To-morrow's People - Hey To-night/ Love Is Where You Find It/ Time Is On My Side

 

Mysterious CCR cover by unknown Irish band

Label: Polydor

Year of Release: 1971

Let's face it, keeping a blog like this one is a slightly eccentric endeavour, but also not an easy task. The fantastic thing about writing about established artists is that their history is known, and they had a clear place - however fleeting - in the ever-revolving and fast-moving world of popular culture. The very mention of a group like Traffic, for example, carries a weight of assumptions, tasty myths and background colour. Some of these assumptions and popular myths are of course worth challenging, and by the time you've finished, blow me down if you don't already have something approaching an essay on your hands (and that's before you've even talked about the music itself).

It's trickier to write about groups whose records sold in the hundreds or dozens, and harder still to focus on bands who issued one 45 then evaporated into the great unknown. I can presume a lot about how they fitted into the context of the era, and why they failed and how they might have succeeded, and I can knowingly nod towards their imaginative (or alternatively pedestrian) use of the stylistic tropes of the time. That's often where it begins and ends, and as you'll probably gather from this overly long preamble, that's usually when I feel I'm shortchanging readers - if you can really shortchange somebody who is getting content for free, that is.

So here we are again. This Irish single threw me completely when I stumbled across it, and 45cat didn't even have it logged in their database. It's pretty damn clear that the A-side is a cover of the Creedence Clearwater Revival track "Hey Tonight", of course (which was somewhat buried on the flipside of that group's 1971 single "Have You Ever Seen The Rain") and the band also tackle Marmalade's "Time Is On My Side" on the flip. 

The version of "Hey Tonight" is interesting in that it takes the rough, rumbling and shaky bluesiness of the original and sands it down and reinterprets it as something close to bubblegum pop. Gone is the roar of the original, and instead a squeaky organ, clear, rounded vocals and a chiming guitar are placed upfront, making CCR sound closer to a mid-sixties pop ensemble trying to restyle themselves as a chewy seventies pop outfit. It's not clear whether this shining up is deliberate or accidental, but it is certainly interesting.

The tracks on the flipside are rather more underpowered, unfortunately, with a tepid and threadbare beat holding the group back a lot - the drummer's rhythms are distinctly pre-Merseybeat in places, actually, with the modest tipping and tapping you would more commonly find on late fifties pop 45s. 

The group? Oh, God knows, and probably somebody else besides, and if you happen to be that mere mortal, please do leave a comment. I highly doubt To-morrow's People were a showband, so I'll instead guess that they were a rock group on the Irish bar circuit who managed to land a one-off deal with Polydor. Maybe one day I'll find out how offbeam or on the money I am.

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