Mother's Day: Lost & Found

related thematically in some way.  Up top the main image is an illustration of a blood dripping Jesus  and right below - a hand written note. 

But what could possibly connect them and mothers day though?



Well the answer is that both of them contain the words 'Precious Blood'. I found this note in my mothers handwriting in her house after she had passed away. It's the lyrics to my song Precious Blood. I found it as we cleared her house out after the fire. Sorry emotional freight there to delve into but it is OK. I am not one to shirk that task no more than dodge the work required in clearing out my Mams heavily hoarded house. The note shows that my mother loved the song and she actually preferred the less finished demo version more so than the recorded one with all the production bells and whistles. Both of these versions are included in my upcoming album release scheduled digitally for the twelfth of May.

It is ironic that at such a personally-challenged, low-tide faith point in life that I am releasing a collection of counter-cultural spiritual songs. I feel far-from-uplifted these days and like everyone else pressed in hard. on a number of battle fronts. But we are doing the best we can. And that is good enough for now.

I have written many songs, in many genre that no one has ever really heard except the dog and the missus and some open mic regulars. Over time I recorded some of the chosen few of these with real drummers, choirs and strings etc, and some of them exist only as a live instant in time or as bedroom demos. But they all have or had something I wanted to express. It was as part of Covid lock-down time I undertook to look through my recorded archive and put out some of them. These Precious Blood album songs are part of some theme I felt could walk together.

Releasing art into the world is termed 'shipping it' in 'War of Art' style resistance circles. I should have huge resistance to release this stuff but I don't care as much anymore. What I mean is I do care of course but I don't have control over whether I will get critiqued but I should do it anyway. That is the nature of the artistic beast.

It  is a time where life and death has been very close by us. Perhaps I am part of some universal message app and I or we do need to look to the nearly abandoned spiritual comforts of our forebears to ease the displacement we are feeling in the previously unchallenged but now creaky and nonsupporting cultural shibboleths. I feel Capitalism's UberTech Bros are eating my lunch in front of me, and asking me to consent to my dis empowerment and data surveillance in so many ways with dark-patterned digital manipulations.

So this music package is in someway a sort of barmy yet sincere Mothers Day tribute and a thank you. It's a gathering up of the lost and found music tracks like 'Treasure'; a song which set me out on this road of songwriting - I won my first award for in Dublin way back in the smoke filled past.

'I may be able to speak' got me into music college and as one of my first songs to be picked up for release on an independent UK record collective. 'Happy Christmas' and 'Angels Tears' illustrate a time playing with Genna Johnson and the Band in New York - we were called LaughJohnLaugh. 'Our Father', 'Peace' were both recorded down the street from where I live in Brooklyn. So it is a historical record and I am glad to be be releasing it - who may hear it among the busy overwhelm of Spotify is yet to be told but I hope you get to enjoy it on the twelfth when it is released to most digital music outlets.

Happy Mothers Day

ExtraOrdinary: A Memoir Piece

Extra ordinary is ordinary plus plus. It is the humdrum, the common place with added zest. Some of the kids like my nieces and nephews today describe characters perhaps seen preening and drawing attention to themselves in an excessive and ostentatiously unnecessary and cringey way as being extra. But we all want more don't we - please sir can I have extra? Oliver Twist 2.0 might have said. No one is anyone on Instagram or social media if they are merely ordinary. Only the fantastic need apply for the froth of internet fame.

My Mam and Dad took the upgrade and became holy rollers in the 1970’s. It was called Charismatic Catholicism, that is the Evangelical spirituality of the early church where the Holy Spirit appeared above in tongues of fame above the heads of the disciples.

Mam and Dad’s thing was very much all of the Catholic stuff with all the added extras - signs & wonders, healing of hands, speaking in tongues, devotees physically falling backwards and sideways after being overcome with the hyper emotion of the experience of being slain in the spirit. Mam especially loved that and found it very comforting to go into a trance like reverie afterwards. She was like the suffering woman in the bible who if she only could ‘touch the hem of the garment’ would be healed. And she was calmer and more peaceful and it gave her standing up life meaning to be always in search of a healer who had or reputedly had the gift of healing and who could stir up the room or the gathering into a soft edged spiritual frenzy with loud praying in hymns, singing and enunciating in Indian raga like rhythms sounding like “lack a day al shar ma rababa lam ela" This syllabic and rhythmic chanting in tongues stirred up intense devotional feelings and an ecstasy in some. There was something happening, but was it what my parents believed.. .click to continue reading

This memoir piece continues on my writing space on SUBSTACK where I have started to publish some experimental pieces in different genres.

https://johnmunnelly.substack.com/

Hattwood Hot Sauce

• Brooklyn Fare, 431 W 37th St., NY
• Food Emporium, 325 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
• Key Food, 102 MONTAGUE STREET, Brooklyn, NY
• Brooklyn Fare, 200 Schemerhorn St. Brooklyn, NY
• Butcher Block, 43-46 41st St., Queens, NY.
• Fulton Stall Market Store, 91 South St., Manhattan, NYC

Precious Blood 2021

Track Listing

1 Precious Blood II
2 Our Father
3 Peace
4 Angels Tears ii
5 I may be able to speak
6 Precious Blood I
7 Treasure
Bonus Live:
8 Happy Christmas Live at FTCC feat/ Genna Johnson & Silent Note