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A Lark Ascending
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Posts posted by A Lark Ascending
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Sorry. You are quite right Simon.
But tune in at 7.00 anyway. You'll get Nick Barraclough's half ironic approach to current country pop. Always entertaining.
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Enrico Pieranunzi
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Gianluigi Trovesi
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I love the Proper Boxes - a great way to explore unfamiliar areas.
But they do make mistakes.
The two I've noticed:
The Bud Powell set - one of the Sarah Vaughan tracks has the needle jump back into the last few seconds. A Proper error or part of the original transfer?
The Lionel Hampton set - the 'Sweethearts on Parade' is actually Louis Armstrong!
I recall reading the Ellington set has one track mis-titled.
A minor irritation. Anyone spotted any others?
I'd recommend 'Hitting on All Six' as a great way to hear some early jazz guitar.
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Jimmy Hastings
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The Denny I saw was a bit later - October or November of 1973. It was just as I'd started University and she played the student's union hall.
The Fairport concert was definitely the same tour - again at university. It could have been any time from Oct to early Dec that I saw them. I recall we were also supposed to get Sour Grapes that term - R + L Thompson and Simon Nicol. That one sadly was called off and I had to wait another seven years to see Thompson live for the first time.
Yes, I share your liking for 'The Way I Feel' - I love the way it builds and the harmony vocal between Denny and Lucas; Donahue's guitar is tremendous throughout. My own favourite from the album is 'The Sea', a five star Denny song with a perfect solo from Jerry Donahue. I also love the opening 'Nothing More' which has the same sort of drama as 'The Way I Feel.' There are two lyrically strange but beguiling tunes - 'The Pond and the Stream' and 'Winter Winds' with exquisite medievally interlocking acoustic guitars. And, of course, the 'time stands still' beauty of 'The Banks of the Nile', one of her great traditional interpretations. If the album is weakened it is by the Lucus led numbers but they do provide a contrast.
The CD reissue has two additional tracks (also on the box) which are marvellous. 'Two Weeks Last Summer' (in the 'Winter Winds' mould) and 'Gypsy Davy' (using the slow building, dramatic style).
One other Denny track I adore is 'By the Time It Get's Dark' which can be found on the box set. It's just a demo, has some dodgy lyrics and rhymes but has Sandy at her most innocent sounding in a gorgeously optimistic melody. It's been picked up and recorded by a number of people but seems to collapse under overarrangement. A gem.
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I've said this somewhere else but 'Northstar', 'Fotheringay' and 'Full House' (and a number of other releases of around that period) have a production that is ideal for my listening. Very spare, uncluttered.
I suppose the bleakness of Northstar very much appeals to me. I was reading Richard Thompson only yesterday talking about how in his early songwriting he felt uncomfortable revealing true feelings and so hid his early songs in code; I hear the same thing in 'Northstar.' The thing is I prefer the uncrackable code of that record and, say, 'Henry the Human Fly.' I think it helps evoke a very strange and mysterious place that very few records of the time (or since) enterred. That same place that much traditional folk song takes you, largely because key verses of song have been lost or mixed with other songs to create a tale which never quite makes sense. Like 'Tam Lin'!
I'm probably being a bit hard on her later voice. Surviving performers get to choose what is released. The various live discs that have come out have had to make do with what was there, not necessarily her at her best. I saw her twice - once with a very small band in late 1973 and once during her second period with Fairport in '74. Both were wonderful concerts.
By fresh-voiced I suppose I mean youthful. Her voice changed colour around '72. Had she been more stable, had she possessed the focus of a Thompson or a Hutchings I have no doubt she would have produced even more startling music. She just seems to me to have got a bit lost and retreated into nostalgia.
We shouldn't overlook her marvellous performance on 'The Battle of Evermore' on Led Zeppelin IV.
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I've been living with the Round About Bartok disk for a week now and love it. Actually not all that Bartoky. Very much in the chamber jazz mould of ECM. I'm normally not a great fan of the violin in jazz but very much like Gregor Huebner. And George Mraz's bass is beautifully caught on the recording. In fact I'd recommend it to anyone who likes jazz bass!
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If you read Clinton Heylin's bio you come across a very insecure and disturbed person. Her marriage with Trevor Lucas was in trouble at the time and he'd just taken off to Australia with their daughter.
I'd qualify Simon's advice by recommending 'The North Star Grassman and the Ravens' and the 'Fotheringay' albums as beautiful examples of Denny's talent . There are some superb songs and performances on those two(I've been playing them for 30 odd years with no loss of affection). 'Sandy' also is very enjoyable but is more produced, something which spoils her final two discs for me. Had she lived I fear she would have become a much more mainstream performer. She seemed to become swamped in orchestras and a nostalgia for 30s 'light programme' music.
Also her voice hardened from about 1972 on. Alot of the live material has her not always in tune and a million miles away from the fresh voiced singer of Unhalfbricking, Liege and Lief or Fotheringay.
