REVIEWS:
At least some of these people, however much their lineups may have changed, were Original Hippies From The Sixties, they spent some time as British folk hippies to be sure, their thing was traditional Brit folk music, tho' their love for Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan compositions shone through in all its obviousness. I don't really want to pry into the many albums released under the name "Fairport Convention" after Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny left the band, but if some other columnist wants to take time out from reviewing heavy metal to look at it...
Thompson went on to a successful solo career, why not, he's a living guitar Cuisinart, a zillion different styles all in the same two hands. Sandy Denny, whose voice shone through like a powerful lighthouse light through the densest fog (& who made a guest appearence on Led Zeppelin's "Zoso" album, IV, the one with "Stairway to Heaven" on it), became an alcoholic, and after destroying her body with liquor she died sometime in the 1970s after falling down a flight of stairs. The rest of the bandcontinued on with the occasional participation of Thompson all the way up through the 1990s. I will try to do justice to their sixties' stuff. Wilson and Alroy have figured out who these people are -- why haven't you?
--Samuel Fassbinder
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(reviewed by Samuel Fassbinder)
This was their second album -- the first album had Judy Dyble instead of Sandy Denny on female vocals, there's a version of "Chelsea Morning" on it (the song Bill and Hillary Clinton chose to name their daughter after), and I used to own it. This one, to be sure, is a little album of gems, all of it way too short and sweet because the whole thing, twelve songs, sums up to a mere 38 minutes and twelve seconds. Every second of this album was thought through beforehand to the spectacular end result, which is why its overall length has been forgiven. You won't find this album anywhere on amazon.com -- try Rykodisc (http://www.rykodisc.com/), it's a Rykodisc release. I suppose that much of its content has been anthologized on the Meet On The Ledge anthology, but that's not really the same.
"Fotheringay" is a Denny composition, a sad song of imprisonment behind an achingly-pretty tune, done in a style I can only recognize as "Elizabethan." "Mr. Lacey" is a funny song, rockin' blues, about an inventor. "Book Song" is a pretty love song with great guitar/organ/ tape-loops accompaniment, nice male vocals, nice humming."The Lord Is In This Place... How Dreadful Is This Place" is a snippet-length gospel hum (no lyrics, just humming, and guitar) with some fun acoustic play. "No Man's Land" is a sing-along sort of tune with an accordion and hand-clapping as well as the full rock band. "I'll Keep It With Mine" is a classic early Dylan composition, masterful and absurd. "Eastern Rain" is something Joni Mitchell wrote but never released (prob. in the period when she released the Clouds album), and Sandy Denny's voice shimmers behind the drum and autoharp accompaniment. Very cute guitar solo in the middle.
"Nottamun Town" is a dirge, sounding very traditional, composed by Thompson, with some stressed-out fiddle in the middle. "Tale In A Hard Time" rocks and tinkles its way through, full band with banjo; smooth male vocal, Thompson's electric guitar sounds vaguely Scottish, like he were playing for the bands Tempest or Big Country or something. "She Moves Through The Fair" should have been enough to show the rock world that Sandy Denny's voice could light sports arenas all by itself, on its emotional strength. Polite acoustic and electric guitars shine in the background. Using the guitar as a rhythm instrument here was clever.
"Meet On The Ledge" is a song about singing, it starts out as a duet (don't worry, not yucky like Kate Bush with Peter Gabriel) but ends as one of those songs where everyone in the band was gathered to sing together. "End Of A Holiday" is an instrumental curtsey to end the album. You really do feel like you want more when this one's over. These people acted and looked like members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (see the back cover of the CD), but they weren't merely derivative, they were geniuses, too. They did a later album with traditional tunes; this one sounds just as good. Maybe they were the ones that founded the SCA; I wouldn't be surprised.
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(reviewed by Samuel Fassbinder)
The front cover of this album, whether it be CD, tape, or vinyl, has a picture of Sandy Denny's parents standing outside of the gates of their estate, with the group inside the gates relaxing on the front lawn. The music of this album is significantly slower than the music on What We Did. The first song on side A of the tape is "Genesis Hall," Sandy Denny singing a bitter lyric over a folky tune. "Si Tu Dois Partir" is a Dylan song sung in French, with fiddle and washboard accompaniment. "Autopsy" is a drowsy sad song -- "You spend all your time/ Crying..." with a great solo by which drifts into my favorite song on this album, "A Sailor's Life," about the love-'em-and-leave-'em lifestyle of sailors. Starts out dramatically with humming cymbals and faintly rumbling guitars, the violins join the rocking-chair tenor of the song with a soft squeak, the song slowly builds up energy among all of the instruments as Sandy Denny's voice slowly builds an emotional intensity, then she stops singing and the instruments takes over. The band deftly moves into full-tilt rockin' jam, guitar and violin solos both at once... at the end, the instruments slowly fade to silence...
Side B of the tape starts with the rockin' "Cajun Woman," a tune with some significant charms. It continues with the slow "Who Knows Where The Time Goes," a pretty song in fact dedicated to the passage of time. "Percy's Song" has the group singing an old-fashioned chorus together, repeated over and over again, "Turn, turn, again/ Turn, turn to the rain and the wind" and a mandolin accompaniment, Denny's stern intonation being accompanied throughout by other male voices. Funny, now that "The Weakest Link" is on American TV, everyone knows what a "stern intonation" is. The mandolin has a funny sound in this song because whoever's playing it (Richard Thompson maybe, he _would_ do stuff like this) is squeaking the strings to insert a bouncy string noise into the recording mix. Or is that the guitar that's doing that? There's a guitar in the mix too. I think it's the mandolin. At any rate, the lyrics are depressing as heck. The last song, "Million Dollar Bash," offers a country-folk melody, mandolin accompaniment again, and each band member takes turns talking the verses (they aren't really singing), which are all in celebration of the "Million Dollar Bash."
Now, you know I don't terribly mind that Fairport Convention plays Americanized hick music. I've already said something about the enormous range of talent that was compacted into this group. It's that I don't see that talent really being applied to its fullest here. They're having fun on "Million Dollar Bash" and "Cajun Woman," they're just not doing a lot with it. I prefer side A, which would be the first four songs of the CD version, though I really liked the version of "languid" represented by "Who Knows Where The Time Goes." There's enough spin on this thing to merit it a 7 or an 8. That's a good rating in my book. Listen to this album during the summer, maybe on a Sunday when you don't have much else to do.
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