Fairport Convention – 50th Music Anniversaries and Other Musings

July 1970 Music Wrap Up, Pt. 1

With everything that’s going on out there these days on top of it being my least favorite time of year, to refer to them as dog days is an insult to dogs everywhere. But the music plays on. If I haven’t said so in the past, these end of the month wrap up posts aren’t simply what I deem to be “leftovers” not worthy of dedicated posts. In many instances they’re an acknowledgement of my ignorance. In other words, I know what I know, but there’s so much music I haven’t absorbed in my 49.5 years, yet I continue to play catch up.

Three cheers to the first person to correctly name the band in that rather nondescript featured image at the top…

7/7/70: Parliament – Osmium

See, this is what I’m talking about. I could spend a year in a Parliament and Funkadelic 101 course and barely scratch the surface. Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain (1971) and Eddie Hazel’s Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs (1977) are in my rotation, but that still leaves, what, thirty or so albums? Anyway, Osmium was Parliament’s debut album, released 50 years ago this month. Osmium is the chemical element of atomic number 76. Duh.

7/8/70: Beck Hansen born

Beck released his first album about 27 years ago, and he’s been doing things his own way ever since. He’s one of the more innovative musicians out there, and is certainly one of my favorite contemporary artists. I tend to gravitate toward albums like Sea Change and Morning Phase. He turned 50 earlier this month. Seems like yesterday that the McCartneys and Jaggers of the world hit the half-century mark.

7/14/70: Supertramp – Supertramp

Supertramp’s eponymous debut album was released 50 years ago. It (as well as their second album, Indelibly Stamped) is an album I “should” be more familiar with than a couple of YouTube listens. It’s a bit more on the prog side of life than what they came to be known for, which is why I never heard the album as a kid. I’m a fan of the Roger Hodgson/Rick Davies combo, and I love every release within their five album stretch from 1974’s Crime of the Century to 1980’s live Paris. 1982’s …Famous Last Words has its moments as well. It’s inevitable that I’ll absorb this and its follow up a bit more, probably in the near future.

7/20/70: The Doors – Absolutely Live

This was the first live Doors album, and it contains performances from mid-1969 to spring of ’70. It received rather poor reviews, but with the Doors one never knows what personal ax a writer might have had to grind with that band. The Doors were a group that people either seem to like or dislike without middle ground. Maybe it was the Celebration of the Lizard that sealed this album’s status among Rolling Stone writers and their ilk. Live at the Hollywood Bowl was my live Doors listening experience during my formative years. Come to think of it, that might be the show they got the Absolutely Live album cover photo from. It’s certainly not representative of the bearded and slightly bloated Jim of 1970. I’m still a fan.

July 1970: Fairport Convention – Full House

Fairport Convention is a band that I’ve raved about, and in a way I’ve patted myself on the back for having discovered them for myself despite my rural Midwest American 1970’s-80’s upbringing. But the reality is I only know and love the albums they did with Sandy Denny, which comprise three of the first four Fairport albums. Full House was their fifth. This was Richard Thompson’s last appearance with the band, and it’s apparently a very good album which follows in the vein of Liege & Lief but without Sandy, who had moved on to form Fotheringay. I just haven’t heard it. Perhaps you can see the dilemma I face when trying to decide what direction to take with my music education: Funkadelic or post-Denny Fairport Convention? Have I reached a point where there’s just not enough time to devote to all the sounds I’ve yet to explore?

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmium_(album)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertramp_(album)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolutely_Live_(The_Doors_album)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_House_(Fairport_Convention_album)

June 1970 – Fotheringay

June 1970: Fotheringay – Fotheringay

Fifty years ago this month the eponymous debut from the British folk group Fotheringay was released. The band was formed by Sandy Denny after she left Fairport Convention in 1969, and included her future husband Trevor Lucas on guitar as well as Gerry Conway on drums, guitarist Jerry Donahue, and Pat Donaldson on bass. The band’s name was derived from a castle where Mary, Queen of Scots was once imprisoned. It was also the title of a Denny song recorded with Fairport Convention. Fotheringay was the only album they released during their original incarnation. The group disbanded in 1971 during sessions for their second album when Denny chose to pursue a solo career. Fotheringay 2 was finally released in 2008.

I began to take an interest in the late 1960’s/early 70’s British folk scene in the late 90’s, about the time I, like many others, discovered Nick Drake through a Volkswagen commercial. The first group whose music I explored was Fairport Convention, and I immediately became a fan of the late Sandy Denny’s vocals on their second through fourth albums. It turned out I had heard her sing before; she was the only guest vocalist to appear on a Led Zeppelin album, on the song The Battle of Evermore. As a natural progression I gave this album a listen and found it to be a continuation of the Fairport sound I like, then dove into Denny’s wonderful solo work. She was a brilliant composer and vocalist, but a somewhat tragic figure who passed away in 1978 at the age of 31.

Fotheringay was produced by Joe Boyd, whose fingerprints are all over recordings from the British folk and underground scene including the aforementioned Drake, as well as The Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, and others. My favorite tracks on the album overall were written and sung by Denny, especially Nothing More (with its Jerry Donahue guitar solo that I wish was about five minutes longer), though Trevor Lucas’s rendition of Gordon Lightfoot’s The Way I Feel is a particularly strong example of the British folk rock I enjoy. They also took a turn at Dylan’s Too Much of Nothing, another song from his 1967 basement sessions with the group that would soon be named The Band that wouldn’t see the official light of day until 1975. Interestingly, Fotheringay wasn’t even the first to release a version. Peter, Paul and Mary had a Top 40 hit with it in 1967, and Spooky Tooth also released it on their debut the following year.

