Three Of The Best for the Year of the Horse

In order to celebrate Chinese New Year, here are a trio of songs from my music collection with an equine theme.

First up... the song that first brought Irish band The Thrills to my attention. While it was the West Coast inspired Big Sur that convinced me to buy their debut album So Much For The City... it was One Horse Town that made them jump out of the radio for me ten years ago. Not to be confused with the Elton John song of the same name, The Thrills' One Horse Town manages to tell the story of feeling trapped by your surrounding while bristling with youthful enthusiasm...It's a coming of age breakaway song - should such a genre ever be created




In this next video while I revere Roddy Frame for his lyrical skill, on this track he shows off his technical ability as a guitarist. Spanish Horses features on the 1993 album Dreamland, which I recall as not being much of a success, but which in fact reached a creditable No 21 in the charts according to Wikipedia. Anyhow - even though I recall the beginning of a downturn in fortunes the music from Roddy (who turned 50 this week) was still definitely a high...




Finally - my favourite band and the true story of a 'down and out' who regularly frequented a park near writer Cathal's house in North London, but who was killed by a group of thugs while sleeping in a derelict building. The song opens with the line "Johnny The Horse was kicked to death, he died for entertainment." but the record label were worried this would hold it back commercially. So they got the band to change it to "Johnny The Horse, he passed this way..." which has always let the song down in my opinion.