I've recently bought 'This May Be My Last Time Singing', a compilation of African-American independent gospel singles, released privately between 1957-1982 and performed by non professionals. This won't come as too much of a surprise for regular readers who will be aware of my long standing passion for gospel music, and I'm happy to report that it's marvellous. All of it. A stand out track for me though is 'On The Right Road Now', recorded by the Crump Brothers in 1968 and sees vocalist M Crump (no other name is given) hollering out how he looks forward to the day when every day will be Sunday. This stands out on two counts; firstly, by virtue of the sheer joy and evangelical desire to spread the good news that fires the man's voice in a way that even manages to inspire a lifelong atheist like me, and secondly by the fact that Mr Crump is able to get me to derive pleasure from a proposal that, in some ways, is one of my worst nightmares. Maybe a song advocating swallowing live spiders would give me more of the creeps, but not that many - you see I simply can't imagine anything much worse than a world where every day is Sunday. Dear me no.
I think a lot of this stems from my childhood where every Sunday afternoon, the local church down the road would ring its single bell at 5pm for fifteen minutes. Ostensibly to call the faithful to prayer, all I heard was the tolling of the end of the weekend and each ring fired a hollow point bullet into the joy that once was Saturday. BONG! Time to come in from playing with my mates. BONG! Time for a bath. BONG! Time for Last Of The Summer Wine on TV. BONG! Time for bed ready for school next day. Brrrrrrrr - that bell sucked lifelessness of the day the way a naked flame burns oxygen and the feeling of inevitable helplessness has never left me, meaning every Sunday since comes with its own black and white tinted minor miseries.
Why am I telling you this? Well, it's mainly because I want to be upfront about my inbuilt prejudices and to show, on one hand, what a fine job those Crump Brothers were doing within the medium to get me to overcome them and to listen to what they're saying - I don't believe in Fascism either, but I can't imagine any act could dress up a song with a message of white supremacy in a way that would let me give it the time of day. On the other hand though, it also demonstrates what a poor job they were doing after all; for all Mr Crump's enthusiasm, he moves me not one step closer to his God. Yet at the same time, and somewhere in the middle of both of these reactions, it can't be said either that his message is falling on deaf ears; I can draw sufficient secular inspiration from his own zeal the same way I can draw it from all the best gospel. It's why I listen to it after all. And further, it neatly illustrates why I don't listen to Cliff and his Millennium Prayer.
Basically is a marriage of the 'lyrics' of The Lord's Prayer to an overcooked rendition of 'Auld Lang Syne' as musical backing ('Living Doll' it ain't), Richard's voice solemnly quivers like a plucked string with the enormity of the lyric he's been called on to deliver. This is no time for any light-hearted banter about mistletoe and wine, this is serious, end of the Millennium territory, and yet rather than recite the message as blank verse, Cliff falls between the stools of song and sermon and goes for the pop bait by trying to force the lines into a tune and rhyme of sorts as they crawl over a rousing drum tattoo to march the Christian soldiers onward into the coming Millennium.
Sincerity isn't the problem here; Cliff is no less sincere than the Crump Brothers were; he's just a whole lot less enjoyable. You see, outside of the already converted, his sincerity is neither infectious nor contagious. It's not inspiring either - Richard wasn't the first to record a version of the Lord's Prayer,* but he surely serves up the worst with his dullard thud of showbiz schmaltz dressed up as populist religiosity covering fascistic evangelism as Cliff in his own way wishes every day of the new Millennium could be Sunday too, whether the rest of us want it or not - this is THE Millennium prayer don't forget.
But in trying to do God's work on earth, he's succeeded only in raising hell in a truly awful concoction that really does not make me wish that everyday was like Sunday** and its success must surely have fed on new Millennium fears and some subliminal desire to appease the gods into not delivering earthquakes, plague, and the catastrophic destruction of the world via the vague notion of a Millennium Bug waiting in the wings to wreck havoc as soon as the clock chimed midnight on New Year's Eve. That's how I rationalise it anyway. But maybe it's simply a logical and fitting (almost) end to a year that, in terms of number ones, has been pretty bloody poor. Cliff's Christmas songs would get a hell of a lot lighter after this, but there would be no more number ones. I'd like to think even God knew when enough was enough.
* For a whistle stop tour, check out the Nina Hagen and Siouxise and the Banshees versions for punky irreverence that aim for controversy but are no less dull in their own way. Mario Lanzo managed to wring some melody from the lines without the need for a sing song tune, but for a showstopping version that has all the inspirational passion of of any gospel song, then check out Mahalia Jackson's paint stripping take at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Cliff was clearly taking no notes.
** Then again, Wizzard never made me wish it was Christmas every day either.
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