Killer songs

One of the serendipitous discoveries on holiday was music, one album or CD in particular, an album that I loved from my childhood and I'd been carting the vinyl record of it around for the past 25 years but had nothing to play it on. So I couldn't believe my luck when trolling through the vast racks of music at JB HiFi that I spotted a CD of Angel Clare by Art Garfunkel. I know you're all going, seriously? Baby faced Art Garfunkel? Yes seriously. Some albums define your childhood, for me it was Angel Clare, and also ABBA, but hey, we wont go there.

So the other night I got to sit down and listen to this album for the first time in 25 years, and to my delight it was still as fabulous, and charming, and surprising as I remembered. The kids loved it. One of the songs I had forgotten about is a nasty little number called Down in the Willow Garden, and boy did I smile as I listened to the lyrics because this very gentle sounding, folksy song is about murdering his love, Rose Connelly. A year or so back Peter Rozovsky over at Detectives Beyond Borders had a post about songs with killer lyrics and I knew there was a song floating around in my consciousness, but I couldn't quite identify it. Well here it was, with it's gentle tune, and sung by this benign looking white guy with a fro, with lyrics like

'I drew a saber through her,
It was a bloody knife,
I threw her in the river,
Which was a dreadful sight.'

Nice.

You've got to watch the quiet ones.

The full lyrics are here on Art Garfunkel's website. No wonder I turned out to be a crime writer, filling my brain as a child with songs like that!