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  • The Complete Works (Year 1)
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    This 2nd edition of our boxset contains all four of The Bookshop Band's CD albums. All the CDs are individually numbered and packaged in a bespoke letterpress-printed case. The box also contains our very own newspaper - The Bookshop Band Chronicles.

    All are bound together in a lovely box.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Complete Works (Year One) - 2nd Edition via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £1 GBP

     

about

This is a tale about a couple that had a boy after years of trying for a child. The woman is so delighted that she dies. The man remarries and has another child, but this mother is not kind. She entices the boy with an apple and chops his head off with the lid of the apple chest. She makes it look as though it is the daughter’s fault, then feeds the boy to his father in a stew which he can’t stop eating. Meanwhile, the boy turns into a bird and sings ‘My mother she killed me, my father he ate me, my sister, Marlene made sure to see my bones were all gathered together, bound nicely in silk, as neat as can be, and laid beneath the juniper tree. Tweet, tweet! What a lovely bird I am!’

The bird gathers gifts from the locals including a stone with which he drops on the mother. The bird returns to being a boy and they go inside to eat.

The song was written and performed at Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights when Simon Winder came in to talk about the Penguin Central European Classics collection.

lyrics

One winters day, in the snow she lay
There was a tree, a juniper tree
Nine months past and a child at last
Tears were in her eye’s
Of joy, and then she died.

Now, the boy, white as snow, red as blood
A new found love, a wicked love
She cut his head, now he is dead
Tears were in her eyes
Of fear and devil’s lies

Beautiful bird of
Song he sings, for all his loves
People look up above
Below the tree there’s signs of life.

Next winter’s day, now the boy would play
Beneath the tree, the juniper tree.

credits

from The Complete Works (Year One) - 2nd Edition, released June 22, 2013
Written and recorded by The Bookshop Band
Mixed by Marco Migliari

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all rights reserved

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about

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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