In the days before Rock'N'Roll

The Sunday Challenge = Your interpretation of an individual song or piece of music.
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My alltime favorite Van Morrison created this song, a poem that's tells the story how he got inspired by certain artists: Radio played a crucial role In-the-days-before-rock-n-roll .


At YouTube: In the days before rock and roll

At Soundcloud: In-the-days-before-rock-n-roll

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I am down on my knees
At those wireless knobs
Telefunken, Telefunken
And I'm searching for
Luxembourg, Luxembourg,
Athlone, Budapest, AFN,
Hilversum, Helvetia
In the days before rock 'n' roll

In the music fragment you can hear the typical tuning-nois between 5":05 and 5":15

The song lists singers who influenced the youthful Van Morrison including Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Elvis, Fats, Sonny, Lightning and above all Ray Charles, the high priest. He also refers to Radio Luxembourg to which thousands of British and Irish teenagers in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s would tune in to on their primitive radios, despite the poor reception, because it played the pop music they wanted to hear.

Irish poet Paul Durcan, who co-wrote this song, provides the spoken vocals on this track. In 1988 Durcan wrote: "Myself, if I was Minister for Education, I'd bring in a new curriculum in the morning and top of my list would be Kavanagh and Morrison. All of Kavanagh and Morrison - not my selection or Saint Augustine's selection or Barry McGuigan's selection or Dean Martin's selection but the entire oeuvre and let the audience pick out what they like and what they don't like."