A to Z Album and Gig Reviews
Various Artists - I Am The Resurrection: A Tribute To John Fahey (Vanguard)
2006 marks the 40th anniversary of the late, and legendary, maverick guitarist John Fahey's signing to the Vanguard label, as well as the fifth anniversary of his death. This is but the first of the year's three planned tribute albums and so far the only one to have been sent me for review.
Fahey is already recognised as one of the most innovative acoustic guitarists ever, expanding the boundaries of the instrument (a humble steel-strung guitar) and its repertoire, and this tribute disc should act as a further catalyst for exploration of his recordings. Its innate eccentricities, partly conditioned by the choice of performers (mostly - appropriately enough - decidedly left-field), well reflect the wilful eccentricities of Fahey himself; his behaviour was weird to say the least...
His music was never exactly easy listening, and invariably idiosyncratic, but often it was immensely appealing and sometimes incredibly beautiful - qualities which are again matched by the tribute tracks here. Being espoused by artistes as diverse as John Renbourn and Sufjan Stevens is probably as good an indication as any of Fahey's wide-ranging influence, for his ambit was far wider, and considerably more mind-expanding, than that of the "standard" guitar admirer or player-virtuoso.
On this tribute album, the treatments of Fahey compositions range equally far and wide, from the solo guitar reinterpretation (Peter Case doing When The Catfish Is In Bloom, and extremely creatively too), to the fairly straightforward and suitably majestic (Pelt's Sunflower River Blues), the suitably quirky nu-folk (Devendra Banhart's take on Sligo River) and an "entertaining", tho' fairly cataclysmic power-thrash through Scott Joplin (album producer M. Ward's Bean Vine Blues #2).
Highlights for me were the distinctively epic (and typically episodic) Dance Of Death from Calexico, and the quite disturbing freak-surf Portland Cement Factory At Monolith from Cul De Sac. Currituck Co's extended electric medley John Hurt Shiva Shankarah is another success, and other indie-rock performers like Lee Ranaldo and Howe Gelb also emerge credibly from their encounter with Fahey, although I found the pseudo-cosy almost-pastiche of the Sufjan Stevens track a bit hard to stomach. That one aside, every other track here convinces (either immediately or after a bit of chewing-over!) in much the same knotty way that Fahey's own music does, and so represents a fitting mechanism for the Resurrection of the man's standing.
David Kidman, June 2006
The music of this distinctly maverick guitarist has never been everybody's cup of tea, but nobody can deny his uncompromising individuality or his formidable technique. Ever since he impinged on my consciousness in the late 60s through fleeting appearances in obscure places such as John Peel's Night Ride programme, the Zabriskie Point film soundtrack and the Transatlantic label guitar sampler album, I've been fascinated with his music - a real odd mixture of minimalist country blues, ragtime, old-time and ambient soundscape, often without any obvious structure or purpose but equally often beautifully economic and perfectly formed. His penultimate album Hitomi mixed electronic treatments with acoustic and electric picking, a methodology that continues on into Red Cross. This was the very last recording John made before his untimely death in 2001, and, while it can't really be regarded as his finest hour, there's more than enough of interest within its 50-odd minutes to justify purchase. Recording quality is uneven, but John's peculiar Americana landscapes are as compelling as ever if you're already attuned to his wavelength. John comes full circle on this album, at peace with both past and present, as is demonstrated by the selection of tunes he presents. They're a typical Faheyian mixed bag, a new variation on Motherless Child sitting well alongside Irving Berlin's Remember, and perfectly complemented by John's own wonderfully titled Charley Bradley's Ten Sixty-Six Blues and the more rambling soundscape Untitled w/Rain. Perhaps there's a mite too much minimalist repetition on a couple of the tracks which at around seven minutes will outstay their welcome for some listeners, and perhaps his rendition of Gershwin's Summertime is a bit unremarkable, even uncharacteristically straight, but overall this final offering should not disappoint those who are already converted to the Fahey church.
David Kidman
www.copperplatedistribution.com
David Kidman
This live collection was recorded in concert at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury on 22nd February 2003, the band's 36th anniversary year. It's a perfect illustration of just why the band's longevity is legendary, and finds Messrs. Pegg, Nicol, Leslie, Sanders and Conway one year on from their excellent XXXV album pulling out all the stops to entertain a receptive audience with repertoire old and new, bringing out the tried and tested by both playing to the crowd and ringing the changes. In other words, doing exactly what they do best! Merely to trot out the time-honoured superlatives would be an unimaginative appraisal, but a largely accurate one; perhaps it's best to concentrate on giving a flavour of the group's repertoire of the time, which this set does admirably. The emphasis is much more firmly on songs by now, with those good old standby tune-medleys like Canny Capers and Level Pegging forming the instrumental interludes(along with the then-fresh Woodworm Swing). Lakota Lullaby and The Game Pieces didn't occur all that often in the band's live sets, and to be fair they're not among my favourites either; and the set's not without one or two relatively routine runthroughs (Walk Awhile, Rosie). On the other hand, special moments for me come with the traditional Western Wind and Claudy Banks and Pete Scrowther's Heart Of The Song. The band's special guest for this occasion was Andy Guttridge (whose star seemed much in the ascendant around that time but who has since gone rather quiet); Andy adds his stylish vocals and guitar when appropriate. Even the (pre-encore) finale (which incorporates Matty Groves and Dirty Linen after a hesitant MASH theme start) wears well outside of its stage context. Notwithstanding its minor predictabilities, this is still a set worth having (and there's also a DVD equivalent, but that doesn't have any extra music - just biog and interview material). But oh dear, the booklet note (such that it is) turns out to be little more than a sketchy career overview that barely skims the surface of the band's history, tells us nothing about the occasion or the performance represented on the discs and gives precious little information beyond what everyone (and I mean everyone) already knows anyway - and there seems no logical reason for the set's title either!
David Kidman June 2008
This is a cracker! The only surviving footage (outside of the recent reunions, that is) of the fabulous Full House lineup of Fairport (Swarb, RT, Simon, Peggy, DM) – there's a mere twenty minutes of Fairport in toto, but what a stupendous set. It comprises three fairly breakneck instrumental medleys including the mando-extravaganza Flatback Caper (introduced by a cheeky mini-drum solo) and a full-pelt finale set which alone would break anyone's neck trying to dance to it, as well as lusty runthroughs of Sir Patrick Spens and Now Be Thankful - on all of these the band are on absolutely blistering form. Then, stuck bang in the midst of the Fairport set, there's a pair of songs from Matthews Southern Comfort - My Front Pages and (a slightly truncated version of) Southern Comfort itself - both of which showcase just how together this unit was, with superbly coordinated CSN-style vocal harmony work that puts the rough-house vocalising of their Fairport contemporaries to shame, and not to mention the supreme pedal-steel playing of veteran Gordon Huntley. It's all so musically captivating, but also exceedingly tantalising in that it begs the question of whether any more footage was shot (for all the claim that Tony just let the cameras roll, I still can't believe that these seven numbers were all that was performed on the date). Indeed, it's a wonder that the film was made at all, for its genesis (involving film star Stanley Baker, as we learn from the bonus interview on this DVD!) is distinctly bizarre. It's not like yre conventional "film of a live gig", but more of a heady snapshot in time, an aromatic portrait of part of a "family fun day" event where the "rock-band" performance is sandwiched (conveniently) in between the performing chimpanzees and army helicopters (though we're treated to a snippet featuring the latter only, you'll be pleased to note!). The "happening" was filmed with affection and a sense of relaxed, carefree enjoyment that mirrors the easy bonhomie of the performance: you're really transported back in time here, and with a beer bottle in your hand you're wandering through the crowd drinking it all in. Rather than taking the musical documentarist's usual route of chronicling the flow and detail of the actual music through the modus-operandi of focusing on and generally following the performers either via their mouths or their fretboards, here it's more ciné-verité-style, where the attention of the roving camera as often as not wanders off, past the singers' and musicians' faces into empty space, around wooded glades, out into the crowd. Showing life naturally "how it is" (as the film's director might have said at the time), there are some choice glimpses of some oh-so-70s fashions and behaviour - and there's even a spot of nappy-changing during Dirty Linen! so at times it's almost as much of a social documentary, but the half-hour of music, and the pricelessly laconic intro voiceover by John Peel, still provide the film's true raison-d'être. The sound quality is a touch raw on the Fairport set, with Swarb rather more upfront than RT, but overall it's remarkably truthfully balanced considering the circumstances. The bonus feature is a 15-minute interview with Tony Palmer which gives some insights into the making of the film. An essential little issue, for more than just the Fairport completist.
David Kidman March 2008
Here's an overdue reissue for the long-deleted album brought out eleven years ago around the first appearance of the Fairport Acoustic Convention (ie drummer-less) lineup, one which proved there was abundant energy and life in the brand-name, and that all the rhythm they needed for a tight non-electric performance was present and very much correct. The 16 tracks bring together a large helping of "old and borrowed" items from all periods of the Fairport repertoire, recorded at a concert in Banbury on the very last day of 1995, topped up with seven items which were then new to the band's sets. (The "blue", I hasten to add, refers to the cover shot colouring rather than any of the disc's contents) The first category includes the trad Widow Of Westmorland's Daughter, the more inevitable but nevertheless welcome Matty Groves/Dirty Linen stomper, a stirring reworking of Genesis Hall with slightly different key words, Crazy Man Michael, Ralph McTell's Hiring Fair, John Richards' Deserter (from Simon's solo repertoire) and a bunch of jolly and wholly endearing throwaways (Foolish You, Swimming Song and Huw Williams' Struck It Right) - although the caveat is that any "deliberately silly" moments-musicaux which may go down well live do wear a little thin on repetition. The Simon/Ric/Peggy/Maart penchant for Django-style swing is a prominent feature of the set here, with two delicious instrumentals including the now-standard Woodworm Swing, and even the chestnuts come up absolutely fresh and as claimed on the Chaps' liner-note "you just haven't heard them like this". The second category ("new") includes three premières (Chris Leslie's Lalla Rookh, James Taylor's Frozen Man - superior to James' own version in my opinion - and Loudon Wainwright's charged political statement Men, which has been rarely heard since). On these studio tracks and the love set alike, the playing and singing is exceptional, the lineup is tight and together and clearly having a great time, and with not a weak moment musically either this 71-minute disc's well worth having in the collection.
