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 1993 Mirrors    CD  CDTRAX068

  1  Refugee ..Bogle 3:56 
  2  One Small Life ..Bogle 3:24 
  3  Plastic Paddy ..Bogle 3:11 
  4  Welcome Home ..Bogle 4:30 
  5  Flat Stony Broke Waltz ..Bogle 3:32 
  6  Vanya ..Bogle 4:28 
  7  Don't You Worry About That ..Bogle 5:32 
  8  Mirrors ..Bogle 3:41 
  9  The Song ..Bogle 2:52 
  10  Big (In a Small Way) ..Bogle 4:06 
  11  At Risk Bogle ..4:18 
  12  Never Again-Remember Bogle ..4:46 
  13  Somewhere in America Bogle ..4:20 
  14  Wouldn't Be Dead for Quids Bogle ..2:35 
  15  Wishing Is Free Bogle ..4:01 

Eric Bogle is the folk troubadour of our time. He writes songs that have a 

story to tell, and he tells them with a combination of wit, melody and often 

heartbreaking description. 

We are all familiar with "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" and "The Green 

Fields of France," which were hits for various singers. These are excellent 

songs and they tell very real stories, but Bogle has other tales to relate. 

Mirrors opens with a song written in the early 1990s that is perhaps more 

relevant today. "Refugee" contains lines like "in the dust and heat the women 

queue for hours for handouts of rice or maize or flour. And old people die 

nearly every day, turn their faces to the wall and slip away." How many such 

people are still queuing and dying over a decade later? 

He also has a go at the aficionados of the folk boom of the 1990s when 

anyone with two hands and the price of a guitar thought they were God's gift 

to the folk scene and any member of the opposite sex. "Plastic Paddy" uses 

almost every song title from the Aran sweater brigade repertoire: "He's 

desecrated the Holy Ground, ripped apart the Black Velvet Band and sunk 

The Irish Rover with all hands." Again it is a funny song but with more than 

an ounce of truth. 

"Welcome Home" reminds us not only of the heartbreak of war but of the fact 

that not only the U.S. had troops fighting in Vietnam. It also reveals the 

unseen casualties of war, those whose minds are destroyed and those who are 

left to cope. "Or where hate is muddy quicksand, love is tempered steel, 

Annie waited for his wounds to heal." "Somewhere in America" recalls the 

loneliness of life on the road for a singer as he lives away from wife and 

family. 

Listening again to this album I am enjoying the songs but there is a very real 

sadness that comes when you look at the notes and why he wrote them. Ten 

years later they could all be written again. 

"At Risk" was written about the physical and sexual abuse of children. "Never 

Again" was about the concentration camps of World War II. "Mirrors" reflects 

on the thousands of "street kids" killed or dying every year. "Don't You Worry 

About That" is a tale of inflation and recession. 

Maybe it is time for this CD to be repackaged and re-issued in the 21st 

century, maybe then someone will listen to the folksinger. Then again, maybe 

-- they never listened before.

cd ripped by dBpoweramp

please seed
 
http://dickthespic.org/2010/10/17/eric-bogle/