RFI: Folksy Stuff like Fairport Convention S&D

Steeleye Span are very very uneven, but radiant at their best--start with _Hark! The Village Wait_ or the early greatest-hits _Original Masters_.

Eliza Carthy is okay; her dad, Martin Carthy, is wonderful, and probably my favorite guitarist. All his records are good, but especially the ones from the '70s (whichever one starts with "The Bedmaking" is my fave).

And would Gryphon qualify as folky?

Fairport's "Unhalfbricking" must be searched, especially "Genesis Hall", one of those songs that sounds as though it's carrying such a heavy load on its back that it's only just struggled into existence (Talk Talk's "Such A Shame" followed where it left off, 15 years later). It's hard to believe it's still alive, indeed it's only just desperately clinging onto life, maybe a metaphor for aspects of the society it was released into. Nowhere left to go, indeed, but what's all the more amazing is how utterly they refute that on the album as a whole: "A Sailor's Life", amazingly, fully deserves its reputation, such is its endless compulsive guitar grind. I was fearing a pointless imposition of rock upon the song when I first heard it, actually it's the opposite. Everything flows perfectly, no wonder that incarnation of Fairport was too good (read: had too many individual talents heading in different directions) to last.

"What We Did On Our Holidays" isn't far behind it. Other individual songs that haunt my mind from those albums: "Book Song", "No Man's Land", "Tale In Hard Time", "Autopsy", "Eastern Rain", "Nottamun Town". If you like the intros-unrelated-to-the-songs on Rod Stewart's first two number ones, you'll like "End Of A Holiday", as well.

Fotheringay over-produced? Maybe, at times, but "The Sea" remains one of the highpoints of its era, a fantastic use of environmental / physical metaphor for personal decay / dereliction. The "News From Nowhere" of pop music: once-only in every sense. You don't have to fully endorse the sentiments of "The Pond and the Stream" to identify with them, and "Nothing More" and "The Banks of the Nile" are also wonderful. The weakest moments on that album are when Trevor Lucas comes to the fore, I think.

The Pentangle's "Basket of Light": yes yes yes search out today, though the overwhelming air is the opposite of "Genesis Hall": practically zero *rock* influence but huge jazz inflections on the time signatures / arrangements creating an incredible mood of vibrancy / zest for the future / utter optimism. Highpoint thereof: probably the multi-layered flow of "Train Song" (what was it in the water c.1970 that produced such loving *detail* in production values even on basically really mouldy old records? Even on their / his best song I still want to punch J. Hayward, but the high-speed guitars on the Moody Blues' "Question" are magical). Also wonderful: the brightness of "Light Flight", the slow build of "Once I Had A Sweetheart", the way "Sally Go Round The Roses" treats early 60s girl- group pop as though it was traditional material and in doing so renders the divide between "new" and "old" utterly irrelevant and meaningless (I'm sure I remember Duane in NZ saying the very same thing ages ago). Actually everything on "Basket of Light" is great though the arrangements aren't quite as revelatory on some of the traditionals: still very pretty and all that and exactly what you need to bring the best out of the songs, but they don't blow your mind the way "Train Song" does even now.

These records are in a continuum for me: I associate them with Skitz, Roots Manuva, and even Timbaland & Magoo's "People Like Myself" closer than with anything in the "folk" field in the last ... oooh, let's say my lifetime, OK? A lot of British music, much of it totally unrelated to any notional idea of "folkiness", revolves around that 1968-70 moment and worldview, at least to my ears. I could take or leave a lot of that era, but not *this* part of it.

By the way, Mr. Robin, whatever happened to Elidor? Was always an interesting read, yet the "Elidor is going on holiday" notice has been up there for - jeez - how long has it been now?

Surely!

Anybody who wants to recommend to me Fairport Convention things, or cognates, here, please go ahead.

It's not widely available, but you can get it here:

http://www.folkmusic.net/

Otherwise, there's a nice Celtic bent to some Trees stuff - I'm thinking specifically of things like 'Murdoch' with Celia Humphris doing the banshee bit (possibly over-doing it really but somehow the too-muchness only makes me crave it more) and Barry Clark's guitar swooping round the misty cairns much like a rum-addled puffin in his most impossible dreams.

The Woods' Band album that is.

not sure about the 'these trails' record though

My husband put the entire Maddy Prior discog on my computer & it always makes me laugh every time I see it on my itunes.

lol I revive3d this thread before I noticed the Steeleye Span thread was already on new answers page

Fairports' BBC sessions box is just great.

Was interesting to see a lot of the material The Dubliners recorded mid 60s turning up in electric versions on Steeleye Span, Fairports etc lps.
Wish I could find live audio & video from Ashley Hutchings era SS, & more by him with Fairports. Got the French set with Judy Dyble but apparently it was filmed in colour.

Haven't looked to see if Electric Eden & Seasons They Change have been discussed much yet.

Think I found this site through googling Emanuelle Parrenin whose La Maison Rose I saw in a list of cds on ebay.

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.

its better to buy something that hasn't been done up than something done up badly