David Kidman November 2007
The anniversary in question being the 25th... in 1992: so this two-disc set (which first appeared on disc in 1993) is a perfect encapsulation of the fest at which it was recorded – Cropredy of course - and, I might say, warts and all! No problem with that if you want the essence of the band and the fest, so on with the show... The 1992 Cropredy was notable for marking Chris Leslie's debut with the band, stepping in for Ric Sanders who'd injured his hand falling through a greenhouse window only days before, and Chris proved himself big-time. (The confusing thing is that the booklet credits Ric himself as keyboarding on four of the items!) Anyway, I think the majority of the remainder of the credits are reliable, certainly those involving guest artistes (Robert Plant on Girl From The North Country, All About Eve's Julianne Regan on It'll Take More Than The Blues), and the stalwarts Vikki Clayton (taking the Sandy Denny roles), Swarb, Ashley Hutchings and Richard Thompson. (And OK, I'm not altogether sure about Close To The Wind) Ralph McTell also guests on Polly On The Shore, although he sounds uncharacteristically tired at times. As far as material was concerned, the range was typically wide, with plenty of crowd-pleasing opportunities drawn from the back-catalogue and given a new dusting-off, although some worked better than others it must be said (as is always the case with such occasions). And to be honest, I find the almost omnipresent glitzy synthy keyboard tone too much for comfort on the first few and final few items - thank goodness the band have seen sense and returned to the more natural acoustic blend in recent years - and the ill-advised gimmick note-extension trick at the end of John Barleycorn is one of those decidedly cringe-making moments best edited out. But there are plenty of choice moments, such as Poor Will, The Deserter and a magisterial Sloth (albeit a mere 12 minutes on this occasion!). This Cropredy set is most unusual too in that it doesn't contain Meet On The Ledge... But the sound quality is superb, with remarkably little intrusive audience noise (the set was recorded direct to DAT from the sound-desk).
David Kidman November 2007
When is a Free Reed box-set not a Free Reed box-set? - When it's a Box Of Pegg's! Well you could almost get away with saying that, for basically this four-disc box-set conforms in almost every respect to the "house-style" format adopted by the ongoing series of celebratory sets issued by Free Reed, while maintaining the key selling-points and features that make those Free Reed sets so much a benchmark (and so wholly desirable!): great value (nearly 5½ hours of music), brilliant compilation and research, the inclusion of lots of rare and unreleased material alongside the "hits" and outright classics, a fine standard of remastering, and a lavish accompanying book authored by someone with in-depth knowledge and appreciation (Nigel Schofield). But whatever the marketing angle and rationale, this is definitely another box that deserves your serious attention. It's probably the first of its kind to feature a bass player (as opposed to a singer, singer-songwriter or guitarist); but in any case, Peggy didn't set out to be a bass player at all (let alone the universally highly-regarded "folk-rock-bass-players' folk-rock-bass-player"!) but he actually began his musical career as a lead guitarist. It's right and proper therefore that this set chronicles Peggy's musical activities in all their guises (ie. not only as ultra-versatile instrumentalist, composer and arranger but also as long-term co-organiser of the Cropredy Festival), as well as containing plenty of choice examples of his virtuosic bass playing - a "definitive blend of rhythm and melody" which, Simon Nicol recalls, was, at his audition for Fairport, "accompanied by the sound of jaws dropping"! (And let's not forget his superb mando-work.)
The sub-title given to each of the four discs colludes neatly with the fun theme of the overall package (which takes the form of a crib-board-style "long box"). Disc 1, subtitled Level Pegging, begins with that very track in its original Cocktail Cowboy incarnation, then proceeds on a real magical history tour with a series of tracks charting Peggy's apprenticeship in various Birmingham bands in the "Brumbeat" scene of the mid-60s (The Crawdaddies, Dave & The Emeralds, The Ugly's, The Exception), thence his stint with the Ian Campbell Folk Group (represented here, however, by the entirely untypical Private Harold Harris) and session work with jazzer Dave Peace's combo, The Leesiders, and later still his stint with Jethro Tull, his appearance on Steve Ashley's Family Album and his membership of the Dylan Project. Rather cleverly, Disc 1 is connected by the thread of Peggy's recent duo album with P.J. Wright (Galileo's Apology - from which two tracks here, and a further one on Disc 4, are sourced), a release which, as Nigel points out, provides "an interesting career overview in Peggy's (own) selections".
Disc 2, subtitled Two For His Heels, reflects the bonus-scoring nature of that cribbage term by presenting a selection of Peggy's guest appearances on records by others, ranging from Ralph McTell, Bob Fox, annA rydeR, Nick Drake and John Martyn to Marc Ellington and Beryl Marriott. On the way, some enticing obscurities are unearthed, including the 1971 Mike Heron B-side Lady Wonder and a real curiosity from actor Murray Head (A Tree), while Peggy's solo that opens Chris Leslie's morris set (taken from his Dancing Days album) is one of the man's most triumphant on record: what a display of technique. This disc concludes with a gorgeous Sandy Denny-related triptych: Sandy's own Full Moon, the 1989 Cropredy Who Knows Where The Time Goes featuring All About Eve's Julianne Regan, then Beth Nielsen Chapman's totally spellbinding rendition of Sandy's Solo taken from 2005's Cropredy. (Another performance from that year, cropping up earlier on this disc, features Richard Thompson leading the Fairport band on his then-newly-recorded Let It Blow). Most aptly, the track from Cocktail Cowboy chosen to launch Disc 2 is Peggy's delicate cover of the wonderful Steve Ashley song The Journeyman. The largest of the many "asides" to the track-notes posits that it would actually be impossible to provide a complete list of all of Peggy's sessions, and yes, the prospect is mind-boggling and more than a bit overwhelming to contemplate (tantalisingly, these notes are only able to list but a few of the obscure releases on which Peggy has played).
Disc 3, subtitled Twelve For A Double Pair, offers up from the vast corpus of recordings Peggy made while a card-carrying member of his two "principal" bands (Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull) a parade of "epics, rarities, classics and, to frame the whole thing, some related oddities". Appropriately, the disc's lead-in Cocktail Cowboy track is Peggy's cover of the then-rarely-heard Ian Anderson song Jack Frost And The Hooded Crow. Then come a series of crossover performances, including Ian A joining Fairport at Cropredy (Serenade To A Cuckoo, Hunting Girl and John Barleycorn), an unreleased 1980 take of Tull trotting through Peggy's Pub and a Broadsword And The Beast outtake. Intriguing additions to the disc include Jacqui McShee's performance of Morganne (from the epic show Excalibur – Le Concert Mythique), and a hitherto-forgotten Fairport cover of Bryn Haworth's Pick Me Up. Two highpoints of Disc 3 come with familiar Fairport material: the 1975 live rendition of Sloth, as well as unusually featuring Sandy and her piano, includes a tremendously lyrical bass solo from Peggy, whereas the rare fiddle & mandolin duet version of Flatback Caper was recorded by "Fairport lineup number 8" in 1972 (it even kicks off with a dance-band-style drum solo from Peggy's old Brummie mate Tom Farnell!). Interleaved between the notes to Disc 3 we also find five rather useful discographical supplements: Pegg/Fairport (The Island Years), studio (1980-2007), Tull Live & Compiled, Fairport Live Convention, and a Fairport "Cropredography": if nothing else, we're left marvelling at the sheer number of recordings amassed even thus far, and can salivate at what might still crawl "out of the woodworm" on a future compilation!
Disc 4, subtitled One For His Nob (referring of course to that celebrated bald pate), presents a disc-full of Pegg compositions (or arrangements), which nicely round out the portrait of this genuinely consummate artiste. These include among the five tracks from the Cocktail Cowboy album (see below), both that record's nadir and arguably its zenith – as for the latter, I've always been really touched by his Song For Sandy – as well as rare takes of three songs from Babbacombe Lee (where Peggy's undersung talent for harmony vocal is also showcased), a generous handful of typically inventive instrumental medleys from all periods of Fairport's illustrious history and four settings of traditional songs. There's also a brief first-take of Matthew, Mark, Luke And John, a previously unreleased Tull version of the Jams O'Donnells Jigs set that chronologically comes halfway between the two Fairport recorded versions, a decidedly rough honky-tonk live rendition of When First Unto This Country from the elusive 1976 six-man Fairport lineup, and a live Ian Campbell Folk Group medley that contained Peggy's "first mando experience". The final disc, and indeed the whole box, ends with an example of perfect symmetry (as it began, so to speak), with Level Pegging - arguably the definitive Peggy instrumental - but this time in the 1992 Cropredy version that first appeared on Free Reed's Cropredy Capers set.
An additional, yet skewed sense of unity is imparted to the whole box-set by the unusual gambit of including within all the tracks from Peggy's 1983 (entirely-) solo album The Cocktail Cowboy Goes It Alone (which has to date gained two rather restricted CD reissues only) - unusual in that they're not all gathered together in one place but end up scattered throughout the four discs. The album contains some marvellous things, and the whole DIY ethos is admirable, but I remember at the time being turned off by the cheesy 80s elements such as the occasional robotic vocal treatments and the disco-fied programmed percussion (handclap beats and suchlike) that permeated some tracks - some of this even sounds rather quaint nearly 25 years on, and surprisingly doesn't irritate quite so much, though even now I still can't get along with the forced chug-a-lug chumminess of the title track! The accompanying full-colour 100-page book comprises a short introduction, a valuable "life and times" overview-cum-biographical sketch, and the inevitable, exhaustive track-by-track guide and background notes, while dispersed throughout the book we find a fabulous selection of personal archive photos (many previously unseen, and all excellently-reproduced), newspaper clippings, extracts from Peggy's own diary, scrapbooks and other memorabilia, not to mention further sundry juicy tangential and/or discographical nuggets. This all adds up to another magnificent box-set in a year which has already seen the fabulous Steve Tilston box from Free Reed (to which the two sets are umbilically connected by the presence and the (purely incidental, I'm sure) duplication of the brand-new Tilston recording with Peggy of his own Here Comes The Night! There will, inevitably, still be some listeners who only know Peggy through his role as Fairport's bassist; important though that continuing commitment is, it's nowhere near the whole picture, and this set deserves to be applauded for its success in presenting Peggy's achievements fairly and encompassing all spheres of his musical activity: emphasising his versatility, his tenacity and his exceptional all-round musicianship. A fitting celebration indeed.
www.fairportconvention.comDavid Kidman September 2007
So on to Disc 2, which contains, all conveniently collected together in one place, the remainder of the tracks recorded during the album sessions (ie the three which didn't make it to the final cut) together with five tracks recorded a month earlier for John Peel's Top Gear radio programme. The first of the above categories comprises a (perhaps mildly tentative) rendition of Sir Patrick Spens and versions of Roger McGuinn's Ballad Of Easy Rider and Richard Fariña's Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood. Although the band's impetus to "go back to the roots" on this album had come from the examples set by The Band (on Music For Big Pink) and Dylan (on his Basement Tapes bootlegs), it's significant that the two "American" tracks recorded for the album sessions were excluded from the final, finished release. For stylistic reasons of course: for musically, however, they're easily on a par with the rest of the album, and Quiet Joys contains what's arguably one of Sandy's finest recorded performances. The second category comprises radio-session tryouts of Tam Lin (which somehow seems more urgent than the album version even though it's half a minute longer!), the Jigs & Reels Medley (tempo changes slightly better managed here), Reynardine (markedly freer than the album take, and with a greater degree of instrumental embellishment) and Sir Patrick Spens (better balanced and more animated than the studio take), and a real oddity, a jokey-throwaway rendition of The Lady Is A Tramp (this has been the stuff both of Fairport legend and not a little embarrassment!). The disc concludes with a piano instrumental dash through Fly Me To The Moon, which appears to be the coda to Tramp where the tape was left to run on...
