If you're going to cover a song, I realised years ago, you have to own the song for yourself. You have to make it your own. And the way you do that is to find a way of singing the song in a way the original artist hasn't even thought about. Find a unique way of entering the song. That's exactly what Christy Moore does with this song.
So as part of my tribute here and elsewhere to Shane McGowan, here's Christy Moore singing Fairytale of New York.
There's a great documentary about the making of Fairytale of New York but I haven't been able to post the complete documentary. However here's a link to take you to it.
Click here for the link to the full documentary, The Story Of The Pogues & Kirsty McColl Fairytale of New York The full Story.
I hope you enjoy it.
We watched him perform at the Hay Festival in 2018. We managed to buy a couple of the last tickets for the gig. We were right up in the front. When he started with the band, the place erupted. People who were politely sitting in rows behind us, suddenly got up off their seats and rushed to the stage.
It was a great gig!
from Bloodaxe Books
After prison he turned from crime to music and poetry. In 1989 he was nominated for Oxford Professor of Poetry, and has since received honorary doctorates from several English universities, but famously refused to accept a nomination for an OBE in 2003. He was voted Britain's third favourite poet of all time (after T.S. Eliot and John Donne) in a BBC poll in 2009. In 2011 he was poet-in-residence at Keats House in 2011, and then made a radical career change by taking up his first ever academic position as a chair in Creative Writing at Brunel University in West London.
He appeared in a number of television programmes, including Peaky Blinders, Eastenders, The Bill, Live and Kicking, Blue Peter and Wise Up, and played Gower in a BBC Radio 3 production of Shakespeare’s Pericles in 2005.
Best known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults – and his poetry with attitude for children – he had his own rap/reggae band. He produced numerous recordings, including Dub Ranting (1982), Rasta (1983), Us and Dem (1990), Back to Roots (1995), Belly of de Beast (1996) and Naked (2004). He was the first person to record with the Wailers after the death of Bob Marley, in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela, which Mandela heard while in prison on Robben Island. Their later meetings led to Zephaniah working with children in South African townships and hosting the President’s Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996.
His first book of poems, Pen Rhythm, was produced in 1980 by a small East London publishing cooperative, Page One Books. His second collection, The Dread Affair, was published by Hutchinson’s short-lived Arena imprint in 1985. He published three collections with Bloodaxe, City Psalms (1992), Propa Propaganda (1996) and Too Black, Too Strong (2001), the latter including poems written while working with Michael Mansfield QC and other Tooks barristers on the Stephen Lawrence case. His DVD-book To Do Wid Me: Benjamin Zephaniah live and direct (filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce) followed from Bloodaxe in 2013, including poems drawn from all his collections.
His other titles include his poetry books for children, Talking Turkeys (1994), Funky Chickens (1996) and Wicked World (2000), all from Puffin/Penguin; his novels for teenagers, Face (1999), Refugee Boy (2001), Gangsta Rap (2004) and Teacher’s Dead (2007), all from Bloomsbury; The Bloomsbury Book of Love Poems (1999); Schools Out: Poems Not for School (1997) and The Little Book of Vegan Poems (2001) from AK Press; and We Are Britain (Frances Lincoln, 2003). He published his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes and Benjamin Zephaniah, with Simon & Schuster in 2018.
Click here for an obituary from The Guardian
Click here to listen to Dog Eats Dog. It's the fifth episode of the Radio 4 documentary, Legend, The Life of Joni Mitchell.
Click here for the third instalment of this extraordinary documentary about Joni Mitchell as she turns 80. This episode is called Blue.
On 7th November 1943 Joni Mitchell was born. This year on the 7th November she'll be 80 years old. To celebrate her birthday I'm going to post a link to each of the 6 episodes of a documentary about her life.
My plan is to post a photo, post a link to the documentary and post videos of performances given by her over the years that i've really enjoyed.
I hope you enjoy them too.
I came upon this video this morning and thought it was great. It was the sheer joy and exuberance of singers, band members, soloists and conductor that made me think of you. So I thought I'd share it.
I thought you'd like this photograph. I stumbled on it today going through my fb feed. Apparently it's the most detailed photograph of a solar eclipse ever taken.