Below is a live clip of Fotheringay performing perhaps my favorite song of theirs on the German TV program Beat Club, followed by the album itself.

Tracklist

Side One:

Nothing More
The Sea
The Ballad of Ned Kelly
Winter Winds
Peace in the End

Side Two:

The Way I Feel
The Pond and the Stream
Too Much of Nothing
Banks of the Nile

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fotheringay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fotheringay_(album)

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=10949

January ’69 – Fairport Convention’s Holiday Show and Tell

Fairport Convention – What We Did on Our Holidays

…she stood out like a clean glass in a sink full of dirty dishes – Fairport band member Simon Nicol on Sandy Denny’s audition with the band.

When Fairport Convention released their second album, What We Did on Our Holidays, 50 years ago this month, British folk rock was evolving quickly. By the end of 1969, it would be a full-fledged thing. But at the beginning of the year, the band had yet to take the full plunge. What we have on this album, remarkably the first of three by Fairport that year, is an interesting mix of original songs with then-obscure cover versions as well as their own arrangements of traditional songs. Perhaps the most notable thing the band did on its holiday was hire a new lead singer, Sandy Denny, to replace the departed Judy Dyble. This was Denny’s rather remarkable debut.

L-R: Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, Sandy Denny, Martin Lamble, and Ashley Hutchings

What We Did… shows a very young group of musicians with a new vocalist rapidly finding their way, but by no means were they scraping the barrel for material. The opening track is Sandy’s Fotheringay, one of the most beautiful acoustic folk songs of the era. There’s also the straight forward electric blues track Mr. Lacey, written by band member Ashley Hutchings and featuring the stellar lead guitar of 19-year-old Richard Thompson. The Book Song and No Man’s Land remind me of American west coast bands, the former the Mamas and the Papas with a Cajun twist, the latter a mish-mash of early Dead and Airplane.

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There’s a nice version of I’ll Keep it with Mine, at the time a lesser known Dylan track which turned out to be a good song choice for Sandy’s vocal and Iain Matthews’ harmonies (only Judy Collins had it on an album at the time; Bob’s versions would see the official light of day on later compilations). They were also the first to release Joni Mitchell’s Eastern Rain – a track which is perfect for either Fairport or Joni (or even It’s a Beautiful Day?). Leaning once again toward English folk, they also put down their own take of the traditional Nottamun Town, a “lost song” from medieval England which ended up passed along through oral tradition to American Appalachia, and whose melody Dylan used in Masters of War in 1963.

61NIeIh9FwL._SX355_.jpg — The album’s “chalkboard cover” is a photo taken in a university classroom that doubled as the band’s dressing room before a gig. They picked up the chalk, started drawing, and ended up with an album cover.

Reviews are mostly positive. AllMusic’s Richie Unterberger:

And more than simply being a collection of good songs (with one or two pedestrian ones), it allowed Fairport to achieve its greatest internal balance, and indeed one of the finest balances of any major folk-rock group.

My favorites are Sandy Denny’s original Fotheringay, Richard Thompson’s Meet On the Ledge, Joni Mitchell’s Eastern Rain, and the traditional She Moves Through the Fair – a song I’ve yet to hear a bad version of, with or without vocals. While it may or may not be a cohesive album, I no longer hear it as just a step along the way toward Liege & Leif. It’s a great collection of songs, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with a band releasing a batch of tunes they just happen to enjoy playing, whether they “go together” or not. 1969 had to have been a blur for the group. They would soon experience major adversity prior to the release of their next album just a few months later as they forged ahead, leaving a significant footprint on the music world.

Tracklist

Side One:

Fotheringay
Mr. Lacey
Book Song
The Lord Is in This Place…How Dreadful Is This Place
No Man’s Land
I’ll Keep It With Mine

Side Two:

Eastern Rain
Nottamun Town
Tale in Hard Time
She Moves Through the Fair
Meet on the Ledge
End of a Holiday

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Did_on_Our_Holidays

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairport_Convention

https://www.allmusic.com/album/what-we-did-on-our-holidays-mw0000309532

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/5hw6/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottamun_Town

June Tunes, Pt. 2

Let’s continue our June 1968 wrap up:

Iron Butterfly – In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Iron Butterfly’s second and most well-known album was released June 14, 1968. The title track, released as a single the same day, holds an odd place in rock history in my mind. It’s almost become a punchline due to the garbled title and the fact that it takes up the entire second side of the album. But the album stands on its own as the highest selling release of 1969. It was also the biggest seller for Atlantic Records until Led Zeppelin IV.

Fairport Convention – Fairport Convention

This was the English folk-rock band’s debut album, and I can’t write intelligently about it because I haven’t listened to it. As with many other groups I’ve wanted to get to know, I familiarized myself with Fairport Convention by purchasing a hits collection before branching out, but the compilation didn’t include any songs from this self-titled debut. Judy Dyble was the lead singer on this record, but she would be replaced by the siren Sandy Denny for the next few releases, and they are among my favorite albums from the era. I’ll have more from Fairport Convention next January when I have a clue what I’m talking about.