Spriguns Of Tolgus – "Jack With A Feather" (Alida Star – ASC 7755) 1971

Another pale blue off the shelf standard jacket,and another Fairport Convention emulator,and every line-up of Fairport and Steeleye Span is represented,but all on one LP. 

Noticed that an original copy of this private pressing is up for sale on Discogs for a very reasonable four grand!?....does anyone actually pay these prices? How they can look at themselves in the mirror I'll never understand.Sorry African children you'll have to continue to die horribly of disease and hunger 'cus I just bought a Spriguns Of Tolgus original pressing for Four grand! Luckily for us mentally normal persons there exists Cd's that we can rip and distribute to the poor, Robin Hood style.

It's not bad musically, but when a disc is judged mainly for its rarity rather than quality,it can cloud certain person's vision. They did however get signed to a proper record label on the basis of this,and now enjoy a 'cult' following in Scandinavia,which is what we all dream of in our nascent adolescent pop stardom fantasies is it not?

The band photo's on the cover are rather amusing anyway,dressed up as knights, wizards and jesters.....which ,may I suggest, should be made compulsory for at least one day a month during the full moon?

On later records,they did get darker,and so should it be.

Listen carefully for Singer Mandy Morton's Bongo's.

Tracklist:

1.Lambton Worm
2.Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
3.Derby Ram
4.Jigs:Rakes Of Malo / St. Patrick's Day / Ten Penny Bit
5.Flodden Field
6.Troopers Nag

7.Curragh Of Kildare
8.Keys Of Canterbury
9.Twa Magicians
10.Seamus The Showman
11.Barren Banks Of Aden

DOWNLOAD and pay no less than zero quid HERE!

Gallery – "The Wind That Shakes The Barley" (Midas Recordings – MFHR 046) 1972

On the aptly named Midas label.Anyone who touches this turns it into gold.Fetching up to a grand for this Folk Wave long missing pastel blue progressive folk rarity.

A lot of these independent releases seemed to go for the pastel shade jacket around 1972 to '76.....obviously it was either cheap,or it was a take it or leave it situation.

Of course, I don't own an original copy.If I did it'd be straight to eBay. However, as with most bands from rediscovered genres, it got a re-released version,adding some bonus home-recordings, which are included here for all you rabid Gallery-ettes out there...of which I'm sure there are dozens?

Tracklist:

1 Seven Gypsies 2:54
2 False Bridge 4:36
3 Queen Of Hearts 3:45
4 Gilderoy/Staten Island/Harvest Home 22:36
5 Let No Man Steal Your Thyme 2:28
6 Dowie Dens Of Yarrow 4:03
7 The Wind That Shakes The Barley 4:22
8 Broomfield Wager 2:46
9 Chaconne 2:58
10 The Baron Of Brackley 4:27
11 Icy Acres 5:01
12 Home Recordings 20:06

DOWNLOAD a folk art gallery HERE!

Fresh Maggots – "Fresh Maggots... Hatched" (Sunbeam Records – SBR2LP5002) 1971

 It wasn't the Punx who first sang about life on the Dole (unemployment Benefit) apparently?Among a lot of other traits that they shared with earlier times,like all those ridiculous 'Punk before Punk' groups that get discovered everyday,just to put that to bed,Punk Rock only existed when it had a name,which was basically all it was about musically,but there were some good clothes at least;unlike the Hippies. Two of which can be heard on this sunk without trace Psychedelic Folk monster from 1971,singing about The Dole...among other topics, including anti-war and anti-monarchy tunes.

This Nuneaton#(UK) based pair  obviously heard The Incredible String Band,and Donovan,and realised just a couple of acoustic guitars and a penny whistle could possibly get them on the Hippie Folk bandwagon,and maybe, able to sign off the Dole? This may have occurred, but by 1972 they were back on the Dole after failing to shift enough units to make a second album economically viable..... a familiar tale.

#The Home town of the great Larry Grayson if anyone's interested.So its very possible that the good Larry would have heard Fresh Maggots at some point while walking up and down Nuneaton high street.I can just imagine he,Slack Alice, Non-Stick Nell,Apricot Lil and Once a Week Nora, standing at the back of the hall while the Maggots were going off on one. Any late comers would have been swiftly advised to "Shut that Door!"......just don't tell Everard for christs sake!

Ooooh look at the muck in 'ere!

Tracklist:

A1 Dole Song 3:27
A2 Rosemary Hill 3:34
A3 Quickie 1:21
A4 Everyone's Gone To War 3:55
A5 And When She Laughs 2:49
A6 Spring 3:22
B1 Balloon Song 3:56
B2 Guzz Up 1:37
B3 Who's To Die? 3:55
B4 Elizabeth R 2:53
B5 Frustration 5:58
C1 Car Song 4:06
C2 What Would You Do? 2:47
D1 Frustration (Live) 5:54
D2 Rosemary Hill (Live) 3:49
D3 Quickie (Live) 1:29
D4 And When She Laughs (Live) 1:29
D5 Spring (Live) 3:06

DOWNLOAD the flys that hatched from the maggots HERE!

Trees – "On The Shore (Expanded Edition)" (CBS – 64168) 1970

Following on from Forest, the group, not the crap footy team, comes another contender for the fourth best Folk-Rock group in the UK and Ireland.

So what makes up a Forest?.....yeah,very good,...Trees.

They were on CBS , got the sleeve designed by Hipgnosis, and sold about twenty two copies of their debut album,and even less, probably 17 of this follow up. It has a very recognisable cover photo,and i hear there's a new pressing on coloured vinyl that i may purchase to leave out on my coffee table for my regular fine wine and cheese fondue soirées. That should cement my place in the bourgeoisie as a newly qualified permanent resident of France under the Brexit agreement......they took my fingerprints the fookers! I get a plastic card with my face and biometric data on it,which leaves an empty feeling after four years of being used as a negotiating chip by both the European Union and dear old blighty........Kuntz!....There was a German footballer called Kuntz i seem to recall.He was a Cunt too.

Its all fine stuff,but some of the acid guitar playing does irk somewhat.It's that fizzy transistor distortion,of which there was rather too much of, that spoils the overall sound a tad.Great for The Gang Of Four, but for progressive Folk....Nah!

There's,naturally, a lovely lady sharing the singing duties again, the recently deceased, Celia Humphris.This one can actually sing to boot.....Mmmmm nice. Apparently Cecilia lived in France too,probably next door to me.....i'm that sociable that i would never know.Hopefully she not stressed out by our bastard politician chums in her last days?...cunts!

So to make up for all this bureaucratic fascism i've only gone and  knocked up an expanded edition of the Tree's second and best album "On The Shore",padded out with peel sessions,demo's, and unreleased third album demo's too!?  

Tracklist:


On The Shore

1 Soldiers Three 1:50
2 Murdoch 5:09
3 Streets Of Derry 7:34
4 Sally Free And Easy 10:08
5 Fool 5:22
6 Adam's Toon 1:12
7 Geordie 5:05
8 While The Iron Is Hot 3:20
9 Little Sadie 3:10
10 Polly On The Shore 6:09

Demo's and Sessions:

11 Polly On The Shore (Demo 1970) 5:45
12 Streets Of Derry (Demo 1970) 6:12
13 She Moved Thro' The Fair (Demo 1969) 5:28
14 Pretty Polly (Demo 1969) 4:54
15 The Great Silkie (BBC Session 1970) 6:51
16 Soldiers Three (BBC Session 1970) 1:42
17 Little Black Cloud (Demo 1969) 2:16
18 Forest Fire (BBC Session 1970) 4:09

Demo's for Unreleased Third album (1971):

19 Prince Heathern 4:33

20 Tom Of Bedlam 7:56

21 Cry Of Morning 2:56

22 Bergen Polka 3:33

23 Friar Tuck 6:49

24 Innocent Hare 2:05

25 Van Dieman's Land 7:13

DOWNLOAD if you're really shore HERE!

Forest – "The Full Circle" (Harvest – SHVL 784) 1970

On this weekend that sees all leading sports clubs,especially Football clubs and their sickening playing staff boycott social media for four days(????),why not forever if they really gave a shit(?), in a fruitless attempt to end online abuse,and general offensive behaviour(sounds good to me...the abuse stuff not the protest shit). Another small step for a small mind,but another giant leap for mankind towards that magnolia existence that is creeping ever closer.