While recovering from my second bout of Covid and still coming to terms with living the rest of my life from a wheelchair, I thought I'd put together some favourite music videos.
My original intention is to put up a list of say at least 8 specifically made music videos. However, there are videos on YouTube that have been edited from much longer performances that I love watching, and will include these as well I expect.
I'm not gonna put these in any order, although I do think I know already which video I think is my number one all time favourite music video.
I suppose I ought to note down what I think makes a good music video. However I don't want to make a big fuss about this. I wanna be intuitive and even a little impulsive. But I also don't want to lead you down Cull du Sacs. I don't want to waste your time.
So I'm choosing good songs. Though not necessarily my most favourite songs.
I'm going to be posting videos over the next few days or perhaps a couple of weeks.
Anyway, here's a first video.
I've only watched it once. And that's today, the day I first posted this post. Perhaps it was watching this that inspired me to post this challenge.
I wrote this after I was discharged from hospital last year in 2022. But it's been in draft form ever since.
I noticed it this evening, scrolling through my blog posts and realised I had posted nothing about what's happened to us.
So it's been a year since my right knee was amputated. But this whole thing probably started at least 3 years ago now in 2020.
But my memory is shot.
I wouldn't trust it if I were you.
But this account is as close as I can come to what happened to me.
Over the next few months I'm intending to edit this post, add some photographs and write a second account following on from this one.
All I've got is a series of events but I can't be sure the the order of them.
I've got to lay them down quickly before they disappear completely.
At Home
In 2020, I was given a new prosthetist. She made a new above knee leg for me. Despite being considered a specialist above knee prosthetist, I developed a sore and slowly it developed into an ulcer. The ulcer developed along the line where my above knee leg is sealed onto the prosthesis. Secretly, I blamed my prosthetist and the long line of prosthetists I saw during that period for the ulcer, who tried to mend it. I went back to Queen Mary's hospital regularly - at times almost every week to have the problem fixed. Every prosthetist I saw, including my own prosthetist, tried to put it right, but they all concluded that the leg fitted well, and they could see no reason why the prosthetic leg should create the ulcer.
This went on for quite a while. I cleaned and dressed the small ulcer. It wasn't growing or getting smaller. It wasn't infected. But it wasn't right. It became painful. I only walked when I had to walk. Whenever I got home from teaching or going out I transferred into my wheelchair.
The ulcer was dressed regularly and I just carried on. As you do.
At the same time as the ulcer was developing on my left above knee amputated leg I began to feel fatigued.
Everyday it was the same. I woke feeling that lead weights were attached to me, trying to hold me down. It went on like this all day till I went to bed.
I'd wake the next day and it was the same. It didn't get any worse or any better. I carried on working. I didn't connect the ulcer to the fatigue.
The GP Surgery, hospital appointments and work
Until February / March 2022 the G.P surgery phoned with the results of my regular 3 monthly blood tests. The GP said, my results showed high levels of inflammation. He'd contacted Doctor Kiely - the doctor who managed my recovery from Polyarteritis back in 2004. He was based at St George's hospital. The GP wanted to inform Doctor Kiely of the situation and ask him to call me in for an appointment.
An appointment came to see Prof Kiely. In the consultation Prof Kiely said confidently that I didn't have a resurgence of Polyarteritis - an autoimmune disease I'd developed when I was 17. He was confident that something else was causing the high inflammatory markers, the anaemia and low red cell blood count. I think he put all my symptoms down to a virus.
So we went back to our local G.P surgery with one question.
"If this isn't Polyarteritis, then what is this?" The GP said she'd send me off for tests.
She was one of the surgery's GP team. I'd never seen her before. She seemed in her 20's. I was pissed off and didn't expect this consultation to lead anywhere at all.
About the same time [as we were seeing the GP] in March 2022, I experienced fatigue. I remember teaching, but feeling the whole time as if I was being weighted down by a huge stone hanging over a long drop. Other symptoms developed, these included sleeplessness, loss of appetite and sudden short fevers. I assumed it was a virus. It would pass.
A couple of weeks passed. I continued to teach.
But then I went off sick.
The GP we'd seen who recommended tests, referred me to have three scans under three different medical teams, these were, heart, lungs and kidneys. The appointments came fairly quickly. Scans were either CT scans or MRI scans.
