Podcast appearances and mentions of Vashti Bunyan

For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-one-minute bonus episode available, on Judy Collins’ version of this song. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by editing, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum For about an hour this was uploaded with the wrong Elton John clip in place of “Saturday Sun”. This has now been fixed. Resources Because of the increasing problems with Mixcloud’s restrictions, I have decided to start sharing streaming playlists of the songs used in episodes instead of Mixcloud ones. This Tunemymusic link will let you listen to the playlist I created on your streaming platform of choice — however please note that not all the songs excerpted are currently available on streaming. The songs missing from the Tidal version are “Shanten Bells” by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” by A.L. Lloyd, two by Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, three by Elton John & Linda Peters, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow” by Sandy Denny and “You Never Know” by Charlie Drake, but the other fifty-nine are there. Other songs may be missing from other services. The main books I used on Fairport Convention as a whole were Patrick Humphries' Meet On The Ledge, Clinton Heylin's What We Did Instead of Holidays, and Kevan Furbank's Fairport Convention on Track. Rob Young's Electric Eden is the most important book on the British folk-rock movement. Information on Richard Thompson comes from Patrick Humphries' Richard Thompson: Strange Affair and Thompson's own autobiography Beeswing.  Information on Sandy Denny comes from Clinton Heylin's No More Sad Refrains and Mick Houghton's I've Always Kept a Unicorn. I also used Joe Boyd's autobiography White Bicycles and Chris Blackwell's The Islander.  And this three-CD set is the best introduction to Fairport's music currently in print. Transcript Before we begin, this episode contains reference to alcohol and cocaine abuse and medical neglect leading to death. It also starts with some discussion of the fatal car accident that ended last episode. There’s also some mention of child neglect and spousal violence. If that’s likely to upset you, you might want to skip this episode or read the transcript. One of the inspirations for this podcast when I started it back in 2018 was a project by Richard Thompson, which appears (like many things in Thompson’s life) to have started out of sheer bloody-mindedness. In 1999 Playboy magazine asked various people to list their “songs of the Millennium”, and most of them, understanding the brief, chose a handful of songs from the latter half of the twentieth century. But Thompson determined that he was going to list his favourite songs *of the millennium*. He didn’t quite manage that, but he did cover seven hundred and forty years, and when Playboy chose not to publish it, he decided to turn it into a touring show, in which he covered all his favourite songs from “Sumer Is Icumen In” from 1260: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Sumer is Icumen In”] Through numerous traditional folk songs, union songs like “Blackleg Miner”, pieces by early-modern composers, Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs, and songs by the Beatles, the Ink Spots, the Kinks, and the Who, all the way to “Oops! I Did It Again”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Oops! I Did it Again”] And to finish the show, and to show how all this music actually ties together, he would play what he described as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”] We have said many times in this podcast that there is no first anything, but there’s a reason that Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention’s third album of 1969, and the album other than Unhalfbricking on which their reputation largely rests, was advertised with the slogan “The first (literally) British folk rock album ever”. Folk-rock, as the term had come to be known, and as it is still usually used today, had very little to do with traditional folk music. Rather, the records of bands like The Byrds or Simon and Garfunkel were essentially taking the sounds of British beat groups of the early sixties, particularly the Searchers, and applying those sounds to material by contemporary singer-songwriters. People like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan had come up through folk clubs, and their songs were called folk music because of that, but they weren’t what folk music had meant up to that point — songs that had been collected after being handed down through the folk process, changed by each individual singer, with no single identifiable author. They were authored songs by very idiosyncratic writers. But over their last few albums, Fairport Convention had done one or two tracks per album that weren’t like that, that were instead recordings of traditional folk songs, but arranged with rock instrumentation. They were not necessarily the first band to try traditional folk music with electric instruments — around the same time that Fairport started experimenting with the idea, so did an Irish band named Sweeney’s Men, who brought in a young electric guitarist named Henry McCullough briefly. But they do seem to have been the first to have fully embraced the idea. They had done so to an extent with “A Sailor’s Life” on Unhalfbricking, but now