Finally, Disc 2 also includes a second (significantly longer) version of Quiet Joys, but the actual source of this isn't credited on my promo copy for some reason. All of the bonus tracks are superb in terms of sound quality, and vastly improved from the fluttery, fuzzy bootleg tapes on which we first encountered these rarities; they are valuable additions to one's understanding of Liege And Lief and the climate that produced it. And even after all this time, little of the "shock of the new" has worn off of the grooves of Liege And Lief itself: it still possesses the power to startle and delight, and it still maintains an air of ground being well and truly broken.
David Kidman August 2007
Volume 2 in the continuing Woodworm Archive series brings a real gem of a set recorded by the four-piece acoustic lineup (Nicol, Pegg, Sanders and Allcock) on the now-legendary Spring 1996 Australasian "Unplugged and Half-cocked" Tour. By 1996, the occasional acoustic Fairport show had grown to full tours, mainly overseas (for understandable logistical and financial reasons). 1996's was a notable tour, partly because it was to be Maartin Allcock's last trip down-under as a member of Fairport (he left the band at the end of that year), but also because it captured the lads on particularly splendid form musically and it was "one of those nights when everything was just right". In true Fairport fashion, the set-list mingles old favourites and newer covers, songs and tune-medleys with equal aplomb and chummy professionalism; the playing and singing is uniformly superb and the whole set hangs together fabulously. Excellent versions of Slip Jigs And Reels and Crazy Man Michael provide early highlights, and The Deserter (the brilliant John Richards song not the Liege & Lief trad arr.) receives one of the finest renditions I can recall. The instrumental gamut runs widely and thoroughly effortlessly from Woodworm Swing and Mock Morris to Portmeirion and a spirited Irish medley, and Matty Groves even throws in the Dirty Linen set at its close. The McGarrigles number Foolish You crops up midway through the set; well, I'd forgotten Fairport ever did that one but it's better than a lightweight interlude in their capable hands. If ever you desired to demonstrate the need to own a Fairport-In-Acoustic-Mode live album, then this release is likely to be the one I'd choose, actually. Overall a faultless but by no means auto-pilot set, and excellently recorded, this is one to savour in the comfort of your own home for some time to come.
David Kidman June 2007
This is a really important release, which forms an essential adjunct or supplement to the recently-completed Island/Universal programme of early (pre-Woodworm) Fairport Convention reissues. It is, in effect, a greatly extended version of the useful Heyday compilation which a decade or two ago gave some of these performances their first official outing on record. Fairport used their BBC radio sessions in tandem with their live sets not only as a tryout arena for new material but importantly also as a vehicle for airing different aspects of their wide repertoire including many songs that would never surface on record. Such material had become the stuff of legend, existing only on bootleg discs of distinctly variable, often execrable quality and/or privately-owned reel-to-reel tape collections mouldering away in attics. Of course, some of the radio recordings have since surfaced on semi-official fan-base cassettes too, and then on official "archive" collections like the aforementioned Heyday as well as more recently the fabulous Free Reed box-sets and the Ashley Hutchings "Guv'nor" retrospectives, but sometimes (perfectly unavoidably) in comparatively indifferent transfers. In fact, until a bare few years ago, it was thought that very few of these original BBC recordings remained in the company's archive at all, but then a box was discovered there, so the opportunity was taken to make the whole collection of the surviving recordings available in a decent edition.
Here, then, Universal have proudly presented us with a truly handsome four-disc box-set housed within a hard-cover book. The set has a total playing time of quite a bit over four hours, and comprehensively contains the band's complete surviving BBC recordings from December 1967 through to August 1974, made for John Peel's Top Gear and various Stuart Henry, David Symonds and Folk On One shows; the vast majority dating from the incredibly fecund 1968-70 period when they were almost a "pet" BBC band. The remastering of these original transcription recordings is pretty good, often bordering on excellent, and only the fourth disc sees any significant lapse in sound quality, this being because all the selections have been taken directly "off-air" (being the only available option in the absence of the original transcription tapes) and some of these are actually quite poor - but even so, that's reasonable enough bearing in mind their rarity value as possibly the most acceptable of the few surviving recordings (unless some of you are resolutely harbouring better ones!). These recordings are vitally important too in that they constitute a virtual potted history of the band and its (surprisingly rapid) development from an intelligent amateur outfit performing mainly covers of American folk-pop and singer-songwriter source material (albeit unusual stuff imaginatively chosen and arranged), through the parallel strands of the various band members' developing songwriting talents and a heavy immersion in the English tradition, and then on into defining and their nascent purely English take on the folk-rock concept and their role as standard-bearers for the genre. Although the songs were consciously arranged for group performance, Fairport radio sessions were also notable for a feeling of spontaneity and sometimes unbridled fun, whereas they also stood out from many of their contemporaries in that the group members gave these sessions some especially memorable performances which really have stood the test of time. There was always a tremendous variety within the group's repertoire, and their enviable choice of vocalists was but one factor in their impressive stylistic breadth.
You really need to play the entire set through in sequence, for all I can do here is cherrypick! The sessions move effortlessly from Judy Dyble's renditions of even-then-largely unknown Joni Mitchell songs, through to very obscure Dylan numbers (Jack O' Diamonds, Lay Down Your Weary Tune) and Ian Matthews and Sandy Denny duetting on a stunning and intriguing arrangement of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, a lovingly extended improvisation on Nottamun Town, the at-the-time-obstinately-unreleased Thompson classic Poor Will And The Jolly Hangman... there are so many delights here for the Fairport fan. (Of course, there's a tiny quota of disposable throwaways too - a ramshackle but fun Lady Is A Tramp, a mediocre unrehearsed-sounding cover of Light My Fire - but even these are worth hearing just the once!) And these "alternate takes" of Fairport could differ very significantly from the official or final recorded (LP) versions, and thus they provide much more than curiosity or incidental interest.
Finally to the accompanying booklet: this is an attractively-designed 48-page tome, although the hefty numbering hides the fact that text (and photo) content only occupies a snapshot area (in "photograph-format") as the centre portion of most of these pages. The central essay, by Kingsley Abbott, is just fine and contains virtually all of the key biographical detail you'll need (whether or not you already have any degree of knowledge of the band's early years) as well as plenty else that illuminates our understanding of the context and content of these BBC session recordings. Reproduction of photos is excellent too. All told, this is a finely presented issue, and likely to be the last word as far as this material is concerned.
David Kidman June 2007
I think this now completes the series of Island/Universal re-releases of the original Fairport albums, with everything pre-Woodworm now available in definitive remastered and/or expanded editions. These three titles, however, quite logically left till last in the programme, have never been particularly well regarded, and even the staunchest Fairport fan would readily admit they don't necessarily represent the best in the band's illustrious canon. Having said that, none of the three (and The Bonny Bunch Of Roses in particular) actually deserve to languish in obscurity.
1976's Gottle O' Geer is undoubtedly the most strange of the three: its genesis lay in a projected Swarbrick solo album that would have arisen out of the ashes of disillusionment which scattered freely around the bones of the near-death of Fairport Convention when several key members left the band following the surprising commercial failure of the exceedingly fine Rising For The Moon album. Those left, Messrs Swarbrick, Pegg and Rowland, took themselves away to a remote studio in Cornwall, but the sessions produced only a handful of usable tracks so when they reconvened in Island Studios in London they called Simon Nicol in to engineer and had a bunch of mates (including Martin Carthy, Gallagher & Lyle, Robert Palmer, Nick Judd and Henry Lowther) round to play bits! They all had fun in experimenting with unorthodox ideas, but the result was the most un-Fairport-sounding of albums to be issued under the Fairport banner. Despite worthy moments like the Frog Up The Pump medley and Sandy's Song (aka Take Away The Load), it was an erratic collection of tracks that only intermittently sparkled. In effect it proved Fairport's swansong for the Island label, who had released their product for nine years. Gottle O' Geer is wayward, poor fry, minor Fairport (they even dropped the Convention from the band name for the release): call it what you will, but it's still worth owning a copy, if only in order to complete the portrait of a confused band in confusing times. Especially since this reissue includes a bonus track in the form of an outtake from the Hammersmith session, a Swarb/Pegg song Angles Brown which turns out to be one of the better cuts in the end.
The Bonny Bunch Of Roses came out in 1977, after Simon Nicol had been "coaxed to return to the fold" and the revitalised four-piece had obtained a new recording contract – with the then-mildly-unfashionable prog label Vertigo. The album was only modestly experimental in any way though, and happily, very much infused with the spirit of getting back to traditional sources, with Swarb's influence paramount. Several of the songs had been in the Fairport repertoire for some years but hadn't actually gotten stale: the title track is a 12-minute epic with an arrangement only partly based on that of a 1970-vintage, at-the-time-unreleased studio workout (a stunning track which resurfaced a couple of years ago on the remastered edition of Full House), while their treatment of Adieu Adieu originated from 1972. I'm not convinced by their fairly plodding version of the storming shanty General Taylor, but everything else works just fine. The album's small quotient of covers is no disgrace either: Richard Thompson's wonderful Poor Ditching Boy is as near as dammit to trad-inspired, and Ralph McTell's Run Johnny Run is a very good match for the original.
Finally we come to Tipplers Tales, Fairport's second album for Vertigo, which was recorded in 1978 before the band was dropped from the roster at their own request (famously, they were paid not to make any more albums!). It was just a "loosely-themed collection of songs about drinking" which although it ostensibly captured the band's sense of humour was also in part a going-through-the-motions affair, in which many of the tracks ran out of steam and ideas after less than two-and-a-half minutes and even the more ambitiously extended, episodic Jack O'Rion was a touch unsatisfactory, especially when compared with the more coherent Bonny Bunch. The album's probably most notable for including an early tryout of the jaunty instrumental Bankruptured (later to appear on the Expletive Delighted! album). There's a relaxed feel to the music-making, but at times that borders on the complacent (the "this is what we do and we're good at it thankyou", take-it-or-leave-it attitude taken a tad too far maybe), with the impression of having little new to say in general (the band's version of Three Drunken Maidens is distinctly routine for instance). Even by the very act of recording the album, the band seemed to be confirming that they really did feel out of step with the changing music scene (where punk was all the rage etc), so it came as little surprise when the following year (1979), Fairport decided to call it a day at Cropredy, and it was to take five years of Cropredy "reunions" to convince them to come together again as a permanent outfit.
David Kidman March 2007
"Well, that's the first forty years out of the way. Onwards!" saith Simon Nicol, longest-serving of the original Fairporters, with characteristic mock-dismissiveness. Onwards indeed... for forty years is a momentous milestone, which the package of this anniversary offering reflects; its attractive cover portrait certainly conveys both the desired mood of jovial celebration (tho' a "tea-total" one, you'll note!) and the band's sense of history and folk culture which permeates their approach and provides a continual backdrop to their music-making.