I for one is gonna have to go through this blog with a fine tooth-comb to eek out anything that could make a poor social media user cry or angry or sad.Usually this manifests itself by myself being labelled racist, or a neo fascist for not being a fan of Reggae,and other absurd notions such as that!?

 I've backed it all up by the way,so fuck 'em. I demand my right to offend and to be offended,we're all grown-ups here thanks.

So how does this tie in with my current interest in Hippie and traditional Folk,which inexplicably seems to offend a few of our visitors,so they might complain to our Google masters and get this site deleted,alongside other similar arseholes. An internet full of fluffy bunnies,pink unicorns and rainbows......I may slash my wrists right now!Zog's drummer has already done that with an angle-grinder (true!) but survived,leaving him without the ability to either Drum, wank or work! All he has is the Internet.....naturally now avoiding the copious amounts of free Porn, for obvious reasons;which, alas will also soon be erased from this increasingly dull medium.

Right, time to get offensive,abusive and display acts of mild bullying.

I fucking HATE Forest!....down in the deepest sewers of my black heart.

Noooooo Not Forest, the superb progressive Folk band from the early seventies, that fucking shit Football team from Nottingham, whose staff are also going on this silly half-arsed boycott.

For those too sensible to have any interest in this petty triballism to know, Nottingham is the  neighbouring city to Leicester (my personal Bethlehem)festering in the East Midlands hinterlands of the UK. 

In my yoof  Forest were rather successful,and we Leicester fans never heard the last of it. These Notts... (they hate being called 'Notts' Forest hehehe),i'll say it again, Notts Forest Fans, forgot that old showbiz rule of, be careful how you treat people on the way up,for you will surely meet them again on the way down......and down they went,as far as one can go. Suitably humbled by Leicesters continuing success post 2016 Premier league triumph,we long passed these crowing reprobates ,and for the runners-up prize the same fate befell those other lesser rivals,Derby County,and Coventry City. Shame innit?

Enough Gloating.....well maybe......but,one Forest I do love is this Acid Folk masterpiece  which travels a full circle from Football,of which there is actually very little to like,ne'r mind love? We sad fans are a captive audience,emotionally blackmailed by the super rich and despicable mercenary playing staff....fuck 'em I say. Love my club, but everything else about footy makes my stomach contents defy gravity.

Forest,the folky groop, however, are the opposite of stupidity,greed and big business.They also make some delightfully dark progressive folk music, that strangely ,at times, remind one of The Pale Saints if the 4AD legends had long hair and acoustic instruments.

Thankfully, neither Forest the Band,or The Pale Saints, came from Nottingham, so they're definitely ok by me.

Grimsby gave birth to Forest,thanks to their connections to Hull on the other shore of the Humber estuary,where legendary folkers, 'The Watersons' hung out in the sixties.But, disquietingly too close to Lincolnshire,which does in fact harbor some Forest Fans, and is full of Gammon faced Brexit voters.....double stupid. 

Tracklist:

A1 Hawk The Hawker
A2 Bluebell Dance
A3 The Midnight Hanging Of A Runaway Serf
A4 To Julie
A5 Gypsy Girl & Rambleaway
B1 Do Not Walk In The Rain
B2 Much Ado About Nothing
B3 Graveyard
B4 Famine Song
B5 Autumn Childhood

DOWNLOAD a good argument for the deforestation of football HERE!

Shide And Acorn – "Under The Tree" (Solent Records – SM 011) 1971

Who???....Shide and Acorn?...What?....Common questions indeed,but in a nutshell, Shide and Acorn were a short-lived folk rock group from the Isle of Wight who formed, renamed several times and disbanded all in the space of about two years in the early seventies. The band released only one studio album, the 1971 independent label offering 'Under the Tree'. The charming DIY-ness of it all has a strong resemblance to the Punk DIY culture 7 or 8 years hence.The amateurish guitar playing and bedroom of mum and dad's house singing are refreshing for 1971, when if you couldn't play an instrument to an impossibly high standard you could virtually forget dreams of pop stardom. Every instrument and voice seems to be slightly out of tune,notably the piano,and the school orchestra violin playing.The vocal harmonies are toe-curling,but you can't help but love this LP,which had an initial pressing of exactly 99(?);probably because if you wanted 100 you crossed into the next price bracket,and money was obviously tight,so 99 it was. Few were sold of course,and allegedly 50 copies were thrown out in the garbage by Guitarist Mike Jolliffe's pissed off parents.....at today's prices that ill advised act of parental stupidity consisted of about £30,000 quid's worth of plastic and cardboard! This record fetching somewhere in the vicinity of £600 quid a piece. I'd like to think a copy was retrieved by an Acid Folk obsessed bin man,and is still treasured to this day? But, even if it was, any Progressive Folk fan would have thought this was shite.....The Pentangle it sure ain't.

Naturally,as every forgotten,sometimes for good reason,musical shysterpiece was rediscovered and re-released in the nineties,mainly in Japan.So too was "Under The Tree",and now sits there among the elect in vinyl heaven. If you've got a spare £600 pounds (UK) sterling to waste, then you too can have an original pressing. Nowadays that amount of cash wouldn't even get you two Clock DVA box-sets from Vinyl On Demand.....I know which one I'd sooner have.......Nooooooo!!!....absolutely NOT bloody Clock DVA!!!! Jesus! 

Tut Tut Tut! Mr and Mrs Jolliffe!? What have you done?

Tracklist:

A1 Eleanor's Song
A2 Away! Fly Away Love!
A3 Truckin
A4 Girl Of The Cosmos
A5 Heron Grey
B1 Under The Tree
B2 So Long Day
B3 Solitaire
B4 Marigold
B5 Sound Of Winds

DOWNLOAD zero quids worth of digitized plastic HERE!

Swordedge – "Swordedge" (Swordedge Records SW001) 1980

We look back at 1980,and dream up images of the public walking around looking like Joy Division or The Birthday Party.The fact is that everyone looked like Swordedge,.... except for hip dudes like me of course, I was always embarrassingly too cool for school. I envy Swordedge,who had the guts to walk around the north east of England looking like that......that's real COOL with a 'K' in my book. When I....Yawn...went to see The Clash in 1978, like a twat, the whole audience, save a few clash clones in the front looked like this. Long greasy hair in a side parting, non-mohair woolly jumpers and flares. Exactly the kit that real outsider Punk Groups wore,Johnny Moped style.

I'd love to go back to 1977 and form a Folk group ,not that i can play guitar good enough,or sing, but the sheer 'Up-Yours'- ness of it would have been impressive.

Also, while the DIY Punk groups were getting deals with Rough Trade and Virgin, charming folk trios like Swordedge were laughed out of town."You guys should be on the stage....the next stage OUTTA HERE!"

So they had to actually, really, 'Do it' themselves.Saving up a tenner a week from their jobs with the council Social services and Citizens advice Bureau's, maybe even,as trainee teachers, to record and release their own album. Swordedge's eponymous effort being an exact reflection of life for real people outside the music press,being a prime example. It was always the Folk scene,both trad and prog, that actually lived the Punk Ethos as eulogized by......ugh!That name again!...The Clash, and other part-time evangelists of the Epoch. Supporting the Clash that notorious evening was some actual 'Real' Punk, by Suicide,who made real inner city Folk music from New York City. Ironically Joe "Woody" Strummer was in fact a self proclaimed Troubadour before he saw Dr Feelgood,boring everyone with his renditions of Woody Guthrie songs. Probably where he got his predictable Politics from.......yeah you guessed it, I don't like the Clash.....good debut album though, but....! 

Musical outsiders for 1980, Swordedge's material, was strictly 'Trad'.Zero self-penned ditties in a Folk-Rock stylee.....and why not? Rather pleasant Stuff,but their actual existence in the Post punk continuum, boths amuses and titillates.Sometimes being a Naff bastard is Kool with a capital 'C' or 'K'.