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I just read a very entertaining book about Ashley Hutchings over the holiday - "The Guv'nor and the Rise of Folk Rock" by Brian Hinton and Geoff Wall (Helter Skelter). It only covers his career up to 1973 - basically Fairport, Steeleye Span and the early incarnations of the The Albion Country Band. A fascinating evocation of an era I lived through but on the other side of the pages of the Melody Maker and NME!
It's especially instructive about the live bands and music that never got to record. I'd dearly love to have heard a Shirley Collins band that went out in late 1971 with Hutchings, John Kirkpatrick, Royston Wood and Richard Thompson for a few dates in the English West Country. And the 'caretaker' Albion Band that had Hutchings, Simon Nicol and Richard and Linda Thompson (or Peters as she was then). Maybe the tapes will get out eventually! Recommended to anyone who enjos this music.
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Bells?
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Jon Jang
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Chris Biscoe (great UK sax/clarinet player)
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Steve Waterman (excellent UK trumpeter)
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Zoot!
The saxophonist im 'The Muppet Show'
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WEDNESDAY 23rd APRIL
A special show to commemorate Sandy Denny, who died 25 years ago this week. As well as Sandy's music, the show will feature reminiscences from some of Sandy's friends and colleagues including Richard Thompson, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Pegg, Simon Nicol and producer Joe Boyd.
Can be heard at 7.00 p.m. UK time...or at your discretion for the following week. The Beeb now archives it's programmes for latter listening, up to a week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/folk/mike_hard...ing/index.shtml
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Tiziano Tononi
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Simone Guiducci
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Definitely a very odd record...and an indication of why Thompson is one of those rare musicians from the rock-ish area who has remained creative for so long. His willingness to fly off at tangents.
There was a second FFKT album called 'Invisible Means' that I like even more - it includes a grade A Thompson song called 'Killing Jar'. And a wonderful, wonderful rocking version of Loch Lomond (a Maxine Sullivan connection there, perhaps...Fairport's first single was a Sullivan cover).
One of the intriguing things about the recent TV documentary on Thompson was how completely un-rock and roll he was. He's always played up, in an ironic way, his 'suburban' nature. But he really does seem to live a pleasant middle class existence in California, dreaming of England. He even works a 9 to 5 day writing his songs and working on his music!
And then it all comes out wierd!
I'm hoping that some earlier live material gets out now that the internet has made limited interest CDs viable. I work with a chap who was the keyboard player in the Albion Band in the late 70s/early 80s and he has a tape of a Richard and Linda tour during their initial Muslim phase - the guitar playing is apparently extraordinary.
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A couple more strange but wonderful recordings from this bunch, early 70s era, this time from Ashley Hutchings and John Kirkpatrick:
Morris On - with Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks and Barry Dransfield. Electric Morris tunes with some songs. One of those records that turned my head around about what I might like in music. This was so different from my usually rock diet in 1973! I can still recall the odd looks I got when I got it onto the school record player one lunch time! The record was very influential in its time, reclaiming the Morris from the worthy but stuffy folk antiquarians. There's a nice follow up called 'Son of Morris On' and, more recently, a 'Grandson of Morris On' (which I've not heard).
The Compleat Dancing Master - a sort of follow up, perhaps the start of Hutchings interest in music and speech recordings. A sort of dash through English dance music from the Middle Ages to the early 20th C with brief gobbets from contemporary literature interspersed. Worth it for the William Prynne Puritan diatribe against dancing!
There is also a 4CD being prepared of The Watersons extended family. Hopefully this will be a largely unreleased collection.
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I think I must play 'Liege and Lief' about two or three times a year - not bad for a record I first bought in 1972!
All the new remasters of the early Fairport catalogue are excellent - they've finally got all the odds and sods that were scattered across various singles and compilations into the core packages. The reissue of 'Full House' is especially rich in this respect.
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I've just this week received two of the 'official Bootlegs' from the RT site.
'Celtschmertz' is solo RT from 1998, a marvellous disc of 'greatest hits' done acoustically.
'Semi-Detached Mock Tudor' is a 1999 band record (RT, Teddy Thompson, Danny Thompson, Michael Jerome, Pete Zorn) and is blistering! Some outstanding guitar and a general high-octane performance. It really brings some of the 'Mock Tudor' tunes alight.
Also recommended - 'Two Letter Words' - an acoustic and band 2CD from 1994 with Dave Mattacks, Pete Zorn and Danny Thompson.
RT afficianados should not miss these - available through:
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The Timothy White book is really interesting, as much as an insight into Californian social history as it is on the music of the BBs.
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I understood what you were saying, BFrank, and didn't take it amiss.
I suspect we all repeat ourselves constantly in writing about our favourite performers...a bit like we repeat ourselves constantly when chatting in pubs (or bars!). I can cope with repetition if a person's enthusiasm for an artist shines through.
Yes, 'John the Gun'...a great tune and lyric. I also love the dual guitar interplay on 'Late November' with Jerry Donahue. To say nothing of the sheer haunting mystery of the title track.
Radio programme about Sandy Denny
in Miscellaneous Music
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Yes, a nice drift down memory lane.
A pity it was read by Mike 'I-speak-your-weight' Harding.