So far so apt; but what of the music within? In so many ways it's exactly as predicted: a typically varied and eclectic collection of material, balancing forward-looking and contemporary-aware against backward-glancing to tradition and revisiting of former glories. It could easily have turned out a tired set of "so what?" tracks, but Fairport's immensely skilled at reinventing itself and ringing the changes while still retaining its believability through sheer musicality and those trusty Fairport trademarks of excellent playing and singing, fine in-house writing and a good taste in song covers. In those respects nothing would seem to have changed here, for the mix of those elements is as persuasive as ever. The new album showcases no less than five freshly-composed songs from the increasingly prolific pen of Chris Leslie; these run the gamut from the charming 6/4 lilt of Spring Song (which trips off into Princess Royal) to In Our Town, a deceptively light-textured yet bittersweet slice of social comment, and the contrasting pair Edge Of The World and South Dakota To Manchester which draw on legend and historical event respectively. The strength of the current writing is counterpointed by the album's two "revivals" of celebrated trad-arrs from the band's back-catalogue. First comes a more-than-solid Polly On The Shore with some excellent soloing and supportive rhythm section to complement Simon's strong vocal work. Second - and perhaps most surprisingly in view of the original's iconic status - placed squarely at the centre of the disc we find Tam Lin; this may employ the distinctive riff of the Liege And Lief version, but it turns out quite different in impact from the seminal Sandy/Swarb rendition due to the striking new gambit of splitting the storytelling role between Simon and Chris, each equally commanding in execution and flair (and although the key-change this necessitates rather startles at first, it's extremely well-managed on each appearance); the new version is sufficiently convincing on its own terms and never a mere excuse for an instrumental workout.
No Fairport album would be complete without its quota of fiddle-led instrumentals, so to get three of Ric's originals (two fast but not too furious and one slow and stately) is good measure indeed, and the invention never lets up, notably on the nifty Bowman's Return (which I'd term an "archertypal" - sic - Fairport romp!). It's in the nature of the six covers that the album might raise some eyebrows. All but one of these are stacked up in the second (post-TamLin) half of the disc, and the sense of unity that the clutch of Chris's compositions gives the rest of the CD is perhaps mildly compromised by the stylistic diversity of the covers. Taken individually, though, there are characterful performances of some fine songs here, notably Simon's gutsy vocal on Pete Scrowther's driving historical ballad Hawkwood's Army and the knowing, funky cynicism of PJ Wright's Galileo's Apology. And a cautiously rousing version of Love On A Farmboy's Wages proves that A Partridge can indeed be "fair game" for this band to cover (sorry!). But maybe the catchy pop mode of Glenn Tilbrook's Untouchable won't please every Fairport fan, brilliantly suited though Chris is to this idiom (as, by the way, he is also to expressing the altogether more melancholy metaphysical reflection of The Vision, a beautifully poised Bill Miller/John Flanagan composition).
Summing up, then, I consider Sense Of Occasion an album of no mean stature, although that quality perhaps doesn't readily (or completely) reveal itself on first or even second playthrough. For that reason alone, it will probably not turn out to be judged the band's finest hour, but equally it doesn't disappoint (and anyway it constitutes great value at over an hour's worth of music without a duff track). Yet for whatever reason it doesn't quite make the splash that one might expect of an anniversary party gig. That might be due to the sequencing, though I do recognise the near-impossibility of assembling a perfect listening plan out of such a diverse set-list! In that regard, Chris's wry and jauntily upbeat commentary on the passage of the years Keep On Turning The Wheel, though it verily "motors along" with some cunning and cute instrumental and stylistic references to the band's long history, and provides a logical launch-pad for any celebratory album, doesn't quite have the oomph to make an immediate impact in the pole position of lead-track. But Steve Ashley's delicate gem Best Wishes, expertly managed with a simple, sparse instrumental backing, is absolutely ideal as the band's parting-shot (you can even forgive the exuberant clownishness of the brief "extra exit" that's tacked on afterwards!).
David Kidman February 2007
Fairport Convention - Off The Desk (Matty Grooves)
Even after all this time, Fairport are still often asked for live recordings, so here fans' wishes are made to come true big-time as we're presented with an "official bootleg" of two full discs culled from performances from 2004 and 2005 taken straight off the mixing desk, with no remixes and no overdubs whatsoever. An admirable policy; and master supervising engineer Rob Braviner knows his stuff inside out and every which way, for this is a truly superb set that really does capture all the finesse, musicianship and camaraderie that characterises a Fairport gig. Alright, so in terms of material you've heard many of the actual selections before (in some cases umpteen times!), but what's perennially amazing with this band is that each piece comes up each and every time brand spanking fresh. And often with a brand new, and highly convincing, fresh arrangement, tailored to the stunning, ever-expanding versatility of the band members (gawd blimey guv, three fab mandolinists? - I ask yer!...). Alongside the evergreens like Walk Awhile and John Gaudie, and the next tier of tried-and-trusted Fairport classics (of which there's a growing number with each successive album!), there are some less-often-revisited ones (Genesis Hall for instance), while Off The Desk also contains a sprinkling of worthy newer songs that haven't yet made it into the fans' top fifty - the opening Over The Falls is one that springs to mind - and it's also good to hear Steve Tilston's Willow Creek. From abject and seemingly effortless instrumental mastery through to superbly characterised vocal work, unerring judgement in song interpretation and an ideal sense of both timing and pacing of tunes whether slow or fast, Fairport is a supreme unit, and its current incarnation has something to offer every folkie. It's no wonder that they're regarded as being at the very top of the tree, and they're likely to remain so for a very long time to come. Off The Desk is an excellent record of this fine band at their enduring peak.
David Kidman
Fairport Convention - The Wood And The Wire (Talking Elephant)
Talking Elephant continue their admirable reissue programme with the band's celebrated Y2K album on which Chris Leslie first came to prominence as a songwriting force to be reckoned with. No less than seven of the album's original 14 tracks were penned by Chris, an impressive tally by any token, and at least two of these songs (I'm thinking of Banbury Fair and The Dancer) present a "contemporary take on traditional themes" vibe that more than once reminded me of Steve Knightley's best writing. The album also marked another specific turning point in the band's history, in that shortly before its inception Gerry Conway had replaced Dave Mattacks at the percussion stool. Gerry was to give the band a solidity of a different kind as regards his use of the basic kit, and atn that time he had begun increasingly to experiment with other percussive textures, like the distinctive timbres of dumbek and hand drums, presenting what might seem familiar material with intriguing new rhythmic possibilities (for example, the Western Wind that blows straight from Morocco!). Also on the instrumental side, though I'll admit that up until this album came out I'd not really been much of a fan of Ric Sanders' smooth, slithery fiddle style, which I'd often felt suited the band's material less than that of Swarb, but by that point the band seemed to have found a way of keeping it in check and in fact Ric's own beautiful, drifting instrumental A Year And A Day had proved one of the album's highlights and still stands out today. As regards material generally, the band's choice of contemporary songs for The Wood And The Wire is every bit as inspired as ever, including Pete Scrowther's Heart Of The Song and Steve Tilston's Rocky Road. I'll admit however that I find the more-than-slightly-silly Spike-Jones demeanour of the album's obligatory trad.arr. tune-workout (The Good Fortunes) wearing thin after first play. But for the most part, at the time of its release, The Wood And The Wire had capitalised on the satisfying nature of the band's live performances of that time, and so it's mildly unfortunate that the two examples selected as bonus cuts for the present reissue of the original album don't really illustrate this. Here, a reasonable enough treatment of Now Be Thankful is preceded by a spirited (and thankfully silly-noise-less) romp through The Good Fortunes, but nevertheless I feel sure that more substantial examples from the band's 2000 tour might have been exhumed from in the vaults for this reissue. Either way though, it's still important that the original album remains available, for it showed then (and still shows now) that the trusty Fairport beast was (and still is) capable of moving on and bringing fresh insights to folk-rock as we know it.
David Kidman
Fairport Convention - Who Knows (Talking Elephant)
Don't we already have enough Fairport live recordings on the market? I hear you cry… surely it's fast approaching Deadhead-style saturation point? What next - Peggy's Picks Volume 93? But hang fire before you sharpen those slings and arrows of barbed discontent. This CD represents a first-time release for what actually amounts to a major find in the context of Fairportology (if there is such an activity, which I don't doubt for a moment!), ie a newly-discovered live recording of a Fairport lineup captured at a crucial stage before a major transition. And what's more, this marks the first live gig recording of that lineup to be released.
The story goes that a tape box was discovered in the Woodworm archives, somewhat cryptically labelled just "1976"; research by Fairport buffs then led to the inescapable conclusion that the box had been mis-labelled since it was self-evidently a tape of a live gig by the band lineup that finished its British tour at the beginning of November 1975 - Sandy Denny, Dave Swarbrick, Trevor Lucas, Jerry Donahue, Dave Pegg and Bruce Rowland. The end of that tour marked the end of an era for the band, since Sandy, Trevor and Jerry were to quit the lineup at that point. Further deduction processes have narrowed down the tape's origin even further, so that its most likely provenance is thought to be a gig at Brunel University on 31st October 1975. (Hmm, I thought I detected a few beer-bottle clinks…) The crowd is certainly audibly enthusiastic, as you can hear. And rightly so, for it's a performance worth preserving, and yes, exhuming. The set mixes "Sandy renaissance" material like Rising For The Moon, Stranger To Himself, John The Gun and One More Chance with well-travelled Fairport standards from earlier eras (Sloth, Lark In The Morning, Brilliancy Medley and Hexhamshire Lass), the seemingly obligatory Dylan cover (Down In The Flood), the relatively rarely-heard Iron Lion and Restless, a suitably riotous, scattergun "set finale" (don't you believe it!) Sir B. McKenzie's set (pogo-ceilidh in the aisles, not!), and, inevitably, a third?-encore Who Knows Where The Time Goes? that sounds distinctly subdued, even a little tired (though you might take comfort from the fact that this particular performance didn't make it onto any of the commemorative samplers?!).
So what about the quality of the performances? Well, the band unit is functioning very well indeed, clearly inspired by the appreciative audience, and the strength of Sandy's contributions in particular is noteworthy. There's a fine performance of Stranger, which segues appropriately and rather neatly into a typically epic (18-minute) Sloth. Jerry's solos, scattered throughout the set, tend to arise organically rather than just being "bolted in" in the manner of many folk-rock outfits of the time. OK, maybe Peggy's bass solo is a tad over-indulgent, but what the hell? And there are the usual pyrotechnics-à-go-go on the instrumentals to make you gape. The recording itself is a touch "rough and ready" in places, there's a certain boxiness of tone to Swarb's violin and Sandy's vocal (both of which you accept as par for the course on recordings of this vintage), and the balance in the mix seems to favour Sandy's piano just a little too much on occasion, but the musical compensations are plentiful. Verdict, then? - a distinctly-better-than-very-good warts-and-all set, and a rare surviving example of a gig recording by that particular lineup, so the true Fairport fan will regard this CD as worth purchasing on that count alone.