Katy went to the Bologna Book Fair on 23 March. I had been officially sick for 8 days when she left.
At home I went ON GUARD!
I started spending the night sitting up in an armchair in the sitting room. I was on guard twenty four hours a day. Seven days a week. On guard against an unseen enemy. I was a body knotted in anxiety and stress. I couldn't relax for one moment. And yet the invisible enemy was upon me. Destroying whatever it could of me. It was absolutely awful. I was defenceless! I was powerless!
I was on guard for weeks. Always watchful. Drifting into a few moments of sleep here and there. By this time I wasn't eating.
And then one morning in mid May, my left stump was covered in purple patches. We knew exactly what this was. This was vasculitis! We'd seen it before in 2004. And I'd known it from the 1970's & early 80's. It's a symptom of Polyarteritis Nodosa.
Untreated we knew these purple patches would become ulcers and attack the stump. In 2004 vasculitis resulted in the amputation of both my legs. The left leg amputated above the knee, the right, amputated below the knee.
And of course, when we saw the purple patches, we immediately tried to contact Prof Kiely. But he was away.
Meanwhile the GP's heart scan showed an enlarged aorta. But this was normal. They'd check it again in a year or two.
We can't remember anything about the lung scan. But whatever they found they considered wasn't causing me any harm.
At Kingston Hospital
We had to wait a bit for the third scan. A kidney scan. And wait a bit longer for the results. When we did see the consultant urologist at Kingston Hospital, he said that I had kidney cancer. He said he'd need to remove the whole kidney. He said once it was removed everything would be alright. I wouldn't need any further treatment.
And then we told him about the vasculitis.
By the time we had this consultation - with the consultant urologist - the vasculitis was all over the left leg. It was early days. There were purple patches. No signs of ulcers yet.
He had a look at the leg and said he wouldn't operate until the vasculitis was all sorted out.
We needed to consult with Prof Kiely again.
Despite Prof Kiely being on holiday, we had the first of several phone consultations. But he didn't change his mind about his idea that the something else was causing the illness. Instead he said the cause of the vasculitis was due to the cancer. He said get rid of the cancer and the vasculitis would go away. He told us to go back to the consultant urologist and tell him to remove the kidney as soon as possible!
So with the support of one of the GP team at our local surgery and a rheumatologist at St Thomas's hospital it was decided to remove the kidney.
By this point the ulcers were getting significantly worse. Right from the start, the ulcers were not being treated at all. This was a deliberate policy set by Prof Kiely. The medication needed to treat the vasculitis would inhibit healing the cancer. As well as this, Prof Kiely was sure that - with the cancer removed - my body would heal the vasculitis by itself. The cancerous right kidney was eventually removed at Kingston Hospital in July.
But the vasculitis continued.
I was ready to be discharged by the urology team at Kingston hospital but the ulcers on my legs were still progressing. We've got photographs of the progress of these ulcers from early on. I'm not going to share them with you though. The ulcers were so shocking!
Just before I left Kingston hospital, we did see a rheumatologist. He recommended a biopsy of the ulcers. But the urology team at Kingston were only interested in the cancer. And they discharged me. Eventually an appointment came for a biopsy. When we went for the biopsy the doctor at Queen Mary's hospital, Roehampton. was so shocked by the ulcers he told us to go to St George's immediately. He said St George's hospital is the place where the ulcers could be treated properly. He said the best and quickest way this could be done is if we went to A&E.
At St George's Hospital
So we drove to St George's hospital A&E.
That was one of worst experiences we had during this time.
We arrived at around 4.00 in the afternoon and joined the queue to be seen. First by a nurse and then by a doctor. I sat in the wheelchair. Katy sat in a chair.
We waited. We waited! And we waited! And waited!
At some point in the middle of the night we were moved to another part of the A&E department. It was quieter. There were fewer people. There were curtains. There was a bed. There was a chair. We were told we were being admitted to the hospital but were waiting for a bed to be freed up.
We realised that wasn't going to happen for hours yet. And so we waited and were admitted onto a vascular ward later that morning.
At first I was admitted into an 8 bed bay. It was noisy. It's difficult managing 8 bored and very unwell men. So I was pleased that one day I was transferred into a single bay.
