY BLUE - THEM

(from Them Again)

 

A Belfast cover of the song whose title is an almost over used saying in our house (in an Indian accent - great story!).

 

GO AWAY LITTLE BOY - LONE JUSTICE

(from This World Is Not my Home)

 

Love this cow-punk cover when Maria McKee was in her prime. Bob gave Lone Justice this unrecorded song and they left it off their album and put it on the b-side. Very Maria!

 

CHANGING OF THE GUARD - PATTI SMITH

(from Twelve)

 

Great that this song gets a good over. Even better that it is Patti Smith. 

 

JUST LIKE A WOMAN - NINA SIMONE

(from Let It Be Me)

 

Simone put her own touch on everything and oh my she does it good on Just Like A Woman.

 

SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE - DIANA KRALL

(from Chimes Of Freedom; The Songs Of Bob Dylan)

 

Wee jazzy piano yearning version of this great song from a great album…

 

SHELTER FROM THE STORM - CASSANDRA WILSON -

(from Belly Of The Sun)

 

Staying Jazzy. Staying on Blood On The Tracks. Hushed.

 

 

POLITICAL WORLD - THE CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS

(from The Chimes Of Freedom; The Songs Of Bob Dylan)

 

Old time string version with Rhiannon Giddens awesome voice

 

LICENCE TO KILL - ELVIS COSTELLO

(from Chimes Of Freedom; The Songs Of Bob Dylan)

 

Elvis keeps it political with Costello like urgency.

 

EVERYTHING IS BROKEN - SHERYL CROW (feat JASON ISBELL)

(from Threads)

 

Sheryl collaborates with the wonderful Jason Isbell to rock the best out of this song of fallen humanity.

 

I BELIEVE IN YOU - SINEAD O’CONNOR

(from BOB DYLAN; THE 30th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION)

 

Originally on the first “Christian” record. Sinead adds that defiance that only she can.

 

GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY - POP STAPLES

(from Don’t Lose This)

 

So many choices with this one. Hard to beat Pops as he gospels up the big song from Slow Train Coming live.

 

PRESSING ON - GLEN HANSARD

(A Tribute to Bob Dylan In The 80s: Vol 1)

 

Glen seems to get the spiritual pilgrimage of this one.

 

I”VE MADE UP MY MIND TO GIVE MYSELF TO YOU - COWBOY JUNKIES

(from Dylan… Revisted - Uncut June 2021)

 

From the very latest Bob record, Cowboy Junkies who have covered a few do a stunning job.

 

EVERY GRAIN OF SAND - EMMYLOU HARRIS

(from Wrecking Ball)

 

Maybe my favourite Bob lyric. It is a hymn. It is good in Coronavirus times.

 

 

DEATH IS NOT THE END - NICK CAVE

(from Murder Ballads)

 

No man more perfect than Nick Cave to cover this one. 

 

THINGS HAVE CHANGED - CHRIS TAYLOR

(from Down a Dead End Street - Tribute To Bob Dylan)

 

From my favourite ever Dylan covers record. Chris’s voice always feels perfect for all Dylan’s imperfections.

 

BLIND WILLIE MCTELL - CHRISSIE HYNDE

(from Standing In The Doorway; Chrissie Sings Bob Dylan)

 

From Chrissie’s album of Bob’s songs, one that Bob didn’t include on an album that needs included. 

 

TRYING TO GET TO HEAVEN - LUCINDA WILLIAMS

(from Bob’s Back Pages: A Night Of Bob Dylan)

 

Lucinda’s drawl fits the Dylan phraseology perfectly… and isn’t this all our aims…

PERSONAL SURMISE ON SERGIO AGUERO

In the summer of 2011 we were holidaying in Spain. One evening we found ourselves in the little town square of Los Montesinos for an evening meal. The waiter was a young Englishman who had lived in Spain for some years. We got talking football, that universal language. I had read something on the internet that day about Manchester City buying some guy called Aguero. 

I asked the waiter who would have seen Aguero playing for Atletico Madrid what he thought of him. He was not at all happy. He was a United fan and thought that Aguero was going to be a hit. He waxed lyrical about him and I have to say that I went back to our house that night quite encouraged about this guy Aguero.

A decade later and Sergio Aguero is an all time footballing hero of mine, up there with Colin Bell, Johan Cruyff, George Best and more recently Vincent Kompany, Yaya Toure and David Silva.

I remember Aguero’s first game. He came off the bench with 30 minutes left and scored twice and added an assist. It seems fitting that in his last game, this weekend against Everton, that he also came off the bench with around the same half hour remaining and scored twice. That sent City fans back at the Etihad for the first time in a while, there to cheer a 5th Premier League Trophy presentation in Aguero’s ten years. An Aguero double. What a bonus. It was perfectly scripted and deeply emotional.

In a career bookended by those two substitute appearances Sergio Aguero scored more Premier League goals than any other player has ever done for one club. He was a goal machine.

For me his brilliance was his ability to score half chances and goals out of nothing. You felt that if the midfielders, wingers or overlapping full backs could get the ball anywhere near him in the penalty area that he could do magic things.

He had this awesome balance, could swivel and swing. He could conjure volleys from ridiculous angles, his pièce de résistance. In seven of his ten seasons he scored 28 goals or more. When you have a player who can create something from nothing or finish what is not even a half chance you can go far. City did.

Add to the ability the humility and sense of the collective and you have an even better player. Sergio never seemed selfish, always seemed loved by his team mates and even in a final season when he could have been complaining about not getting games he simply got on with and was ready when he was needed. Phil Foden speaks about how much he has learned from Aguero. Mentor too!

