A Selection Of Curious & Interesting CDs
Aside from the steady stream of Bert Jansch reissues, the Andy
Roberts anthology and the forthcoming Pentangle 4CD box set (for
all of which, see elsewhere on this site) here’s a few other
releases I’ve been involved in recently: sleeve-note writing
and, in all cases bar Alison O’Donnell’s all-new album,
compiling. I’ve no doubt all available somewhere online. All
heartily recommended, of course.
Alison
O’Donnell & Isabel Ni Chuireain -
Mise Agus Ise (Myself &
Herself)
(Osmosys, 2006)
One of the two legendary ex-vocalist/writers from ‘70s Irish
prog/folk/rock ensemble Mellow Candle, Alison asked both me and
writer John O’Regan - unashamed fans of her stuff - to write
some kind of endorsement for her first album of original material
in years. Track it down - it’s
terrific…
Skid Row -
Live And On Song (Hux,
2006)
I promised Brush
Shiels, when I interviewed him for
Irish Folk, trad & Blues: A Secret History
that
I’d see what I could do about unearthing some BBC recordings
of his mythic 1969-71 band Skid Row, featuring Gary Moore on lead
guitar. As ever, Brian O’Reilly at Hux Records was up for a
bit of arcanery and though the BBC only retained one (completely
frenzied) BBC In Concert half-hour on the band, we added their four
incredibly rare singles sides released on Dublin’s Song label
in 1969 - one of which features Phil Lynott’s first ever
vocal recording. Hence the punning title of the compilation. Brush
and drummer Noel Bridgeman contribute vintage pics. Of course, as
soon as it was manufactured someone contacted Brian saying he had a
fabulous recording of a 1971 BBC studio session for
Sounds Of
The Seventies. Looks like a
sequel might be on the cards…
Sweeney’s Men -
The Legend Of Sweeney’s Men (Castle,
2005)
A
long-plotted projct this one - a 2CD set featuring everything
released by the hugely influential Irish folk/embryonic folk-rock
group, namely two albums, four non-album single tracks and various
covert appearances on showband singles spanning 1966 - 69. It also
follows various threads from the group during the early ’70s
- Johnny Moynihan recording ‘Willy O’Winsbury’
with Anne Briggs for example, and Gay & Terry Woods shortly
after the group’s demise recording Sweeney-related material
with Steeleye Span and The Woods Band. Also featured is the classic
1976 recording of Andy Irvine’s mesmerising 1968 song
(written shortly after leaving the group to bum around the Balkans)
‘Autumn Gold’ and his 1990s musical memoir of the
Sweeney’s era ‘My Heart Tonight’s In
Ireland’. just about the only period oddity we couldn’t
find to licence in was Skid Row’s ludicrously rare 1969
single ‘New Places, Old Faces’, featuring Johnny
Moynihan on tin whistle. But, as the Skid Row set above
demonstrates, it didn’t escape the net for long…
Dave Swarbrick - It Suits Me Well (Castle,
2004)
I’ve never
interviewed Dave Swarbrick, fiddler/vocalist with my favourite
Fairport Convention line-up (the ‘Full
House line-up’,
circa 1970), but I annotated and compiled this 2CD set using
previously published interviews, chiefly Karl Dallas’
1981 Melody
Maker piece on the
man. Disc 1 draws on Dave’s four albums for the Transatlantic
label 1976-83 (Swarbrick,
Swarbrick 2, Smiddyburn and
Flittin’)
and brings together all of the tracks from those albums which
feature Martin Carthy and the surreptitious Full
House band reunion;
Disc 2 comprises two previously unavailable BBC broadcasts of
Dave’s bands from the 1980 and 1984 Cambridge Folk
Festivals.
Davy
Graham -
Godington Boundry (President,
2004)
I’d previously annotated Castle’s expanded reissue of
Davy’s first album, The Guitar
Player, notable for
featuring the results of an email exchange with Bob Monkhouse - one
of Davy’s early champions. That sleeve note, though lengthy,
reused a lot of material from my previous writings on Davy
(in Mojo,
Record
Collector and Kay
Thomson‘s DG fanzine Midnight
Man), but the
enthusiasm of Sam(antha) Czerpanski, in charge of veteran label
President’s reissue programme at the time, nudged me into
going an extra mile with this one - a reissue of Davy’s last
album, first released in 1971, from what might be termed his
heyday. I drew on Karl Dallas’ two 1970 Melody
Maker interviews with
Davy but was delighted to track down in time a previously untapped,
as far as I’m aware, 1975 interview from Guitar
magazine by
Ralph Denyer. Sam also unearthed some additional photographs from
the recording sessions and while there were no bonus tracks, the
remastered sound was superior to the album’s previous outing
on CD. A satisfying project to be involved in - and delightful to
find out that Sam was a pal of ex-Atomic Rooster vocalist Pete
French. Which leads me to…
Atomic
Rooster -
In Hearing Of… Deluxe Expanded Edition
(Castle,
2004)
This is one of six Rooster albums I compiled and annotated for
Castle aka Sanctuary. It all started because I was increasingly fed
up with the same brief encyclopedia entry being rehashed on one
shoddy Rooster compilation after another. Two of the group - most
significantly their pianist/chief writer and visionary Vincent
Crane - and nobody was fighting their corner in terms of honouring
and making available their recorded legacy in a way that might be
appreciated in the CD era. Bar owning a few compilations and a
battered vinyl copy of the amazing In Hearing
Of (the third of
their five albums from the band’s original existence of
1969-73) I didn’t know much about the band, so set about
sourcing and buying as much vintage press material on them as
possible and tracking down reference copies of foreign vinyl
oddities, such as the US-only single version of their UK hit
‘Devil’s Answer’ which featured
In Hearing
Of vocalist Pete
French replacing its original (by then sacked) vocalist John Cann.
