Flabbergasted Folk

Shirley Collins - The Power Of The True Love Knot (1967)

2011-03-16T20:19:00.001-07:00

Shirley and Dolly Collins
"The Power of the True Love Knot"
Originally Released 1967 (Polydor)
CD reissue, Wing and a Prayer / Fledg'ling Records 2000 (FLED3028)
Also reissued on vinyl in the 1980s by Hannibal / Rykodisk

1 Bonnie Boy 3:45
2 Richie Story 4:18
3 Lovely Joan 2:30
4 Just as the Tide Was A'Flowing 1:39
5 The Unquiet Grave 3:26
6 Black-Eyed Susan 3:36
7 Seven Yellow Gipsies 1:48
8 Over the Hills and Far Away 2:28
9 Greenwood Laddie 1:45
10 Lady Margaret and Sweet William 5:10
11 The Maydens Came 1:59
12 Polly Vaughan 2:49
13 The Barley Straw 3:51
14 Barbara Allen 3:26

Shirley Collins' music is best heard in the small hours of the day, late evening or early morning, when most of the world is sleeping and your own thoughts aren't quite as loud. Equal parts austerity and warmth, her voice wraps around you like a old quilt on a cold day. And her music is the quilt-work of the British Isles, spun by the hands of laborers destined to anonymity as the "small" people of history but whose melodies and words have outlived most music bound to commercialism. Collins has passed that quilt on to successive generations of folk music lovers with her own indelible stitches. She may not have been the first person to commit these songs to tape but her records are held in high esteem as a reference point by both music nuts and music scholars. The further back you go with music that has fallen into the 'public domain', the more variations on the songs you have, and with Shirley's repertoire we are talking very old indeed. So old that those variations are often subjects of debate, and Shirley wrote some of her own melodies using anonymous pieces of song poetry.

I won't hold up pretenses - I came to Shirley Collins music by way of tracing the influences of my influences when I was thinking of myself as a songwriter. It's a practice I've kept up even though I'm no longer actively writing / composing -- I believe it's called "research" by those music conservatory types of people. For me it meant listening to certain records very deeply and often, paying close attention to writing credits and liner notes. THIS was my (informal) music education, and I would trace genealogies of musicians and writers to arrive at mutual fonts of inspiration. This was in the days before music blogs and the instant-gratification of internet sharing communities (before long after listening to music on wax cylinders, lest any readers think that I am absolutely ancient). The days when you had to literally hunt down music by haunting used record and CD shops, making real-life-flesh-and-blood friends with similar interests, or even visiting a public library or two. For music from my own home continent, North America, that's meant going back to some of the earliest material available thanks to dedicated and largely independent labels interested in divulging it. For English music, my interests started with Fairport Convention and sprouted like a weed to Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Davy Graham, and eventually landing at the foot of the Great Mother of them all, Shirley Collins. And there it more or less stops. I could dig deeper some day, I suppose. (Incidentally I discovered the records of Nick Drake and The Incredible String Band along the course of this musical sojourn, rather than the river flowing in the other direction -- I just had to put that in there to show "I was there before it was HIP!" thanks to the neo-freak-folk phonies or whatever they are calling themselves, if they still exist at all).

Although she has recorded with permutations of a number of people involved in the aforementioned ensembles (particularly her famous "Folk Roots, New Routes" with Graham), my favorite records of Shirley are those she made with her sister Dolly Collins accompanying her, and this is one of them, in spite of her being left off co-billing credit on the front album cover as she did on several others. While Dolly was the family pianist of the household, here she plays the spell-weaving miniature pipe-organ, a variation on a hand-pumped instrument whose timbre falls somewhere between a flute and a harmonium. Alongside Shirley`s multinstrumental prowess on dulcimer, guitar, and banjo, the organ brings the music a reedy, ancient quality encapsulated in that cliché standby of music-writing words, "timeless."