Tracklist:

1.Rosemary Lane
2.No Pain
3.Squire Of Hainborough
4.My Ladye Constance
5.Brave Wolfe
6.Greenfields Of America
7.Party On Mars
8.Voilà Le Printemps
9.The Pavement Artist
10.The Shearing's Not For You

DOWNLOAD something totally not edgey HERE!

Mellow Candle – "Swaddling Songs" (Deram – SDL 7) 1972

 Not all Irish Folk is about pixie dancing,and playing the same tunes with different titles on a penny whistle. Here in France,if you play any Folk Music, even Fairport Convention, the French cannot help themselves from exclaiming with great joy, "Ahhh! La Musique Irelandaise".

It's all Irish music to them,from Steeleye Span,Jethro Tull to A.L.Lloyd and the Watersons. Which is rich coming from a place that has precisely zero traditional music,except for some funny stuff from Brittany,whose very name is a big clue as to where that came from.

Mellow Candle, although not 100% Irish, were Ireland's answer to Sandy Denny's Fairport Convention, and were almost as good as The Pentangle......someone said.

They also had a few under-age teenage girlies doing the vocal duties.....whoops...nearly said oral duities then, for which I apologise profusely. Alison Williams and Clodagh Simonds,provide fair Denny and McShee impressions ,which could have ,in a more just world, won them the accolade of Fourth Best Folk-Rock group in the UK...and Ireland,and beyond.

Clodagh Simonds,was also the chief Songwriter, contributing to most of the tracks on this LP,enabling them to steer clear from that quagmire of Rocked up traditional tunes.

And, of course, Mellow Candle was snuffed out by that equally traditional Rock malady of near zero album sales.Which is a pity for one of the most consistent Progressive Folk albums ever made....100% prog with no terrible Rock'n'Roll,Bob Dylan, or jazz covers that blighted the career of Sandy and Fairport.And even better....No bloody String Sections.....just some Mellotron,a fact which is a recommendation in itself is it not?

Tracklist:

1.Heaven Heath
2.Sheep Season
3.Silver Song
4.The Poet And The Witch
5.Messenger Birds
6.Dan The Wing
7.Reverend Sisters
8.Break Your Token
9.Buy Or Beware
10.Vile Excesses
11.Lonely Man
12.Boulders On My Grave

DOWNLOAD something astonishingly mellow HERE!

Midwinter – "The Waters Of Sweet Sorrow" (Porcelain – PCN 001) 1996/1973

By 1973 every urban street had a Progressive Folk Band with a lady singer of questionable ability singing about country life,while the blokes squabbled over who was gonna be the Bert Jansch of the group.

Alas, also by 1973 the kids were turning a blind ear to these urban folkies and went in a very ill advised ELP direction. So it was unlikely you were gonna get your album released by Island or any other previously Folk orientated label. So your tapes were stored on the shelf until the crate diggers of the nineties 'rediscovered' your rejected efforts,and burnt it to CD for the Japanese market.

Midwinter were one of these doomed ,too late for the wave, kind of things, which rose up from deepest darkest Great Yarmouth; a grim seaside town, that had less than nothing happening during the Winter season...except for the Folk Club,where our anti-heroes met up.......during the bleak Midwinter of 1972.

The tapes were indeed found in guitarist Ken's Attic, and now they enjoy the cult status that was denied them when it was most needed.Better late than never I guess?

Impressively this is quite good indeed,despite yet another version of "Scarborough Fair". Jill Child's singing comes from a Jacqui McShee via Shirley Collins direction,but,of course lacking either of their charisma's or talent, .Lets face it you ain't gonna find a Sandy Denny living down your street in Great Yarmouth are you?....Probably in the eighties if she fell on hard times maybe, but we'll never know......so Jill Child it is.However, her simple understatedness suits the music much more authentically than any of those Female Folk legendesses.

Tracklist:

1.Sanctuary Stone
2.To Find A Reason
3.The Skater
4.Scaborough Fair
5.The Oak Tree Grove
6.Dirge
7.Maids And Gentlemen
8.The Waters Of Sweet Sorrow
9.All Things Are Quite Silent
10.The Two Sisters
11. Winter Song

DOWNLOAD the midwinter of discontent HERE!

Paul Giovanni and Magnet – "The Wicker Man OST" (Die or DIY? Version) 1973

I'm still waiting for Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber to do a west end/broadway version of  one of the greatest movies ever made,namely, "The Wicker Man", the Citizen Kane of Folk Horror Musicals.Or was Orson Wells' career defining moment actually The Wicker Man of  post war Hollywood mystery dramas? Both I think?

What Sir Andrew would do to this classic Dark Folk soundtrack makes one fear for the survival of humanity. What makes this music even more remarkable is that it was written by an American, the late Paul Giovanni,who can be seen in the Green Man pub singing "Gently Johnny" in the outtake sequence and in the finale singing "Summers a Coming In".These all sound like authentic ancient Folk tunes,but,no sir, written by a yank!?

The funniest story about this film is that Rod Stewart threw a wobbler about Britt Eklund getting her jugs out and doing a sensual naked dance to tempt the virgin Fool played by Sergeant Edward Woodward into being deflowered by Brit as the Landlords Daughter.

So much did rock'n'roller Rod moan about this that a body double was used for the dancey bits.....but Wow! What a body double...Phwaoooer!

Also funny, is why on earth is christian society so scared of Paganism? Calling this bizarre film a Horror movie reveals humanity as the death-fearing bunch of simpletons we really are.After-all, Christianity is virtually Paganism but with the green man replaced by a bearded old bloke/entity in the sky.....now that's even sillier than Rod Stewart.

Britt Eklund wishing Rod Sewart had a body double with a smaller nose

Even more silly than Rod Stewart has to be the absurd 'remake' starring Nicholas Cage. I managed ten minutes of this drivel before I switched channels. I can only imagine Cage brandishing a firearm at the head of one of those Pagan scum demanding "Ok you Pagan Son of a Bitch!This .44 magnum says you know the whereabouts of Rowan Morrison"?

The fuckers also did the same to UK crime thriller "Get Carter",this time even worse, Sly Stallone as Carter!?....Hollywood leave us alone please...in fact leave everyone alone....pretty please!?

What if Richard Curtis did a remake of "Mean Streets" with Hugh Grant as Johnny Boy, or Mike Leigh's version of "Halloween" starring Dame Judie Dench as Mike Myers eh?....I dunno, I'd actually quite like to see these films!

PS...there are so many versions of this soundtrack, so i done a sort of a best of...for yers.

Tracklist:

Songs From Summersisle Ballads Of Seduction, Fertility And Ritual Slaughter

1 Corn Rigs 2:35
2 The Landlord's Daughter (movie Version) 2:37
3 Gently Johnny 3:32
4 Maypole 2:43
5 Fire Leap 1:26
6 The Tinker Of Rye 1:50
7 Willow's Song 4:40
8 Procession 2:15
9 Chop Chop 1:41
10 Lullaby 4:29

Incidental Music From 'The Wicker Man'

12 Opening Music / Loving Couples / The Ruined Church 4:13
13 The Masks / The Hobby Horse 1:25
14 Searching For Rowan 2:22
15 Appointment With The Wicker Man 1:18
16 Sunset  1:05

17 The Landlords Daughter (Studio Version) 2:40

DOWNLOAD a good harvest of modern folk tunes HERE!

or 

via the mediafire ferry from the mainland HERE!

John Cameron – "Kes - OST" (Trunk Records – JBH077LP) 2019/1969

A few of my favourite movies by coincidence have folk inspired soundtracks.One being Ken Loach's film version of Barry Hines' "A Kestral For A Knave", "Kes".

