"As the man in that lovely jazz film 'Round Midnight' said - "Your notes are fine, but where's your story?" (with any of them)
Jim Carroll"

That's quite interesting, I enjoyed all three, but the first and last most.

The first time I heard Lucy Wan was in Jim Moray's version: Jim Moray And maybe it's because you don't often hear songs about incest and sibling murder in a pop/hip-hop musical context, but I was genuinely rivited by the story. The taboo, the violence, the love and distress, the flight into the unknown. The lack of conclusion. Maybe because the contemporary context counterpoints a story which comes from so long ago. And yet through this, gives it life blood, and immediacy. I like those no-doubt synthesised anxious rising pipes over the rap.

I've heard a few of Sedayne's pieces since I've been here. And it's a bit like Lime Pickle for me (Lime Pickle like Stout or Danish Blue, being something that I had to aquire a taste for.) This piece however, which he posted up on another thread yesterday, is by far the most 'living story' version of this song I've heard. I've heard a few 'Gently Johnny's' (being a bit of a fan of the Wicker Man, and having been on the quest for so-called 'Pagan' songs lately) but I've not heard the real and intimate story of seduction and foreplay in the lyrics as sucessfully expressed in any other (it's got a nice wedge of Whitman in the middle too): Gently Johnny

In a way I think I'm very fortunate, coming as I do to traditional song, with completely virginal ears - and a personal curiosity for experiencing unfamiliar things, which don't conform to what I might expect to enjoy. Does a story have to be told in a way that we are familiar with, to impress itself upon our imaginations or our responsive senses? I probably don't know enough about traditional song or storytelling to judge, but I supsect that my 'not knowing' is itself a blessing of sorts.