The first release in what turned out to be a series was the 2CD
compilation Heavy
Soul (Castle, 2001),
featuring a 6000 word band history based on vintage press
interviews and a painstakingly reconstructed chronology of tours
and line-up changes - something Rooster seemed to specialise in.
This was followed by expanded versions of their five 1969-73 albums
proper, including B-sides, BBC radio session tracks and alternate
mixes/foreign releases where appropriate. I interviewed a few
Rooster survivors - one per album - and in the case of In Hearing
Of… it was the fabulous Pete French - lovely bloke, huge
talent, massively under-rated. Pete had previously been the driving
force in Leaf hound - a Zeppelin-ish early ‘70s act which
recorded one now legendary album, Growers Of Mushroom. I
interviewed Pete a couple of years later for a Mojo
‘Buried
Treasure’ feature on the album - now available in remastered,
expanded form from repertoire Records. Better still, Pete has
formed a new version of Leafhound and at the time of writing (May
2006) has a new album in the can - including a new version of the
classic opening cut from his sole album with Rooster,
‘Breakthrough’. I have a feeling it’ll be
blistering…
Pentangling
-
The Collection: Pentangle * John Renbourn * Bert
Jansch (Castle,
2004)
A no-frills 3CD compact slip-cased set offering a great value
introduction to the band and its two simultaneously-solo-artist
guitarists, with one disc apiece to the group (1968-72), to John
(1965-73) and to Bert (1965-73) - sampling all of their album
releases during those periods, including a couple of non-album
single tracks. Also useful, in utilising the 2000+ remastered
versions of all the tracks, to anyone wondering whether to replace
their vinyl or indeed previous CD versions. Go on, you know it
makes sense!
Gordon
Giltrap -
The River Sessions (River Records,
2004)
River Records own the archive of the defunct Radio Clyde, and aside
from unearthing an incredible 1974 Glasgow concert by Bert Jansch
(also released under the slightly under whelming
River
Sessions title) they
turned up this fabulous, and fabulously recorded, 1979 performance
by acoustic instrumentalist Gordon Giltrap, touring at the time
with a one-off trio. For my money it’s the best, purest, most
exciting and most fun example of Gordon’s art on one disc -
all the better for being captured on tape almost candidly (if
Gordon ever knew it was being recorded, he’d certainly
forgotten all about it). I was involved in River getting hold of
Gordon for approval in releasing the concert and Gordon was keen
for me to interview him and write the notes - and I was, of course,
happy to oblige.
David
Gates -
The David Gates Songbook (Jive,
2002)
A bit of an odd one for me, this - not in terms of the artist, of
whom I’m a big fan, but rather in the label being a
subsidiary of a major and the album being quite a prominent
release, featuring several specially recorded new tracks alongside
Bread and Gates solo classics and accompanied by promotional radio
and TV appearances in the UK from the man himself. I’d
interviewed David for Mojo
and
Record
Collector before, during
the ‘90s, and I suppose the label tracked me down on that
basis. I touched base with David during the process of writing the
notes - short and sweet, at the label’s request, rather than
the multi-thousand word Harper epics I seem to foist on everyone
else - and also the press biog material. It’s quite odd
watching Richard & Judy interviewing someone on a sofa using
anecdotes/info you’ve compiled in their questions. But then,
for me, it’s quite odd watching Richard & Judy at
all… During the promo campaign David appeared in a live
Radio 2 outside broadcast from a bar in Belfast of all places and I
managed to stop him in a corridor between his 10 minute stage spot
and a waiting limo, to say ‘Hello, nice to meet you,
I’m the guy who did the sleeve notes on the
record…’ Alas, my brief interruption was enough time
for a horde of veteran Bread fan women to surround him and impede
any further thoughts of speedily exiting the building. David was
clearly bewildered. Slightly embarrassed, I quickly
disappeared…
Duffy
Power -
Sky Blues: Rare Radio Sessions (Hux,
2001)
A project I’m very proud to have been involved in, and a
complicated one to explain fully. Suffice it to say that after our
project to record a new album with the veteran British
blues/jazz/soul legend - a great singer and an equally great,
underappreciated writer, harmonica player and guitar stylist - in
collaboration with Janet Holmes (see elsewhere on the site) had
reached an impasse, more down to logistics than anything else, I
decided it would be nice to try and pull together for Duffy an
album of BBC radio session material from his heyday. It proved much
more involved an adventure than I ever imagined - the BBC
themselves had wiped everything he’d done, but once I’d
put the word out via various magazines a netherworld of collectors,
radio buffs, retired producers and erstwhile Duffy collaborators
came out of the woodwork and a terrific album was assembled,
spanning 1968-73 Radio 1 and Radio 3 sessions with various
different line-ups (solo, duo, full band) plus a bonus 1993 Radio 2
set with ‘60s sax legend Dick Heckstall-Smith. We even had
the luxury of leaving off a 1968 track Duffy wasn’t entirely
happy with, and an entire 1998 full band session which would have
possibly upset the vintage focus. As ever, Hux did a great job on
the packaging. If you haven’t heard Duffy before buy this -
you won’t be disappointed!