Firstly, the rationale of using a “reactor version” of a song

With a music video or three on a blog … adding a reactor to one side can multiply the dynamics going on, provided:

• the song itself has enough going for it from its time, is a classic of its genre, if the acoustics and vision are good and so on … Sultans of Swing, House of the Rising Sun, Righteous Bros all fit the bill as known-knowns;

• the reactor is precisely the right person for that genre, for that type of thing, is not full of BS for the first two minutes, e.g. lacks ego, is generally knowledgeable, cares, is open to something not his/her era (all three below are generations younger) … and so it goes on;

• there’s at least some audience for the songs in 2025. For example, most here would maybe not care for Joe Cocker, his mannerisms, his voice … but a dozen maybe do realise it’s of our era, it was our culture of the time, our radio … and had a murky backstory;

• there are other dynamics going on as well as just song and reactor … maybe the reactors themselves bring a whole different human element into it … together with their own backstories … together with some difficult questions … that’s why these three very responsive and/or unusual girls below.

Why not boys for such a job? Wasted, I’m afraid. Give the boys tech-proficient songs they can analyse to the nth degree and they’re on clover … but not with Joe Cocker’s gravelly power and passion … that needed someone like Stacey (third number), who noted that Joe Cocker (initials JC by the way) “seemed possessed by the music” 13m 05s, then 14m 57s … he didn’t just rattle it off. Almost complicit you might say.

And in the second song, a very vulnerable seeming girl opens her vlog with discordant metal noise … quite out of keeping with her nature it would seem … Stacey’s word “possessed” springs to mind. I went looking in youtube about her backstory and at one point, she wrote of “returning to her family”, which suggests she was drawn away. Shan’t look further down that rabbithole.

About the Beatles song itself which Cocker sings, Paul McCartney himself was all for this “good northern lad” from Sheffield.

And after the song ends, she reads further about it, something to do with some Caesar or other, or some Section or other, whatever that means (for some reason, Huntingdon sprang to my mind and the notion of possession again).

A few Xers pointed out, about the Huntingdon perps, that one of the killers may well have been a yardy:

… but it sounded more like a “prison conversion”:

Plus Steve’s comment here:

“Seems Rupert is in agreement with you, James: ‘The British State Is Complicit.’”

The third song below brings in yet another dynamic … the backing singers are elevated far more … they’re almost co-leads at times … almost … they ask him questions in some sort of catechism, not unlike sirens, which he answers … everyone giving his/her all … and then that bloodcurdling scream from the “good northern lad”.

Essentially, I’m saying that there’s no way we’d have seen any of the above without these reactors to one side. Add to that those two curious girls (tracks one and two) … what a contrast. The first instantly possessed by the sound, voodoo like … the second typical western would-be good girl, wanting to analyse, unable to. Fragments, bits and pieces, no? No coherent whole backstory.

Throw in here that the second kid reminds me of Carrie, plus the Tuesday reference is to Tuesday Weld, who in turn was on with Don McLean, who’d written that song about 1959, plus she was inhabiting Chateau Marmaunt at one time … look that one up. Plus in that second song, note the bass guitar inverted, turned on its head. Plus more snippets coming next post.

Juss sayin’ like.

The reactors: Stacey’s one of my regular visits, always an intelligent assessment. The other two are new to me. The first girl comes up again in Mon 6 on a different topic, not music.