Round Three Redux? Round Five-and-three-quarters? In any case, Welsh fans will be biting their nails, or any other available substance, and wondering if France can win with a bonus point and 21 points to deprive them of the title.
Scotland will no doubt have plenty to say about this, as a win with a six-point points advantage will put them second on the table (giving them their best finish in the Six Nations), supposing France don’t score a LBP.
Sadly, both teams can finish above Ireland. Maybe we should just cancel this match.
And maybe we should support France to wind up the OH.
Onna telly this week
Friday 26th March
| Gloucester v Exeter | 17:30 | BT Sport 3 |
| France v Scotland | 20:00 | BBC1 |
Saturday 27th March
| Glasgow v Treviso | 13:45 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Bristol v Harlequins | 14:00 | BT Sport 1 |
| London Irish v Bath | 15:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Worcester v Northampton | 15:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Wasps v Sale | 16:30 | BT Sport1 |
| Leinster v Munster | 17:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
Sunday 28th March
| Dragons v Edinburgh | 14:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Leicester v Newcastle | 15:00 | BT Sport 1 |
Ovally Balls 
I’ve just found a recipe for garlic wine. Not sure this is what I needed for my wild garlic but I’ll run this past Mrs Craigs first.
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Chimpie – when we had chooks I used to bbq chicken wings in the garden and we’d eat them on a blanket. I think one of my kids (let’s just blame them) dropped a half eaten wing and eventually my flock had developed a taste for bbq brethren.
They became very aggressive in their pursuit of bbq wings; to the point where it was impossible to have a wing picnic in the garden without being harassed by ravenous birds.
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Hens LOVE eating:
snakes
snakes eggs
mice, alive
mice, dead
dead or poorly hens
corn
slow worms]
fast worms
figs
beetle grubs
etc…………………list no trending towards more wholesome things
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no = now…………doh!
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“Whatever happened to Glenn Bryce?” was a question asked by nobody. The answer seems to be that he’s living in West Beach and playing for a Pro-Pleasing MLR side, after being screwed around by the SRU.
*WARNING* This article contains pictures of an Australian rugby player in his budgies….
https://www.theoffsideline.com/whats-eating-glenn-bryce/?fbclid=IwAR2MFZD2gsh0sIlt2hDp9wrGflnZFxeNssN1vf5FEwT04svyvxPavgUfw-8
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@slade
My Dad once witnessed someone picking through the remnants of a buffet to get food for her chickens, but discarding any meat on the grounds they were vegetarian. My old fella said “so they don’t eat worms, do they?” to which the chicken owner looked very confused.
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I just looked at the fixture list for the w/end; there’s some cracking match-ups to look forward to:
https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/scores-fixtures/2021-04-10
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well…..if Exeter make £2.3m loss, goodness knows what some others have incurred
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Slade – one of our hens grazed her arse and the others smelt blood and promptly pecked her to feck. She was fine but we took her to the vet and he told us to spray her with this stuff that smelt like oregano. They don’t like pecking that apparently.
I spent a few weeks running around my garden every morning chasing after a hen trying to spray her arse with an aerosol can of pizza spray (to the amusement of my family).
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Sladey, a fair bit of their income comes from renting out the facilities at Sandy Park for corporate events, which has obviously going to have taken a kicking in the last year. Plus, wage bill must’ve gone up a bit by signing Gray and Hogg.
The others, though, are probably in a worse state.
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Merry Clayton
What a story! – I must listen to her work
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/apr/08/gimme-shelter-left-a-dark-taste-in-my-mouth-merry-clayton
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@slade
Her own version of Gimme Shelter is better than the original. Been listening to her for years – she’s great.
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“Her own version of Gimme Shelter is better than the original”
it’s good, no doubt and she brings “The Church” to it, but “better than the original” is a big statement
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Agree with Ticht. Her part in the original does raise the old goosebumps.
