As you will have seen Richard Moore has been updating the ‘News” page for me the last few months. Unfortunately, I was rushed to hospital on 24 January and was quite unwell for four months, hence my absence on all media sites. I am just starting to find my feet but you will understand that I have been unable to do anything at all over the time period. Thankfully Richard has stepped up to ensure that all the new projects in the pipeline are going forward, but it has been painfully slow, especially with the streaming downloads with Universal Music which are still awaiting legal clearance. This has now been ongoing for the last year, and it seems we can do nothing to speed up the process. A lot of companies are blaming Covid but to be honest this sort of thing can be achieved quite quickly if people pulled their fingers out.
Our other MM project is still viable, but we are waiting on rights agreements. Need I say more!!!
Richard has spent several months updating the official MM website – www.mattmonro.com – and as he told you last month the discography is now complete. It is much more comprehensive than the old website, and is fully illustrated and contains track lists and links to ‘making of’ articles and other relevant links. This doesn’t include every single release as this would take hundreds of pages to achieve, but includes all original and important releases and covers the original release of every track. Updating the site is a mammoth job but He, as always, will win in the end. We are purposely paring it down as it would seem that a lot of areas aren’t looked at so we are condensing it to just MM content.
As you will know we launched the official MM YouTube site to coincide with dad’s 90th anniversary last December so we could offer you a 4-part audio documentary to celebrate the occasion. Because of all our staunch followers it was important to us that we give this for free and every week Aviator and the MM Estate are adding a MM video, some of which haven’t been available before. This collaboration is important as it takes off all the unofficial content on dubious sites, especially those of bad quality. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel (which is totally free) as they will advise you every time something new is added.
As always Richard and I have our nose to the ground in trying to trace any MM memorabilia whether performances, radios, song sheets or photos and this week we were able to find a Des O’Connor Show from 1970 – which has dad singing a solo, a duet and appearing in two comedy sketches. This is fantastic and with luck it should pop up on the official YouTube site very soon. A collector in New Zealand also kindly sent us a radio performance of the Joe Loss Show with dad singing ‘Portrait of My Love’. This was an interesting find as I didn’t have a listing or contract for it. Having listened to the recording dad is only singing with a piano backing whereas the show itself had a full band. This seems to me that dad must have stepped in at the last minute to cover another artist’s illness or some such similar thing.
It is amazing that even though I have begged for material over the years people are reluctant to come forward. With the original Camay advert which took some 18 years to find, the lady said she hadn’t come forward because she’d assumed we must have it. Thankfully she did contact me eventually.
And now we come to something momentous. Richard received an email asking if we wanted to buy a MM show from 1969. This is not a guest appearance but dad’s own 45-minute show from a venue that we didn’t know had been taped. Now we find that the BBC did tape it in broadcast quality and sold it abroad. I don’t want to put a hex on it by telling you what it is yet because although I have paid for it the original tape has not been received yet. Richard and I have everything crossed that it will be in our hands this month. Hopefully in the next updates we will be able to tell you what it is but if it comes off it will be the biggest find since dad’s Australian live show.
Because of the pandemic I haven’t been on the cruise ships for the last 18 months and because of that my new book ‘The Autonomous Cruiser: The Complete Guide to Cruising For and With Disabled Travellers’ has been sitting at the publisher the last year as the timing wasn’t right. Now the cruise ships are returning to the seas, I am looking at releasing this in the autumn and will let you know the exact date when we have a slot.
Any new visitors to the site please feel free to look around and if you would like to join the forum, please drop a note to richard@mattmonro.com rather than me as I am not up to full speed yet.
I do hope those that are sports fans will enjoy the football and tennis this month and I have everything crossed that England gets some favourable weather over the coming weeks
Until next month, stay safe and keep spreading the word about everything Matt Monro
