Sandy Denny, Fairport Convention and other related folk-rock

[editor]

What lovely lyrics these are. Splendid song too.

They said that it was snowing in astounded tones upon the news.
I wonder why they're always so surprised 'cause every year it snows.
Frozen images of snowploughs as they churn along the motorways.
I haven't had no boots to wear or any loot to spare for days and days.
I've traveled more than forty miles today, I must have grown some wings.
It's strange how time just seems to fly away, I can't remember things.
In a world of my own they say and who can blame them, they're just not the same.
I've known about it all along though I thought I was all wrong, and it's such a shame.
Why don't you have any brushes any more, I used to like your style.
I see no paintings anywhere and there's no smell of turpentine.
Did I really have no meaning? Well I never thought I'd hear those words from you.
Who needs a meaning anyway, I'd settle any day for a very fine view.
I couldn't even tell you all the changes since you saw me last.
My dreams were like the autumn leaves, they faded and they fell so fast.
In fact as you say the snows are here and how the time it slips away.
But I'm glad you did pass by, I think I'll have another try. It's another day.
The day and then the night have gone, it was not long before the dawn,
And the traveling man who sat so stiffly in his chair began to yawn.
Having kept me here so long my friend, I hope you have a sleeping place to lend,

 

[Judelo]

Thanks for that

 

[Idris2002]

Sandy 4 names Deny who studied classical piano as a child and went to a posh all girls school in Kingston upon Thames was a typical working class girl of her time.

They were all a bunch of middle class tossers who abused their status to the point of self-destruction. The fucking rediscovery of English folk was the biggest joke of all. Coining it from traditional working class songs then spunking all the cash on cocaine. Whole scene isn't just middle class, it is also a just little bit insular on the ethnic thing.

Nothing wrong with preserving traditional music, but they made it all a little bit too much the 'p'reserve of white, middle class folk.

I'll go now.

Stanley Edwards - best troll ever.

I saw Fairport in Durham last year, and great they were too. It's a shame Sandy D. didn't stick around though.

 

[butcher]

I always loved 'Crazy Man Michael' and 'Farewell, Farewell'

 

[Saunders]

I get this as a recurring earworm. It was a filler track on the end a tape of an album.
Only found out what and who it was a few years ago.
Love it, and shame it’s not on Spotify.

 

[Sprocket.]

The North Star Grassman and the Ravens, as been a treasured album I inherited from one of my cousins back in the mid seventies.
It is a very emotive album with some great songs.
One of the greatest female vocalists this country ever produced.

 

[Sprocket.]

Slightly off topic by relevant. I would like to say what a great bloke Ashley Hutchings is. Always polite and give you time for a natter, used to bump into them regularly when the Albion Band was touring back in the late eighties and early nineties. Phil Beer, who went onto to form Show of Hands and Ashley were always decent to those who turned out to see them.

 

[campanula]

Great thread. Digging out some Pentangle, Eliza Carthy or even Mr Fox (but drawing the line ar Steeleye Span)

 

[ManchesterBeth]

not really into her but i can appreciate her voice and talent. but then not really into English folk either.

 

[Humberto]

Genesis hall

 

[neonwilderness]

I get this as a recurring earworm.

I occasionally get the same with Nothing More. Today is one of those days

 

[editor]

I've been listening to an awful lot of Sandy Denny recently.

I'll have to read this when I get chance

I've Always Kept a Unicorn tells the story of Sandy Denny, one of the greatest British singers of her time and the first female British singer-songwriter to produce a substantial and enduring body of original songs. Sandy emerged from the passionate, hard-drinking folk scene of the sixties - a world of larger-than-life characters such as Alex Campbell, Bert Jansch, Jackson C. Frank, Anne Briggs and her future husband, the Australian singer Trevor Lucas. She then laid down the marker for folk-rock when she joined Fairport Convention in 1968, recording three albums with them before her shock departure in November 1969 just ahead of the release of the last, the seminal Liege & Lief.

Sandy was driven by a restless search for the perfect framework for her songs during the seventies. She first formed Fotheringay with Trevor Lucas, but left the group controversially after their eponymous debut album. This was followed by a historic one-off recording with Led Zeppelin, 'The Battle of Evermore' - Sandy is the only guest vocalist ever to record with the group - and four mercurial solo albums, as well as a return to Fairport Convention, before her tragic and untimely death in 1978, aged thirty-one, in circumstances still shrouded in hearsay and speculation.

Sandy's often turbulent relationship with Trevor is at the core of her later life and work, as she tried to reconcile motherhood and marriage with the trappings of a rock 'n' roll lifestyle and a conflicted desire for the fame and success that others expected of her. Largely based on original and candid interviews with more than fifty of her friends, fellow musicians and contemporaries, and with access to previously unseen documents, photographs and Sandy's own notebooks, this is Sandy's story - that of a life never sung out of tune

]
Anyone read it?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ive-Always-Kept-Unicorn-Biography/dp/0571278906

 

[Idris2002]

 

[butchersapron]

Judy Dyble died last sunday.

 

[blossie33]

Judy Dyble died last sunday.

Oh dear she can't have been that old.
RIP

 

[Humberto]

Her voice is like an expertly played instrument. Which is what a singing voice is I guess. Just seems particularly obvious here.

 

[Saunders]

Her voice is like an expertly played instrument. Which is what a singing voice is I guess. Just seems particularly obvious here.

Oh how lovely. Thanks for posting it.

 

[editor]

Never heard of this before (ignore the fucking annoying host)

 

[editor]

There's an absolutely fabulous interview with Linda Thompson in the Guardian.

She's really funny and has certainly lived a life!

Sandy and I were in the studio and there was a tea break, there was no question it would be us making the tea. Some idiot playing a nose harp would just sit there: ‘Two sugars, love.’ We were tough, but we crumbled.”

Existing largely on a diet of vodka and antidepressants, Thompson wasn’t above physically attacking her ex-husband onstage. “And I stole an audience member’s car in Niagra Falls and ended up in jail, but they didn’t press charges. They thought: ‘This woman is clearly deranged.’

‘They said I was worse than the Sex Pistols!’: folk legend Linda Thompson on trashing dressing rooms and losing her voice | Linda Thompson | The Guardian

amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org

 

[Agrippa57]

One of my favourite albums of recent years is Big Machine by Eliza Carthy and the Wayward Band. My Christ, that band is absolutely terrifying. High points for me; Mrs. Dyer The Baby Farmer and Stingo. Utterly frightening musicianship.