Come back to the Moon

So I heard this in full for the first time today:

“Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” by Jonathan King, a song I’d heard of but never properly heard until now; it was a fairly substantial hit in its day (1965) but somehow it completely bypassed me until this afternoon. I can only assume that at least part of why that should be is down to King’s later, er, career as a convicted sex offender, you know, a bit like why you don’t hear much from Gary Glitter any more… But there is another song I have known for a lot of years that suddenly shone in a new light after hearing this one:

The Humblebums featuring Billy Connolly in 1969 (before Gerry Rafferty joined), with “Why Don’t They Come Back to Dunoon”. I actually only have this on cassette so haven’t been able to listen to it in I don’t know how many years, but “Dunoon” has always been my favourite song on it… and, listening to the King song today, I suddenly realised “Dunoon” had an earlier model. Not an exact match, but near enough…

…Indeed, had I ever done any discographical research into the Big Yin, I might actually have discovered this fact years ago, cos there it is right there on the label of the First Collection album. This is, obviously, a somewhat meaningless discovery but I’m kind of amused to have finally made it; as for which of the two I ultimately prefer, well, there’s an undeniably appealing wistful quality to the original, but, you know, the pedophile thing. So I think Billy & Tam win by default.