Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief
To bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.

Text by William Shakespeare, music by Gavin Friday and Herb Macken

Machushla

Macushla! Macushla!
Your sweet voice is calling,
Calling me softly,
Again and again,
Macushla! Macushla!
I hear it in vain.
Macushla, Macushla,
Your white arms are reaching,
I feel them enfolding,
Caressing me still.
Fling them out from the darkness,
My lost love, Macushla,
Let them find me and bind me
Again, if they will.
Macushla! Macushla!
Your red lips are saying
That death is a dream,
And love is for aye,
Then awaken, Macushla,
Awake from your dreaming,
My blue-eyed Macushla,
Awaken to stay.

Words by Josephine V. Rowe
Music by Dermot MacMorrough
c. 1910, Boosey & Co., New York

Tenderness of Wolves

From Scatology, by Coil

Was all in vain? Or did you cry?
No need to ask, my tears have run dry
This is the end of my pity
I await to die
You now the living, me now the dead
To prove that you loved me
Mere words could not have said
Bitting into skin, into flesh, into me
Taking all you could
Oh, I’d still give you blood
Just to paint your lips
If you should wish them red
My desires your kiss completed
But only now I can see
The vicious joy when you took delight
Behind each kiss your poison bite
And when my all was given
And you had taken
Oh dog-like Judas
You did disappear
Was all in vain? Or did you cry?
No need to ask
You now the living, me now the dead

Blue Blue Moon

from the album No Talking, Just Heads – The Heads

Another Saturday night
And she knows where she’s goin’
To that small corner bar
On the far side of town
Folks call her Ol’ Faithful
‘Cause she’s always hangin’ aroun’
Dressed up shimmy-shammy
In her sequins and pearls

Hey, there, Moon
Blue, blue moon
I’m all alone
Blue, blue moon
Without a love of my own

A ‘Stoli’ on ice
Makes everything just right
She laughs and chit-chats
With whoever’s around
‘I’ve been there – done that -
Have you heard the one about -?’
No one ever listens
And they don’t hear the sound

Hey, there, Moon
Blue, blue moon
I’m all alone
Blue, blue moon
Without a love of my own
Just looking for a friend
Someone to dance with me
A little romance
Cheek to cheek!
Someone to hold
And dance the night away

‘Tick-tock’
Goes the barroom clock
It’s quarter past two
And the night’s wearing thin
She salutes the happy couples
Bids them all fond ‘Adieu!’
‘Barman, make mine a double!
Cinderella, here, has lost her shoe!’

Hey, there, Moon
Blue, blue moon
I’m all alone
Blue, blue moon
Without a love of my own

‘So, I’ll make believe
Someone danced with me!’
She used to sing, she used to cry
But, now
She doesn’t even try
Because she knows the stars
- Those bright & shiny stars! -
Have all fallen, fallen from the sky

The moon is blue
The moon is blue
The moon is blue
The moon is blue
The moon is blue

(G.Friday, C.Frantz, J. Harrison, T. ‘Blast’ Murray, T. Weymouth)

A Thousand Years

A sweet kiss said forget me not
when love spoke I knew no wrong
but that was once upon a dream come true
a long time ago
baby’s sick
baby’s cold
baby’s feeling blue
for what seems like a thousand years
dreams for those
who sleep at night
lovers kiss, dreams entwine
in the dark I wait at night
for your call
will you call
you never call (my name)
lying weak on my bed alone
moonlight keeps me warm
as I wait for a thousand years
???
???
???
dreams for those
who sleep at night
lovers kiss, dreams entwine
in the dark I wait at night
for your call
will you call
you never call(ed) (my name)
love is cruel
love’s a liar too
but a fool can see no wrong
so I’ll wait for a thousand years
yes I’ll wait for a thousand years

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• Video: Gavin Friday – Sonnet 40 with Gavin Bryars Ensemble
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• Nothing Like The Sun newspaper reviews

Gavin Friday with the Gavin Bryars ensemble, performing Friday’s setting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 40 at Purcell Rooms, London on July 4, 2009. Audience shot video.

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• Nothing Like The Sun, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
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“But the most charismatic moment occurs when Friday stalks on in gold jewellery and inch-high brothel-creepers to intone Sonnet 40 like a diabolical lounge entertainer.”

Lynne Walker for The Independent:

“The most extraordinary setting, however, is Gavin Friday’s take on No 40, which he intones in a kind of strangulated speech-song. While his words are often inaudible, as a piece of performance theatre it is astonishing. He swerves between Caliban and Puck and several characters in between so compellingly…”

Terry Grimley reviews Nothing like the Sun for the Birmingham Post:

Gavin Friday, who sang his own setting, scored a point by dragging Shakespeare into a pop idiom, turning the final couplet into a classic fade-out.

Read the full review.

The Bardathon blog writes:

The fourth sonnet was set by one of the chief attractions (for me) of the event- Gavin Friday, who performed the sonnet himself. Friday is an old-school friend of Bono and the rest of U2, and has performed with them on and off over the last 25 years, as well as producing his own work including a spectacular reinterpretation of ‘Peter and the Wolf’. He turned Sonnet 40 into a moody lounge number, half-singing, half-speaking the words until he reached the final couplet, for which he transferred to a falsetto as he sung over and over “Kill me with spites, kill me with spites” as he walked off the stage and the music faded away. Writing about music is something I find nearly impossible, but it made everything in me tingle.

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• Article: Nothing Like The Sun – Shakespeare for cool cats

Thirteen sonnets scarcely represent Shakespeare’s 154 poems in a Complete Works season but Nothing Like the Sun is at least a nod in the right direction. Opera North and the Royal Shakespeare Company invited Gavin Bryars to curate an evening of musical settings, the centrepiece of which is his own sequence of eight sonnets for soprano, tenor, speaker and ensemble. The first half is made up of music by five musicians, each preceded by a slightly self-conscious and not always convincing reading of their sonnet. With the intrepid James Holmes as keyboard player/conductor, however, the music hangs together better than the words.

Five diverse musical voices and a lack of narrative focus prevents any sense of flow in the first half, though not without some original expression of Shakespeare’s words. Natalie Merchant makes an evocative stab at Sonnet 73, while Mira Calix adds rustling leaves and other scrunchy natural sounds to the quirky No 130. No one chooses the sonnets allied to political events or the ones that speak about sex (No 20) or introduce an explicit erotic element (No 151), and even Nico Muhly and Antony Hegarty avoid playing with gender roles by plumping for “Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed”, conjuring an image of elusive sleep with wandering cello and tinkling piano.

Alexander Balanescu’sNyman-like textures, almost Bachian at times, wrap themselves seductively around No 43, “When most I wink”, Anna Maria Friman’s ethereal soprano tones circling above the instrumental world like a halo. Cruelly written for tenor, it leaves John Potter sounding a little vulnerable.

The most extraordinary setting, however, is Gavin Friday’s take on No 40, which he intones in a kind of strangulated speech-song. While his words are often inaudible, as a piece of performance theatre it is astonishing. He swerves between Caliban and Puck and several characters in between so compellingly that Bryars’ music pales into an atmospheric blur. Piano and cimbalom evoke the antique sound of the virginals mentioned in No 128, while the nightingale of No 102 sings high on bright clarinet. His last setting, No 64, finally brings all the performers together, but it’s a long time coming.

By Lynne Walker

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• Nothing Like the Sun – Lancaster University
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