David Kidman
It's hard to imagine any even half-hearted Fairport completist really needing yet another anthology of the world's greatest, most enduring folk rock band, but I daresay room could be made for this rather fine collection while those looking for a quick resume could do far worse. A three disc box set it embraces all timeframes in the band's existence and ever changing line-ups, including a small dose of rarities (though none previously unavailable) as a bonus. The first disc harks back to the earliest days where they were still juggling their fondness for American singer-songwriters with the awareness of English traditional folk that singer Sandy Denny brought to the table when she joined. Thus while there's the band rearrangement of Sir Patrick Spens, Denny's seminal Fotheringay provides the only one self-penned material among the studio selections. Otherwise it's an eclectic choice that ranges from Some Sweet Day and Judy Dyble singing Both Sides Now (apparently their debut studio recording) to a rough edged demo of Night In The City to Denny's interpretations of Jackson C Frank's You Never Wanted Me and Dylan's Dear Landlord, the added lure being the fact they're drawn from the Ashley Hutchings hard to find limited edition The Guv'nor series. The remainder of the first disc is taken up with 1997 Cropredy recordings (from the Cropredy Box) of numbers that featured in their early set material, including the autobiographical Wings, a solo Hutchings lead vocal for Million Dollar Bash, Thompson's Genesis Hall and evergreen set staple Matty Groves.
Though Expletive Deleted, The Five Seasons and The Wishfullness Waltz are represented, the second disc's drawn mostly from Red & Gold, and Gladys' Leap and while there's no gold nuggets in the pile it's a thoughtful selection that avoids overly obvious choices to include the likes of Summer Before The War, Red and Gold and Wat Tyler. On then to the third set which almost all stem from 1997's Cropredy, the exceptions being Close to the Wind (1994), Richard Thompson taking lead on I Heard It Through The Grapevine (1995) and Simon Nicol singing Who Knows Where The Time Goes recorded in 97 but at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury.
No complaints with the live selections either, certainly not when they feature Thompson and Donahue trading lead guitar on Sloth, Cathy LeSurf's tribute to Denny with Solo and the massed ranks FC anthem that is Meet On The Ledge. The sleeve notes might have been fuller with more info for non buffs, but otherwise this is a fine selection of snapshots from a fabulously extensive family album.
Mike Davies
Fairport Convention - Over The Next Hill (Matty Grooves Records)
If there's one thing that can be said about Fairport Convention it is that, over the course of the band's 37-year history, they've had their ups and downs.
From the motorway crash that left drummer Martin Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn (Richard Thompson's girlfriend) dead, through financial calamity, dozens of personnel changes and the break-up of the band (before re-forming again) to the sad breakdown of bassist Dave Pegg's marriage earlier this year, it's been anything but a smooth ride for the folk-rock pioneers.
So, maybe, it was with that eventful history inmind that the band, mindful of the fact that none of us know what the future holds, called their latest album Over The Next Hill.
It's an album which will reassure Fairport's fans that the band does, indeed, have a future. Many had feared that Pegg's divorce from wife Christine, herself a major cog in the Fairport machine, could mark the beginning of the band's end. But, if Over The Next Hill is anything to go by, they'll be around to mark their 40th anniversary - and more beyond that.
Of course, it helped that old friend of the band Steve Tilston had written a song called "Over the next hill". It's the opening track of an album that's full of strong writing, the band's usual exemplary playing and some top-notch singing that sees a true coming together of the voices of Simon Nicol and Chris Leslie.
The choice of material covered across the album's 11 tracks displays a finely judged balance between in-house and bought-in songs. In addition to three from multi-instrumentalist Leslie and a couple of instrumentals from violinist Ric Sanders, Tilston contributes a couple, band friends Ben Bennion and Julie Matthews have one apiece, as does an American called Bob Dylan and, completing the set, there's the obligatory Trad Arr Fairport.
Leslie's latest additions to the Fairport canon are full of vivid imagery, imagination and clever but not over-stated arrangements. They represent what is possibly his most consistent songwriting of any time since he started to put pen to paper for Fairport.
"I'm already there" tells the tale of Banbury man George Back's Arctic adventure with Sir John Franklin in the early 19th century: "Land of great white bear across that crystal floor, like a snowflake's fall, I'm already there". For a man who lives in Oxfordshire, miles from the nearest coastline, Leslie's work has always had a strong nautical feel to it.
"Over the falls" features more water, albeit this time it's Niagara Falls, and The Great Blondin's tightrope crossing of them in 1859. Starting with Leslie's singing of the chorus, the song develops into his voice over acoustic guitar before the band swings in. Sanders provides a nice fiddle break and Gerry Conway's percussion is, as always, inventive and not quite what you'd expect. He has become a vitally integral part of the Fairport sound.
Leslie's third offering again slips back to the 19th century for its subject matter. "The fossil hunter" - set, yep, beside the sea - remembers Mary Anning of Lyme Regis who supported her family by finding and selling fossils on the beach and making important discoveries in the process. It has been a part of the band's live set for some months now and is something of a quiet grower.
Steve Tilston's work has been featured by Fairport in the past - notably "Slip-jigs and reels" and "The naked highwayman" - and he's helped out again here with two crackers. The title track's a road song, be it for a hiker or a folk-rock band and the lively tempo is driven by some nifty mandolin picking from Leslie behind Nicol's rich, warm voice.
Anybody already familiar with Tilston's work wouldn't need to see a writer's credit on "Willow Creek" to know who'd composed it. The twisting, turning wordplay, sung by Nicol and Leslie, laid over an equally sinuous melody has Tilston written all over it.
Sanders' "Canny capers" is a set of four lively fiddle-fuelled tunes which he has generously dedicated to the band's "sixth member", Rob Braviner, and which gives Pegg a chance to flex his mando muscle. "Some special place" is a lovely, beseeching refrain, which, to my heathen ears, is crying out for a suitably gentle and heartfelt lyric. The Fairport five show that they can handle the sensitive stuff with as much panache as they do the rockers.
And this album's rocker comes from another old pal of the band, Ben Bennion. "Wait for the tide to come in" chugs along at a steady canter, helped in no small way by a couple of tasty Stratocaster breaks from Nicol which show he really should strap on the electric a little more often.
Julie Matthews' "Westward" lopes along with a slight country tinge, though, in truth, it's not one of her strongest compositions. Nicol and Leslie sing some nice harmonies and the song benefits from the decoration of delicate filigree embellishments from Sanders' fiddle.
The album is nicely rounded off - or is it? - with a nod to the band's early days as they reprise their French-language version of Dylan's "If you gotta go, go now", "Si tu dois partir". It's a rollicking accordion-laden workout, with Nicol donning beret and hooped jersey for the vocal, and cements the band's link to the past with a sample of the drums of Martin Lamble from the band's original late-'60s version.
So, do the Fairports remain a force to be reckoned with? Over The Next Hill shows that they are still masters of both the mustard- and rug-cutters' crafts and, with playing and material of this quality, will continue to delight their fans all over the world for a good while yet - no matter the height or girth of the next hill.
Fred Hall
Fairport Convention & Friends - Cropedy Capers (Free Reed)
I was giving up hope of this set ever arriving chez-moi at all (the official press mailout had apparently been restricted to "prestige southern-based publications", for some inexplicable reason), so was pleased to "get the call" from a regional quarterly to give it a fuller and more detailed appraisal than one of those oh-so-important rags would feel inclined to devote in its measly few column inches… So here we are.
Now at the risk of sounding unduly patronising, surely none of you will be unaware of the role and stature of Cropredy, the fine festival (based in the quiet Oxfordshire village of that name) that for the past 25 years has acted as a magnet for followers of Fairport Convention, its various offshoot bands and myriad of musical mates. This celebratory four-disc box is given a timely release just when the future of the festival is deemed uncertain due to the recent divorce of Dave and Christine Pegg. Whatever the future holds, this lavish set is a handsome product that, for those who've never sampled the festival's delights, proves the best possible substitute for being there, and for those who have it's a splendid – if at times necessarily frustrating – evocation of the intrinsic vibe of the event.
Ambitiously perhaps, Cropredy Capers is billed as the "perfect souvenir" – well, for the Fairport fanatic, the perfect souvenir would most likely be a mammoth room-filling set that presented every single year complete, but taking usual practical and sensible constraints into account this joint Free Reed-Woodworm production couldn't really be bettered. I say that with due cautious qualification, for every fan will have special memories, favourite performances of individual songs, preferred lineups or permutations, whatever. But even given that there've already been several "official" issues of often quite comprehensive selections from individual Cropredys (including Woodworm's own Cropredy Box, Cropredy 2002, AT2, The Boot and The Other Boot, and the recent Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood box of the '86 & '87 Cropredys from Shakedown), as well as assorted tracks which have surfaced on other compilations like Free Reed's own earlier Fairport Unconventional and of course the same label's fully-fledged Cropredy – The Best And The Guests box), it was still a good idea to bring forth previously unreleased material for this new box (some 90% of the total 5¼ hours' playing time). So I'd better "get on with it!" and divulge some details to persuade you that this new set's worth having…
It should go without saying that there's heaps to delight in on these four themed discs: Disc 1 is (perversely?) titled Farewell, Farewell, and brings a succession of performances from both then-current and specially-reconvened lineups that are seamlessly stitched together with intros, announcements and beery banter to capture the essential spirit of Cropredy. By and large this works, though I confess to finding the "compilation track" of different versions of Million-Dollar Bash less than satisfying. Highlights of Disc 1 include an epic vintage-2000 breakneck dash through Sir B. McKenzie's that's manically driven along by duelling fiddlers Swarb and Ric, and a stirring Who Knows Where The Time Goes? led by Iain Matthews. Disc 1 also sneakily includes a bonus track – a 3-minute sound montage spanning the festival's 25 years. Onto Disc 2, Blow Again, which is subtitled "a Fairport Convention covers album", features many of the "surprise guests" for which Cropredy has become famed. The disc's first half is distinctly "trad. arr.", whereas the second half focuses on rather less expected repertoire (Day Trip To Bangor – eek!) and brings on Bob Fox, Steve Harley, Robert Plant, Joe Brown and Loudon Wainwright III among others, with it must be admitted a varying degree of artistic credibility – but then these are one-offs, and as such valuable mementos… and at least the disc ends on a high with a redeeming and classic rejuvenated 2001-vintage Now Be Thankful.
Disc 3, The Winding Road, contains songs that highlight – or are associated with – the solo careers of many Fairporters past and present in what turned out in most cases to be the only Cropredy performances of those particular songs. Rising For The Moon, exceptionally, appears twice, first in an acapella rendition by Vikki Clayton (sadly, this is curtailed after just over a minute here). Disc 4, Bruised And Beaten Songs, trots out "the top twelve most-played songs at Cropredy in their most remarkable versions" – now there's a contentious value-judgement which will set those Wadworths-fuelled punters arguing well into the night! This disc is described as a "virtually self-defining" Best of Cropredy, and so it proves, ending up with the inevitable Matty Groves, but in a rarely-heard version culled from a 1991 Banbury Mill rehearsal tape. With the possible exception of the misguided helium jape that kicks off the 1998 Royal Selection No.13, it's solid gold most of the way on this final disc, with the epic 1989 Sloth featuring Richard Thompson and Jerry Donoghue a real neck-prickler.
