The Sixties soundtrack of our lives, part two

Here’s another great, evocative song that sounds as if it really should be in a Sixties film:

This one sets more of a pastoral scene for me, so here’s a little bit of clichéd imagery to go with it…

Scene I

Shimmery, white material fills the whole screen – slowly the camera zooms out and gradually it becomes apparent that it is the fabric of a dress.  It zooms out further to reveal the young woman wearing it, the shape of her body just showing through the flimsy summer frock which is made slightly transparent by the bright sunlight.  She’s walking through the long grass of a meadow, a dreamy expression on her pale face. The scene continues to zoom out until she is only a small figure in the distance, then it angles up to show just the vivid blue, cloudless sky.  A white bird flies silently across, left to right…

Scene II

… You choose…!  I’m no good at this film directing malarkey.

The Sixties soundtrack of our lives, part one

Don’t you sometimes just hear a song and think “this should be in a film”?  I mean the kind of song that brings to mind images of Susannah York - or Michael York for that matter – in the type of movie that is probably set in London or another cosmopolitan city.  Both song and film have to be from the Sixties, ideally.  This is a world of coffee bars with Formica table tops or bowler-hatted men lusting after their dolly-bird secretaries.  Perhaps the scene shows two young lovers walking down a quiet street in early evening, pigeons fly upward as the couple approach them, then our hero and heroine turn a corner and we view them from the back as they disappear into the distance and the closing credits take their place on the screen.  Or maybe the kohl-eyed female lead is leaning out of a window, chintzy net curtains and blonde hair blowing in the breeze, as the camera pans out to the view she sees, of a city full of bustling crowds and red double-decker buses… introducing us to a world we’re going to be immersed in for the next ninety minutes.

Songs which work really well for me which are already in films include the wonderful ‘To Sir With Love’ which just succeeds on so many levels.  Who could fail to be moved by it in some way?  Or how about the superb intro to ‘Up The Junction’…

But other songs are just random singles, lone B-sides or album tracks perhaps, which never did get included in a film score, and I reckon they should have been.  Cue this song from 1968, the B-side to ‘Race With The Devil’ by The Gun.  It’s somewhere in the middle of my imaginary film, and I see a beautiful man, maybe he’s driving along a coastal road in an open-top car, the early morning sun refracted artily on the chrome trim of his MGB.  I don’t know what his story is yet, but it’s sure to be full of surprises, secrets and probably a fair few groovy club scenes.

More make-believe soundtrack songs to follow in future instalments…