Karel Fialka 'Hey Matthew'

Chart Peak: 9

YouTube

And the connections continue, since Cliff Richard apparently once covered Fialka's 'Aube Someday'. Apart from that fact, it's hard to get started on 'Hey Matthew', except to say it's one of those songs I remember from the time, but haven't really heard since - so it's not quite the song I recall. I was sure that I remembered "Matthew" as having an American accent, probably because he was talking about Airwolf and the A-Team and stuff.

Like a lot of records from this time, it sounds cheap - but unlike most of them it actually was, reportedly knocked off for a budget of £300. Nowadays he'd probably have to pay several times that for permission to use that Spiderman costume in the video. Strip away the synthesised production, though, and what it reminds me of most is one of the second-division protest singers of the 1960s, or those slightly earnest types who were still taking their acoustic guitars to schools when I was a pupil. It's simple musically and the moral is pretty obvious, and yet I can't entirely take against it, even if small children singing on pop records are something I struggle to tolerate. I suppose there's a certain warmth about it that discourages me from being too negative.

I wouldn't buy it though, which is probably just as well since it's the first track on this blog that I haven't found commercially available anywhere.