And then one day one of the rheumatology team said that the ulcers were so bad on the right leg the only way forward was to amputate the knee.
And that is exactly what they did at St George's hospital at the end of August.
Newborough Green Roofs KT3 September 2023 by David Loffman
Click here to hear Martine Wright MBE talking about rebuilding her life after she became seriously injured after the terrorist 7/7 attack in London in 7 July 2005.
Her slot begins a 24.30 and lasts just over 13 minutes.
Before the attack, Martine worked as a marketing manager. But she is now a 7/7 survivor, a Paralympian, Motivational Speaker, Author, Channel 4 Reporter and Mother.
She is also now a bi transfemoral above knee amputee.
St Mary's Hospital in 2005 while we both were learning how to walk again on Prosthetic legs.
At last! It's taken me sometime to work it out. But I think I'm there now.
Here's a video of my father of the bride speech. Given on Iona and Andrew's wedding day. The 10 June 2023 at Calke Abbey in Derbyshire.
Gordon Lightfoot has died aged 84.
He died in his Toronto home on 1 May 2023.
Click below for a news report
And click below for a link to one of the greatest songs of the 20th century
The Original
Well this is a tough c2c. I love both versions and feel
quite torn by them. I’ve heard them both for years. I think I’m gonna go with
MacColl.
Here are a couple of reasons.
Firstly, I’m so surprised by her voice in this song. It’s so
strong and accented. There’s a freshness in it.
Secondly, she’s more believable than The Kinks.
It’s a strange song really. Ray Davis is writing about loss.
Yet the song is so upbeat. His harmonies with his brother are fantastic but
there’s no connection to the implied sense of loss buried in the song. Perhaps
that sense of loss is carried better in a woman’s voice. She sings it upbeat
like the lads but as Nicki writes,
‘she gives it a slightly more melancholy feel to the song.
It feels more mellow and controlled.’ I agree with Nicki. I think it’s a
woman’s voice that we feel better expresses the tortured joy that is being
described here. In the words of Leonard Cohen, ‘a broken Hallelujah.’ Except of
course Cohen was a man and wrote and sang beautifully about loss.
My review of About Time by Calum MacColl
The CD opens with Good Enough. At the age of 58 Calum has
released his first solo album.
I love the honesty in this opening song. It kind of sets out his stall as a
song writer and performer. Calum uses the song to encourage himself to follow
and live his dream of being a successful artist. And he reaches out to others,
like himself, to be courageous and do whatever is needed to achieve your goals.
Calum puts the spectres of perfectionism and failure behind him. Perhaps even
slain the shadows of his parents’ – Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl - legendary
successes as singer song writers. He steps out of the shadows and performs remarkably well in my opinion.
I remember after years of teaching, feeling I wasn’t very good. Often paralysed
by fear myself. After years I suddenly realised I might not be the best teacher
on the planet but I was good enough. Calum like me seems to have reached a time
in his life and career where he too can accept that truth. That he too is good
enough. Better than good enough actually.
What follows is a series of songs about everyday life, like
walking his dog. Other songs include reflections on life, loss and bereavement.
For example, in Cosmonaut – the second song - Calum sings about his friend –
singer song writer Colin Vearncombe – Black – probably most famous for his
song, It’s a Wonderful Life - who died in a car accident. He writes about him as
a cosmonaut. Completely out of reach. Calum sings directly to his friend. Tells him how things have changed and asks him
what things are like for him. It’s a moving love song, without a whiff of Bowie’s
own space prisoner. Thank goodness.
And in the song The Other side / Liberation Road, written in two parts. About,
Woodrow Speed and Lyle Lovelady, two American soldiers who fought and died
during the D-Day landings in World War II.
The first part of the song is addressed to one of the American soldiers,
whose grave Calum and a friend Tim May - who co-wrote the song with Calum - found
among all the graves in the American Cemetery in Normandy. There was something of Eric Bogle's song No Man's Land here.
This first part of Calum's song is slow. The beat played out on keyboards punctuated with sparse instrumentation.