Historians have made quite a bit of noise (noisy in so much as anyone reads history at all) about the relatively recent provenance of our modern notions of romantic love. Shirley knows the intricacies of those arguments without having to have go the circuitous route of a PhD - by meticulously close attention to the truly "popular culture" of her own people. The selections of this record are all love songs, many of them so robust with stark tragedy as to make most radio-friendly `sad` love songs (even those ones you like) sound positively silly. Shirley provides paragraphs on each song on the record in the notes; there is nothing capricious here, everything was chosen with deliberation. I was about to write more of my own reflections on the tracks here when I looked again at the album and read again the liner notes written by Shirley herself for the original back cover of the LP, thankfully reproduced fully by reissue label Fledg'ling Records. Rather than give my own hackneyed plagiarism, I figured it would better serve Shirley's honor by reproducing her own words below. It is obvious that on top of her stunning musicianship she also possesses a penetrating mind and ability to contextualize her work in a very sophisticated way. So, I will leave the rest to her, other than pointing out that a few of my absolute favorites on this particular album are "The Unquiet Grave," "Lady Margaret and Sweet William" from where she took the album's title" and the incomparable "Polly Vaughn." The album also features Robin Williamson from the ISB on one tune, incidentally.

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Townes Van Zandt - For The Sake Of The Song (1968)

2011-01-01T19:52:00.001-08:00

Townes Van Zandt
For The Sake Of The Song
1968 Poppy Records (PYS-40.001)

Reissued 1993 on Tomato Records (598.1091.29)

1 For The Sake Of The Song 4:45
2 Tecumseh Valley 2:40
3 Many A Fine Lady 3:52
4 Quick Silver Daydreams Of Maria 3:41
5 Waitin' Around To Die 2:22
6 I'll Be Here In The Morning 2:42
7 Sad Cinderella 4:40
8 The Velvet Voices 3:12
9 Talkin' Karate Blues 3:01
10 All Your Young Servants 3:04
11 Sixteen Summers, Fifteen Falls 2:36

Produced by Jack Clement and Jim Malloy

It's a new year. I am short of words. Barely hanging on here really. Where did everybody go?

The liner notes to this reissue are beautiful. Most or all of them were written by Mickey Newberry.

Majestic.

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*note: the track titles for numbers 9 & 10 are reversed, sorry about that but that is how they apppeared via the all-knowing cddbase

Sorry it's been so long since Flabbergasted Folk had anything new to say. I promise it won't be so long until my next letter, and that I'll write more.

Tim Buckley - The Peel Sessions (1993) 320kbs

2009-05-07T21:51:00.001-07:00

Tim Buckley
The Peel Sessions
Strange Fruit records, 1993

1 Morning Glory
2 Coming Home to You (Happy Time)
3 Sing a Song for You
4 Hallucinations/Troubadour
5 Once I Was

Review by Richie Unterberger

Recorded in April 1968 for the BBC, these five songs -- a short album, or long EP's, worth -- show Buckley at his most melodic and intimate. As on his posthumously issued 1968 concert recording Dream Letter, the instrumentation is sparser than on his Elektra albums. On these sessions, he was backed only by longtime guitarist Lee Underwood and Carter Collins on percussion. This set features songs from his second and third albums, as well as a couple of cuts that didn't make it onto record in the '60s. Highlighted by a ten-minute medley of "Hallucinations" and "Troubadour," it's a worthwhile addition to the Buckley canon.

Richard and Linda Thompson - In Concert, November 1975 (2007) VBR

2009-04-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

I wrote this little piece sometime in March and then sort of forgot about it. Here it is, with the music as well... here

The whirling dervish of Richard and Linda Thompson

Listening to anything by Richard and Linda Thompson is an experience that must strike you at the right time – the right time of the day or the week, the right time in your life – or you just might miss everything that made them so great. A winter’s night, the first snowfall, sitting by a blazing fire in a bar by an old train station. Only there are no trains tonight. Tonight, you can hear a pin drop. Voices on stage entwined together like the lovers they belong to, meshing and mixing with concertina and a rhythm section so tuned in you could almost forget they are there until they remind you. It’s that kind of performance, in a small space that feels like home, home enough to close your eyes and simply listen. You can hear so many moments in this performance where the audience is hanging on every last note, literally, holding back their applause, barely breathing, until they are sure the spell is really over. Eyes closed, but not asleep. I used to wonder about Richard and Linda’s conversion to Islam and the influence of Sufism they claimed had changed everything for them. To my ears, at first, I could only hear the sadness in these songs, a deep and terrible longing, and wondered how it was any surprise to anyone that their relationship dissolved in the early 80s. Where was the joyful dance of Rumi in these tunes? Sure, they also played upbeat tunes, and their love for American music – old country and rock and roll mostly – really comes out on those early records, making it even more obvious why Richard had to leave Fairport to keep his creative muse alive. But, one day after a particularly long night awake with myself, I think I finally understood.