Yes,Kes, the Film, was better than Kes, the book. Mainly because of the casting of Mark E Smith look-a-likey,the then unknown David Bradley as Billy (soon after to regain his unknown status rather swiftly), and the late,great,Brian Glover as sadistic gym teacher Mr Sugden. This film was a silver screen version of my early life, especially the school parts.It was not so much 'Silver' in colour but Grey, like Billy Caspers' clothes.And my version of Mr Sugden was a complete Cunt called Jim Kedie (now dead) who liked to grab your genitals in the rugby scrum,and give you a sound beating for looking at him in the wrong way. On the Facebook site of old boys....yes my grammar school was 'Boys only'!!? I know some people find this fact incredulous?....but on this sad Gateway Old Boys Facebook group,they seem to see this monster as some kind of Hero,...a great bloke? Undoubtedly denying some dark events like a delayed kind of Stockholm syndrome to avoid the trauma that happened long ago.They probably all got shagged by this twat.....as my reaction is normal,I don't think i got shagged by him....but certainly remember rolling with his punches. Anything I say on this rose tinted window into a past that never existed gets deleted faster than you could say Project Yew Tree (the police investigation following the Jimmy Saville affair).....Anyway, that scene on the football pitch was exactly as Kedie was, minus the funny bits.

One of the key themes of the film is the education system of the time, where smart kids were streamed to the Grammar Schools, like me ironically, and the rest dumped in the less academic, Grimmer rather than Grammar, Secondary Modern cesspits. This dour social criticism and bleak portrayal of working class life was typical of Loach's films.The man himself is on record as saying:
"It [the film] should be dedicated to all the lads who had failed their 11-plus (wot your scribe obviously didn't Tee-Hee). There's a colossal waste of people and talent, often through schools where full potential is not brought out.".....I'm living proof that this also happened in the Grammer Schools too?

In a 2013 interview, director Ken Loach said that, upon its release, United Artists organised a screening of the film for some American executives and they said that they could understand Hungarian better than the dialect in the film. Americans couldn't understand proper English back then,unlike today, thanks to the phenomenon of 'Anglo-creep' seeping in UK slang by the backdoor of various popular media formats.Yes, now Americans say stuff like "Cheers","Wanker" and "Twat",enjoy sarcasm, and can watch British films without sub-titles.This is advancement?

I have a disturbing recollection that either this or "The Leather Boys" is Morrisey's favourite movie?....but don't let that put you off, they are both brilliant,although Kes wins out for its poignant soundtrack and emotional pay off.

Tracklist:

A1 Front Titles
A2 Billy's Paper Round
A3 Dawn - Billy Sees Kes In The Tower
A4 Stealing The Book
A5 Midnight - Billy Climbs And Captures Kes
A6 Training Kes
A7 Kes First Flight
A8 Jud Walks To The Mine
A9 Kes Flies Free
A10 Kes Flies Higher
A11 Billy Asleep In The Boiler Room
A12 Foreboding
A13 Looking For Kes
A14 Realisation
A15 Burying Kes

DOWNLOAD the joylessness of the real past HERE!

John Faulkner and Sandra Kerr – "Bagpuss: The Songs & Music" (Smallfolk – SMF001) 1974/1999

Zchivago sings holding back the tears,for the finishing touches of his version of "Candle In The Wind" in memory of Sandy Denny....."And I'd like to have known you but I was just a kiiiiid"......

Indeed I was once a kid, believe it or not, and as I may have mentioned before, there was a lot of Folk music about, especially on Kids TV programming.The stand out moment being the thirteen,unlucky for some, episodes of the erstwhile adventures of a saggy old pink and white cat in Emily's lost and found objects shop window.Bagpuss!

Emily would found some old crap someone lost in the street, chuck it in the shop-window display, and leave it there for Madeleine the rag doll (Sandra Kerr) and Gabriel the Toad (John Faulkner), with a Chorus of Mice from the mouse organ, and unhelpful comments from smart arse Woodpecker,Professor Yaffle and,of course a certain Saggy Old Cloth Cat.When bagpuss woke up, everyone else came to life for fifteen minutes, and fixed the piece of crap into something that might refind its previous owner.

Oliver Postgate(RIP),possessor of the finest narration voice on the planet,could lull me into a womb-like situation at the drop of a syllable;like leaning back in the bosom of your dear departed mother once again.

Oliver's folky chums, John and Sandra,were commissioned,which in 1970's BBC terms would mean they got a fiver and a sandwich to do it,and make the music.Which consisted of a bunch of traditional folk tunes furnished with new words for us kids,plus a few originals.

I seem to remember the Uncle Feedle Episode featured a few rather horrific rag dolls, that missus Postgate must have kinted up in a hurry,resembling eyeless zombies more than cute children's characters.I'm sure Madeleine sings that she's Just a Rag Doll made from 'Crap' during this epidsode....reigniting the furious debate about "Captain Pugwash" and the characters Seamen Stains and Master Bates......an urban legend unfortunately!

The thing about folk music is that it can be both dark and twee at the same time,and the music for Bagpuss fits those criteria beautifully....forget Current 93 this and similar cult soundtracks are da real thing man.It hasn't quite gained the kudos of Playchool's dark folk princess Toni Arthur and hubby Dave, but it has its darker moments.

Oliver Postage made all these masterpieces on a budget of a tenner per episode in his garden shed....the ultimate TV DIY......and don't forget this is the man who made the Clangers, and Noggin the Nog too ,among many others.

A Posthumous knighthood is called for here...give him Jimmy Savilles,it might revive this soiled institution for future good?

Tracklist:

1 The Bony King Of Nowhere 3:27
2 Mouse Round (Here's A Pin) 0:42
3 The Princess Suite 2:36
4 Weaving Song / The Laird Of Drumblair 2:13
5 Uncle Feedle 2:25
6 Ragtime Mice 0:13
7 Turtle Calypso 2:15
8 Brian O'Lynn 2:09
9 Agricultural Jigs 2:18
10 The Town Band 1:13
11 The Miller's Song 3:00
12 I Saw A Ship A-Sailing 2:31
13 Song Of The Flea 3:03
14 Mouse Round (Mending Song) 0:25
15 The Ear Song 1:21
16 Hamish McTavish 1:25
17 The Old Woman Tossed Up In A Basket / Haste To The Wedding 2:43
18 The Porcupine Song 2:32
19 The Oak Tree Reel 2:27
20 Row, Row, Row Your Boat 3:15
21 The Prima Ballerina 2:10

DOWNLOAD some lost tunes from emily's shop window HERE!

Sandy Denny - "York University 14th October 1972" (Bootleg)

Yep, it's 43 years today since Sandy Denny's life support systems were turned off, following a brain hemorrhage probably incurred after falling down the stairs of a rented cottage in Cornwall while on holiday with her parents....better known as the two middle aged persons on the front cover of "Unhalfbricking" ...and hitting her head on the stone floor.Falling down some stairs was something she tended to do quite regularly apparently. She was discovered, by chance, at a friends house unconscious on the floor.She never regained consciousness,and basically died alone......Sandy would not have liked that eventuality at all.

I should write my own Candle In The Wind" for her really I suppose,as like Reg, I was just a kid when she ,the bucket, did kick. Ironically, 'twas Elton's entertaining performance at the Albert Hall in 1970,supporting Fotheringay, that was the final nail in the coffin for Sandy's ill-fated band of chums......so thanks for that Elton you fat bastard. Choosing an act whose specialty was audience pleasing entertainment as support was rather ill-advised for Sandy's preference for the add doomy lyric and a group not exactly renowned for jumping around too much.

It was also Sandy's flaccid contractual obligation recording of "Candle In The Wind" as a desperate single, that ended her tenure on Island, and likely her career.I'm sure she could have made a comeback in the nineties however,June Tabor managed it.

However detrimental the break up of her group was for her confidence and drinking problem, I prefer Sandy Solo,with minimal backing...check out her Demo's for justification.

This solo concert at York University,is classic Sandy, nervously joking between songs,but the joking stops when she starts to sing.

Its got another nicely doomy version of "Late November",my personal fave,which recounts the fatal Fairport Convention bus crash on the M1 in late november 1968,for which she never got over her survivors guilt,but at least it got channeled lyrically.

Hard to believe she would have been an old lady now,although she smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish,so that's debatable. Alas, she remains another case of die young and stay pretty.

Tracklist:

1 It'll Take A Long Time
2 Bushes And Briars
3 Sweet Rosemary
4 It Suits Me Well
5 The Sea Captain
6 Tomorrow Is A Long Time
7 The Lady
8 John The Gun
9 Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood
10 Late November
11 The Music Weaver

DOWNLOAD one the few things worth going to university for HERE!

