Swell Season at Radio City Music Hall -- Gently Johnny

I was at this show (below, in the video, on May 19, 2008) at Radio City Hall here in New York, just after the semester had ended, to watch the band Swell Season. The year before, we had seen the movie Once which I really enjoyed -- it was a touching fictional story about a street-singing singer/busker in Dublin who falls for a sweet Czech girl. The two characters were played by the two main singers of Swell Season who also wrote all the songs.

So.. about half way through the show at Radio City Hall, Markéta Irglová (the Czech girl, just 20 years old), did a solo number, inviting her sister (Zuzana) to sing. They did a particularly haunting version of "Gently Johnny," a song originally featured on The Wicker Man soundtrack. Wicker Man was a rather obscure British horror movie put out in 1973 which featured a few British luminaries of the time including Britt Ekland and Christopher Lee. In recent years, there's been a general reassessment of the movie, and many critics now consider it a horror classic. I was totally blown over by the song and immediately got the soundtrack (which is middling at best).

Below I have Swell Season's beautiful version, followed by an mp3 of the original by Paul Giovanni who composed the soundtrack for The Wicker Man. Giovanni's version is much more in the form of an olde English folk parable, probably the way it was originally meant to be. Irglová's version is like a spooky Joni Mitchell song. Both are awesome. (And no, I'm not going to mention the horrible 2006 remake of The Wicker Man.)



Paul Giovanni -- Gently Johnny [mp3]