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The Desert Has A Thousand Eyes (DEMO)

from Uke Town - Double Demo Album by Phil ‘Swill’ Odgers

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Originally intended as a project through PledgeMusic until they managed to lose all of my recording funds! This is double album of 18 tracks, including 3 special cover songs, on a twin CD set. All written or played on a Ukulele! Yes, you heard that right, a Ukulele! There are some other instruments on here too of course – Tom Spencer joins in on Banjo and Guitar, Geoff Price plays Lap Steel and Mandolin – and more there’s Ukes of course – James knight also play a Tongue Drum on one of the tracks!!

    In the main part these are demo versions of songs I’ve written or taken a shine too over the past year. I’ll be looking at picking 10 of these songs, developing them further and re-recording later for a ‘commercially available’ album at some point (which may include more traditional rock n’ roll instruments).

    This double CD is a very limited edition only available here and possibly at some gigs next year. It will not be made available for general release.

    Posting out orders now folks...

    Includes unlimited streaming of Uke Town - Double Demo Album via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.     ... more
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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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      £1 GBP  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

  • Full Digital Discography

    29
    releases

    Get all 29 Phil ‘Swill’ Odgers releases available on Bandcamp and save 65%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Far Rockaway - The Songs of Phil Ochs, Christmas In Prison - Live From Swillville - December 2023, There But For Fortune, Questions, Answers & Songs, SWILL'S SURPRISE SESSION (JAN 20TH 2022), GHOSTS OF ROCK N ROLL, Folk at the Fortress, THE BEST OF SWILL'S SUNDAY SESSION VOLUME 2, and 21 more. , and , .

    Excludes supporter-only releases.

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about

Loosely based on The Men They Couldn't Hang's eventful tour of Egypt in 1997. This song was originally going to be about a small toilet that our drummer (Bladder) at that time found in the middle of the desert. The song took on a life of it's own and morphed into something a bit more serious.

Port Said is an Egyptian city at the northern end of the Suez Canal, on the Mediterranean Sea. A concrete lighthouse dates from the canal’s opening in 1869. On the waterfront is the former department store Simon Arzt. Now disused, the art deco building offers a glimpse into the past, to when Port Said was a cosmopolitan trading hub. Nearby is the Islamic-style Suez Canal Authority Building, with its green domes.

Also, As Americans grapple with Donald Trump's ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, it's a good time to point out a little-known irony. The Statue of Liberty — that symbol of American freedom and diversity that has greeted immigrants for generations — was originally modeled after an Arab woman.

The statue's designer, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, was enamored with Egyptian pyramids and monumental sculpture. According to historian Edward Berenson, in the 1860s, Bartholdi decided to build a monument to commemorate the opening of Egypt's Suez Canal.

"And that monument was going to be a woman in the southern opening of the canal holding up a torch over her head and that woman was dressed in Arab peasant garb,” Berenson says. But when the ruler of Egypt, Khedewi Ismail Pasha, went bankrupt, the colossal Suez sculpture project was jettisoned.

But the artist soon found a way to recycle his design. “A couple of years earlier, Bartholdi and his friends decided they were going to give a gift to the United States that was going to celebrate the centennial of the American Revolution,” Berenson explains. “And then, Bartholdi thought, ‘Ah! I’ve got a great idea! I can reuse this image but change it to fit the American Revolution.’”

Bartholdi changed the woman that was originally dressed in Arab garb into a Greco-Roman goddess of liberty. And the Statue of Liberty, as we know her today, was born.

lyrics

I'll add these later but here's the first verse for now:

On the Ismailia desert road from Port Said to Cairo
It’s a three hour drive from the three green domes
As the sun beats down, we’re melting on the highroad
Sticking to our seats and boiling in our bones

credits

from Uke Town - Double Demo Album, released December 25, 2019
Words and Music by Phil Odgers. All instrument splayed by Phil Odgers

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Phil ‘Swill’ Odgers image

Phil ‘Swill’ Odgers London, UK

Phil ‘Swill’ Odgers is singer and a songwriter with legendary UK folk rebel rockers The Men They Couldn’t Hang. He is also a solo artist in his own right.

Audiences around the world from Cairo to Reykjavik, Brisbane to Vancouver and Berlin to London have submitted to his effervescent and heartfelt vocal style in stadium, theatre, hall and after hours lock in. ... more

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