 

Martin Carthy – "Landfall" (Philips – 6308049) 1971

Archie Fisher was not the only MBE on the folk circuit incredibly. For sooth ,Martin Carthy MBE has been a reality for more than a decade.This means I have to choose a favourite Martin Carthy album,so, having a liking for grim tunes and psychsploitative sleeve art I've plumped for this...."Landfall". A word that usually means the moment when a hurricane  hits the shore and calms down a bit.

There's good songs about infanticide,loneliness,death,injustice, and mental illness,what more could you want?

Martin is also worth his MBE for never selling out,and  for his impeccable ethics...you know, those things the Punk Rockers conveniently forgot about once they got in the charts.....I know,'but he accepted an MBE' you say....in the world of Folk this is not the same act of betrayal as Mick Jagger accepting a knighthood, as the royal family was always an accepted part of the folk world especially in the lyrics.Without the murdering, thieving, war mongering scum that made up the royal families of the past, we would have only about half of the folk songs available for the good Martin to re-interpret for us!?

Tracklist:

A1 Here's Adieu To All Judges And Juries
A2 Brown Adam
A3 O'er The Hills
A4 Cruel Mother
A5 Cold Haily Windy Night
B1 His Name Is Andrew
B2 The Bold Poachers
B3 Dust To Dust
B4 The Broomfield Hill
B5 January Man

DOWNLOAD the calming moment of the hurricane HERE!

Archie Fisher – "The Man With A Rhyme" (Folk-Legacy Records – FSS-61) 1976

What does 'Sister Ray' mean to you?.....No not The Velvet Underground, obviously the late Sister Ray Fisher,sibling to the more successful Archie Fisher; both members of Scottish Folk Royalty The Fisher Family.Archie, as it says, is the man with a Rhyme,and he penned quite a few popular contemporary Folk tunes that garnered an audience in the States, United of...!

Archie is also the man with an MBE,awarded for services to Folk music in the 2000's.

He does a nice line in gentle, acoustic folk,and manages to sing in various accents, both Scotch and English; a fact that would make many a kilt wearing Scottish nationalist bigot spin in his shallow grave.

Archie realised we were all the same people on that wretched Island.

Tracklist:

A1 Twa Bonnie Maidens 3:23
A2 Welcome Royal Charlie 3:03
A3 Dark Eyed Molly 2:59
A4 Queen Amang The Heather 3:49
A5 Jock Stewart 2:57
A6 The Witch Of The West-Mer-Lands 4:38
A7 The Echo Mocks The Corncrake 2:42
B1 Western Island 2:01
B2 Upstairs, Downstairs 1:58
B3 Mount And Go 3:13
B4 The Wounded Whale 4:09
B5 The Cruel Brother 5:45
B6 Coshieville 3:04
B7 South Wind 3:19

DOWNLOAD something fishy HERE!

Ray Fisher – "The Bonny Birdy" (Trailer – LER 2038) 1972

Staying on the theme of androgynous female first names, after Frankie, and Lindsay ,but not staying on the same musical theme, we've got Scotch Folkie lady,and bonny birdie, Miss Ray Fisher.She,who sings with a Scottie from Star Trek style scotch accent(but this one is apparently 'real'?) about Scottish stuff,but without that distasteful Scottish Nationalism that makes everyone groan as soon as North Sea fucking Oil is mentioned! The same shit happens in conversation with persons of Irish decent too.The clock is ticking as to when 'Da Potatoe Famine' is inevitably mentioned. Jeeeezuz, let it go will ya!?

But, when it comes to traditional music, Scottie from Star Trek can sum it up in one of his adapted catchphrases.

"Yae cannie change the laws of Folk Captain!" (Montgomery Scott,chief engineer, USS Enterprise)

No doubt that The Fisher family were staunch nationalists,but no real hint of that crap on this record anyway,especially as most of the English folk glitterati appear on this album,as featured on the rear cover in that folk style of heads floating in bubbles. Included in the floating bubbles are folk gods Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings who supply arrangements, guitars and backing voices.

As far as I can see the song selection only hints at the Glencoe massacre when scots killed scots,and no tiresome tunes about slaughtering the English at one of the few battles they actually won.

American Aussie and Jew Hater, Mel Gibson,barked the immortally fictional line "You may take our lives but you won't take our freedom!",in that rather silly film about William Wallace.

They are still a slave state of the English to this day apparently? All that devolved power and democracy, higher capita per head spending of govt funds north of the border,and other atrocities like that. Poor fuckers.

The Uyghur's in China and the Rohingya in Myanmar have got it easy compared to the repressed Scots.

I know that by mentioning the Uyghur genocide in China I am risking receiving a virus that wipes this blog completely and emptys my bank account,but I felt obliged. A western boycott of Chinese goods, like anything by Apple, would go a long way to offer some support for our Muslim chums in the Re-Education centres and forced labour Factories of China.This is probably the only time I have agreed with Iain Duncan Smith ever! Who is normally reprehensible in his obnoxiousness......this also sadly means that I agree with Trump on China too...but perhaps for different reasons.

Oh Yeah.....this albums pretty good by the way.....got rather sidetracked.....again!? 

 

Tracklist:

A1 Johnnie Sangster
A2 Mill O'Tifty's Annie
A3 Bonny At Morn
A4 Forfar Sodger
B1 Pride Of Glencoe
B2 Silkie Of Sul Skerry
B3 Shipyard Apprentice
B4 Bonny Birdy

DOWNLOAD this bonny compressed mp3 file HERE!

Lindsay Cooper – "The Small Screen, Music For Television" (Sync Pulse Records – 625) 1984

In an age where the television screen is no longer small, but the size of medium sized cinema screen,we are treated to a bunch of channel 4 commissioned films from the first year or so of  Britain's fourth channel.

Back in 1982 I excitedly rushed back from school to catch the start of a brand new channel which promised adventurous and challenging programming. I got home just in time to see the start at 5 o'clock,only to witness the naffest of quiz shows ever invented...'Countdown', the ultimate show for geeks and nerds everywhere!?....the first episode featuring celebrity farmer Ted Moult, who subsequently blew his brains out a few years after his character was stained by appearing on Countdown in the coveted role of Smart Arse.This death by boredom atrocity is still going today,although it has a sexier lady on the vowels, and consonants,the lovely Rachel Riley,and also an x-rated version presented by that potty mouthed tax evader Jimmy Carr.

The real tasty programmes started after the 9pm watershed,with the very wonderful "Five Go Mad In Dorset",featuring a wizard bunch of uncouth 'Alternative' comedian types,playing the roles of Enid "Nazi Sympathiser" Blyton's thoroughly racist,sexist and arrogant little twats, The Famous Five.

Then later still we got the type of experimental films that Lindsay Cooper and her ilk would have made soundtracks for, like the spiffing efforts featured on this rather splendid cassette.

She wasn't too bad for a girl!? Hurrah!

Notes:
Tracks A1 to A5:
Songs from five short films made by Lis Rhodes & Jo Davis (Four Corners for Channel 4).

Tracks A6 to A9:
Green Flutes, a film about a Republican flute band in Glasgow, directed by Nancy Schiesari for Channel 4.

Track A10:
Domestic Bliss a comedy/drama directed by Joy Chamberlain (Newsreel Collective for Channel 4).

Tracks B1 to B8:
With Our Children, a film about lesbian mothers directed by Melanie Chait (Lusia Films for Channel 4).

Tracklist:

A1 The Song Of The Goose & The Common
A2 Off The Fence
A3 Fair Exchange
A4 Windscale
A5 The Number 8 Bus
A6 Belfast
A7 Fanfare
A8 Flute Tune
A9 Priesthill
A10 End Credits
B1 Court Entry
B2 Lord Wilberforce
B3 Home Movie 1
B4 Open Letters
B5 Linda B.
B6 Home Movie 2
B7 Three Heads
B8 Julia/End Credits

DOWNLOAD via your small screen HERE!

