What a scene-stealer that Tim The Elder is! In he strolls today, in his customarily nonchalant way, with his latest not for sale offering, which this week turns out to be the eponymous debut from Fairport Convention (Polydor, 1968). I had forgotten that this band had a brief life before Island, still helmed by Joe Boyd at the controls, though without the remarkable vocal talents of Sandy Denny, with lead vocals on this first outing provided by one Judy Dyble, a librarian, so Tim The Elder informs me. One could be rude about Judys profession and her somewhat tremulous vocal performance, but really its unfair to compare anyone with the incredible Sandy. Enough preamble, though. There is only one word to describe this album: incredible. Its incredible that Richard Thompson could play the way he does here, as an eighteen-year-old. Its incredible too that the band should be so fearless and genre-defying on its debut. They sound like the greatest English psychedelic band that never was, and one is tempted to mourn that they veered off into fully-fledged folk territory, albeit folk with a real sense of adventure, and albeit with the mighty Sandy in tow. After all, they sounded pretty washed up within a few short years by the time of Full House, with Sandy having departed for her magnificent, if ill-starred, Fotheringay project. Of course it would be wrong to reject, through ignorance, all of their post-Sandy work, so maybe Tim The Elder will take pity and provide the means for me to reach a more measured judgement there. But for now, I feel sad that this electric (in every sense) prototype was ditched so quickly. Its amazing to hear a Fairport album sounding so genuinely wild and heavy in places - even too loud for the stampface at times - with some really intense bursts of psychedelia, some terrific original songs and some great covers, the best of these being Joni Mitchells Chelsea Morning (and its pretty incredible too that Joni herself was writing such amazing songs as this so early in her career). All in all, this is one of the finest English albums of the sixties, a magical cul-de-sac, and - Tim The Elder, take note - quite a valuable artefact in its own right. I shall therefore be returning it to Tim The Elder with a heavy heart, but properly encased in complimentary PVC, as an item of this quality always should be (tut tut, Tim The Elder!) Before Tim The Elder took the day in an entirely unexpected direction, we had chilled out with Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66s Greatest Hits, particularly enjoying their uptempo take on Bacharachs The Look Of Love and their lovely treatment of Cole Porters timeless Night and Day, and all the while trying not to let this Ipanema soundtrack remind one of our boys footballing misadventures from a summer long since passed (or maybe past, since our boys seem incapable of passing the ball to each other). After Sergio, wed taken a trip to Cafe Reggio with Isaac Hayes and his hot-buttered soul fest that is the Shaft soundtrack. Im always pleased as punch to acknowledge that it was my wife who opened the door to my soul - and to the soul of Isaac Hayes, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, and so many others whom I had been wont, in my musical infancy, to dub as medallion man music - and thirty years later I still adore all this soul food with the zeal of the convert. Shes not called The First Lady for nothing, you know! And speaking of first ladies of soul, here is the greatest female soul vocal track of all time, in my opinion. Till tomorrow, then, when the Vault will be staying open for a couple of hours into the evening during the Christmas lights switch-on festivities in Holt, heres the inimitable Aretha: https://youtube/watch?v=N6HhtnxA4F0
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 19:13:43 +0000
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