they were going to go much further: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves” (from about 4:30)] There had been some doubt as to whether Fairport Convention would even continue to exist — by the time Unhalfbricking, their second album of the year, was released, they had been through the terrible car accident that had killed Martin Lamble, the band’s drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson’s girlfriend. Most of the rest of the band had been seriously injured, and they had made a conscious decision not to discuss the future of the band until they were all out of hospital. Ashley Hutchings was hospitalised the longest, and Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, and Sandy Denny, the other three surviving members of the band, flew over to LA with their producer and manager, Joe Boyd, to recuperate there and get to know the American music scene. When they came back, the group all met up in the flat belonging to Denny’s boyfriend Trevor Lucas, and decided that they were going to continue the band. They made a few decisions then — they needed a new drummer, and as well as a drummer they wanted to get in Dave Swarbrick. Swarbrick had played violin on several tracks on Unhalfbricking as a session player, and they had all been thrilled to work with him. Swarbrick was one of the most experienced musicians on the British folk circuit. He had started out in the fifties playing guitar with Beryl Marriott’s Ceilidh Band before switching to fiddle, and in 1963, long before Fairport had formed, he had already appeared on TV with the Ian Campbell Folk Group, led by Ian Campbell, the father of Ali and Robin Campbell, later of UB40: [Excerpt: The Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Shanten Bells (medley on Hullaballoo!)”] He’d sung with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: [Excerpt: A.L. Lloyd, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” ] And he’d formed his hugely successful duo with Martin Carthy, releasing records like “Byker Hill” which are often considered among the best British folk music of all time: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, “Byker Hill”] By the time Fairport had invited him to play on Unhalfbricking, Swarbrick had already performed on twenty albums as a core band member, plus dozens more EPs, singles, and odd tracks on compilations. They had no reason to think they could actually get him to join their band. But they had three advantages. The first was that Swarbrick was sick of the traditional folk scene at the time, saying later “I didn’t like seven-eighths of the people involved in it, and it was extremely opportune to leave. I was suddenly presented with the possibilities of exploring the dramatic content of the songs to the full.” The second was that he was hugely excited to be playing with Richard Thompson, who was one of the most innovative guitarists of his generation, and Martin Carthy remembers him raving about Thompson after their initial sessions. (Carthy himself was and is no slouch on the guitar of course, and there was even talk of getting him to join the band at this point, though they decided against it — much to the relief of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, who is a perfectly fine player himself but didn’t want to be outclassed by *two* of the best guitarists in Britain at the same time). And the third was that Joe Boyd told him that Fairport were doing so well — they had a single just about to hit the charts with “Si Tu Dois Partir” — that he would only have to play a dozen gigs with Fairport in order to retire. As it turned out, Swarbrick would play with the group for a decade, and would never retire — I saw him on his last tour in 2015, only eight months before he died. The drummer the group picked was also a far more experienced musician than any of the rest, though in a very different genre. Dave Mattacks had no knowledge at all of the kind of music they played, having previously been a player in dance bands. When asked by Hutchings if he wanted to join the band, Mattacks’ response was “I don’t know anything about the music. I don’t understand it… I can’t tell one tune from another, they all sound the same… but if you want me to join the group, fine, because I really like it. I’m enjoying myself musically.” Mattacks brought a new level of professionalism to the band, thanks to his different background. Nicol said of him later “He was dilligent, clean, used to taking three white shirts to a gig… The application he could bring to his playing was amazing. With us, you only played well when you were feeling well.” This distinction applied to his playing as well. Nicol would later describe the difference between Mattacks’ drumming and Lamble’s by saying “Martin’s strength was as an imaginative drummer. DM came in with a strongly developed sense of rhythm, through keeping a big band of drunken saxophone players in order. A great time-keeper.” With this new line-up and a new sense of purpose, the group did as many of their contemporaries were doing and “got their heads together in the country”. Joe Boyd rented the group a mansion, Farley House, in Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, and they stayed there together for three months. At the start, the group seem to have thought that they were going to make another record like Unhalfbricking, with some originals, some songs by American