Lindsay Cooper – "Outtakes For Other Occasions" ( No Man's Land – NML 8603 C) 1986

Well when I said that at least there were no feminist lyrics berating men for being men and not women, on The Feminist Improvising Group tape,yeah?...Well it seems that they....I used the word 'They' which in feminist newspeak usually means 'Men'...they,not 'they',saved that one for this tape of soundtracks for zero-budget plays and films that no-one got to see except a few chin stroking artphag's and the people who made them. 

"Score" from "Give Us A Smile",sung by improvising vocalist Maggie Nichols,with words by...wait for it....the Leeds Animation Workshop?... has all the paranoia and anti-male propaganda anyone could wish for......yeah of course everything is designed to keep women in their place,y'know, the kitchen and bed etc, blah blah blah.

It's enough to turn anyone into a misogynist inside three minutes.

'No Man's Land' is the label,but I notice Chris Cutler,and Fred Frith featuring prominently on the credits,dunno about you but the last time I checked they were officially 'Male'?

Otherwise, musically great,and reassuringly short. 

Tracklist:

From The Play "The Execution" 4:05
A1 Tsar's Band
A2 The Assassination
A3 The Evening Before
-
A4 Score (From The Film "Give Us A Smile") 3:00
B1 Washing Line (From The Film "Green Flutes")0:35
B2 Score (From The Film "Against The Current") 3:05
B3 Curtain Music From The Play "The Time Of Their Lives" 1:20
B4 Trih's Song 1:23

DOWNLOAD the occasional outtake HERE!

Feminist Improvising Group – "Feminist Improvising Group" (Self-released C-60) 1979

Everybody loves a feminist don't they?

So the challenge is how to alienate as many potential supporters of the cause as possible. This is normally achieved by letting Germain Greer talk uninterrupted for about twenty minutes. Another effective method of closing ears and minds to the feminist cause is by forming a free improvisation group and attaching the word feminist to the collective moniker.

Apparently Cumbrian folk singer Frankie Armstrong was once connected to this ensemble formed by Henry Cow bassoonist Lindsay Cooper,although not long enough to damage her virtually already non-existent career. This stuff could clear a room of Feminists in as long as it takes to burn a couple of peek-a-boo bra's. There will inevitably be a few blokes left to endure the noise, so they can brown nose the ladies with some opposite gender 'support', read that as the opposite genders hidden agenda,as most chaps think this Trojan horse approach will secure entry into the ladies under garments...think again chaps....ok yes it does work sometimes ...statistically.

At least they don't sing lyrics about all men being potential rapists....we already know that, and don't want to be preached at thanks.....we know, and it's to the male sex's credit that so few of them actually rape anyone at all...including other men.Never mentioned is that men are more frequently the victim of male violence than the fairer sex...world war 2 being the zenith of this genocide.Not helped in the previous war by thee so-called Fairer sex doling out white feathers to male pacifists shaming them as cowards.

Is there a Black Lives Matter Improvising group in formation?...if there is they are too late,as most of sixties free jazz beat everyone to it.

DOWNLOAD proof that women can make the same god-awful racket as their male counterparts HERE!...now that's equality?

Frankie Armstrong – "Lovely On The Water" (Topic Records – 12TS216) 1972

"No no no! Heavens to murgatroyd Frankie, the water' s down there,that's the sky you're looking at!? Sheech!

They're not the sharpest tools in the box thems countryside folk, but when it comes to minimally accompanied singing of the old tunes they can make the most complicated of emotions seem explicable,and pop singers seem like the talentless dicks they undoubtedly are.

Apparently,now blind,which would explain a multitude of things,except that Frankie, isn't a bloke, and she comes from one of those places that no-one can find or escape from,namely, Workington...the clues in the name.A industrial town in the gloriously savage slate grey wilderness of Cumbria,the most radioactive place in England,which sits on the coast next to the most radioactive sea in Europe,The Irish Sea. Cumbria being the home to the first Nuclear Reactor in the western world at Windscale.

So the combination of Coal dust, Steel plant pollution, and radioactivity makes for a heady cocktail that produces the kind of strangeness that manifests itself in English Folk Culture,so Obviously there's gonna be a Folk singer or two that comes from Workington isn't there?

The issues in these songs are as old as the human race.The Brown Girl especially being an early example of Black Lives Matter,or rather Brown Lives matter ,even though the Brown Girl in question does actually survive.

Things never change do they? 

"The Young Girl Cut Down In Her Prime" is a two hundred year old version of the recent anti-male protests in the UK.

Tracklist:

A1 Tarry Trousers
A2 The Green Valley
A3 Low Down On The Broom
A4 The Cruel Mother
A5 The Crafty Maid’s Policy
A6 The Maid On The Shore
A7 The Frog And The Mouse
B1 Lovely On The Water
B2 The Brown Girl
B3 The Young Girl Cut Down In Her Prime

B4 The Unquiet Grave
B5 The Saucy Sailor
B6 The Two Sisters

DOWNLOAD lovelier on your computer HERE!

A. L. Lloyd, Anne Briggs, Frankie Armstrong with Alf Edwards and Dave Swarbrick – "The Bird In The Bush (Traditional Erotic Songs)" (Topic Records – 12T135) 1966

Phwooooaaaar, Fnar Fnar, Kyuk Kyuk,,Titter Titter, them rude Folk Singers Folks eh?

If you've ever wanted a semi-boner caused by a 17th century song full of sexual references as sung by a fusty old bloke called Bert,accompanied by another old duffer called Alf on the squeeze box, then this is the album for you.

Luckily, we also have the lovely,and apparently sober but sexually liberated goer, Anne Briggs , to achieve the same effect rather more easily;depending on your sexual orientation of course.Then again there's also Frankie Armstrong, who, as fate would have it,isn't a beered up old bloke,but turns out to be another fair folk maiden with at least a couple of admirable qualities.

Yes it's true, country folk from the olden days had a sex life,and what's more, they sang about it.Although I guess there weren't many songs about Homosexual love affairs.....but I wouldn't put it past 'em.Seems like the country folk were far ahead of those urban dwellers on most issues at the time.I guess it depends on the person singing,as is the tradition of Folk singing,that you can adapt the words to fit your own personal leanings?So if you were a Gay Shepard,you can adapt any of these tunes to be about that tempestuous affair you had with young Billy Biddlesthwaite round the back of the grain silo in the silage pit (Snigger!). Or, knowing some farmer boys, that troublesome evening in the hay with Susan the transvestite Ram treating him like the lady he wished he were.

We also have a pre-Fairport Dave Swarbrick on the fiddling...Fnar Fnaaar,Kyuk Kyuk!

Tracklist:

A1 A. L. Lloyd– The Two Magicians 4:41
A2 Frankie Armstrong– The Old Man From Over The Sea 2:49
A3 A. L. Lloyd– The Wanton Seed 1:30
A4 Anne Briggs– Gathering Rushes In The Month Of May 4:46
A5 A. L. Lloyd– The Bonny Black Hare 2:54
A6 Anne Briggs– The Whirly Whorl 1:12
A7 A. L. Lloyd– Pretty Polly 1:27
B1 A. L. Lloyd– The Old Bachelor 3:42
B2 Anne Briggs– The Stonecutter Boy 1:53
B3 A. L. Lloyd– The Mower 1:57
B4 Frankie Armstrong– The Bird In The Bush 2:55
B5 A. L. Lloyd– The Pegging Awl 2:46
B6 Anne Briggs– Martinmas Time 4:50
B7 A. L. Lloyd– The Widow Of Westmoreland's Daughter 2:15

DOWNLOAD into the birds bush HERE!Kyuk Kyuk!

Various Artists – "The Iron Muse (A Panorama Of Industrial Folk Music)" (Topic Records – 12T86) 1964

Nooooooo, this isn't an album by Current 93,Coil, or any of the other ,so-called privately educated Industrial folkers .This was made by people who actually worked for a living. And they didn't live anywhere like the tastefully paved avenues and nooks of Hampstead either.They endured the rough end of the Industrial revolution that made the various Polytechnics and Art schools that Throbbing Gristle attended look like fluffy pink kindergartens, and trod the grimy cobbled  slipways to an early death in the ,to quote Pere Ubu, Dub Housing of the Industrial north,where the sun literally never shone. The only way out for these slaves was ,hopefully, a rampant case of emphysema.A disease which Ironically,did for Genesis P.Orridge look alikey, fiddling folk legend Dave Swarbrick in the end,after his double lung transplant......but his was due to chain smoking rather than breathing in coal dust for 40 years.