But as with all the previous Free Reed boxes, you get much more than the discs themselves: exemplary packaging, with an eminently readable 136-page full-colour book (written by Nigel Schofield) containing anecdotes, memoirs, factoids, full track notes and plenty of photos, as well as a slimmer (but almost equally fascinating) volume Walk Awhile (again by the indefatigable Nigel S) that's a kind of guided gazetteer outlining a series of wanderings through the streets of Cropredy. Something for everyone here too – for the "Cropredy child" (of any age really!), there's a "cut-out-and-build" model of the festival. What else could you ask for? Well I suppose a "gottle o' geer"?! … So here's a little riddle-me-ree to finish on: What do you get if you string all the fun tunes on this set together for an evening on the dance floor? Answer: A "caperceilidh" (sorry – couldn't resist!) … But hey, seriously – retailing at £45, and a snip at the price, this is a pretty essential souvenir that'll probably end up one of Free Reed's best sellers despite the admittedly ephemeral (and very occasionally distinctly off-key! But what the hell!) nature of some of the musical content. 25 years – who knows where the time goes, indeed? Dare I say the set will make a perfect Xmas present for the Fairporter in your life – particularly if (like me – boo hoo!) he/she didn't get to make it to Cropredy this year!
David Kidman
Island's programme of Fairport reissues reaches a near-end (only Nine and Gottle O' Geer to go now, if memory serves me right!) with this trace (well it's not a brace is it?!) of early-70s offerings that, while never regarded as exactly classic or indispensable Fairport, still have their moments of glory. With the departure of Richard Thompson from the ranks following the unsurpassable Full House, Angel Delight (named after the band's ill-fated communal dwelling-place, a disused pub near Little Hadham) saw the four remaining band members (Swarbrick, Nicol, Pegg, Mattacks) sharing vocal duties, with the lion's share now taken by Swarb (and to his credit making a more than respectable job of it). Just over half of the tracks were "trad. arr", including the two instrumentals (which were growing ever-quirkier -
Babbacombe Lee appeared in 1971, and (in keeping with then-current trends) was to all intents and purposes The Fairport Concept Album. It was the brainchild of Swarb, who found a bundle of papers telling the story of "the man they could not hang" in an antique shop and was inspired to assemble this musical narrative. This time round, virtually all sections of the album (songs and tunes alike) were group compositions, utilising a goodly range of folk stylings, and the result was an unexpectedly coherent, if low-key, piece of work. It even featured a cameo appearance by Bert Lloyd reading a newspaper extract), and its lavish presentation (gatefold sleeve, copious repro broadsheet texts etc) were admirable. The present reissue brings for its bonus material two Fairport performances taken from the 1975 BBC programme The Man They Could Not Hang, which additionally include Jerry Donaghue (on Farewell To A Poor Man's Son) and Sandy Denny (on Breakfast In Mayfair). Finally to Rosie, the 1973 release (recorded quite late the previous year) on which Swarb really came into his own, particularly on the poignant and enduring title track (one of four Swarb compositions on the album). By Rosie, Simon Nicol had departed the fold, and Trevor Lucas and Jerry Donahue had joined, and the Fairport sound was becoming arguably more outwardly conventional and less distinctive. The album used guest drummers Gerry Conway and Timi Donald, and there were appearances from Richard & Linda and Sandy (on the title track) and Ralph McTell (on Me With You). It all sounds reasonable enough today, but it's an altogether patchier affair than any of its predecessors, with some distinctly filler material and two rather more disposable than usual instrumental cuts. The reissue takes its five bonus tracks from an April 1973 gig at the Howff, London; four of these are versions of album tracks, the fifth a cover of Jerry Reed's The Claw.
David Kidman
David Kidman
This new box-set (containing two CDs and a bonus DVD) presents excerpts from the band's performances at two of the early full, "official" Cropredy Festivals. The gigs represented concentrate not on the specific repertoire of the then-current lineup of the band per se (Nicol, Pegg, Mattacks, Sanders and Allcock) but on the now-familiar celebratory "chronicle" sets, the whistle-stop tour through the glorious and ongoing history of the Fairport institution, that every year Cropredy delights in staging, with its plethora of guest artists shuffling on and off stage in ever-bewildering permutation. Thus is every Cropredy guaranteed to be a genuinely different, and highly stimulating experience, and invariably it develops into a breathtaking succession of scintillating one-off lineups with individually stunning cameo performances from Fairporters and associates past and present. Several of the high points of the 1986 disc come courtesy of Iain Matthews, who graces centre stage for an unusual turn at lead vocal on Who Knows Where The Time Goes?, having earlier turned in a particularly well-controlled rendition of Suzanne; then there's an acapella rendition of Woodstock that features Iain in consort with Richard Thompson, Clive Gregson and Christine Collister. Cathy Lesurf does a great job on Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood, and there's even a rare Dave Pegg lead vocal offering (Bird From The Mountain). The 17-minute roller that was Sloth does not disappoint, and Meet On The Ledge gets arguably one of its finest-ever outings. Ian Burgess's evocative booklet note also mentions Robert Plant as having appeared that year, but sadly his contribution is not included on the disc! On to the 1987 set, and from the band's vast cumulative repertoire only Who Knows… gets duplicated, this time with Cathy taking the lead. Standouts from that year include June Tabor, unused to the electric band setting but managing to soar mightily powerfully through John The Gun, Ralph McTell's equally uncharacteristic electric charge through a stonking Bridge Of Sighs, Ric trading solos with Ian Anderson on the hoary Tull classic Serenade To A Cuckoo, and Cathy's delectable rendition of Tomorrow Is A Long Time (shame her vocal wasn't so well miked for the ensuing For Shame Of Doing Wrong). Thompsoniacs will be in their element too, and can rejoice in his many supreme and unmistakable guitar contributions. OK, so I know these are just the highlights of two specially good Cropredys, and so much else could have been included if it were a four-disc set (so why not bring us a volume 2?). One or two tiny gremlin typos aside (Simon Nichol?!), the presentation is just fine, as is the recorded sound. Turning briefly to the accompanying DVD, well this (perhaps not entirely illogically, as it turns out) gives us a fairly relaxed 58-minute interview (dating from Christmas 2002) with Messrs. Pegg and Nicol that centres round an "inside story" re-telling of aspects of the band's 35-year history; the time constraints mean that it's necessarily selective, and the interviewer's not always ideally clued-in so not all opportunities for incisive questioning are explored, but it still comes up with some fascinating information nevertheless. Apart from some seemingly rather pointless switching between face-on and profile shots, there's no distracting camerawork to worry about either, which is another good thing.
David Kidman
The early-Fairport reissue programme continues by plugging the gap at the very start of the band's career, bringing a veritable feast in these freshly remastered CDs, each complete with a sensible collection of bonus tracks (in keeping with the earlier reissues in the series, of Liege And Lief, Full House, Heyday and House Full). The band's eponymous début, at times stylistically a trifle wayward, nevertheless contains some intriguing pointers towards later developments, even if it only partially reflects the original line-up's musical predilections and early influences. The band's live act at that time majored on adventurous choices of covers of American singer-songwriter material, which on this first recorded effort was represented only by Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, the bulk of the remainder of the tracks being group members' compositions. The four bonus tracks are all covers; there's Leonard Cohen's Suzanne (an undated, rare transitional studio take, with vocal by Iain Matthews, providing an interesting contrast with the Sandy Denny version from the Heyday radio sessions), and the first single – a cover of Maxine Sullivan's If I Had A Ribbon Bow – untypical of the rest of the group's repertoire but a charming novelty on its own terms. The takes of Tim Buckley's Morning Glory and Richard Fariña's Reno, Nevada (the latter featuring a killer guitar solo), previously only available on bootlegs, come from a 1968 French TV programme. By the time of Holidays, the band had changed its lead female vocalist from Judy Dyble to Sandy Denny, ushering in its first classic period. The developing songwriting talents within the band, notably Richard Thompson, were beginning to bear serious fruit, while the Stateside influences (though still present, notably in the form of another then-rarely-heard Dylan song, I'll Keep It With Mine) were being supplanted by a growing interest in the English traditional folk repertoire (largely steered by Ashley Hutchings), and for all its transitional nature Holidays remains a satisfying album in its own right, containing as it did Sandy's exceptional Fotheringay, a fine rendition of She Moved Through The Fair and the very first appearance of the anthemic Meet On The Ledge. Bonus tracks comprise the bluesy Ledge single B-side (Throwaway Street Puzzle), an equally bluesy radio track (You're Gonna Need My Help) on which RT (unusually) plays slide guitar, and finally a rejected single cut of Some Sweet Day (which would probably more logically have been coupled with the first album on reissue since it would appear to include Judy vocal); the latter two cuts seem to be identical to those included on The Guv'nor Volume 1. And so finally to Unhalfbricking, that nascent folk-rock classic which introduced Dave Swarbrick to the group, knocking us all sideways with the unsurpassed cataclysmic 11-minute raga treatment of the traditional song A Sailor's Life that ended the album's first side and paved the way for Tam Lin and Matty Groves to come. Unhalfbricking also contained Richard's doomy Genesis Hall (a strange but effective opener), Sandy's Who Knows Where The Time Goes?, the riotous cajun single Si Tu Dois Partir and in complete contrast an epic cover of another Dylan number (Percy's Song). Bonus cuts are another pared-down Dylan cover (Dear Landlord) and Ballad Of Easy Rider, recorded at the Liege And Lief sessions but arguably sitting rather more comfortably amongst the repertoire on Unhalfbricking. You need at least the second and (seminal) third of these albums in your collection, I say, and these new handsomely-presented editions will surely prove definitive.
David Kidman
This release marks the first official CD appearance of this particular punningly-titled set of highlights from the band's second reunion show (dateline: the 12th anniversary of Woodstock) on 15th August 1981. (Just to clear up any potential confusion, it's also previously been issued on LP under the title Live At Broughton Castle, highlighting the fact that the gig could not take place at the now-customary site of Cropredy that year, but its contents are different from the identically-titled Musikfolk video release which contained extra tracks…) The Swarbrick/Thompson/Nicol/Pegg/Mattacks lineup was on great form, augmented by Bruce Rowland, and then as now the band's ethic of hard-working, hard-playing, passion mixed with fun, is right up front throughout their performance. And the selection of material for this 41-minute collection is a representative one, no mistake, with continual old favourites Walk Awhile and Matty Groves side by side with one-off covers (Both Sides Now, featuring a guest appearance by Judy Dyble, and a rather more throwaway Country Pie), a then-new-and-unreleased Richard Thompson number Woman Or A Man getting an early tryout, a superb (then-equally-rare) airing for the Full House reject Poor Will & The Jolly Hangman, and, making for a riotous finale, Jerry Lee's High School Confidential (showing off Fairport's ability to rock'n'roll with the best of the Bunch!). This CD has been mastered direct from the original vinyl, so the sound quality is a mite cracklesome in places; good though it is to have it available here in this format (and notwithstanding the other extracts from the same festival which are already available on CD), why could not the extra tracks from the video been included here at least to boost the playing time?
