That's wonderful!! But I think it fits even better to London's Calling myself!

A musician? LOL! I think Napper would disagree (only kidding, Tom)! I write and sing unaccompanied as well as with a variety of instruments, and yes I guess it's true that RR would be much easier to do nude. In fact I've just tried it and it is. It certainly solves a lot of the timing problems, but it doesn't fix everything. 'Such and such' still seems too prominent, and I'm still not sure that such a beautiful sad tune can ever really convey the "wryly self-mocking" tone (as McGrath so astutely put it).

Peersonally, I feel the poem passes through a number of emotions, though it's hard to judge having heard the song many times before I read the words as they were laid out on the page (and that makes a big difference as any poet will tell you). The tune now informs my reading of the poem, so it's hard to grasp that Kavanagh was really driving at.

I suspect the local Dublin references are almost in-jokes, or geographical puns perhaps, so maybe there's some dry humour in poem, which is lost in the sad but quite opulent setting, leaving these references sounding merely perplexing.

I don't have any problem with people changing words or tunes (as long as it's with permission if the writer's still alive). I do it all the time myself, in fact I think RR needs more drastic revision than you commonly hear to have real integrity as a song.

I guess I say all this because I work hard to expunge any confusion from my own songs - while leaving room for the listener's imagination to flower. I require every syllable to count in the effect (even if I'm being deliberatly obscure and poetic), and, because I feel I'm talking to the audience when I sing, I also don't want to seem to be talking nonsense (well, not in a serious song anyway) to people who've kindly come out to see me.

When I sing Raglan Road there are some lines that just don't make sense to me - so how can I convey the sense of them to an audience?

If a lyric is completely free, abstract, in blank verse - as some are, that would be fine. But RR is quite specific and literal some of the time, but very non-specific and elliptical at others. It's in this disconnect that my problems lie. I just don't think many songwriters would deliberatly set out to give the listener this many hurdles to jump over. Whereas a poet would, and should.

But as say, none of this really matters if it moves you personally (as it obviously does to most), and I understand Kavanagh was delighted with the setting, so this is really just academic blather from an inveterate devils advocate like me!

Tom

PS, I'm fascinated by the craft of songwriting, and it's my job too. If anyone happens to be interested, this is a download of the booklet that was serialised in Living Tradition magazine last year. (It's free)