60,000,000 BUFFALO
Nevada Jukebox
Collectors Choice
www.ccmusic.com
Tired of folk music being played in the old Greenwich Village tradition, Judy Roderick, like so many others, got hip to the peace‘n’love generation. The whiskey marinated holler of Janis Joplin, the rootsy inclinations of The Band and perhaps a dash of Stones/Faces/Allman Bros soulful swagger liven up the proceedings, and this loose album struts and swaggers from the get go. Nevada Jukebox was released in 1972 on Atco and sought to finally break this stalwart of the folk scene. It didn’t. But it is a good soulful-rock LP with the sloppy, ‘Sympathy For The Devil’-like take on the traditional ‘Maid Of Constant Sorrow’ sounding like it was sponsored by Jack Daniels and the Play Like Keef In A Day guitar instruction book!
Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills
CLANNAD
Beginnings: The Best Of The Early Years
Music Club 2-CD
www.demonmusicgroup.co.uk
Best known as new age, synth-laden ’80s Celtic folk family famed for their haunting theme to the UK TV show Robin Of Sherwood, and the act that gave the world baby sis Enya and her mega-selling ‘Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)’, Clannad actually started performing and recording in the early ’70s utilising the Gaelic tongue and both ancient and modern instrumentation. The material compiled on this set, culled from their early albums, spans 1973-82. Clannad (Pre-Robin Hood) sang traditional tunes, but there was a jazz undercurrent and an edge to their music that although not quite acid-folk showed the band to be fully aware of contemporary rock, notably the folkier end of prog and the folk fusion of Alan Stivell. Clearly not finger-in-the-ear fuddy duddies the young Clannad wore their hair long and their trousers flared. Folk music by hippies!
This is truly beautiful, winsome music that is an ideal accompaniment to daydreaming about misty mountains, ancient myth and fair maidens. Glorious.
Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills
JULIE FELIX
First, Second, Third: The Complete Decca LPs, 1964-66
RPM Retrodisc 2-CD
www.cherryred.co.uk
Julie Felix is a native Californian with Mexican and Native American ancestry, but as a musical performer she made her home in England. She was Decca’s foremost folk act and Britain’s face of folk during the mid-60s. These, her first three albums for Decca, find her mining the usual territory of Dylan, Guthrie, Seeger, and also giving readings of songs written by the likes of Tom Paxton and Donovan. She didn’t do much of her own songwriting (not then – she’s done that in more recent years), and her voice is pretty but kind of average. But in her prime, as she is represented here, she was something like a grittier Joan Baez and a notable interpreter of classic folk songs new and old.
Brian Greene
PAT KILROY
Light Of Day
Collectors Choice CD
www.ccmusic.com
Pat Kilroy flamed high and free across the sky like a comet – and burned out just as fast, passing on from this world on Christmas Day, 1967. The ’66 Elektra LP he left behind is testament to a soul full of searching and wonder. As California mutated from beat into hippie, Kilroy was ahead of the curve – third eye fully attuned, deeply immersed in India and esoteria, existing up in Big Sur on only the foods of the earth, and exploring “existing universal unity” through a music rooted in the ol’ folk blues and the ancient Child ballads, but gallivanting through Eastern ragas, Indonesian gamelan, mystical lyricism, modal improvisation andmoreagain.
Now finally starting to be recognised as a trail-blazing entry into acid folk, this remarkable recording deserves to be cherished by anyone who ever held Tim Buckley, Fred Neil or the SF scene close to their heart. Indeed, by simply anyone who ever had a heart. Full stop.
Hugh Dellar
LINDA PERHACS
Parallelograms
Sunbeam CD
www.sunbeamrecords.com
Originally released on Kapp in 1970, Perhacs’ cult classic is bathed in the same stony afterglow as David Crosby’s solo debut and resonates the mellow, occasionally funky vibe of early Buffy Saint-Marie, Joni Mitchell and Janis Ian. Others may hear the more esoteric touch of a Vashti Bunyan or Dory Previn’s contemporary Mediarts releases. The ambient silence that envelops tracks like the gentle ‘Dolphin’ imbues the album with the early morning intimacy of listening to Nick Drake whilst sipping a steaming cup of coffee and gazing over the misty sunrise in the distance.
‘Sandy Toes’ and ‘Porcelain Baked-Over Cast-Iron Wedding ‘ bring a fuller band sound to the set, while the much-discussed title track is a marvel of electronic wizardry – an abstract “VISUAL MUSIC composition”. With Perhacs’ explanatory liners and numerous bonus tracks of demos, alternate takes, and a 2005 BBC interview, this is the definitive version of an album that’s as fresh and vital today as it was on its initial release.
Jeff Penczak
VARIOUS ARTISTS
The All New Electric Muse: The Journey From Folk To Rock
Universal 3-CD
Digital repackage of Island’s groundbreaking 1976 triple LP box set, pretty much the first to look back at 15 years of modern British folk music and put it into a rock context.
Plotting a heady trajectory from Lonnie Donegan’s ‘Rock Island Line’ to John Renbourne’s ‘Circle Dance’, this cache of 50-odd tracks takes in defining moments from Davy Graham, Shirley Collins, Bert Jansch, Donovan, The ISB, John Martyn, Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Nick Drake, Traffic, Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, Martin Carthy, Richard Thompson, Ashley Hutchings, Tim Hart & Maddy Prior, Dave Swarbrick and… well, need I continue?
A veritable who’s who of homegrown troubadours, beatniks, storytellers and displaced rockers that tells the story better than any other anthologies currently on the market and still has the power to amaze.
Andy Morten
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