It consists of three repeated lines - haiku like - that take us from the battleground setting
in which the two men died and transports us with the familiar line, ‘see you on
the other side’, a line first associated with the Apollo 8 mission where the
astronauts were out of communication with Mission Control for 34 minutes while
they travelled behind the moon. Calum uses outer space again as a way of writing
about complete dislocation and separation from life. Instead he puts the phrase into a
military context. The line becomes abstract; either meaning, we’ll meet again
after the battle, or we’ll meet again in death. It’s a haunting and strangely
comforting refrain.
Finally, Calum covers one of the last songs his father wrote, Joy of living,
released three years before he died. It’s a beautiful performance and matches
the beauty of his father’s words. Calum is accompanied by an acoustic guitar
and suddenly we’re reminded of the huge folk music tradition that he comes from.
Ewan MacColl sang his goodbyes to the mountains of the Lake and Peak Distracts
he loved. Then sings his goodbyes to his wife
– Peggy and finally his children. . Calum’s father performed the song aged 71
and died 3 years later. Calum’s a sprightly 60 odd years old now. Let’s hope there’s
a lot more music to come.
Here's a link to Hive where you can buy the CD
Here's a review of Calum MacColl's - my friend's - CD. The review is published in Plastic Magazine. Here's a link to the magazine.
London-based indie folk artist Calum MacColl seemed destined to become a musician due to the rich sonic heritage of his family. The son of folk legends Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, he’s also the half-brother of Kirsty MacColl but he’s ventured on his own unique musical path that’s seen him enjoy a decorated career that spans decades.
Over the years he’s played in various outfits and written for and performed with hundreds of iconic artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Eddi Reader, Backstreet Boys, Ronan Keating and Colin Vearncombe aka Black. Earning a Grammy-nomination for his work as a producer, he also co-wrote the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Best Original Song in 2015.
More recently however, he’s set out as a solo artist under his own name, to bring to fruition his dazzling creative vision. Now ready to share that vision with the world, he brings us his debut full-length record as a solo artist with the aptly titled album About Time.
Featuring ten new recordings that showcase Calum MacColl’s timeless folk songwriting talent and his assured musicianship and vocal performance, across About Time he delivers moments that charm, moments that move you and moments that inspire reflection.
Led by his smooth vocal leads carrying delicately crafted melodic lines and thoughtful lyricism, he enlists an array of traditional folk style instrumentation to capture a sound that’s as engaging as it is enduring to make a thoroughly enjoyable listening experience and a worthy debut effort from a celebrated artist.
Commenting on his debut LP, he shares, “It’s About Time – both the songs and the fact that I’ve only just got around to making this, my first solo album, at the age of 58. I’ve been writing songs all my life, but they’ve invariably been for other people to sing. It never occurred to me that I could sing them myself.”
Click here for a link to last week's Radio 4 programme This Cultural Life.
Released On: 28 Jan 2023Available for over a year
Click here to read the Poetry Society's announcement of Anthony Joseph's winning the T S Eliot Prize 2022. Click here to read an article Joseph wrote explaining the background to the collection. It can be found on the Poetry Society website. Click here for a link to that website.
Here's what the Guardian wrote about Anthony Joseph winning the prize yesterday
Anthony Joseph has won the TS Eliot prize for his collection Sonnets for Albert, described as “luminous” by the judges.
Joseph takes the £25,000 poetry prize, which this year saw a record 201 submissions.
Chair of judges Jean Sprackland, who was joined on the panel by 2021 Costa book of the year winner Hannah Lowe and 2019 TS Eliot prize winner Roger Robinson, said each of the shortlisted books “spoke powerfully to us in its own distinctive voice”.
“From this strong field our choice is Sonnets for Albert, a luminous collection which celebrates humanity in all its contradictions and breathes new life into this enduring form,” she added.
Sonnets for Albert, which was shortlisted for the Forward prize for best collection last year, is an autobiographical collection that weighs the impact of growing up with a largely absent father. Reviewing the book in the Guardian, David Wheatley said that “after much silence and absence in life”, Joseph’s father was “painstakingly restored in death in a book-length ‘calypso sonnet’ sequence”.
Joseph is a poet, novelist and musician, and a lecturer in creative writing at King’s College London.
He is the author of five poetry collections and three novels, including Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon, which was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness prize and the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore award and was longlisted for the 2019 OCM Bocas prize for Caribbean literature. He has also released eight critically acclaimed albums.