I am not the first to point out when the silences and spaces between the notes is what’s important. The two of them danced together with their voices, with the interplay between Linda’s voice and Richard’s understated playing. And only Richard Thompson could take a five-minute guitar solo and still come off as humble, self-effacing even. There are no heroics here, from anyone.

As nice and even wonderful as the records Richard and Linda made together were (I am partial to ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’ and ‘Pour Down Like Silver’ myself), I can’t help thinking that THIS is how these songs were meant to be heard, at least the songs in this particular set list. We don’t get the acoustic majesty along the lines of “Beat the Retreat”, for example, that were always transcendent minutes for me on those records. But these electric numbers, with the sparse and tight backing of Fairport friends Dave Mattacks and Dave Pegg, with John Fitzpatrick on accordion and concertina, they just, well, BREATH better than the studio versions. On “Now Be Thankful,” Linda sings the definitive version of the song Richard had been trying to get right for some time. It has appeared on the Fairport’s “Full House” album, and – as we now know from the outtakes – had been attempted with Sandy Denny before she quit the band. Neither of those versions come anywhere close to this one, although the all-male harmonies on Full House are also stirring and very well executed. Richard’s voice has been criticized as being rather restricted in range. Rubbish. It’s what he does what the range he has, a sense of spot-on economy of phrasing that is of a piece with his guitar playing. Again, those magisterial solos on the long, dirge-like pieces (Night Comes In, For Shame of Doing Wrong, Calvary Cross) have confirmed me in my often-held belief that Thompson is the greatest electric guitarist to ever come out of England. His style has strong roots both in the acoustic folk traditions of his mother country and also a reverence for styles coming from across the ocean. When he stretches out, it´s with modal variations on the chord changes, using his whole instrument and rarely playing single-note runs up or down the neck. In a rock setting, even when more of a roots setting like this one, it is very rare for an ensemble with a single guitarist to be able to let that guitarist stretch out like that without feeling a gap in the center somewhere where the rhythm should be, which is why so many of the ‘power trios’ relied on instrumental pyrotechnics to overcome that handicap. But the way Richard plays makes the rock distinction between “rhythm” and “lead” guitars seem utterly beside the point, the plaything of adolescents. Like the best of the English guitarist like Ralph McTell or Bert Jansch, or the best American fingerpickers like Mississippi John Hurt or Fred McDowell, who are a one-man-bands without ever showing off, just graceful. It’s why you can bring someone who finds most guitar solos tedious and self-indulgent to see Richard play, even to this day, and they will walk away astounded at the man’s mastery – and not just of “his instrument”, but of his own musicality. The reason I have often felt he is perhaps the best electric guitarist out there (I’m moving beyond the UK now..), is because he always, ALWAYS, plays to the song. It’s not just that he knows when to hold back and let a stunning voice like Linda’s command the stage – it’s also that what he is doing in those moments is still so nuanced and complex, even when minimal or understated. That’s what has always made him a “musician’s musician” with a cult following, rather than an Eric Clapton who can wow football stadiums with his wankery and blues clichés.

The recording is remarkably warm and fresh sounding, not sure why it took so long for this to be released as an official album since there was obviously care taken in the recording of it.

1. I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (3:15)
2. Hard Luck Stories (3:51)
3. Night Comes In (10:48)
4. Morris Medley: Old Woman Tossed Up in a Blanket / Shepherd's Hey / Bean Setting / Shooting (5:20)
5. A Heart Needs a Home (4:20)
6. Why Don't You Love Me? (2:40)
7. Now Be Thankful (2:57)
8. Jet Plane in a Rocking Chair (2:56)
9. Streets of Paradise (4:27)
10. For Shame of Doing Wrong (8:16)
11. Calvary Cross (14:01)
12. Hokey Pokey (The Ice Cream Song) (4:13)
13. Things You Gave Me (2:33)
14. It'll Be Me (4:51)
15. Together Again (3:23)

