Reupload - Money - Come Laughing Home/ Power Of The Rainbow

Label: Major Minor

Year of Release: 1969

"Stop wasting your time looking for obscurities," a rather pushy record dealer said to me a couple of weeks ago. "There's nothing out there that hasn't been compiled or DJ'ed with already, and even if you think you find a good record nobody's heard of, I guarantee you somebody out there has." 

"Ah yes, Mr Dealer, but what if they found a record, believed it to be crap, and wrongly put it to one side?" I replied. Well actually, I didn't.  I just nodded and smiled at him politely whilst those very thoughts ran through my head.

 Of course, he had a very good point.  It is indeed becoming a near-impossible mission to find anything new that's interesting, particularly from eras where the lucky dip has been well and truly picked dry.  Given the enormous array of blogs out there, the endless unofficial compilations of obscure material it's impossible to keep track of, and street-smart retro DJs with money to burn, you can never definitely state that you're the first person to be wowed by a track.  So naturally, when I say to you readers "This is a good record which appears to have been ignored", it should be taken with a tiny pinch of salt. It could be played weekly at your local popsike bop for all I know.

Obviously I'm leading up to the point that Money's "Come Laughing Home" is a really pleasant surprise, despite being rather tartly dismissed by a couple of other sources.  When you see a record label clearly stating that the tune is from a theatre production - in this case Keith Waterhouse's play of the same name - you tend not to expect more than a saccharine pop ballad with a gentle orchestra behind it.  This, on the other hand, introduces itself with some doomy organ chords, the repeated pleading refrain "Come home!" before launching headlong into a sweet and wistful piece of harmony-drenched popsike.  Reminiscent of a likable Roy Wood penned ballad and containing riffs which sound similar to fragments of "Dancing In The Moonlight" in places, the A-side is summery, breezy and chipper without being irritating.  I don't want to overstate the case here, but it's surprising that this one hasn't received a bit more attention from collectors.

Sadly, the flip "The Power Of The Rainbow" really isn't worth troubling yourselves with too much, being a rather dull pop ballad.

Money apparently hailed from Manchester, but information about them is otherwise hard to come by.  One more single entitled "Breaking Of Her Heart" was issued in 1970 before they disappeared off pop's map, and if you know who they were and what else they did, please do let me know.

(Since this blog entry was originally uploaded in July 2012, a few facts have come forward. Key players in the recording, Ray Teret and Mel Scholes, were apparently also DJs on Signal in Stoke. Something I should also have spotted first time around is that this is a Bill Kenwright production, who had a background in musical theatre and acting, and is of course these days is Chair of Everton FC. 

That seems to it, but if anyone knows anything more, please let me know. Somebody called Emma Tanton dropped me a line promising more information, but it was never forthcoming -if you want to get back in touch again, I'll be all ears).