.... and for all those other nations that are "on the wrong side of history".
Yes, there's sort of a topical reason for posting this clip this week, but actually I've been meaning to do so for ages. This is a song that has astonishingly powerful resonances for me - and yet, until I found this on YouTube some time last year, I don't think I'd ever seen this performance of it before; or indeed, any performance; it's entirely possible that I'd never heard the song all the way through before.
The reason it induces such a swoon of nostalgia in me is that it was used as the theme music for BBC1's weekly roundup of new cinema releases (imaginatively titled Film + last two digits of year in question), a Monday night fixture throughout my childhood and adolescence. I think it was originally presented by a journalist called Iain Johnstone (ah, well, Johnstone certainly covered for Norman a number of times later on, but I gather the early days of the show had a number of different presenters, including Freddy Raphael and Joan Bakewell.... before my time!), but he soon ceded the position to Barry Norman, whose lugubrious wit in the role soon made him quite a media celebrity; he helmed the series through most of the '70s and '80s, and well into the '90s, I think (though I'm not sure if it continues to this day).
I really should not have been able to watch this, since it was usually on after the Monday night film - and thus starting at well after 11pm, and sometimes after 11.30pm and going on until just after midnight. However, staying up LATE - especially for a film - was something that I had come to regard as the best of treats at a very early age, maybe as young as 4 or 5 years old; and I'm sure I made such a pain of myself when denied one of these treats that my parents soon began to give in to me. Once I'd proven that I could still get up in the morning and function at school the next day, they started allowing me to stay up until 10.30 or 11 every night, and occasionally until 12..... even when I was barely 10 years old. By the mid-70s, Barry was a Monday night addiction for me.
The music accompanied the opening montage of micro-clips of famous films, which remained largely unchanged for long periods - although I think they usually updated it occasionally during the course of each year to represent some of the recent big hits. It was also used during the show for shorter montages of the films to be featured that night. It could be quite a challenge to spot all of the excerpts - they were usually without sound and some were subliminally brief; and, as often as not, they were from films that I'd never actually seen. Even so, I usually did pretty well: my competitive film-buffery started early!
And so...... I've heard this tune - especially the opening few bars - countless hundreds of times; yet it's such a catchy little number that it never seems to lose its charm.
Here's the great jazz pianist Billy Taylor playing it - for once! - all the way through: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, his own composition.
Yes, there's sort of a topical reason for posting this clip this week, but actually I've been meaning to do so for ages. This is a song that has astonishingly powerful resonances for me - and yet, until I found this on YouTube some time last year, I don't think I'd ever seen this performance of it before; or indeed, any performance; it's entirely possible that I'd never heard the song all the way through before.
The reason it induces such a swoon of nostalgia in me is that it was used as the theme music for BBC1's weekly roundup of new cinema releases (imaginatively titled Film + last two digits of year in question), a Monday night fixture throughout my childhood and adolescence. I think it was originally presented by a journalist called Iain Johnstone (ah, well, Johnstone certainly covered for Norman a number of times later on, but I gather the early days of the show had a number of different presenters, including Freddy Raphael and Joan Bakewell.... before my time!), but he soon ceded the position to Barry Norman, whose lugubrious wit in the role soon made him quite a media celebrity; he helmed the series through most of the '70s and '80s, and well into the '90s, I think (though I'm not sure if it continues to this day).
I really should not have been able to watch this, since it was usually on after the Monday night film - and thus starting at well after 11pm, and sometimes after 11.30pm and going on until just after midnight. However, staying up LATE - especially for a film - was something that I had come to regard as the best of treats at a very early age, maybe as young as 4 or 5 years old; and I'm sure I made such a pain of myself when denied one of these treats that my parents soon began to give in to me. Once I'd proven that I could still get up in the morning and function at school the next day, they started allowing me to stay up until 10.30 or 11 every night, and occasionally until 12..... even when I was barely 10 years old. By the mid-70s, Barry was a Monday night addiction for me.
The music accompanied the opening montage of micro-clips of famous films, which remained largely unchanged for long periods - although I think they usually updated it occasionally during the course of each year to represent some of the recent big hits. It was also used during the show for shorter montages of the films to be featured that night. It could be quite a challenge to spot all of the excerpts - they were usually without sound and some were subliminally brief; and, as often as not, they were from films that I'd never actually seen. Even so, I usually did pretty well: my competitive film-buffery started early!
And so...... I've heard this tune - especially the opening few bars - countless hundreds of times; yet it's such a catchy little number that it never seems to lose its charm.
Here's the great jazz pianist Billy Taylor playing it - for once! - all the way through: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, his own composition.
And here's a version by the divine Nina Simone (but no video, unfortunately).
No comments:
Post a Comment