Richie P. Havens - 1983 (1969) VOB

2009-04-08T07:29:00.000-07:00

1 Stop Pulling and Pushing Me Havens 1:48
2 For Haven's Sake Havens 7:01
3 Strawberry Fields Forever Lennon, McCartney 3:37
4 What More Can I Say John? Havens 4:38
5 I Pity the Poor Immigrant Dylan 3:09
6 Lady Madonna Lennon, McCartney 1:57
7 Priests Cohen 5:15
8 Indian Rope Man Havens, Price, Roth 3:02
9 Cautiously Hayden 4:00
10 Just Above My Hobby Horse's Head Havens, Roth 2:58
11 She's Leaving Home Lennon, McCartney 4:05
12 Putting out the Vibration, And Hoping It Comes Home Havens, Roth 2:53
13 The Parable of Ramon [live] Havens, Roth 7:56
14 With a Little Help from My Friends [live] Lennon, McCartney 5:19
15 Wear Your Love Like Heaven [live] Leitch 4:55
16 Run, Shaker Life [live] Havens 4:04
17 Do You Feel Good? [live] Havens 4:52
18 Handsome Johnny [*] Gossett, Havens 3:54
19 No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed Havens 2:58

ALBUM 1
ALBUM 2 with artwork

This is one of my favorite records from Richie Havens, could have been THE favorite except for some inconsistency. I don't always agree with R.Unterburger's reviews but he has a few good points in this one. It is indeed a rare double-album that really needs to be a double-album. However this is also Havens most adventurous and risky records in a lot of ways. Released right around the time of his historical (and accidental) opening of the Woodstock festival, it's a psychedelic folk and funky folk rock thing through and through. Its true, as Mr.U says below, that there are too many Beatles' covers. I am particularly un-fond of Lady Madonna, a song I don't like that much to begin with, and Havens version makes me cringe somewhat. But I am getting ahead of myself somewhat. The record opens with the brief, incomplete-sounding (in a nice GBV kind of way) Stop Pushing and Pulling, then opens out to 'For Heavens Sake,' which is just plain gorgeously moody in a way that only Richie P. Havens seems capable of. He still captures this feeling in his performances, of which I've been lucky enough to catch two. Sad and sometimes bitter, but never cold. Then comes his version of Strawberry Fields Forever, which floored me the first time I heard it, and still does. I used to play it on my radio show often. It's so damn good, it makes up for the other extraneous Beatles tunes on the record. (She's Leaving Home, at the beginning of the second record, is also very very good.) There is a lot to love here -- his take on Cohen's 'Priests,' 'Cautiously' which opens with some trippy analog synth (if anyone knows what keyboard this is, please leave a comment) that changes once more with electric Rhodes and weepy steal guitar, Indian Rope Man with its clavinet. To my ears, the production on this record still sounds fresh and original. Richie will always have his soul in 1969, even though 1983 has come and gone, and I love him for it. His political sensibilities, and his big heart, have always guaranteed a certain eternal quality and relevance to his musical vision, no matter how its exterior may sound 'dated' to some. No shortest of vibe on this record, so give it a try!

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Review by Richie Unterberger

Havens' third Verve album was an ambitious double LP, using about a couple dozen backing musicians in various combinations on instruments ranging from conga and sitar to steel guitar and organ. Though recorded for the most part in the studio, it also included several live recordings from a July 1968 concert. As with many double albums, it perhaps could have used some pruning, although in general it was a worthy expansion of his sound as captured on record. Divided almost equally between originals and covers, the music has the moving and melancholy vibe, yet also somewhat rambling feel, typical of Havens' prime. Certainly his "What More Can I Say John?" is a subtle and admirable anti-Vietnam war song, while his interpretations of Leonard Cohen's "Priests" and Maurey Hayden's (aka Lotus Weinstock's) "Cautiously" are unusual cover choices that are imaginatively done. An Indian influence makes itself heard occasionally, as on "Just Above My Hobby Horse's Head" and "Putting Out the Vibration, and Hoping It Comes Home"; "Indian Rope Man," with Jeremy Steig on flute, is one of his better compositions. However, there's an over reliance on Beatles covers (there are four here). And the live stuff on side four, with its cutesy five-minute version of "With a Little Help From My Friends" (in which Havens wordlessly scats the lyrics), seems like an afterthought to push the set to double-LP length.
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Bridget St. John - Songs for the Gentle Man (1971)