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Just listened to both versions for comparison and I’m not sure you can compare them: they’re fundamentally different other than the lyrics. Love them both, possibly tilting ever so slightly to the Merry Clayton version but that’s possibly because it’s bloody good and new to me.
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Grand Funk Railroad do it justice too, as do Paul Brady and the Forest Rangers. All four versions are quite distinct in style and all four damned good! Kudos to a great song that can be interpreted in different ways without detracting from the original.
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Heresy!
There are few recordings that are as good as the original. Off the top of my head:
– Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah. His Lilac Wine is also excellent.
– Bowie’s Wild is the Wind.
– Ike & Tina’s Proud Mary (I’d argue that one’s better).
– And, just to take the tone down a bit, Billy Idol’s Mony Mony.
– And finally, Richard Thompson’s Oops I Did It Again, which is obviously far, far superior to the original.
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Oh, and of course Bob Dylan’s songs are exempt from the heresy rule. Practically everyone does them better than Bob. Joe Cocker a stellar stand-out (particular favourite: Just Like a Woman), as well as Bryan Ferry (Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright).
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Dylan’s in a curious category of his own: he’s a bloody fantastic songwriter, but not really a performer. However, some of his songs can’t be bettered by others: Blowin’ In the Wind, Like a Rolling Stone, and Positively Fourth Street.
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Might add Dark Eyes to that, but the only person I’ve heard covering it is Joan Baez, and I’m not really a fan.
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The Judy Collins version of Dark Eyes is gorgeous.
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I’ll give it a listen, cheers, TomP! But not tonight; off to bed.
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As I recall as a diehard Leonard fan, I was one of the few to buy his ‘Various Positions’ LP when it was first released. Hallelujah probably the least interesting track on it, and sounded like filler when compared to ‘If it be your Will’. Jeff Buckley gave the song wings and the rest is history, as they say.
THE standout cover for me is This Mortal Coil’s version of Jeff’s dad’s ‘Song to the Siren’. I remember seeing it live on late night tv and it skewed my musical tastes in quite a different direction after that one listen. We may have been here before but here is the live version that knocked my socks off back in those days.
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Stevie Wonder’s version of “We can work it out” is a great song.
Incognito’s version of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t you worry ’bout a thing” is also as good as the original.
And today I heard a really good live Fleetwood Mac version of the Beach Boys’ “Farmer’s Daughter”
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Don’t want to hear Bryan Ferry doing anything to Dylan songs thanks.
Favourite Hallelujah was John Cale on Jools Holland a long time ago.
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Gimme Shelter is going to lose something without the guitar interplay that is the Stones at their finest.
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Any fool knows that the greatest Dylan cover is Hendrix All Along the Watchtower. The original is still good too though.
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OT is of course right about that chap in Bridlington’s version of Dancing in the Dark.
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Neil Young is no Johnny Cash
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As above I’ll doubtless be repeating myself here, but Toots and the Maytals Take Me Home Country Roads.
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Absolutely loads of old ska/reggae songs are covers be that British covers of Jamaican songs, Jamaican acts covering each others’ stuff or covers of soul songs etc.
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“”What’s eating Glenn Bryce?”
A chicken I would imagine.
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Dylan is actually a great performer of his own work (at least on records), mainly because of his phrasing/timing. This is where a lot of other ‘better’ singers bugger them up. Obviously for the most part he had some great musicians playing on his records too.
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@OT – Johnny Cash was at least getting old which Neil Young wasn’t.
I really like Cash’s story-telling version of The Mercy Seat from one of those albums which does change the feel of the song considerably though the original is pretty special too and I wouldn’t really want to argue that one was ‘better’ than the other. Perfect subject matter for Cash of course.
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A T-shirt The Eldest was given with C’est la Vie written on it lead me (and her) to this the other day. Not going to claim it’s better than the original, but I like it a lot.
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I might pick this version to be honest.
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Youtube offers up Springsteen doing it too which is quite good fun, but of course his best cover is an inferior version of Jersey Girl (can it really be a cover? Yes it can!) so that’s too bad.
