RFI: Folksy Stuff like Fairport Convention S&D

(xp) on the ball there, Fizzles ;)

INsect trust are good, bit of jazz in there. Not sure who's got either lp on cd at the moment I have the 1st one on Ascension from about 10 years ago.

Sunbeam records seemed to nearly specialise in folk stuff from the turn of the 60s/70s. Fresh Maggots, Synansthesia,Loudest Whisper, C.O.B. (Clive of the original ISB moved to the South of England and got his own band together), Moonkyte, Bread, Love & Dreams. Jade, Mark Fry, Meic Stevens are all good.

Mr Fox specialised in Northeern English folk I think specifically from Yorkshire. They gave us caroline Pegg who has a solo lp that's quite renowned.
& 2 lps of original material.

Dr Strangely Strange are an eccentric bunch from Dublin who put out 2 good lps Kip Of teh Serenes and Heavy petting, the latter of which features some heavy guitar from gary moore. They have a biography that came outover the last year taht I have yet to read.

Strawbs came from an acoustic bluegrassy background and put out a few at least semi classic lps. I'd recommend the 2 that were recorded with Rick Wakeman onboard . the live set A Collection of Curiosities & the Studio From the Witchwood. I think the 1st 2lps and the ones up to around 1973 are quite recommended too but I'm not as familiar with them.
The singer's vocals are a bit of an acquired taste though.

Jethro Tull got very folky in the late 70s Their lp Songs From The Wood sounds a lot like what other people were putting out about 69/70 but with synths and things added. I think the lp works very well , have heard teh next lp Heavy Horses is less successful.

I have the Dave Bixby related lp Second coming by Harbinger playing in the otehr room which is a semi acoustic band he put together after recording Ode To Quexalcoatl and retains his christian message alongside an odd Bowie lift.

Five Rounds Left
Coach Has Told Me

I'd buy "Five Leaves, Rapid" by Nicholas Courtney

Are there any books that describe this late 1960s era of folk/folk-rock/folk-jazz-whatever in Britain? As someone who has discovered Pentangle and Richard Thompson, and will probably move on to Fairport Convention, I’d like to know more about the historical background and how all these musicians came together.

Rob Young's Electric Eden is the only book you need.

Colin Harper's Dazzling Stranger which is mainly a Bert Jansch biography touches on the scenes in both mid 60s Edinburgh and London a few years later as well as giving the history of Pentangle.

Clinton Heylin put out a pretty comprehensive booki on Fairport Convention last year. What We Did Instead of Holidays.
I like the subject of Heylin's writing more tahn i like his writing which I often find pretty arrogant. But this i sworth reading for the amount of info you get from it

THe Guv'nor on Ashley Hutchings was a great read. Covers early Fairports, Steeleye Span's formative years, and Albion stuff. I think it was where i was reading about the early, Richard thompson era of Albion Band.
I was thinking it was written by Hutchings but now see it is Brian Hinton and Geoff Wall.

Richard Thompson has a 60s memoir due which I look forward to reading.

I Always Kept A Unicorn the MIchael Houghton biography of Sandy Denny was quite comprehensive too,

Clive Palmer had a biography written called Empty Pocket blues by Grahame Hood.
MIke Heron has a 60s memoir out too which I haven't read.

Patrick Humphries wrote books on Richard Thompsoin, NIck Drake and fairport convention a few decades ago. The tone of the one on Richard Thompson is a bit scathing.

Richard Morton jack has a major problem with Electric Eden that I really haven't seen what the story is on. I did think the attempt at injecting a line of speculative fiction into the book was a bit of an odd move. Thought the biographies were interesting.

I'd become rather sceptical about the whole idea of great lost UK folk albums, but when I finally heard Bright Phoebus after its reissue last year (year before?) I was completely blown away. It features most of the people mentioned in this thread (although no wrestlers afaik) and is a truly fantastic work.

Bright Phoebus is great. The album that's been a discovery for me in the last year is Heron's Twice as Nice & Half the Price, damn I love that, want to walk into that cover photo and day in the country.

Electric Eden is a great read, both for the musician histories and for placing it in the context of 19th c. folk song collecting, William Morris, etc. I also have, but haven't read, Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk by Jeanette Leech, which looks promising.

I'll never get bored of "Yellow Roses" by Heron, which I think is on their other LP but I have the comp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqlHLkMyC98

I didn't love Electric Eden as much as more-or-less everyone I've seen comment on it; I found it a bit overblown in places, and I wish I shared more of Rob's taste - some of the records he raves about I didn't take to.

