Val Doonican - Memories Are Made of This (18 Golden Love Songs)

Another excursion outside the box this week, and it’s a definite curio in the collection. Remember when I mentioned here that whilst packing to move house in 2014, I found two cassettes that I had no recollection of acquiring? Well, as mentioned in that post, one was Programmed for Fitness with the Green Goddess, the other was today’s entry. I think I may have bought this cheaply in a charity shop intending to gift it to David as a joke, but I obviously never got around to doing that.

What we have here is Memories are made of this (18 Golden Love Songs) by Val Doonican. I can’t say the Big Valbowski is particularly my cup of tea, but I did like his, erm, “cameo” in ‘The Intro & The Outro’ by the Bonzo Dog Band. Anyway, unsurprisingly I’ve never listened to this before, and I’m not sure how much I’ll find to say about most of it, but the (arbitrary) rules I’ve set myself are that I have to listen to every tape, so here we go.
 
Artist: Val Doonican
Album: Memories are made of this (18 Golden Love Songs)
UK Record Label: Prism Leisure Corporation
UK Release Date: 1996
UK Single Releases from Album: None
 
This appears to be mostly cover versions, and to be totally honest with you the version of the song from which this collection gets its title isn’t terrible. That can’t be said for Val’s version of ‘Wonderful World’ though. Louis Armstrong’s voice had wonderful texture, but Doonican’s is a bit too smooth to do the song justice. ‘The Spanish Lady’ is a traditional Irish folk song, more up tempo than what has gone before, it’s a welcome change of pace to something that has been fairly plodding so far. Unfortunately, we’re back to plodding with a cover of Bing Crosby’s ‘The Isle of Innisfree’, and it’s more of the same on ‘Beautiful Dreamer’. We’re nearing the halfway mark, and I’m not going to lie, this is a bit of a slog. Ooh, the tape has warped a bit, kind of sounds like V/Vm or something, that’s definitely more interesting! I think I’ll eat my Kit Kat Gold. I’ve never had one before. It’s pretty good, imagine a standard Kit Kat/Caramac hybrid and you get the general idea.
 
Side 2 kicks off with ‘Young at Heart’. Sadly, it’s not a cover of the Bluebells track but is actually the Sinatra standard. It’s a crooner doing a crooning song, there’s not much more I can say really. Oh Christ, now he’s doing ‘Close to You’. The kindest thing I can say is he’s no Karen Carpenter. ‘Little Bridget Flynn’ is another traditional Irish folk song. It’s a bit more sinister and brooding sounding than the other one though. I bet she dies at the end. Now we have a cover of Billy Joel’s ‘Just the Way You Are’, it’s not very good, only three more to go after this. The most interesting thing about ‘The Sun Always Shines When You’re Young’ is that there’s a typo on the track listing on the back, so it says Sung rather than Sun. That’s it. The final track is ‘Somewhere Out There’, a duet with someone called Lynn Clare, who to be fair does have a nice voice. I like this – mainly because it means there’s no more to come – but it is probably one of the better tracks on the album.
 
With that the tape draws to a close. I doubt very much I’ll ever listen to that again, but it was an interesting experience to listen to something I’d never normally choose to. I can’t say Val has toppled Scott Walker as my crooner of choice though.

You can't listen to the album here, because I can't find it online anywhere!

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