David Kidman
This prized live recording dates from 1974, place Ebbets Field, Colorado. It has been lovingly traded for years amongst Fairport devotees, but only now is it gaining wider currency through official release, newly-remastered for CD. The lineup was a top-class one, with Swarb, Peggy, Trevor, Jerry and Matty rejoined by Sandy Denny in preparation for the Rising For The Moonalbum release, with which it shares a certain core repertoire. It's a more truthful representation of the band of the time than the admittedly rushed Live Convention album, therefore, as by the time of the Colorado gigs Sandy had again become a full member of the band. As well as trying out some material for the then-forthcoming album, astonishing new light is thrown on existing Fairport classics like Sloth (there's a truly stunning version here on the first of the two CDs, eclipsing the already definitive Full House version), while there's a sprinkling of material from Sandy's solo albums (Like An Old-fashioned Waltz, Solo) and some typically riotous instrumental medleys. And of course two performances of Matty Groves (hilariously misspelt Matty Grooves on the sleeve!), without which title no Fairport set would have been complete, then as ever! Inevitable warts and all, these performances are nevertheless very fine, with some superb soloing, and the band's rapport with its audience is tangible - and let's be honest, that rapport's always been a feature of Fairport live gigs. No other way of describing Before The Moon, then - an indispensable documentary record of a superlative Fairport lineup on great form, at a definite creative peak. You need a copy!
David Kidman
This CD marks the first "proper" release for a set of tapes from the band's personal archive which were originally issued on a limited-edition cassette that has become what the liner notes describe as a "sourt (sic!) after item". The recordings come from the years 1971 to 1974, representing just two different lineups (Swarb/Nicol/Pegg/Mattacks and Swarb/Lucas/Donaghue/Pegg/Mattacks) but with the addition of Sandy Denny on some numbers (she often accompanied Trevor Lucas during the post-Fotheringay period preceding her official re-entry into the band). Whatever their provenance, all the tracks portray Fairport truthfully, as a perennially hardworking band; some of the performances have rough edges, or at times lack in polish, but their honest integrity as entertainers outshines other considerations in spite of some wild variations in recording quality throughout this selection – distortion, phasing, tape hiss, crumbling sound and all that. The tapes have been cleaned up in the remastering process, but some still sound very rough indeed. The entire contents of the original cassette, liner notes and all, have been boosted by four bonus tracks, regarding which we only get bare personnel details and dates (no notes); these include a decidedly ragged Ballad Of Ned Kelly and a more creditable Swarb-led Deserter.. The main items of interest to Fairport connoisseurs are probably those featuring Sandy – a great It'll Take A Long Time (ostensibly recorded at the Troubadour in '74), a determinedly shambolic ad-hoc version of That'll Be The Day and another beautiful version of Who Knows Where The Time Goes?, though the underrated Firs And Feathers gets a timely airing and the Hens March/Four-Poster Bed medley is another of those enduringly joyous Swarb performances of "tunes he could play in his sleep" yet managed each and every time to infuse with a fresh enthusiasm and swing. And I can't object to owning yet another version of Sloth if it's as good as this one, recorded just hours prior to Simon's announcement of his intention to leave the group! Great to have this collection on the shelves at last!
David Kidman
This is almost an hour's worth of Fairport captured live on their "33 days on the road" winter 1990 UK tour. It was a good solid lineup (old-timers Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks with Ric Sanders and Maartin Allcock), and performances reliable, as by and large these recordings demonstrate. Quality's generally better than acceptable, despite one or two intermittent dropouts and a fair degree of tape hiss at times. Material's suitably wide-ranging, giving the best of both worlds – traditional and contemporary, though with an increasing emphasis on the latter. Included here are particularly fine performances of John Richards' Honour And Praise and Ralph McTell's Red And Gold, while even the Lark In The Morning/Matty Groves/Rutland Reel/Sack The Juggler medley is no mere crowdpleasing runthrough. Three tunes by Ric – including, perhaps inevitably, Portmeirion – and Maart's On The Floor complete the picture of a band constantly reinventing itself and rejuvenating what in other hands would rapidly be degenerating into tired old repertoire. Although by its very nature this issue is probably destined more for the shelves of Fairport completists, its musical importance within the canon of official Fairport releases is not to be underestimated either.
David Kidman
Fairport Convention - Fairport Unconventional (Free Reed)
Another in the enterprising, and justly celebrated, continuing series of lavish (and very reasonably-priced) Free Reed box-sets, but much much more than that! This one purports to travel beyond the boundaries of all existing Fairport compilations, defiantly transcending anorakism to produce the ultimate Fairport collection in an unforgettable celebration of the band's 35-year longevity. Well, this fantastic set is certainly all those things and more. Even if you've dutifully purchased each and every official album, tape and CD release and bootleg you could lay your hands on, it's a certainty that there'll be at least half of the selections on this set that will be new to you - and once you realise that, then you'll get an inkling of the sheer scope of the deep trawling that's been done to put this set together. Very few of the selections have been previously released in any form, in fact, although the majority can be classified as alternative renditions of already available material. Admittedly, the sound quality of some of the items is rather poor, but that goes with the territory, as they say.
The layout of the set is loosely thematic (similar to what Free Reed did, and pretty successfully too, with its recent Carthy set), but here I feel the approach works less well, purely because most Fairport fans I know have distinct preferences for particular band incarnations or time-periods and are thus not as likely to want to keep darting about from disc to disc to find their favourite selections; I too would have preferred a more strictly chronological arrangement. To be honest, there are several selections that I won't want to play often, purely because on a musical level they just don't do anything for me. And it's a London-Buses-type coincidence that after years of frustrating unavailability, the band's very first (and completely untypical) single A-side If I Had A Ribbon Bow finally gets a proper CD release both here and on the latest Ashley Hutchings Guv'nor 5 collection! But there's more than enough non-duplication and genuine rarity value here to satisfy even the hardiest Fairport completists.
Personally, I found the various album outtakes, the early demo One Sure Thing and the various Liege And Lief rehearsal cuts most fascinating. And then there are the real curios, like Richard Thompson crooning Frank Sinatra-karaoke-like on a radio session Lady Is A Tramp. This is but one demonstration of the perennial Fairport ethic of not taking everything too seriously, and the Fairport sense of fun does come through in the way the set has been compiled, although I do find that the gimmick of the portmanteau Matty Groves (while acknowledging its cleverness as an exercise) wears thin after a couple of plays. Whatever, and notwithstanding your preferences within the vast history of the Fairport Convention band/brand-name, this set is still likely to satisfy you, since it proudly and quite legitimately boasts that it includes something from every line-up, which turns out to be genuinely representative. (Aside from the four discs in this box, there's a special bonus rarities disc yet to come, of great Cropredy performances by the band and their special guests, which will be made available to purchasers of the first five thousand copies of the set.)
The box also includes a chunky 172-page booklet with plenty of incriminating and illuminating photographic evidence, another, smaller booklet celebrating the Cropredy Festival, and of course a suitably-updated Pete Frame family tree which has already engrossed me for almost as long as it took to listen to the CDs! All told, this is a stupendous achievement for the compilers, and a most worthwhile investment.
www.free-reed.co.uk/fairport
www.fairportconvention.com
The groundbreaking early albums by that archetypal late 60s folk-rock band are at last resurfacing in carefully-presented, remastered new editions under the auspices of the Universal group. Fairport's fourth album, arguably the most influential, was recently nominated "the most important folk album of all time" by BBC Mike Harding Show listeners. And sure enough, many of its innovations resonate and permeate through folk-rock right up to the present day, while some might say that much of it has not been bettered. Its mission statement was ostensibly to create a kind of English country music, almost a kind of counterpart to the Band's Big Pink album which was influencing Fairport tremendously at the time, steeped in the indigenous culture of the land itself. And, digging deep into English traditional folk music, this is what resulted - and the rest is history of course. With that finest of Fairport lineups (Denny, Thompson, Swarbrick, Nicol, Hutchings and Mattacks - a never-to-be-repeated permutation, as it turned out), it's a classic album that you simply can't afford to be without, especially in this virtually-definitive, newly-remastered version which comes complete with two bonus tracks recorded at the same sessions. These will constitute much of the interest even for diehard Fairport fans; first there's an embryonic Sir Patrick Spens, with Sandy Denny singing, which is taken rather slower than Swarb for the later (Full House) reading, and though it lacks the bounce and spring of the latter, it still has much to commend it. (This bonus track is claimed to be unreleased, though what sounds like a very similar, likely-radio-session version of the Denny-led Spens had appeared on volume 2 of Ashley Hutchings' Guv'nor collection.) The second bonus track, a brooding 7½-minute Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood, credited as Take One, is as much a showcase for Sandy's stunning, expressive vocal powers as an exercise in restraint for the band members, bringing Richard Fariña's song to life so very atmospherically. Takes Two and Three, mere studio shavings, are appended for interest thereafter. Interestingly, Take Four, at just 6 minutes, had appeared on Hannibal's Sandy Denny compilation Who Knows Where The Time Goes? - I'm surprised that this final take, together with a cover of the Byrds' Ballad Of Easy Rider, which was also recorded at the L&L sessions, was not also included here for absolute completeness. As regards the remastering, the overall sound picture is certainly crisper than before, missing the very slight muddiness that sometimes marred even the original CD reissue; it does however retain the slightly irritatingly forwardly-placed drumkit on the instrumental medley! Even so, this is an essential reissue - now on to Unhalfbricking please…
David Kidman
Fairport Convention - XXXV (Woodworm Records)
First off, dreadful title. How do you ask for it in a record shop? Thirty Five? Ex Ex Ex Vee? It's not the band's 35th album, and the 35th anniversary of anything is an odd one to mark as being special. The band is very excited by XXXV, as to them it reflects what they want the band to be about. Whether that vision matches what a lot of hardcore fans want is another matter. In any case, it's an odd mix of the new and the familiar, the very good and the pretty cringeworthy.
Madeline - 7/10
There's a 50s rock 'n' roll feel to the opening track. Although the lyrics speak of a romance starting at a "country fair" it could almost as easily be the "high school bop". Simon Nicol takes a fairly laid back stance to the singing, not really attacking the words, and the tune's a merry chug-a-long affair to begin with, Gerry Conway's drumstick clicking reminiscent of Buddy Holly records. I'm not a big fan of the backing harmonies, either. However as it goes on, and the chorus kicks in, it hardens up and gets more serious. There's a couple of good solos for fiddler Ric Sanders and Simon's guitars, and it's wrapped in an infective tune that gets under
your skin.