While I thought it was pretty good on the particular brand of leftism of the 50s/early 60s folk revival I thought it sidestepped the question of how the politics of the whole thing changed/fractured through the hippy years. Ultimately the piece of thinking that had the greatest effect on me was the insight into the deliberate cottageyness of early British attempts at social housing, reflecting interestingly on Britain's relationship with modernism in general, but that's a very different story.

Tim OTM.

Thanks for the recommendations. I’ve already picked up <i>Electric Eden</i>. Rob Young, huh: ironic that the same guy I went to for late-era Scott Walker has written an ample tome on British folk rock.

Electric Eden was a bit of a slog for me (the relentless impressionistic biographies, mainly) but I basically enjoyed it. I'm sure it's been mentioned but White Bicycles is excellent.

I'm listening to Heron again and being reminded it falls the wrong side of whimsical for me. I almost need to semi-ignore it for a bit, let the sunshine bleed in.

I forgot I'd made this: a big old playlist I made as I read Electric Eden. It's a mess but full of goodly things.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0dWPJzlO2fjXzWXIN2Hqhh?si=9JaiZdOSQUeScVcpJvLkUA

Echoing the love for Bright Phoebus here, it's quite wonderful. According the liner notes on the reissue, red wine promises is about getting drunk, walking through Pearson Park and failing to leapfrog a bollard. It's 5 minutes from my house and I've probably fallen over in that spot too. Larkin's High Windows overlook the same park, and I like to think Lal and her fiance are the kids in the first verse.

There is an entire book about Dr Strangely Strange now

yeah got it, haven't read it yet but it looks promising.

Got a new band to me to recommend. Welsh band called Pererin that were around in th eearly 80s but sound like they come from about a decade earlier.
I think they were on the old Bruton Town list of bands of interest so I've known of their existence for several years without actually hearing them.
Welsh language, acoustic stuff that was reissued by Guerssen a few years ago and may have copies left in their sale at the moment.
That was where my copy came from anyway.

cool thanks for the recommendation

That's the 2nd lp, still has some electric input. looks like they went consciously acoustic on the next lp.
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/pererin/teithgan/

right, found it, used to be the masthead list for the yahoo group on wyrd etc folk. Does include a few names that weren't automatically fit into the category

Bruton Town list
ncredible string band, linda perhacs, clive's original band, alastair galbraith, comus, damien youth, pantaleimon, midwinter, bob buckingham, pentangle, parameter, current 93, red chair fadeaway, devendra banhart, iron and wine, belladonna bouquet, gnidrilog, loudest whisper, forest, peter scion, anne briggs, green crown, skip spence, popol vuh, fit & limo, acid mothers temple, roscoe holcomb, six organs of admittance, carol of harvest, pearls before swine, estampie, prydwyn, emtidi, moths, ghost, greg weeks, espers, abunai, mandible chatter, witthuser & westrupp, nature & organization, nic jones, stone angel, tyrannosaurus rex, fairport convention, duncan browne, dock boggs, john fahey, drekka, nick drake, angels of light, hammons family, john martyn, mourning cloak, jan dukes degray, mellow candle, donovan, in gowan ring, third ear band, nigel mazlyn jones, chris thompson, ring, dr strangely strange, martyn bates, animal collective, albion band, langsyne, wizz jones, spriguns, the carter family, fuschia, moonkyte, iditarod, shide and acorn, spirogyra, chris cologne, water into wine band, fotheringay, vashti bunyan, mormos, campfire songs, alasdair roberts, cocorosie, floating flower, peter grudzien, diana obscura, vetiver, danielson family, algarnas tradgard, faun fables, bread love & dreams, malicorne, charalambides, tinsel, davey graham, duncan browne, terry earl taylor, simon finn, book of am, extradition, mac macleod, dulcimer, tea & symphony, moth masque, tir na nog, maitreya kali, joanna newsom, shelagh macdonald, bhagavan das, mark fry, tim buckley, magic carpet, sun also rises, tudor lodge, will oldham, b'eirth, exuma, the trees, the farinas, shide & acorn, steeleye span, principal edward's magic theatre, shirley collins, stone breath, mourning phase, old-time music, new weird, neo-folk, acid-folk, psychedelic folk, strange folk, world serpent, dark holler, hand/eye, the forest people

Just heard from a friend that Judy Dyble has passed away from lung cancer :(

https://www.loudersound.com/news/original-fairport-convention-singer-judy-dyble-dead-at-71

:(

i really like her singing on that first album

OTM + RIP Judy. Her misfortune was to be overshadowed by her successor, but I can't think of many vocalists who wouldn't be overshadowed by Sandy Denny.