songwriters, and a few traditional songs. Even after their stay in Farley Chamberlayne, in fact, they recorded a few of the American songs they’d rehearsed at the start of the process, Richard Farina’s “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” and Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Ballad of Easy Rider”] Indeed, the whole idea of “getting our heads together in the country” (as the cliche quickly became in the late sixties as half of the bands in Britain went through much the same kind of process as Fairport were doing — but usually for reasons more to do with drug burnout or trend following than recovering from serious life-changing trauma) seems to have been inspired by Bob Dylan and the Band getting together in Big Pink. But very quickly they decided to follow the lead of Ashley Hutchings, who had had something of a Damascene conversion to the cause of traditional English folk music. They were listening mostly to Music From Big Pink by the Band, and to the first album by Sweeney’s Men: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] And they decided that they were going to make something that was as English as those records were North American and Irish (though in the event there were also a few Scottish songs included on the record). Hutchings in particular was becoming something of a scholar of traditional music, regularly visiting Cecil Sharp House and having long conversations with A.L. Lloyd, discovering versions of different traditional songs he’d never encountered before. This was both amusing and bemusing Sandy Denny, who had joined a rock group in part to get away from traditional music; but she was comfortable singing the material, and knew a lot of it and could make a lot of suggestions herself. Swarbrick obviously knew the repertoire intimately, and Nicol was amenable, while Mattacks was utterly clueless about the folk tradition at this point but knew this was the music he wanted to make. Thompson knew very little about traditional music, and of all the band members except Denny he was the one who has shown the least interest in the genre in his subsequent career — but as we heard at the beginning, showing the least interest in the genre is a relative thing, and while Thompson was not hugely familiar with the genre, he *was* able to work with it, and was also more than capable of writing songs that fit in with the genre. Of the eleven songs on the album, which was titled Liege and Lief (which means, roughly, Lord and Loyalty), there were no cover versions of singer-songwriters. Eight were traditional songs, and three were originals, all written in the style of traditional songs. The album opened with “Come All Ye”, an introduction written by Denny and Hutchings (the only time the two would ever write together): [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Come All Ye”] The other two originals were songs where Thompson had written new lyrics to traditional melodies. On “Crazy Man Michael”, Swarbrick had said to Thompson that the tune to which he had set his new words was weaker than the lyrics, to which Thompson had replied that if Swarbrick felt that way he should feel free to write a new melody. He did, and it became the first of the small number of Thompson/Swarbrick collaborations: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Crazy Man Michael”] Thompson and Swarbrick would become a brief songwriting team, but as much as anything else it was down to proximity — the two respected each other as musicians, but never got on very well. In 1981 Swarbrick would say “Richard and I never got on in the early days of FC… we thought we did, but we never did. We composed some bloody good songs together, but it was purely on a basis of “you write that and I’ll write this, and we’ll put it together.” But we never sat down and had real good chats.” The third original on the album, and by far the most affecting, is another song where Thompson put lyrics to a traditional tune. In this case he thought he was putting the lyrics to the tune of “Willie O'Winsbury”, but he was basing it on a recording by Sweeney’s Men. The problem was that Sweeney’s Men had accidentally sung the lyrics of “Willie O'Winsbury'” to the tune of a totally different song, “Fause Foodrage”: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “Willie O’Winsbury”] Thompson took that melody, and set to it lyrics about loss and separation. Thompson has never been one to discuss the meanings of his lyrics in any great detail, and in the case of this one has said “I really don't know what it means. This song came out of a dream, and I pretty much wrote it as I dreamt it (it was the sixties), and didn't spend very long analyzing it. So interpret as you wish – or replace with your own lines.” But in the context of the traffic accident that had killed his tailor girlfriend and a bandmate, and injured most of his other bandmates, the lyrics about lonely travellers, the winding road, bruised and beaten sons, saying goodbye, and never cutting cloth, seem fairly self-explanatory: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Farewell, Farewell”] The rest of the album, though, was taken up by traditional tunes. There was a long medley of four different fiddle reels; a version of “Reynardine” (a song about a seductive man — or is he a fox? Or perhaps both — which had been recorded by Swarbrick and Carthy on their most recent album); a 19th century