Ay Lad, life wir aaaaaard oop North,but down the ale houses and pubs.......(amazingly there were no,slash, Zero Wine Bars???.).....of the open cess-pits of northern England,in the absence of TV and Radio,the local singers entertained the cap doffing proletariat with some centuries old Folk songs,passed down purely by ear to mouth. One doubts very much,following the impending extinction events to come,that Aqua's 'Barbie Girl' would achieve the same distinction?.....maybe "The Final Countdown" has a chance, or the Crazy Frog?...But what is sure is that the songs from the English Civil War will still be sung in the crumbling bunkers of the near future.

Often, of an evening,after alighting the pit lift and a quick communal shower, it was down the local, to hear Old Bert sing unaccompanied songs about the Napoleonic Wars,unrequited Love,murder and suicide.....and every body knew the words and their harmony parts.

Thanks to Pete and Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl, there was a Folk revival going on on both sides of the Atlantic.Little did those kids listening to Leadbelly and their exotic American Blues heroes know,most of the songs they were singing were in fact Olde Folk tunes from the British Isles,that were just about to be claimed back.

1964 may have been the height of Beatlemania,but it was also the height of the UK Folk Boom when even records like this sold out like hot potatoes.....I say potatoes instead of Chips because the nouveaux Folkies were predominantly middle class and upwards....exceptions being the legendary Martin Carthy,Anne Briggs and the Watersons of course,but there was a fashion element included that some purists would find distasteful, especially head Folk bore and Kirsty's dad, Ewan MacColl.

Before Bob Dylan (BB),and to a greater extent Fairport (BF) this purist approach was all you got in the Folk Clubs,but this was the inspiration for the Folk Rockers of the late sixties.

I apologise for you having to endure several examples of the depressing Geordie accent on this record,but this is the stuff you would have had to listen in the Folk clubs of the north in the late fifties to mid-sixties.An honest excursion into epic story telling inside a couple of minutes.As Martin Carthy says; "It takes a couple of days to read a good book,an hour and a half to watch a decent movie, but a  song can get you to the same place in just five minutes".......unless it's "Barbie Girl" of course.

Another aspect of the 'Folk Revival' was its politicization.Naturally being working class music, it was hi-jacked by a champagne socialist agenda,leading to pink coloured overtly righteous bores like Billy Bragg!

Ironically it took Margaret Thatcher to liberate these people from the Mines and Factories,an act that in centuries to come will be called 'The Great Liberation'.Being very working class myself,and not Tory in the slightest,I took my chance to escape a lifetime of slavery, fueled by the DIY message of Punk Rock and indeed Thatcher herself, to achieve what most of us working class scummers wish to attain....yep....comfortable bourgeois status.The bleating pinko's and punko's were largely Bourgeois themselves,playing politics with the little people where the music came from,which had absolutely nothing to do with Political Dogma,and politics has nothing to do with freedom.

Nowadays the Iron Muse has been replaced by the Plasma widecreen Muse,or ,even more disturbing, the Social Media Muse.Woe betide all the musicologists of the future unearthing the folk music of today.....one assumes they will rebury it instantly,and create a 'Forbidden Zone' like the one in 'Planet Of The Apes'

Tracklist:

A1 The Celebrated Working Man's Band– Miners' Dance Tunes
A2 Bob Davenport– The Collier's Rant
A3 Anne Briggs– The Recruited Collier
A4 A. L. Lloyd– Pit Boots
A5 Louis Killen– The Banks Of The Dee
A6 Matt McGinn – The Donibristle Moss Moran Disaster
A7 Bob Davenport– The Durham Lockout
A8 Louis Killen– The Blackleg Miners
A9 A. L. Lloyd– The Celebrated Working Man
A10 Bob Davenport– The Row Between The Cages
A11 The Celebrated Working Man's Band– The Collier's Daughter
B1 The Celebrated Working Man's Band– The Weavers' March
B2 A. L. Lloyd– The Weaver And The Factory Maid
B3 Ray Fisher– The Spinner's Wedding
B4 A. L. Lloyd– The Poor Cotton Wayver
B5 Anne Briggs– The Doffing Mistress
B6 Matt McGinn – The Swan Necked Valve
B7 Ray Fisher– The Dundee Lassie
B8 Matt McGinn – The Foreman O'Rourke
B9 Louis Killen– Farewell To The Monty
B10 The Celebrated Working Man's Band– Miner's Dance Tunes

DOWNLOAD from the richest seam in the coal mine HERE!

Anne Briggs – "The Complete Topic Recordings(1963 - 71)" (Bo'Weavil Recordings – weavil 10) 2006

A fine East Midlands lass,with flowing dark hair and an intense stare.....just like your scribe;-).Anne Briggs was only sixteen when she started performing her puritanical solo and unaccompanied Folk singing career at the Nottingham Goose Fair back in 1960. No interest in Johnny Kidd or Cliff and The Shadows for young Anne.When she sings its as if Rock'n'Roll had never happened.....Jazz either for that matter. Instruments???.. that's for sell-outs...the 'please like me' brigade.Or the rogue folkies who formed pop groups, 'The please please like me' brigade, like The Beatles and The Hollies,who were for all intents and purposes electrified Folk groups with a backbeat. Her first EP was out on legendary folk label 'Topic' during the height of Beatlemania in '64,as if from the times before electricity.She sang about the less happy aspects of love and life, unlike our luvable mop-tops.This was about how crap progress was,and the pitfalls of love.Kinda like a sixties version of Straight Edge Punk.

She shunned the spotlight,even refusing to record anything for a while,music was in the moment and shouldn't be repeated.She had no interest in the feminist movement because she WAS feminism.No need for bra burning,she did whatever she wanted without permission from men or women alike.Patronisingly labelled a 'Wild Child' for her attitude to life,especially because she was female,and ladies didn't do things like get drunk and sleep around did they?Er...yes they did.....still do apparently,but now they can play Football or Rugby.....that's progress????

Eventually,of course, the odd bazouki or guitar cropped up,and she even started writing her own songs;but by 1973 she gave up music to live in the scottish wilderness with her Forester hubby, and had a family.Hardly ever to been seen or heard again.One of the very few musicians never to really sell-out to the man,or men.

She was also the source for several of the traditional songs which were popified by The Pentangle and Fairport among others, including "Blackwaterside." Of which former dalliance Bert Jansch's instrumental accompaniment to this song was later copied ,read as 'Ripped Off' by Led Zeppelin's Jimmy 'I ran off with a fourteen year old and nobodies done anything about it' Page; who recorded it as "Black Mountain Side”(notice any similarities there?) and credited himself as the writer....Not the first time Jim was known to do that.....for example probably 'that song', currently in litigation, also? Never forgiven those hairy fuckers for not paying Sandy Denny for her work on Led Zep IV.Twats!

Sandy,influenced by all aspects 'Anne' since she was a 16 year old witnessing a woman on stage in the folk clubs of London,was a good friend,as well as a Fan of Briggs,but could no way match her purist approach to the Folk Lifestyle.As much as she would love to give up the quest for fame or her luxuries,she couldn't.So she wrote a song for Fotheringay about her barrier busting chum, "The Pond and The Stream.

Anne's pure unadorned voice is a beacon for honest simplicity,and intensity,the very opposite to the vocal acrobatics that the modern wave of pop singers torture our ears and minds with today.It was a back to basics approach that would inform the punk music of the future.After all, Punk music ,IS, Folk music innit?

