Music and Songs of Tom Thumb

Tunes of Tom Thumb

Few things hold memory so much as song. Writing songs along the road has allowed me to capture many of the places and experiences from my travels.

1. The Little Prince Song (Download)

This is a tribute to one of my favourite books, told in the first person by the Prince himself though its doubtful he'd ever say so much at one time.

2. William Blake Blues (Download)

Blake's poetry leaves everyone in his shadow even over 2 centuries later. Here I've put together a collection of my favourite verses of his and patched them into a song.

3. I Love All of Me (Download)

This is a rewriting of the old jazz classic All of Me which had far too depressing a flavour, full of lines like I'm no good without you. I resolved to never again sing that kind of disempowering verse and so gave the song a new positive flavour.

4. Street Cat Blues (Download)

Living in Florentin, a neighbourhood of Tel Aviv, I came home every night tofind hundreds of cats eating from skips, sleeping in cardboard boxes and just hanging out. It was obvious that the city belonged to them after midnight.

5. Bella Ciao (Download)

This Italian classic tells of a man leaving to fight with the partisans in the second world war. I took the melody and made it the tale of someone leaving behind consumer society to hit the road. In both cases, the protagonist bids his love ciao.

6. Tommy's Favourite Things (Download)

My Favourite Things was immortalised by John Coltrane and here I've given it a more amorous feel with my favourite tastes in women. The 3/4 beat was too tricky for me though...

7. If Life Were a Song (Download)

I wrote this in my darkest moments living in Rio de Janeiro. Musically and lyrically it's the best I've written and was kind of a catharsis for the worst of my bad moods.

8. Hippy Rehab (Download)

At a rainbow gathering someone accused me of never singing any positive songs so I put this one together to prove them wrong. I stole the melody from an old boogie-woogie song I heard on the radio years ago.

9. Love on a Bus (Download)

This is a loose telling of meeting beautiful girls on buses in Mexico. The air conditioning on the buses was always freezing so I used to carry a blanket with me. If a pretty chica got on board I could always offer to share it...

10. Babylon Blues (Download)

A counterpoint to Hippy Rehab for when the superficialities of the rainbow gatherings got to be too much for me. It helped me find my role in the gatherings as the safety valve, reminding my fellow hippies not to take ourselves too seriously.

11. I Want to Die Young (Download)

Sitting around with a friend in England some years ago, we remarked on how many of our heroes had died before they reached 30. So many of them fell too early that it seemed a song was called for in tribute.

12. Rio Street Stories (Download)

Living in Rio de Janeiro for 6 months I saw so many stories on the street that touched me to the core. I wanted to share them somehow.

13. Pessoa's Sail (Download)

I had this piece of music for a year or so and couldn't find words to go with it. Then one day in a village in North East Brazil I was given a flyer for a restaurant and it had this poem, The Sail from Ferdinand Pessoa on it. I ran home and of course it fitted perfectly. It took me about ten minutes to translate it, too. It seemed to be already written.