The Oxford Declaration

PATHFINDER AUDIO IS AN INDEPENDENT MUSIC LABEL RUN BY SONGWRITER AND ROMANTICS SPECIALIST JOHN WEBSTER

       DOWNLOADS ON THIS PAGE (CDs here) BOX SET here)

Three song collections that give Byron, Shelley and Keats - the poets who inspired the Beat Generation, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen - contemporary presence. Download now to add depth to your music collection.

The Byron EP 'Courageous Heart: seven Byronic songs': the voice and exploits of the poet who rocked his era. Track 1: ‘Lord B. in motion’ (We meet the poet in transit from Ravenna to Pisa); Half a Scot by birth’  (Byron’s farewell to his Scottish youth); ‘Marathon’ (dreams of Greek freedom ); ‘Setting Sail from Genoa’ (Byron journeys from Italy to Greece), ‘Lord Byron’s freedom song’ (an oblique reference to the poet’s death in Missolonghi); ‘Epitaph’, (the poet’s thoughts on his legacy), and ‘So, we’ll go no more a-roving’ (concluding with Byron’s bittersweet lyrics about partings and endings).

Plus: Read John's essay 'Byron and Islam' here. How Byron saved a young woman from  Sharia law, and showed a humane and principled approach to Islam in his life and writings.

Download 'Lord Byron and the Greek War' here and find 'A conversation with Lord Byron' on YouTube here.

The Shelley 'solo album'   ‘Percy Bysshe Shelley: Rock Star’:  Poetic adrenalin and sheer beauty from the daring, visionary and often still controversial poet. Below, a motto enameled onto a small box Shelley kept with him in Italy.

And: Was Shelley the John Lennon of his era? John's essay ''Through a Shelleyan lens' considers the similarities between the two and argues that Shelley would have seen John Lennon as an 'unacknowledged legislator' who 'touched the world with living flame'.

 'John Keats's sublime single' Astonishing maturity and depth in two of Keats’s finest lyrics in song form. A-side 'To Autumn' B-side 'On the Shore'. Preview To Autumn  HERE  - click cover to download. Listen to John's audio life of Keats here.

More resources:

 Lyrics and commentaries for all songs  here. Song previews here.

'A conversation with Lord Byron' now on YouTube. Hear Lord Byron's views on the English, fame, women, love, politics, and his departure for Greece.

Plus, contemporary songs in SONGS FOR OUR TIME by John Webster with Brindaband - 'Hope is a solemn duty we owe alike to ourselves and to the world' - Coleridge

Including:

WORLD AT THE CROSSROADS

'There's a change in the weather, there's a change in our lives

That sends us journeying off into the night...'

Listen on YouTube here

THE PANTHEIST SONG

'There never was an old man God with anger in his eyes

Who had so little patience he threw us out of Paradise...'

THE HILLS OF TUSCANY

'One day you'll build a house where we can both be free

Among the vineyards and the cypresses of the hills of Tuscany...'

  Listen to "Songs for our Time" on Spotify here

  More here on JOHN WEBSTER WITH BRINDABAND

'Sometimes you're gonna live in turbulent times... sometimes you're gonna grow through turbulent times....'

CHECK IT OUT ON YOUTUBE here.

and: WHERE THERE'S LIFE

'When your inner light shines on you/You can make it through...'

from

 Click here to listen on Spotify

NEW RELEASE: 'EDWARD LEAR'S NONSENSE SINGLE'

 John’s versions of two classic poems by the nonsense pioneer, born two hundred years ago in 1812. Preview/download here

download here