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The 5th Knight and the Moon Princess

from Travels from your armchair by The Bookshop Band

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  • CD album
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    'Travels from your armchair' is the first album by The Bookshop Band. It contains all the songs written for Season One of the author events at Mr Bs Emporium of Reading Delights. The songs were all inspired by folk tales from around the world.

    The limited edition bespoke case is designed by the band, is numbered, and printed on an old letterpress in Oxford.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Travels from your armchair via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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about

This song was inspired by one of the oldest narrative tales in Japan, The Bamboo Cutter and the Moon Princess - a startling tale of an alien-being from the moon, who is found and brought up by a loving old childless couple. When she reaches age, she is the most beautiful woman in the world, and glows with an unearthly but lovely light. It is very easy to fall in love with such a lady, and so do five knights, who wait for years outside her house declaring their undying love for her, despite not even having really even met her. Eventually she consents that if they each undertake a very difficult task for her, and bring her an item that she asks for, and then she will marry one of them. They each go off on their journey, but 4 of them, seeing how difficult their specific tasks were, decide to try and cheat. They all return, and large passages of the story reveal how the Moon Princess discovers their forgeries and sends them packing. The 5th Knight however, being the only honorable one among them ultimately dies on his quest, however, in each version of the story this is always covered by one sentence only, which I felt was a bit mean, given he was the only one that really tried. This song is therefore dedicated to the story of the 5th Knight, basically to give this honorable character a little more “screen time” in history.

The story ends when the Moon Princess inevitably returns back to the moon on her flying cloud-ship, your classic ending to a folk tale.

The song is also about trying to hold onto someone who is leaving, which does crop up a few times during this album.

This song was written and performed when Edmund De Waal came into Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights to talk about his book 'The Hare With The Amber Eyes', as part of Japan Night during the shops Season One of events.

lyrics

I have hardly known you
And do not know enough to
Fall in love, but I stop in awe of…

I can tend to feel lost
It’s not the timing, it’s just
Love is not the end, but a journey.

Five ships leave in the morning
And I’ll try to join the one you’re in.
So I flew, I flew.

So from here we shall see
But I’m just happy to be
On our way, but what a day
To be stormy.

Five ships left in the morning
And I couldn’t find the one you’re in
To see you I must be bold
But as I climbed, I lost my foothold.
And I flew, I flew.

Your ship sails in the morning
And I can’t keep you from going.

credits

from Travels from your armchair, released December 1, 2011
Written and performed by The Bookshop Band
Mixed by Marco Migliari

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The Bookshop Band Bath, UK

The Bookshop Band write songs inspired by books and play them in bookshops. They started as a collaboration between a group of musicians in Bath and their local independent bookshop, Mr B's Emporium. Now they are about to go on tour, sponsored by Vintage Books and Independent Booksellers Week, around other bookshops and lit fests. Catch them if you can. Details at www.thebookshopband.co.uk ... more

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