Tracklist:

The EP & Compilations:

A1 The Recruited Collier 2:42
A2 The Doffing Mistress 1:27
A3 Lowlands 3:15
A4 My Bonnie Boy 2:53
A5 Polly Vaughan 4:25
B1 Rosemary Lane 2:44
B2 Gathering Rushes In The Month Of May 4:51
B3 The Whirly Whorl 1:17
B4 The Stonecutter Boy 1:57
B5 Martinmas Time 4:56

The LP:

C1 Blackwater Side 3:54
C2 The Snow It Melts The Soonest 2:23
C3 Willie O Winsbury 5:33
C4 Go Your Way 4:14
C5 Thorneymoor Woods 3:36
D1 The Cuckoo 3:11
D2 Reynardine 3:00
D3 Young Tambling 10:44
D4 Living By The Water 3:55
D5 Maa Bonny Lad 1:18

DOWNLOAD here maa bonny lads'n'lasses

Jackson C. Frank – "The Complete Recordings" (Ba Da Bing! – BING 105) 2015

Just as Space Aliens are reluctant to make themselves visible to humankind to avoid starting a new religion,and Just as Eggs Over Easy lit the spark of a new religion in 1972 with the inspiration for Pub Rock....I suppose you had to be there to understand why?.....Jackson C. Frank was an American ignored in his own country but found acceptance in England,where he was rather influential for a lot of the Brit Folkers who had probably never met an American before (except for Paul Simon,who doesn't count),or even met a Space Alien for that matter.One of these being the young, impressionable, Sandy Denny, who drew great inspiration for her own nascent songwriting.....not something many young women did before the latter part of the 1960's.Incredibly she was only 19 when she penned "Who Knows Where The Time Goes",one of thee greatest tunes ever written,by anyone,ever,even by them shy Space Alien chaps.

Jackson himself,resembled,as well as felt like, an Alien.A living tragedy with a life-story of pain and failure that you just couldn't make up.

There was a member of "The Happy Flowers" (Improv Noise Punk duo who sang about freak childhood accidents from the child's perspective) called 'Mr Horribly Charred Infant'.Whether he was named after Jackson C Frank is up for conjecture, but Jackson C was indeed horribly charred as an infant as a survivor of a raging school fire that killed many of his school chums,and girlfriend Marlene,but Frank survived with something like 50% burns.Which would explain his uncanny resemblance to Top British Buffoon Bastard Boris Pfeffel Johnson

Boris P. Johnson as Jackson C. Frank

Jackson C. Frank as Boris P. Johnson

Jackson was also minted,thanks to the Hundred grand compensation he was awarded for his injuries.Which is about a cool million dollars in today's currency.So upon receipt of this booty, the 21 year old Frank hoped on a boat bound for England to do the folk circuit with his finely honed Guitar and songwriting skills he had developed during his long,lonely recovery from his horrific burns.

He was an instant hit in the Folk clubs of London in 1965,The Troubadour,Les Cousins, etc.;there weren't too many Americans around, so he and Paul Simon cleaned up. Future doomed starlets Nick Drake and Sandy Denny were both smitten, and it was only natural that Jackson made his first and only album, with Paul Simon producing;Frank was so shy during the recording that he asked to be shielded by screens so that no-one could see him, claiming: 'I can't play. You're looking at me.'...This shyness didn't seem to stop him playing live however,or,have a short romance with Sandy Denny.The romance with Britain's fast rising Folk star was short and tempestuous.Denny's Father was less than impressed by him,or her other boyfriends,especially future bed-hopping hubby Trevor Lucas,and who can blame him?

Sandy wrote a song about Frank called "Next Time Around" that sums up the enigma that never was quite nicely.

Jackson,understandably suffered from what we now call PTSD,so his moods were somewhat changeable. He also spent money as if it was going out of fashion, as they say?....don't they??? He had a new flash car every month,most of which got smashed up due to his soon to be well displayed self-destructive tendencies.

He once told Denny that he couldn't bend down and cut his own toenails because of the scar tissue,so he would allow them to grow long enough so that if he kicked a wall they would snap off.....always the charmer huh?

Soon his visa was due to expire,and he was running out of money fast,and even quicker he was running out of healthy brain cells! So he had to return to the States and total anonymity, for a couple of years,where things went rapidly downhill.

Returning to England in '68,he was by now a bona-fide nutjob,and struggled to find gigs.

Quote from erstwhile Chum Al 'Year Of The Cat' Stewart:

"He [Frank] proceeded to fall apart before our very eyes. His style that everyone loved was melancholy, very tuneful things. He started doing things that were completely impenetrable. They were basically about psychological angst, played at full volume with lots of thrashing. I don't remember a single word of them – it just did not work. There was one review that said he belonged on a psychologist's couch. Then shortly after that, he hightailed it back to Woodstock again, because he wasn't getting any work."

Back in Woodstock, he married an ex-model, had two kids, and when the male heir to his chaos died from Cystic Fibrosis, he descended further into Depression and mental illness.He left for New York in a vane attempt to find Paul Simon,but ended up down and out on the streets for several years. Which included an episode when a kid blinded him in his left eye with a pellet gun.The weight piled on and he began to look like Inspector Clay from Plan Nine From Outer Space...post mortem.

One-eyed Jackson on the comeback trail to Oblivion

Jackson ended his short harrowing life moving from Mental Institution to funny farm and back....but surely there's a happy ending where being rediscovered he received past royalties, and acknowledgment of his past work and influence?....yeah?.....nope.... Frank died of pneumonia on March 3, 1999, at the age of 56,the stuff of Hollywood biopics....not.....yet Bono still lives?

His sole album from 1965 is a rather haunting work,from someone who knew what pain and the Blues really were in close-up.He could have been Bob Dylan but he weren't no oil painting,horribly scarred,and quite mental...not the main attributes of a pop star I suggest?

He apparently made more recordings,including,remarkably, a Peel Session!?...somehow?....But they make for an interesting document demonstrating the pure futility of trying to get anywhere when you just haven't got the right coloured hair!?

Of these 67 tracks....67???....I advise you stick to the first 10,and single versions there of, which made up his debut and only album.They are quite brilliant,and touching, even without his depressingly tragic life story.The message is 'Why Bother?'

But....at least he got to meet Elvis.....

The doomed gruesome twosome on set at the Club Tropicana video shoot back in '83,six years after Elvis faked his own death to become Andrew Ridgely aka, the other one from Wham!

Tracklist:

1-1 Blues Run The Game
1-2 Don't Look Back
1-3 Kimbie
1-4 Yellow Walls
1-5 Here Come The Blues
1-6 Milk And Honey
1-7 My Name Is Carnival
1-8 Dialogue (I Want To Be Alone)
1-9 Just Like Anything
1-10 You Never Wanted Me
1-11 I've Been 'Buked & I've Been Scorned
1-12 Gospel Plow
1-13 CC Rider
1-14 Banana Boat Song
1-15 Frankie & Johnny
1-16 John Henry
1-17 In The Pines
1-18 John Henry's Hammer
1-19 Ananias
1-20 Borrow Love And Go
1-21 Jesse James
1-22 Last Month Of The Year
1-23 Washington Jail
2-1 Blues Run The Game
2-2 Can't Get Away From My Love
2-3 Marlene
2-4 Marcy's Song
2-5 Madonna Of Swans
2-6 Relations
2-7 Cover Me With Roses
2-8 Cryin' Like A Baby
2-9 Spanish Moss
2-10 The Visit
2-11 Have You Seen The Unicorns
2-12 Juliette
2-13 China Blue
2-14 Madonna Of Swans
2-15 Box Canyon
2-16 Cover Me With Roses
2-17 Spanish Moss
2-18 Stitch In Time
2-19 Heartbreak Hotel
2-20 Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me / Precious Lord
3-1 Blues Run The Game
3-2 My Name Is Carnival
3-3 Jimmy Clay
3-4 Just Like Anything
3-5 You Never Wanted Me
3-6 Juliette
3-7 Instrumental
3-8 Night Of The Blues
3-9 (Tumble) In The Wind
3-10 The Spectre
3-11 Half The Distance
3-12 Bull Men
3-13 Maria Spanish Rose
3-14 Singing Sailors
3-15 Night Of The Blues
3-16 (Tumble) In The Wind
3-17 Goodbye (To My Loving You)
3-18 October
3-19 Mystery
3-20 I Don't Want To Love You No More
3-21 Child Fixin' To Die
3-22 Halloween Is Black As Night
3-23 In The Pines
3-24 On My Way To The Canaan Land

DOWNLOAD the soundtrack to the least likely rock biopic that Hollywood never made HERE!