Halcyon Days (Strawbs album)

Halcyon Days is a compilation album by English band Strawbs. Although credited to Strawbs it does contain three Hudson Ford tracks and a Dave Cousins solo track (taken from his album Two Weeks Last Summer). The album was released as a 2-CD set in the UK and US. The US release has a slightly different title (Halcyon Days – The A & M Years) and a different track listing.

Cover

The cover image is of a common kingfisher, a reference to the mythical kingsfisher of Halcyon days.

Track listing – UK release

CD one

Halcyon Days

Halcyon Days is an oblique reference to the Greek mythological figure Alcyone, it may also refer to:

Literature

Music

Albums

Compositions

Halcyon Days (book)

Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers is a digital book edited by James Hague and published in 1997. The book was originally formatted using HTML and sold via mail-order, shipped on a floppy disk by Dadgum Games for USD$20. In 2002 Halcyon Days was made freely available on the web. The book continued to be sold by Dr. Dobb's Journal, on a CD-ROM also containing Susan Lammers's Programmers at Work, until Dr. Dobb's shut down at the end of 2014.

The introduction to Halcyon Days is written by John Romero.

Interviewees

Halcyon Days (Sounds of Swami EP)

The Halcyon Days EP is the second official release by the English punk rock band Sounds of Swami. After the success of their Vent EP, the band began work on their first album. After a positive EP review in an issue of TNS Zine, the Manchester zine started a record label TNSrecords and offered the band a one-off split record deal with two of their roster bands. The band reluctantly declined in favour of saving new songs for the planned album.

Months later, the idea of writing and recording songs in a hardcore punk style as a one-off release came to fruition with three of the six songs being written in one sessione. The songs emphasised their more hardcore punk side with influences including Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Black Flag, Gorilla Biscuits and Dead Kennedys affecting the overall sound of the EP.

The band approached TNSrecords about the project in the run-up to their first album and co-released the EP physically on 7-inch vinyl and digitally on iTunes. Both formats are a first for the band. To much surprise, Halcyon Days generated rave reviews on the underground punk circuit and gained high recognition from mainland Europe.