I was a huge Alarm fan throughout my teenage years 83 onwards and to my shame fell away a bit in my mid 20s. Listening to this and other songs takes me back and reminds me how damn good they were/are and has rekindled my love for them. So talented, so good ❤
Even though I love the Byrds' rendition that introduced me to this song as well as Pete Seeger's amazing performance of this, the song is about Welsh miners. How better than Welsh musicians to sing about this disaster? The pipes and drums evoke this tragedy. Although I adore all of these versions, I must say this is the best one.
Me too ! There were The Silencers and The Pretenders playing too ! It was like 6 hours of support bands in the blazing hot Cardiff sun ! And you had to hold your pi55 for all that time too.
This is genius. (Vantage point: I'm in North America and only just this second discovered this Welsh band. I suppose the McGuinn/Byrds version being *so* well known tends to bump newer arrangements down the search results, eh?) But what I want to say is: This is genius!
That's the song! For years I've been trying figure out what that was. They played it one night many years ago when I saw them in Toronto and I haven't been able to figure out what it was until now. What a great song. Thanks!
The Easel Rider Pete Seeger sang it but did not write it ; Jakob Dylan just sang it in the doc echo in the canyon I think the most popular rendition was the byrds
@@elainekwok3595 Actually...Idris Davies, famous Welsh poet born in Rhymney, wrote the original poem, Pete Seeger set it to music (just as Schubert set existing poems by Goethe to music). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idris_Davies en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bells_of_Rhymney
@@elainekwok3595 Sadly Pete Seeger had no idea how to pronounce Rhymney and a generation of American artistes followed in his footsteps, this is how you pronounce the the place name.
Re the pronunciation - let's not forget Idris Davies wrote it in rhyming couplets. So maybe he intended it to be pronounced "Rimney" (to rhyme with "give me"). Certainly makes sense musically. And Seeger pronounced it the same way - probably because he didn't know any differently! So there is also an argument that the boys are being faithful to Pete's version.
@@Alftupper334 I loved The Alarm. but U2 changed my life...'whos better than who' doesnt matter to me...plus mike and bono are friends - i think thats pretty cool
I was in my 30’s in the 1980’s. That seemed to me, at the time, to be the decade when music in general began to go down the tubes. And I also thought, at the time, that hairstyles had surely completely deteriorated to the point of complete stupidity. I am 73 years old now and can honestly say that music and hairstyles have continued to deteriorate to the point where the 1980’s actually look and sound pretty good. I like this rendition of this song by the way. The hair? Well. We’ll just leave that to history.
As they speak Welsh they would know that. I guess they are just following the mangling of the pronunciation that started with peter Seeger, then continued through the Byrds, john denver etc
@@darreng745 No, its pronounced Rum-knee, not rim-knee, same as Rumney in Cardiff. you'd have thought mike peters would know that (even though he's a gog)
