Thirty years ago, Dick Gaughan released his defining album, 'Handful of Earth.' Gaughan's career and personal life were at something of a crossroads when this album was recorded - it's release was contemporaneous with the early, and many would contend, most divisive policies of the then recently elected Conservative Government.
'Handful of Earth,' was a call to small arms. It was Gaughan's attempt to musically articulate his frustrations and despair at what he saw was the systematic erosion and destruction of the rights of working people - the working people he so intensely emotionally identified with.
It is an album of heartbreak, but also an album of shared solidarity for a newly and increasingly lost and disenfranchised generation of young and old, men and women of every colour, creed and none, in the face of callousness, indifference and no little brutality.
It's a darkly celebratory record and is as painfully resonant and relevant today as it was on its original release.
Musicians' Union
TUC
Z Space
No comments:
Post a Comment