Let us now praise Fairport Convention's "Liege & Lief"

Their debut is often overlooked, but is actually a great UK psych pop album. A little less "folk" influenced than their later stuff but it has some elements already in there (after all, Joe Boyd was around already), only more English psych in addition.

MATTY GROVES

he's little

i still don't have this fucking album, every time i go to buy it my wife tells me not to because she already has it. WELL WHERE IS IT, THEN?

(we are the lockhorns irl)

Oooh this album.

"Farewell, Farewell" = tears

"tam lin" sounds proto-black-sabbath to me. so heavy.

The final triumphant turnaround in "The Deserter" is so amazing to me. The "set him free!" part just kicks ass.

thompson took the tune from the child ballad "willy o'winsbury" and set his lyrics for "farewell, farewell" to it. he heard it from sweeney's men, the irish proto-folk rock group that ashley hutchings wanted to draft into fairport at the time of liege & lief. it didn't happen, supposedly that is one of the reasons hutchings left the band. he did succeed in getting terry woods from that group into the first steeleye span lineup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTZZgovSEYQ

The Pentangle version of "Willy O'Winsbury" is fantastic too.

ha, just noticed they talked about willy o'winsbury upthread.

but I guess with Sandy Denny, just start with the North Star Grassman and the Ravens and work your way forward...

love the proto-Television guitar workouts you get on tracks on that lp.
The 2005 remaster helped hearing that greatly. Did the Sandy Denny box set get a further remaster?

"tam lin" sounds proto-black-sabbath to me. so heavy.

think this really hit me a few weeks back when it appeared on my walkman. Not sure why on this occasion particularly, it must have appeared dozens of times without me thinking that, but I was just thinking 'what a riff'. Like has anybody actually reworked the riff fior anything?

Also wondering if anybody's taken direct influence from Steeleye Span's first 3 lps & used it for other purposes than trad folk. Those 3, the Hutchings era Lark In The Morning set sound like they'd make a great psych or goth influence if you backburnered the source material.
So original music, directly influenced by 1st 3 lp Steeleye Span any examples?

I know that Robyn Hitchcock has always been a big Martin Carthy booster, and I think you can hear the Steeleye influence in some of his more celtic-y sounding stuff ... not super overt, but it's there.

Sure they weren't influenced by them... but I got into Steeleye Span in the first case because they reminded me of Popol Vuh

... and the Velvets!

I know this will draw ire from many, but I think this is the album where Fairport started becoming much less interesting, and it's largely because it's here that they abandoned original songwriting (both their own and others, which included both the obvious contemporary folkmasters (Bob Dylan) and less-obvious (a not-yet-famous Joni Mitchell, Gene Clark, Mimi and Richard Farina, etc.) in favor of traditional British folk. And while I do love traditional British folk music, when a band has great songwriters like Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny in it, it's a shame not to take advantage of their talents (Denny's astonishing voice makes it easy to overlook how great a songwriter she was). For me, any of the first three albums or the equally impressive Heydey collection > anything Fairport has done since (at least the 8 or so albums I've heard). Plus they never again had a lineup as strong as the Holidays/Unhalfbricking one.

fair enough, there are times where i like the pre-liege & lief stuff better, too -- though the post-Denny lineup has some amazing moments. The Full House/House Full stuff is particularly great.

didn't know richie unterberger posted on ilm

Yes, I've read RU's reviews, comments, and book, but I've thought the same thing for the last 25 years, long before I'd ever heard of him.

(That said, few rock critic's taste are so closely aligned with mine. But I do disagree on about 10% of his opinions.)

weirdly, steeleye span came up at breakfast this morning at my house. wife said something about "that renn faire stuff you and your older brother like"... ;_;

What Lee626 said is what I think, too.

after the accident that killed martin lamble they decided they would only go on if they could more or less be a different band, hence the full leap into traditional or traditionally-inspired material. so as much as i love holiday and unhalfbricking they just felt that they were through with that stuff for very personal reasons and i'm glad they came up with another model for making great music. also, no way denny or thompson were going to stay long-term in any band where they weren't running the show.

Steeleye's "Hark! The Village Wait" has become something of a white whale to me...which is odd because you'd think it'd be just the kind of album that you would find evenly dispensed the used bins. I've seen about a million copies of "Please To See The King" (all with different covers too), but "Hark!" has proven elusive. Also lots and lots of what look like dodgy later efforts. So what's the third one that I should also be on the look for?

Ten Man Mop is the other one to look for, it's got one of the key Steeleye tracks on it - 'When I Was on Horseback'

Below The Salt has its moments too, but the first three albums are definitely the ones you need.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q4BrtuM5mU

Don't know if Tom was talking about that particular song when he mentioned VU btw, but there is a comparison to be made right there.

the first three albums are definitely the ones you need

otm

Don't know if Tom was talking about that particular song when he mentioned VU btw, but there is a comparison to be made right there.

