Thank you for the days: Wednesday

A new, seven-part series as a thiny veiled excuse to have something to write about: three songs that have a day of the week in the title. Not (just) in the lyrics but in the title. Today, part three, and some head-scratching on my part ... it's Wednesday.

Let's kick off with some stripped back twelve-bar R&B from John Lee Hooker, in the form of Wednesday Evening Blues. This song is 62 years old but must have had some kind of studio trickery applied in the remastering, because the vocal sounds like it was recorded last night...

Let's fast-forward from there to 1980, to Wednesday Week by Elvis Costello and The Attractions, from their Armed Forces period. This is fast and frantic at the start, but the second half is more typical of later Elvis and elevates this above many of its peers.

Let's close with my favourite Wednesday song though; also called Wednesday Week, and also from 1980, this is by The Undertones and signalled something of an advance for them musically, a little slower than much of what had come before, a little more complex too. Who knew, listening to this back then, that Feargal would end up the de facto guardian of the nation's rivers? More power to him!

Hmm, can't think what to do tomorrow...