My Love Is In America - 8/10
The first Chris Leslie number of the disc. CL doesn't dominate XXXV as he did Wood & Wire, but the songs he does contribute here are all rather good. The use of a tenor banjo gently chirruping away gives the whole thing an Irish atmosphere, and why not? The song was inspired by a story read while on tour to Dublin. It's the tale of a man following his love, who has gone with her family to the States - a standard Irish story, although it applies equally to anyone from Europe. Drummer Gerry Conway anchors the tune with a solid rock drumming, but there's plenty for everyone to do here and there's a great fiddle solo. CL sings, and does it well, as he always does on his own songs. A definite grower.
The Happy Man - 9/10
The first Trad. arr. number - a traditional Adderbury Morris tune. It sounds like an archetypal Fairport number, featuring bass man Dave Pegg, Simon and Chris on vocals, and fitting in two other trad. dance tunes - Black Jake and Constant Billy. This is great stuff, works well in concert and should be a live staple for years. Some nice fiddle work on the tunes. Play this at your Christmas parties!
Portmeirion - 10/10
A long time FC favourite made even better by the addition of a wonderful flute solo from Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, as heard at this year's Cropredy Festival. Simply beautiful, and one of the best things on this or any other FC album, providing a showcase for author Ric Sanders on fiddle, for Chris on mandolin and for Mr Anderson, too, who so complements the tune that I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to the original version without thinking there's something missing.
The Crowd - 4/10
Don't know why, but this reminds me of Wonderful Christmas Time by Wings. annA rydeR's tribute to Fairport's annual Cropredy Festival and the people who go is a lovely gesture and meant from the heart. Pity it couldn't have been better. The lyrics are trite, the tune stuttering and difficult to listen to. Simon sounds uncomfortable singing it, and annA's brass accompaniment just sounds alien on a Fairport album, somehow. Ric's fiddle pyrotechnics and the atmospherics from Cropredy itself almost save it but, as I've said before, there is a great song to be written about Cropredy and this ain't it.
The Banks Of Sweet Primroses - 7/10
A return to past glories for FC, with CL stepping into Dave Swarbrick's old singing trousers on this trad. favourite. The real revelation here is just how well his voice works with backing vocals from Simon. The combination is magical - a musical cheesecake with Chris Leslie's airy, delicate topping sitting on Simon's crunchy, solid, dark brown base. But surely several verses are missing? Our hero sings of how he roved out and met a weeping woman in bridal gown, who tells him that all men are bastards and she's off to live somewhere so lonely that she will never be bothered by the beggars again. Then, in the final verse, he's happily telling sailors that many dark and cloudy mornings turn out to be bright and sunshiny days. Bit of a callous beggar, isn't he - unless there are missing verses in which he changes the mood of the maid...
The Deserter - 7/10
Yet another stab at a song that can already be found on FC's Old New Borrowed Blue and on a Simon Nicol solo album. Had FC decided they hadn't made the definitive version? If so, they've not really done much different here. It features the booming drums for gunfire that got mixed reviews at Cropredy. There's a nice bit of mando. And that's it. Still, it's a good song, Simon sings it well and it's good to hear it. Again.
The Light Of Day - 9/10
A song to prove that FC know how to rock, and it's written by CL, who describes it as "a tale of superstition and cunning where a fiddler wins a bet and has the last laugh". Well, there's always a first time! In a way, it's a companion piece to that other Leslie-penned tale of fiddling derring-do, John Gaudie. Simon gets his electric guitar out, Gerry drums up a complicated, driving pattern and Chris and Ric get to do the FC version of The Devil Went Down To Georgia. It never quite goes for the throat as it could, but it's not far off.
I Wandered By A Brookside - 7/10
A bit of an oddity this. Often new words are written to old tunes, but this is the other way around, with Barbara Berry doing a good job writing a tune to words found in the Alfred Williams Collection in Swindon Library! Thanks Barbara, Alf and Swindon. Chris makes the song his own, and its a gentle, laid-back love story. Not a show stopper, but a nice album track.
Neil Gow's Apprentice - 4/10
I really don't like this. It sounds like a Daniel O'Donnell reject, and brings to mind the rather dire FC song London River. Simon sounds nasal and wheezy and the strict tempo drumming and fiddle solos seem staid and dull. A shame really, because the lyrics - about an old Scot who thinks enviously of his brother who went to live Australia - are rather poignant. The tune, however, doesn't suit them.
Everything But The Skirl - 6/10
This is a Ric number, so you should expect some bowed pyrotechnics from the fiddlers. You won't be disappointed - and the rest of the band join in too. Nice, but nothing special.
Talking About My Love - 7/10
There's no hint of folk-rock about this, and if Fairport were to consider releasing a single from the album then this is the track to pick. It's a good soft rock song that could turn plenty of non-folkies on to FC. And at less than three minutes it's perfect radio fodder, too. Make The Happy Man the B-side and it could be a real winner for the band. There's everything you would expect from Fairport on this Leslie/Stonier song, apart from the folk influence. There's fiddle, mando, a rock solid rhythm section, great rhythm guitar, some nice harmony singing, and strong lead vocals from CL. If FC were ever asked to represent the UK on the Eurovision, this is the song they should do. Fans of the folkiest FC will hate it, but it probably represents the future sound of Fairport Convention.
Now Be Thankful - 9/10
Ahhhh, lovely. A wonderful version of Swarbrick/Thompson original. Chris takes lead vocals again, and in one or too places bangs his head on the ceiling of his range, but there's Simon's backing vocals again, to give him added weight. Musically, it's not radically different from the old Fairport version. As the sleeve notes say, this is a "revisit", not a reworking.
The Crowd Revisited - 4/10
Now this really does sound like Wonderful Christmas Time! An uncalled-for reprise, with Miss Ryder shoved front and centre. Why? Why?
Overall, this is a solid album with a few highlights and a couple of low points. I can't get too excited about it. It's neither one thing or the other, really; not a totally new album - even the new songs are familiar after being in the live set for months - nor a best-of the old catalogue done by the current line up, which would have been more interesting. It's not folk. It's not rock. It's not pop. However, it does have elements of all those, and more. Its production style is much more standard than Wood & Wire, which sounded radically crisp and defined. Many listeners didn't like that, but at least W&W had a sound of its own; XXXV doesn't. I think that XXXV is trying to be all things to all listeners, and as a result is not a great success in any department. Overall, I'd give it 7/10. Fairport fans should certainly buy it, but I doubt it will win any new converts.
Phil Widdows
Fairport Convention - Full House (Remastered) IMCD 285/586375-2
This is an utterly splendid reissue from Island Folk Remasters series: The classic FC album out on CD with the addition of some extra tracks from the same period. By this time in 1970, Ashley Hutchings and Sandy Denny had both left the band - and Dave Pegg stepped in and reinvented folkrock bass playing - his novel and structured playing is really highlighted by this excellent remastering job. The band had decided not to replace Sandy, but to take the vocals on themselves - here we can hear some rather tentative singing from Peggy (wasn't it ever thus?), but also some fine performances from Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbrick. Simon Nicol provides a solid backing voice as well. His greater glory was yet to come... 'Walk Awhile' kicks off the album in fine form - Thompson's guitar really shining, and is followed by 'Dr of Physick' - the harmonium features much more strongly than on my old vinyl LP, and gives a much more rounded and sinister sound colour to this song. I, and others would have preferred 'Dirty Linen' to be the second track, but here it is the third - never mind - just revel in the energy!
The classic 'Sloth' stills sounds fresh and powerful. 'Sir Patrick Spens' is next up, followed by 'Flatback Caper' - a tour de force of mandoline playing. Then, at last the track that was left off the original album - 'Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman'. Although it's been long available elsewhere it's great to hear it in context - Thompson brilliant on guitar and vocal. I have always loved FC's version of 'Flowers of the Forest' and here it still sounds wonderful - great harmony vocals and dulcimer. Another added track follows, the mono version of the single 'Now Be Thankful' - a new stereo mix of this song closes the album - FC still perform this song, and rightly so. It's a classic. In between these are the frantic instrumental 'Sir B. McKenzie's' (which was the B side to the 'Now Be Thankful' single) and an early version of 'Bonny Bunch of Roses'. The latter is a much starker and stripped down version of the song - it appeared much later on the FC album of the same name. I like this performance a lot, with RT's subtle guitar, Swarb's fine singing and Dave Mattacks's sensitive drumming. All in all, this is an essential CD.
Jon Hall
Fairport Convention - The Other Boot/The Third Leg (Woodworm Records)
Cropredy Festival is as much an institution as its progenitor, Fairport Convention. It has bred its own traditions, one being the host band's closing set. This is the nearest rock gets to the last night of the proms - though instead of Land Of Hope and Glory, the assembled devotees lift their voices to Meet On The Ledge. Richard Thompson or Elgar and AC Benson? The Royal Albert Hall or a field? Free choices in our liberal democracy - and I choose Simon Nicol and co rather than overwrought, overblown and overweight harpies in absurd frocks.
Unsurprisingly, the Cropredy audience runs miles of tape through dozens of surreptitious recorders and there are probably more illicit recordings of Fairport Convention than any band. But there is also a recording made directly from the mixing desk each year - Fairport probably puts out a higher proportion of its live repertoire than any other folkrock group. The band also pioneered the release of its own BBC sessions recordings long before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon and the lads have been busily bootlegging themselves ever since.
This three-CD 'official bootleg', fully remastered and packaged with an informative booklet, records Fairport's sets from two consecutive Cropredys, 1986 and 1987. The sound quality is first rate throughout and, a few staggers and wavers aside, so are the performances. Even the audiences, caught in generous measure by ambient mics, sound good. The set was lovingly produced by Fairport bassist Dave Pegg and released on the band's 'home' label Woodworm Records. It is available by direct mail from PO Box 37, Banbury, OX16 8YN priced at £22 (which isn't bad for over 30 tracks - three hours - of live music).
One of the delights of Fairport's Cropredy sets are the guest appearances, both programmed and unexpected. As well as the band itself (Simon Nicol, Ric Sanders, Dave Pegg, Dave Mattacks and Maart Allcock), these discs feature contributions from Ralph McTell (inexplicably not credited in the sleevenotes), Richard Thompson, Dave Swarbrick, Cathy Lesurf, June Tabor, Ian Anderson, Jerry Donahue, Ashley Hutchings, and Iain Mathews among others.
Mathews - arguably one of the finest vocalists Fairport ever had - provides two of the set's highlights, an exquisite a capella rendition of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock and an interpretation of the Sandy Denny classic Who Knows Where The Time Goes: contrast the latter with the following year's version by Cathy Lesurf. McTell sings a belting version of Bridge of Sighs, the title track of his then-current album while another of his compositions, The Hiring Fair, is superbly sung by Nicol. Listen out as well for a haunting rendition of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, and the best - the very best - version of the anthemic Meet On The Ledge you're ever likely to hear.
Pure nostalgia for those who were there, an eye-opener for those who missed these vintage festival years, and excellent entertainment for everyone. Highly recommended.
Princess Florence