Thursday 25 May 2017

Red Gold & Green #18 - Pat Kelly

Your humble author with his battered copy of today's featured tune

While sitting in the pub one evening in early 1980, my best pal and I decided to form a band. We were young, idealistic and probably quite drunk. Quick as a flash, one of us produced a piece of paper upon which we jotted down the titles of a handful of songs that, in our highfalutin opinion, we deemed worthy for us to cover. 'Striving For the Right' by Pat Kelly was high on that list. Unfortunately the world was destined never to hear our version of this or any other song, as the band got no further than a few drunken boasts to friends about how truly great we were going to be. We had, of course, conveniently skirted round the crucial fact that neither of us owned, or could play, any instruments.

All these years later, 'Striving For the Right' is still a favourite of mine. A deceptively jaunty tune carrying a strikingly simple and timeless message.

Let us live in unity 
Don't go astray 
We all are striving for the right 
Not for wrong 
For the right 

Pat Kelly - Striving For the Right

6 comments:

C said...

Perfect reggae for a day like this.
But who needs instruments to form a band?! The ones we formed in our heads were always going to be better!
My mates and me were the same. I've written about this before at my place a while back, but we had our band name, our chosen roles, even our album cover all worked out. One time we found the delapidated body of an electric guitar on the communal Guy Fawkes bonfire. No strings, no neck, no electrics. Oh how we treasured it! It meant we could play absolutely anything on it ;-)

The Swede said...

Thanks C. If the bands we formed in our heads are always going to be better, then perhaps we were indeed the best band in the world! We had a name and an album cover too - perhaps I'll come back to that story another day!

C said...

Please do!

Swiss Adam said...

I've been in so many bands that never made it to the first rehearsal.

John Medd said...

I could've sworn I saw you live.

Brian said...

Yep, been there too. Even the failures and never weres make great memories.

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