2009-01-26T19:45:00.000-08:00

1. Day Away 2. City Crazy 3. Early Morning Song 4. Back to Stay 5. Seagull-Sunday 6. If You'd Been There 7. Songs For the Laird of Connaught Hall Pt. 2 8. Making Losing Better 9. Lady & The Gentle Man 10. Downderry Daze 11. Pebble & The Man 12. It Seems Very Strange
This record simultaneously haunts and soothes, a well-crafted piece of baroque psychedelic folk whose understatedness perhaps accounts for why Bridget has been unjustly ignored by the so-called "freak folk" revival of recent years. Her voice draws comparisons to Nico, except that Bridget sings on pitch, and unfortunately that comparison may have kept some from taking in her singular and unique vision. All of Bridget's records are wonderful but this one is a particular favorite of mine. I can, and have, written all manner of overwrought graduate-student prose about this album but I will hold my tongue and let it speak for itself. Often people stumble across her work via her associations with John Peel, Kevin Ayers, or Nick Drake. I found out about her through the personal recommendation of a friend many years ago, and for me that's the best way to discover something as special as this record is to me. If you like it, buy the reissue from Cherry Red. Bridget is still around, living in NYC, and occasionally performing.Songs for the Gentle Man (1971) {Dandelion/Cherry Red} baixar aqui!

Bert Jansch - Jack Orion (1966)

2008-11-05T21:24:00.000-08:00

Bert Jansch
Jack Orion
Release Date: 1966
Recording Date: 1966
Label: Vanguard
This pressing: 2003 Earmark vinyl reissue {42007}
Genre: Folk

Tracks:

1 The Waggoner's Lad - 3:25
2 The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - 1:41
3 Jack Orion - 9:46
4 The Gardener - 1:42
5 Nottamun Town - 4:33
6 Henry Martin - 3:11
7 Blackwaterside - 3:44
8 Pretty Polly - 4:00

Bert Jansch's importance to folk music, to the acoustic guitar and everyone who has ever played one since, cannot be overstated. Neil Young once called him "the Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar" and Jimmy Page ripped him off unabashedly. (I love Pagey but he often didn't give credit where credit it due -- 'Black Mountainside' being listed as 'Traditional, arrangement by J.Page' is a case in point: he lifted the guitar arrangement from Jansch almost note for note...).

All classic-rock name dropping aside, Jansch was a pivotal figure of the English folk-revival. Along with others like John Renbourne (later his bandmate in Pentangle), they attached themselves to old stalwarts of the folk scene like Davey Graham and soaked up everything they could, engaging in a musical project that was both archival and interpretive as it sought to make a place for the roots music of the British Isles at the time when the word "folk" had become synonymous in popular culture with N.Americans like Dylan, Guthrie, Seeger. Unlike John Renbourne, whose playing style and recordings have always struck me as a bit "studied" and academic in their approach, Jansch seemed to actually be living the iconic folk troubadour role. Every touch of his fingers on the fretboard, every note of his imperfect but perfectly-suited tenor making us believe that he had simply strolled into our parlors off the street, fresh from hitchhiking across the English countryside, to play us a few tunes for his dinner. Along with his 1971 record Rosemary Lane, this is a record steeped in "tradition" without making museum pieces of his material. I recommend all of Jansch's early material, and his work with Pentangle, to those interested -- but this is as great a place to start as any.

AMG Review by Richie Unterberger
After presenting almost all-original sets on his first two albums (albeit originals that sometimes borrowed heavily from traditional folk themes), Jansch opted to devote all of his third LP to traditional folk numbers. His future Pentangle partner John Renbourn joins him on four of the eight songs. Highlights include the ten-minute title track (whose length was a real oddity on contemporary folk albums of the time) and a cover of "Nottamun Town" (whose melody Dylan lifted for "Masters of War"). Not as original as the artist's first two LPs, the guitar and vocal work on these adaptations were still as influential to the '60s folk world as anything else in Jansch's catalog.