Joseph was chosen as the winner from a shortlist of 10 collections. The others shortlisted included five debut poetry collections: Quiet by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Slide by Mark Pajak, bandit country by James Conor Patterson, The Room Between Us by Denise Saul and Manorism by Yomi Sode.
Also shortlisted were previous winner Philip Gross for The Thirteenth Angel, Fiona Benson for Ephemeron, Jemma Borg for Wilder and Zaffar Kunial for England’s Green.
The 2021 prize was awarded to Joelle Taylor for her collection C+nto & Othered Poems.
Here's Anthony Joseph reading a poem from the collection
Here's what David Wheatley writing in the Guardian wrote in July 2022 about the collection.
Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph (Bloomsbury, £9.99)
“My father died with his mouth open – / gasping for air”, we read in Shame. After much silence and absence in life, the poet’s father is painstakingly restored in death in a book-length “calypso sonnet” sequence. Albert is a rogue, and encounters with him often take place on the run, as when a brother of the poet catches him at the wheel of a van in traffic in Trinidad. Albert responds by badmouthing his brother to the poet: “they way he does talk proper English, Tony, / he talking more English than you!” Others have respectability, but Albert has style and mystique. Joseph’s relationship with his father is profoundly ambivalent, but Sonnets for Albert movingly makes peace with his shade: Albert has “made his cycle”, an aunt tells the poet, “and that was all that was required of him”.
A long time ago - probably one family Christmas gathering - my sister Debra and me started listing songs we knew that had been covered by another band. We then voted on what we thought was the best recording.
Some time later we invited Nicki - my other sister to join in.
Since then we've taken it in turn posting original songs and a cover of the song to a WhatsApp chat we set up.
We then write a commentary and a judgement about each song.
It's been fun but more importantly it's brought us all a little closer to each other. We all live like - almost everyone else I know - very busy and hectic lives. Our web of connection had become quite thin. Playing wordle almost daily has been fun, but the c2c project has given us an opportunity to go deeper.
Anyway after one commentary and judgement I posted back in October 2022, both my sisters complimented me on the post. So I've decided to post my commentaries to this blog.
I'm not claiming any special gift, talent or skill in writing these commentaries. I'm just listening and commenting on what strikes me about the songs. Sometimes it's the lead voice, sometimes the band, or the lyric or the pace of the song.
I'm gonna post them here cause it's a fun thing to do. It's also a way of celebrating my two wonderful sisters who have supported me through a very rough patch recently. I'm also trying to draw more traffic to the blog - aren't we all - and I want to post more regularly to this blog.
Like the WhatsApp chat with my sisters, I'm gonna post the original and cover song from YouTube, and then write my commentary.
I'm going to attach the first commentary here to this introductory post.
I hope you find them enjoyable. Feel free to comment.
Here's Van Morrison and Them
I love this song. Brilliant to listen to it again. Only really knew the Bowie recording till today.
Lyrically such an interesting, intelligent and insightful
lyric. I love the singer's self conscious, jealous and genuinely human response
to seeing his ex-girlfriend with another boy.
I enjoy and dislike
elements of both recordings.
I love Bowie’s vocal. I always have issues with Morrison’s
voice. But it’s rough and fragile perhaps it really works here.
I don’t like Bowie’s over use of the saxophone. Morrison’s
band is tight as Bowie’s is.
I love the refrain/verse. ‘Here comes the night.’ I love the
way it’s repeated so many times but totally unrelated to the main lyric.
I think the song is so upbeat. Contrasts strongly with the
subject of the song. I don’t enjoy that aspect of the song.
Difficult to judge. The original recording has a default
advantage over the cover, I think. The cover version has to surpass the original, often written by or closely associated with the performer. The cover has to own the song. Make it their own. It has to be more than just a copy of the original.
We have to be aware of the associations we bring to the song and separate ourselves from them.
But here Bowie isn't better than Them despite the better recording equipment and probably better instruments. Bowie isn't trying to do a better performance than the original. He's trying to pay a tribute to them. There's a rawness and an energy to the original, that the cover just doesn't possess. That may have something to do with its release date of 1965, when rock n roll was still quite young. By the time we come to Bowie's1973 cover, the music industry had quietened down, become more settled.
My vote goes to Them.
