Paddy McAloon & Jimmy Webb: The Highwayman

This makes me happy to be alive.

Jimmy Webb (awfully important songwriter chap who makes a certain demographic of older male music lover go a bit funny; he wrote Witchita Lineman, you know, and got Richard Harris and Donna Summer to lament the cake being left in the rain) and Paddy McAloon (Prefab Sproutsperson, godlike genius etc etc) recorded this version of Webb’s track for some TV special on Irish broadcaster RTÉ. Bill Whelan (pre-Riverdance) is steering the orchestra, and the whole thing strikes me as one of those totally random happenings that can only come about as a result of some music lover/civil servant getting access to state-funding and presenting the public with something they never knew they needed.

An excellent argument for the TV licence and YouTube, no?

 

Tin Cat Pot has an mp3 rip of this and plenty of other hard-to-find Sprout goodness.