THEME FROM TRAVELLING MAN

After his fourth album streets of Fire (1979) Duncan Browne's momentum in the music business was gradually lost. The next and final album during his lifetime (Songs of Love & War was a fine, posthumous release from 1995) was not a regular album but a soundtrack for a TV series called Travelling Man, "composed and performed by Duncan Browne & Sebastian Graham-Jones" as indicated on the album cover. So, who was that other guy whose musical participation is altogether missing from the album info here? Wikipedia: "Sebastian Graham-Jones was a British actor and director known for such films and television series as Ace of Wands, Travelling Man, Because of the Cats, The Little Drummer Girl and Shadow of the Noose. Jones was also a theatre director and musician. He died of cancer at the age of 56." The Granada TV series, broadcast in the U.K. in 1984-85, starred Leigh Lawson as Lomax, a man searching for his missing son and hunting down those who framed him. Graham-Jones co-directed the series instead of acting in it.

The main theme is a melancholic instrumental piece in a slow tempo. The pan pipe [synth probably] is not the only reason why I'm thinking of the CAMEL instrumental 'The Stationary Traveller' from the same year! Or more precisely, the beginning of it. But this one doesn't really progress, like the far superior Camel piece does in a gorgeous way. The production sounds a bit hollow, very much of its time. Nevertheless, the piece is quite beautiful.

'Andrea's Theme' is also nice. Could that be a real pan pipe after all? This instrumental piece is almost equally calm and melancholic, and a little bit more varied and dynamic in structure than the main theme. At least if the production was better, one could compare it musically to the calm pieces of CLANNAD at that time. Anyway, the soundtrack seemed to have convincingly expanded the musical oeuvre of Duncan Browne as a composer. A pity he died too soon.