Human Shields, Bloomsday 2013

My band Human Shields played a set at the Bloomsday party at the English Department of the University of Basel last night, organized by the wondrous Michelle Witen, Ph. D.

Our setlist:

The Morning after the Night Before

Better Never Than Late

Alisa's Bridge

The Bloom is on the Rye (lyrics Edward Fitzball, music Sir Henry Bishop)

Bright Cap and Streamers (lyrics James Joyce, music Andrew Shields)

Long Enough

1952 Vincent Black Lightning (Richard Thompson)

Land without Nightingales

Rumpus

We framed the songs with passages from Ulysses:

“Doublebasses helpless, gashes in their sides, musical duets, mandoline and guitar”

The Morning after the Night Before

“Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattlemarket, cocks, hens don't crow, snakes hissss. There's music everywhere”

Better Never Than Late

“they all write about some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont find many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining so beautifully coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the lighthouse at Europa point the guitar that fellow played was so expressive will I ever go back there again”

Alisa's Bridge

“—Leopoldo or the Bloom is on the Rye, Lenehan said.”

The Bloom is on the Rye

Bright Cap and Streamers

“It was like the paintings that man used to do on the pavement with all the coloured chalks and such a pity too leaving them there to be all blotted out, the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth and to hear the music like that and the perfume of those incense they burned in the church like a kind of waft.”

Long Enough

1952 Vincent Black Lightning

“The human voice, two tiny silky chords, wonderful, more than all others.”

Land without nightingales

“Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, Andrew (Pisser) Burke"

“The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their HUMAN shields.”

Rumpus

"Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us then?"