Brian McNeill is a wonderful performer and song writer. He is a major figure in the scottish folk scene: a founder member of the battlefield band. Nearly everyone who is anyone in scottish music has played with that band at some point.
There is very little I can find on the web to give you a flavour of McNeill. I don't know why that is. Perhaps he tells the truth too much.
He does instrumental stuff and his fiddle playing is wonderful: like this
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQJdz3R4L_MHe plays guitar:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj8S9FEA81Q&feature=relmfuHe rabble rouses
www.youtube.com/watch?v=olrNVWW_L8o&feature=relmfuHe comments on history:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZp8BmG02asThat is one of the most beautiful songs about one of very few figures in scottish history who seems to have had some integrity: we are a bit short of those. One of the comments says this is his favourite of his own songs: it is not mine, but I do love it
The Yew Tree is also historical: played here by the Battlefield Band: and this has the words in case you can't hear them
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8nIFwpb3NQ&feature=relatedHe is unimpressed by the American dream, and claims of philanthropy: a song about Carnegie
www.youtube.com/watch?v=--7yGJxxbk8Probably his most famous song, about the big words and false causes: especially narrow nationalism and "patriotic" history
www.myspace.com/music/player?sid=8291544&ac=nowI can't find him performing "Sell your labour not your soul: but the words are here
SELL YOUR LABOUR NOT YOUR SOUL
(Brian McNeill)
Chorus:
Young and old, true and bold
Sell your labour not your soul
Solidarity's your goal - join the union
Come and listen through the land, working woman, working man
Young and old, true and bold - join the union
Black, brown or white, get ready for the fight
Young and old, true and bold - join the union
Will you stand upon your rights or will you live upon your knees
Doff your cap and look away while the bosses take their ease
Unemployment is the fear the bosses whisper in your ear
Young and old, true and bold - join the union
Short term contract when they hire makes it easier to fire
Young and old, true and bold - join the union
More efficiency's the cry, technology's the game
And every dividend you double - well your wages stay the same
They say the unions' day is done and the country's moving on
Young and old, true and bold - join the union
Aye the government knows best, private sector does the rest
Young and old, true and bold - join the union
They'll privatise your hopes and they'll privatise your fears
If they catch your children crying they'll privatise their tears
We will rise, we will grow, we are stronger than we know
Young and old, true and bold - join the union
We will not be denied for we have right upon our side
Young and old, true and bold - join the union
So raise the banners high, let us all march behind
Let Scotland be the first to draw the new union line
and there is a few seconds of him performing it on the album he wrote it for: though he is far better doing this live
http://www.allmusic.com/album/stuc-centena...on-mw0000619421Similarly I can't find a full version of "Fighter", though there are a few seconds here:
http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/brian-mcnei...s/track/fighterand words here:
Fighter by Brian McNeill
One evening as I walked along the bonny banks o' Clyde
I fell in wi' an old man, doon by the waterside
Our talk was of the days in the factories and yards
When the fighting men of Glasgow were the hardest of the hard
Oor talk was of the heroes, of Maxton and McShane
And would the city ever see the likes o' them again
He told me he was sure there was still fighting to be done
But we wouldn't see the fighters till the battle had begun
To hear the old man talking took me back across the years
To the hard, hungry thirties in a city full o' tears
When a wee man from the Gorbals was the victor and the king
The toast of every company, the champion o' the ring
Benny Lynch came up the hard way, at fifty bob a fight
With his eyes upon the glory till the whisky killed the light
And in the streets and tenements you'd hear the people tell
How Benny Lynch's victories belonged to them as well
The whistling of the wind brought another man to mind
A different kind of fighter who was born before his time
Hugh Roberton believed that to go to war was wrong
And against the world's opinion he refused to change his song
He was the city's Orpheus, he gave the world a choir
He forged a song for Glasgow out of gentleness and fire
And when they tried to silence him he fought with all his might
With the dignity and courage of a man who would not fight
Now the song that comes from Glasgow says the city's raw and rough
And standing by the Clyde I knew the song was true enough
But a sound came o'er the river, the beating o' a drum
From the Gorbals that they tore down just to build another slum
It beat upon my heart and told me never to forget
That we're waiting for the fighter that will come from Glasgow yet
We'll know him by his courage, for he'll never give an inch
With the dignity of Roberton and the guts of Benny Lynch
I am biased: I am a Glaswegian. But that sums up bread and roses for me, in a different way.
This was long: but I really love this man's music.