That's exactly the song! That's the song that got me into them!

would love to hear lou sing the "wasn't i gay" part

LOL

Easiest way to get the classic Hutchings stuff is to get the Lark In The Morning 2cd on Sanctuary. Think it may contain a couple of bonus tracks.
the r'n'r single?

The next 5 lps are available on a 3cd set too
A Parcel of Steeleye Span.

both of those sets go pretty cheap.

There was an edition of each of the first 3 with a bonus disc of live material a few years back. i never investigated since I had the Lark In The Morning set. Not sure what quality the live material had. Would like to cos I haven't found Hutchings era stuff torrented, earliest I've found is '73

i listened to this every week when i was in college.... not so much for about a decade thereafter... i thought it was a bit over the top... but am rediscovering it as we speak... and it's good....

btw the two key members of sweeney's men, discussed above, later joined planxty, who are at least as awesome as fairport IMO....

It's Fairport night on BBC4 next Friday – docus on the band and RT, a (recent, sadly) live performance and some archive BBC footage from the 60s and 70s.

Sky Arts just showed a film called London Rock earlier this week that had some footage of the Full House line-up at their communal home among some other stuff. hadn't seen it before.

Also had The Faces and a few other bands. Keep finding interesting stuff on that channel , wish I'd realised I'd had access much earlier.

There's another live set by that line-up shot in I think Maidstone in a show that also feature Matthews Southern Comfort who were also in that London Rock

Just saw that there's a huge Fairport box set out - Come All Ye: The First 10 Years, with a lot of live material, rarities, alt takes. Most of it is on Spotify, as are pretty much all their albums (many of which hadn't been added last time I checked).

What a motherfucking album

I wonder if the debut live L&L performance at the RAH is ever going to become releasable. Somebody did a home remastering of it a few years ago that was at least listenable.

but the recording was deemed unreleasable a few years ago.
Shame to have a recording that historic and not be able to circulate it fully.

Are advances in recording technology going to make things like that more salvageable.

I have the "deluxe" edition with a bonus disc containing:
2-1 Sir Patrick Spens (Sandy Denny Vocal Version)
2-2 Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood {Take 4}
2-3 The Ballad Of Easy Rider
2-4 Tam Lin (BBC session)
2-5 Medley: The Lark In The Morning; Rakish Paddy; Foxhunter's Jig; Toss The Feathers (BBC session)
2-6 Sir Patrick Spens (BBC session)
2-7 Reynardine (BBC session)
2-8 Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood {Take 1}
2-9 The Lady Is A Tramp (BBC session)
2-10 Medley: The Lady Is A Tramp; In Other Words (Fly Me To The Moon)

It's a great addition to an all-time classic.

I wonder if the debut live L&L performance at the RAH is ever going to become releasable. Somebody did a home remastering of it a few years ago that was at least listenable.

but the recording was deemed unreleasable a few years ago.
Shame to have a recording that historic and not be able to circulate it fully.

Are advances in recording technology going to make things like that more salvageable.

― Stevolende

it depends how low our standards as a species get!

that bbc box of theirs is totally amazing btw

don't know if i've ever heard the royal albert hall L&L performance ... anyone know where it can be found?

Royal Festival Hall. To be annoying about it.

ah — i've heard a 1970 festival hall show w/o Denny ... is this one different?

Maybe not? Is the sound quality atrocious?

it's not great — i guess this is the one you're referring to (link is dead): http://time-has-told-me.blogspot.com/2009/01/fairport-convention.html
don't think i've heard it, judging from the comments, the quality is terrible, but I'm pretty used to that.

That's like two or three months before L+L was released, so I would think that's the gig stevolende was referring to.

someone ysi plz

I want to see the English countryside next year, really really I want to go back once in my life...I promise, before I die...

― Bimble, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:34 (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah man

I was wondering to what extent the L&L line up was a live band. trying to think when the accident taht killed Martin lamble happened. looks like taht was June 69 and both Sandy Denny and Ashley Hutchings quit on the way back from a Scandinavian promo appearance before the end of teh year.
Plus there had to be some recovery time and whatever time teh band spent getting their music together in teh country before it got recorded. Chronology I'm looking at here http://www.stocton.org/fc_chron.htm only has the band together for 2 months in taht lineup though some of teh new members are around for serveral months after that.
So wonder if they had time to play together live much at all.

I think that the lineups either side of that L&L one are better documented live. Dyble era has the Bouton Rouge performance which really need s to be seen. Sandy & Ian matthews has 2 1968 sets Whittlesley Barn and Amsterdam.
Then the post Denny/Hutchings line up have Maidstone and POP2 from paris as video plus there seem to be several 1970 audios.

Wish there was more around. the 2 early Sandy are quite nice.
Bouton Rouge has some great guitar from Richard Thompson.

There are also a couple fo pretty good tv appearances from 1976

I wish they still had the TOTP appearance. Looked a laff..