The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 27/11/10
Matt Monro - "We're Gonna Change The World" (1970)
I'm wondering whether to institute a special feature called Saturday Sounds and Tuesday Tunes for all this; but I'd probably get bored with it in short order, and it'd turn into Monday Music and Thursday Thongs in due course.
Anyway, here's the latest sonic gift to youse.
There are two reasons for me including it: firstly, I have wonderful memories of it at the time it was released in the summer of 1970 when I had just turned eight years old. I have a particular image in my head associated with it; that of sitting in a café on the first floor of a building in Dolgellau, where we (me, my parents and a neighbour who was providing the transport) were making a stop on the way to our rented holiday caravan in Tywyn. It was an old building, and the floor was worryingly uneven, sloping up towards the walls. I recall looking out over the logjammed junction either side of the bridge over the River Wnion (pre-bypass days these - all traffic had to cross that bridge and crawl its way through the narrow streets of the town).
A song which seemed to talk of mass public protest - and even possible revolution - may have appeared to be an odd choice for the recorded repertoire of one of the finest popular singers of the second half of the twentieth century (someone for whom even Sinatra had respect), but the sheer joie de vivre of the piece was - and remains - infectious. For whatever reason, however, it was not a hit, despite getting copious airplay on BBC Radio 2. Perhaps there was a conspiracy...
Oh, and the second reason for putting it here? In tribute to the young people who protested in London and many another place this week just passed, and who were forced to undergo what has become the standard thuggery from police forces who are collectively out of control and to whom the word consent has become as meaningless as the word proportionate.