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Best Buckley song for me. Get mildly irritated by it being usurped by an overwrought if beautiful cover of a Cohen song done better by John Cale.
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I think if I want non-Bob Don’t Think Twice then I’ll go for this one. Bob still has the edge in the nastiness/humour coming through in a beautiful song, but John Martyn’s guitar playing is always wonderful.
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Also better than Ferry. To be honest if I have to watch Ferry as well as listen to him then I’d prefer my brother singing it with me singing along out of tune pissed in the middle of the night, but there we are.
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The version of All Along the Watchtower with The Band on Before the Flood is great. Of course it’s essentially Bob and his pals playing it a la Hendrix, but it’s perhaps more coherent. The Band of course do quite a few great Dylan ‘covers’, but it’s not clear whether they can really be counted.
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CMW, I deduce you are not a Bryan Ferry fan. He did do a whole album of Dylan covers, but I couldn’t listen to that. (As you say, Dylan’s sarcasm usually comes through best when performed by himself.) But the studio version of Don’t Think Twice is really lovely; the arrangement sounds like running water.
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Nanci Griffiths’ Boots of Spanish Leather.
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There are some songs I just cannot imagine without Bawb’s voice/delivery – the whole of Blood on the Tracks are examples
In fact I think any reworking has to be considered differently, though I think that has already been said.
I really like the Bawb original of Spanish Boots, this is probably my favourite, and not a mandolin in sight
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John Cale’s version of LCD Soundsystem’s All My Friends is a cracker.
I like The Byrds version of You Ain’t Going Nowhere. Also, R.E.M do a shambolic version with Billy Bragg on the Bingo Handjob concert album, which is fun.
A cover that’s lovely is Hem’s version of R.E.M’s So. Central Rain.
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I got fed u[p of people talking about having their second lockdown birthday so I decided to have one of my own on Wednesday.
My first surprise was my back going into spasm, so ibuprofen and hot water bottles have been my friends for two days. I’ve had some time to watch filums etc, I saw a good one on the history of Blue Note records which I’ve had recorded for yonks.
I watched a ridiculous four hour super hero thing, it was watchable nonsense.
I also had time to ponder Edinburgh Rugby. It’s a very good thing that Chimpie pointed out that the game away to Racing was cancelled because I think that even an international pack like Embra’s could well have been blown away. Schoeman isn’t an international yet, but he will be and even though the scrum might have matched their illustrious Parisian opponents, I would fear for them in the power stakes around the park.
Big Bill Mata would walk into the Scotland team, if not almost every other international side, but even he might have a very subdued afternoon.
Had the game been played Finn would have made a mockery of Edinburgh’s defence, such might have been the dominance of his forwards in the collisions, so the fact he was banned was neither here nor there, really.
Phew, I’m glad we didn’t have to watch that.
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You Ain’t Going Nowhere is a bit of a cheat, it counts as a Byrds song, sort of, in my book, even though Dylan wrote it
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I am somewhat perplexed. ticht at how, with largely the same squad, embra have gone from pro-woo play offs to mince-formed basement botherers inna short period of time.
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I know there’s a second row injury crisis and options at 10 are a bit thin but the pack shouldn’t be getting routinely spanked given the players available.
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Chimpie, I think it’s the depth, or lack of it. The internationals have only played a handful of games for us, Bill was playing with Fiji in November and then was injured, Kunavula (who is feckin awesome) has been crocked most of the year.
We’ve had to do with bairns really, and it will serve us well in the long term, I hope.
That all applies to the pack, it unjustifiable that Nathan Chamberlain can sit as an unused sub whilst van der Walt plays every minute for something like nine games on the trot. Our centres are what they are, nothing special, but Blain looks promising, as does Currie. Hoyland has been good since his recovery.
It wasn’t the best timing for Kinghorn’s form to fall off a cliff.
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