Cycling home from Camden Town I crossed the Millennium Bridge and, looking back, saw St Pauls and the Thames shimmering. So I snapped this, a magical London summer night.
It took a while but the summer has finally settled over London – and, yes, the UK (I know, us residents of the Smoke can be guilty of thinking little exists outside zone 6). On Tuesday temperatures reached 32 and, when you live in a built-up area with heavy traffic, it feels hotter, stickier: I caught up with a Catalan friend in Camberwell and she said London felt as humid as Barcelona. One of the stickiest hour’s of my life was spent in Barcelona waiting for the last train from Sants station back to Villassar de mar (an hour up the coast). Which is to say, that’s hot.
Remember how torrential downpours and plunging temperatures welcomed the start of July? Having been camping then I can’t forget. Back then we huddled in doors (or, in my case, in tent), now we are on the streets, filling parks, people everywhere, everywhere people. Buses start to swelter, the tube can resemble a sauna… I’m fortunate I work from home so don’t have to experience (endure) such daily.
Which begs the question: does the sudden arrival of heat at the end of July account for the outbreaks of extreme violence? As I made my dinner this evening the news reported that, in a repeat of yesterday’s riots in Southport, far right thugs were attacking riot police outside Downing Street. The heat surely only encourages them to drink more beer, conspirashit posts by their leaders, little Hitlers’ Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farrage, being what fires up these banal boneheads to engage in carnage. Still, acts of violence – domestic and on the street – do rise with the temps. Is the Lovin’ Spoonful’s Summer In The City still the most accurate encapsulation of how summer can make urban existence ever more tense?
I chose this video because whoever edited it together really captured the mix of unease and hunger for good times that is part and parcel of summer.
Most summer songs tend to celebrate how fun summer is. Obviously, they’re created to get on pop radio and thus expected to compliment the marketing of summer – Sly & the Family Stone’s Hot Fun In The Summertime being an example of talented people sounding as enamoured of summer as of doing laundry. While DJ Jazzy Jeff & Will Smith’s Summertime is oddly joyless in delivery – you sense the duo were instructed to write a summer rap. Admittedly, Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime does sound jolly yet its lyrics often verge on chauvinistic idiocy – I pity the women who found MJ leader Ray Dorset chasing them.
Summer Breeze is a more engaging summer anthem: both the Seals & Croft soft rock original and, my preference, the Isley Brothers more hard-edged soul rock version. I’m unsure what “the jasmine in my mind” is but it sounds good so I’d like to try some.
This is the Isleys’ performing it live on Soul Train – they insisted! – and its stunning. Ernie Isley plays a beautiful, blues-flavoured guitar solo.
While Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves The Sunshine does sound like an anthem that came out of the sheer joy of summer. Which appears to be the case, Roy told The Guardian “It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day and I just got this phrase in my head: ‘Everybody loves the sunshine.’ I started singing: ‘Feel what I feel, when I feel what I feel, what I’m feeling.’ Then I started thinking about summer imagery: ‘Folks get down in the sunshine, folks get brown in the sunshine, just bees and things and flowers.’ It was so spontaneous. It felt wonderful. And I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound: a mix of vibraphone, piano and a synthesizer. We recorded it at night, so the sun was down, but the vibe in the studio was really nice. Pure vibes. I sang it with Debbie Darby, who we called Chicas because she was a fine chick, a good-looking girl who sang it so beautifully.”
I love this tune, just wish Roy had worked a bit harder on the line “Folks get down in the sunshine, folks get brown in the sunshine, just bees and things and flowers” – “bees and things and flowers”? Roy, aren’t there dozens of examples that could have replaced “things”? Honestly, it annoys me every time I hear this tune, pedant that I am.
Here’s Roy and band with a song that sounds as if it was recorded yesterday – I guess ‘70s jazz funk does underly a lot of contemporary music.
Of course, the classic summer song is the Gershwins’ Summertime from Porgy & Bess. So many great singers have recorded this and I enjoy listening to most of them: the melody has a blues strain that ensures everyone from Billie Holiday through Esther Phillips and Sam Cooke to The Zombies and Janis Joplin has made a good go of it. My favourite version? Difficult. Both Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan sing it superbly. Ella’s version where she shares the song with Louis Armstrong is one of those spine tingling recordings that just washes over me like a welcome shower of warm rain. A perfect summer song, then.
Just luxuriate in this performance as two of popular music’s finest singers caress every word – so, so good.
In London the nicest time of day now is often the evening: temperatures drop and the city takes on a glow, almost an aura. At least for this cyclist, its seems to. One of my favourite places in south east London is Telegraph Hill, a highpoint in Nunhead, where people gather to drink and picnic and watch the sun set across the city, monuments to mammon like the Cheese Grater and the Walkie Talkie glow a deep red before plunging into darkness. Beautiful if – to my mind – somewhat ominous in an eerie, apocalyptic-climate change way. So its Lana Del Rey’s Summertime Sadness that could soundtrack my mood as I watch night settle over the city in summer.
Nice, eh? Lana’s a bit of a one-tune pony – but its a good tune!
Wishing all my readers a summer full of joy.
Sunset over Babylon - the view from Telegraph Hill.
Nice list Garth. A couple more from me.
I know it's totally missing the point of the song, but LDN by Lily Allen still evokes glorious summer days in the the capital for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmYT79tPvLg
And, from a similar era, is the wonderful 'Days Like This' by underrated (and handsome) British soul singer Sean Escoffery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSZtqChhNZg
Sorry for the poor video quality for both. It makes the early 2000s look like the ancient past!
Chris
By far my favorite version of Summer Breeze. Pure gold performance. The Isleys nail it!
And, another nudge here to keep a playlist going on Spotify! So much easier to enjoy than YouTube!
Thanks, G!