Pandemic Songs

Pandemic Songs is songwriter Robb Johnson's chronicle in song of the unprecedented events of the first half of 2020. His critically-acclaimed family histories of the 20th Century Gentle Men & Ordinary Giants use song to dramatise past lives & narrate significant historical events & processes. Pandemic Songs uses songs to provide a media-free perspective of contemporary history, with thirteen tracks written between March & June of this year, that record & comment on the global pandemic, from Robb's local UK perspective. The songs are angry, sad, affectionate, elegiac, satirical, anxious, & compassionate. They celebrate our lives in lockdown & the endurance of our keyworkers, & catalogue the vanities, incompetence, hypocrisy & failures of those in power. Pandemic Songs was recorded with a socially-distanced pared-down version of The Irregulars; John Forrester on bass & vocals, Arvin Johnson on drums, percussion & Spanish guitar, & Fae Simon on vocals. The result is a powerful, visceral album, a significant creative response to these very significant times. Robb Johnson is now widely recognised as one of the UK's finest songwriters: "An English original", - The Guardian...: Saint Mary (a fable about the origin of a virus), Monday Afternoon in the Paris House (March 16th, & a last gig before lockdown), 422 (lockdown has begun), One More Lockdown Day (lockdown continues), 5373 (the number of deaths from COVID 19 continues to rise), 89p (the government responds by promoting a Care badge), Disinfectant (President Trump promotes a cure), The Highlight of My Week (the weekly lockdown shopping), All the Bells Were Ringing (the nightly lockdown dreaming), Lockdown Jokes & Stories (three sad stories- Belly Mujinga, railworker, Mervyn Kennedy, bus driver, Louisa Rajakumari, teacher, & one bad joke - Dominic Cummings drives to Durham), Victory in Europe (May, & the UK achieves the highest rate of COVID 19 deaths in Europe), The Days We Don't Forget (a proper remembrance), In Palmeira Square (June 17th, & lockdown is ending).