RIP. Her album with Trader Horne is wonderful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTQ3JrT4LNo

Thanks, didn't know about that! Bummer that she's gone---did get to do this---from my Nashville Scene ballot comments re 2018:
Richard Thompson is an ever-riveting, never-showboating
featured team player ("Sloth" gets really dead-to-zombstring
strange: is it about wages of sloth, of a sloth? Both?) on
Fairport Convention's roiling, autumn-leaves-shanking
What We Did On Our Saturday, documenting a sometimes
alarmingly energetic hive of all surviving Conventioneers
who came to play
--- which is most, incl. the founding line-up entire, I think
---their 50th Anniversary Concert
(taking things a little easier on Disc 2, but understandably
so, given the earlier waves).

Never really listened to the entirety of the first Fairport Convention album with Judy Dyble until today. Maybe not quite as good as the next few but still nothing to sneer at.

Or sneeze at even.

otm, that was a pleasant discovery for me a while back. iirc it has a kind of californian, byrds-y quality that I rather enjoyed

Yes, exactly. Also another album with Iain Matthews- Martin Lamble too! And Richard's playing is amazing right out of the gate.

Yeah, it's a nice little gem. Understandably it gets overshadowed by the next four albums, but it's a good one.

Bonus tracks good too.

It's curious but notable that the originals on this record are more memorable than the cover versions, with the exception of the two throwaway instrumentals (the only ones with no Thompson credits). Poor Judy Dyble is just adequate, though.

I feel like she may be better than that. Gotta be hard for anyone to be compared to Sandy Denny.

Well, she may have been the best singer in Giles, Giles and Fripp...

It's curious but notable that the originals on this record are more memorable than the cover versions

"Time Will Show the Wiser" is great, better than the original.

OTM. Also I believe some of the Joni Mitchell material appeared here before she released herself so maybe that counts as cover+.

Same with "Eastern Rain" on the next album.

Believe they came as demos via Joe Boyd iirc.

Was about to say the same.

Recommending his book White Bicycles to those who haven't read it. Recommending Beeswing to myself since I only just started nosing around in it.

Beeswing is excellent, especially if your main interest is in Fairport Convention. Thompson focuses on his upbringing through Fairport Convention to his conversion to Islam, but after that, he writes about his life in much less detail.

That's usually the opposite of how those bios go, so that's a plus for me. I guess because the recent events and work are usually at the front of the writers' minds, they are recalled with more clarity. The Bob Mould book is a great example. It was like he just couldn't wait to blaze through the Husker and Sugar stuff so he could write about working for the WCW and getting into techno. Neither of which was as interesting to read about as it sounds.

Ugh, I guess I'll skip Mould's book. That's really disappointing, because he seemed like someone who could write a great memoir.

The only thing I would have liked was an equivalent amount of detail on Richard's work with Linda, and given how it was entwined with his personal life, I can see how he would be reluctant to do that. Plus quite a few people still insist that Shoot Out the Lights was autobiographical when he's already explained many times why that isn't so. I think he's already had enough talking or writing about those years as a result.

Feel like maybe more often than not there is also usually some big block of negative emotion– anger, resentment or just plain old bad blood– that has to be addressed somehow before even beginning to tell the old stories of the original band without it turning into simple score-settling and backbiting. “I’m not going to give those bastards any credit! They’ve already taken more than their fair share and bled me dry for all those years. Turnabout is fair play.” Richard seems like a reasonably retrospective person that could get to some kind of place to deliver a balanced enough story. I also imagine that telling too much about his relationship with Linda would be fairly painful for all involved. Now picturing Teddy on the phone to Rufus Wainwright if not Martha: “Can you believe what he wrote? Listen to this!”

From what I know about the Lol Tolhurst book (which I own and have delved into but…) he was able to get to the good storytelling place as well.

Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys

Huh.

Can't believe no one told me that Richard Thompson & Dave Mattacks rejoined Fairport Convention last weekend to play Full House in its entirety. https://t.co/9yAe0PuSzi

— Tyler Wilcox (@tywilc) August 17, 2022

Good find. Those Fairport folks still seem to be pretty good friends. And props for the frontline rocking shorts.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137254526#/?channel=RES_BUY

Experience the vibes in the original Fairport house! Yours for £4,300,000. Includes duplex annex with a self contained flat and garage space for multiple cars. Listing doesn't mention it but the property is also within walking distance of both Muswell Hill Sainsbury's and a fairly decent Chinese.