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

Version City #10 - Pat Kelly

'Try to Remember' is a song from a musical, 'The Fantasticks', originally performed by Jerry Orbach in an off-Broadway production of the show in 1960 and thereafter covered many times in subsequent years.

Here's a bright 'n' breezy rocksteady treatment by Pat Kelly (often spelt Kelley), which appeared on the b-side of his 1969 single, 'How Long Will It Take?' I've had a scratchy copy of this 7" since the late 1970's, but on Sunday I was lucky enough to pick up an upgrade from a local car-boot sale for just 30p - good times!