His last season hasn't been his best. In his early 30s Sergio seemed more prone to injuries but worse for him he seems to take longer to get back to fitness after an injury. This must have caused some doubt in Pep's mind about how much he could depend on Aguero at this stage.

The English game is the most demanding. He might have a couple of good years left in Spain. Barcelona! When Messi didn't join him at City last season I thought it might go the other way round. Let us hope we don't meet in the Champions League next spring!

Of course the reason he will always have legendary status at City is that moment that is perhaps the most iconic memory in the English game. City needing a goal with less than two minutes of injury time left in the last game of the season to over haul Manchester United already winners at Sunderland. Somehow Mario Balotelli lying on the ground touches the ball to Aguero on the edge of the box. Aguero takes it past a QPR defender, stays on his feet and smashes it into the back of the net. City have won their first title in 44 years.

The commentator’s AGUEROOOOOOOOOO is minted. As memorable as “They think it’s all over, it is now” in the 1966 World Cup Final. When you hear the word you see Aguero running away, shirt off, swinging it like a windmill, before the entire team fall on top of him.

I’ll never forget where I was. I had left disconsolate, disbelieving depressed as City trailed 2-1 with a minute left of normal time. That most iconic moment in my team’s history and I was in my back garden sulking.

BUT… I have watched that goal more times than any other and every time I do I burst into tears. Every single time.

Yet that was only one goal. There have been 260 other goals in all competitions - volleys, thunderbolts, headers, tap ins. Everyone a moment of joy for supporters bereft of joy for almost 40 years before he arrived. 

I am sure as he has been a blessing to us, he has been a curse to the red side of Manchester. I wonder about my waiter in Spain. He knew his football. He knew the quality of this this 23 year old Argentinian who was heading to City. The rest is history. 

Thank you so much Sergio Aguero for writing that history with your genius. We love you. We will miss you. May you keep on scoring as long as it is not against us!

DISCIPLESHIP - LIKE GOLF RULES

My body shuddered. My mouth was agape. My eyes like saucers. I was shocked.

I was watching the golf on TV. It is the USPGA this weekend, from Kiawah Island in South Carolina. For some reason there is a local rule that allows players to ground their club in sand. 

Since I started playing golf as a six year old it has been drummed into me by my father that you cannot touch the sand in the bunker. That means you cannot ground your sand wedge behind the ball. You cannot touch the sand in any way. In fact there is a mythical old tricks of dropping 50p in the bunker. When your opponent picked it up you could claim penalty shots against them!

So, I am watching the now second Major of the year and this guy takes two practice swings in the bunker, lifting sand with each swing. It was like my inbuilt mother board exploded, not able to compute what I was watching. It was like my body gave a little jump.

Apparently it is unique to the Kiawah Island course. Some sandy areas are not defined as bunkers, therefore not hazards, therefore you can build sand castles if you like!

It took me by surprised, how shaken I was. I almost didn’t breathe until the commentator explained.

So, I thought, what would be more crucial things for me to shudder at? My life had obviously been so wired to the rules of golf, even though I haven’t played it for some twenty years, to set off alarm bells when someone did something outside those rules. The ways of golf were so deeply ingrained. 

Christian Discipleship is about a way of life being deeply ingrained. My mind scanned the pages of the Scriptures and settled at Colossians 3:16. “Let the word of God dwell in you richly…” Like those rules of golf indwelling, long after I needed them, the reaction I had needs to be replicated in my spiritual life.

When I see in the world, or maybe more crucially in myself injustice, racism, sectarianism, greed, selfishness, abuse of power, arrogance… my body needs that shudder, that mouth wide open, those eyes wide open. 

May it be so. 

PENTECOST SUNDAY 2021 IN FITZROY

Pentecost Sunday in Fitzroy! It will all be about TWO songs and TWO truths about The Holy Spirit. 

Pentecost UPROOTS and ROUNDS us. These are not contradictions. Last year we looked at Pentecost as a bonfire in a hurricane. It is a powerful force that sends Jesus followers  into the world to do things they couldn't have imagined weeks before. It UPROOTS their ways of life to live an entirely different way.

The Lectionary readings this week though are from John 15 and 16. John records Jesus talking a lot about The Holy Spirit in the Farewell Discourses. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit a Paraclete - a helper, comforter, teacher, counsellor. This is the Holy Spirit GROUNDS us, being with us to lean on when we're not strong.

The online service (going live at 11am) will feature the two songs and a prayer for the Middle East.

The live service in Fitzroy will add some communal songs, sung behind masks, but sung! 

BEWARE OF THE THEOLOGIST

Beware of the theologist

Like the racist

He only sees one colour of truth

Dismisses difference as evil and lies

Treats others like trash

And belittles as he walks away.

 

The theologist knows exactly

He interprets Scripture perfectly

He is certain of what God is doing

God is only doing it through him

And those like him

Even the slightest deviation from the theologist's infallibility

Will negate everything you believe

And question if you are saved at all

The theologist makes those judgements

He avoids relationships and distances himself

And he is always a he. 

 

Beware of the Theologist

Like the sectarian 

He will exclude you from his gatherings

He will bully you

He will dehumanise you

He will put a BUT in everything he says about you

And make you feel as small and wrong and unloved as he can.

 

Beware of the Theologist

And…

Beware of the Theologist within my own soul.

 

Reading Eugene Peterson's biography A Burning In My Bones expressed my experience of theological sectarianism. Eugene detested it. Even in the same denomination he knew theological sectarianism.

I have been hurt by it, shunned by it, damaged by it and live in the omnipresent expectation of being under its dark opinion.

So with Jesus " I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,²¹ that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.