song about a deserter saved from the firing squad by Prince Albert; and a long take on “Tam Lin”, one of the most famous pieces in the Scottish folk music canon, a song that has been adapted in different ways by everyone from the experimental noise band Current 93 to the dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah to the comics writer Grant Morrison: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Tam Lin”] And “Matty Groves”, a song about a man killing his cheating wife and her lover, which actually has a surprisingly similar story to that of “1921” from another great concept album from that year, the Who’s Tommy. “Matty Groves” became an excuse for long solos and shows of instrumental virtuosity: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves”] The album was recorded in September 1969, after their return from their break in the country and a triumphal performance at the Royal Festival Hall, headlining over fellow Witchseason artists John and Beverly Martyn and Nick Drake. It became a classic of the traditional folk genre — arguably *the* classic of the traditional folk genre. In 2007 BBC Radio 2’s Folk Music Awards gave it an award for most influential folk album of all time, and while such things are hard to measure, I doubt there’s anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of British folk and folk-rock music who would not at least consider that a reasonable claim. But once again, by the time the album came out in November, the band had changed lineups yet again. There was a fundamental split in the band – on one side were Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, whose stance was, roughly, that Liege and Lief was a great experiment and a fun thing to do once, but really the band had two first-rate songwriters in themselves, and that they should be concentrating on their own new material, not doing these old songs, good as they were. They wanted to take the form of the traditional songs and use that form for new material — they wanted to make British folk-rock, but with the emphasis on the rock side of things. Hutchings, on the other hand, was equally sure that he wanted to make traditional music and go further down the rabbit hole of antiquity. With the zeal of the convert he had gone in a couple of years from being the leader of a band who were labelled “the British Jefferson Airplane” to becoming a serious scholar of traditional folk music. Denny was tired of touring, as well — she wanted to spend more time at home with Trevor Lucas, who was sleeping with other women when she was away and making her insecure. When the time came for the group to go on a tour of Denmark, Denny decided she couldn’t make it, and Hutchings was jubilant — he decided he was going to get A.L. Lloyd into the band in her place and become a *real* folk group. Then Denny reconsidered, and Hutchings was crushed. He realised that while he had always been the leader, he wasn’t going to be able to lead the band any further in the traditionalist direction, and quit the group — but not before he was delegated by the other band members to fire Denny. Until the publication of Richard Thompson’s autobiography in 2022, every book on the group or its members said that Denny quit the band again, which was presumably a polite fiction that the band agreed, but according to Thompson “Before we flew home, we decided to fire Sandy. I don't remember who asked her to leave – it was probably Ashley, who usually did the dirty work. She was reportedly shocked that we would take that step. She may have been fragile beneath the confident facade, but she still knew her worth.” Thompson goes on to explain that the reasons for kicking her out were that “I suppose we felt that in her mind she had already left” and that “We were probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, though there wasn't a name for it back then.” They had considered inviting Trevor Lucas to join the band to make Denny more comfortable, but came to the (probably correct) conclusion that while he was someone they got on well with personally, he would be another big ego in a band that already had several, and that being around Denny and Lucas’ volatile relationship would, in Thompson’s phrasing, “have not always given one a feeling of peace and stability.” Hutchings originally decided he was going to join Sweeney’s Men, but that group were falling apart, and their first rehearsal with Hutchings would also be their last as a group, with only Hutchings and guitarist and mandolin player Terry Woods left in the band. They added Woods’ wife Gay, and another couple, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, and formed a group called Steeleye Span, a name given them by Martin Carthy. That group, like Fairport, went to “get their heads together in the country” for three months and recorded an album of electric versions of traditional songs, Hark the Village Wait, on which Mattacks and another drummer, Gerry Conway, guested as Steeleye Span didn’t at the time have their own drummer: [Excerpt: Steeleye Span, “Blackleg Miner”] Steeleye Span would go on to have a moderately successful chart career in the seventies, but by that time most of the original lineup, including Hutchings, had left — Hutchings stayed with them for a few albums, then went on to form the first of a series of bands, all called the Albion Band or variations on that name, which continue to this day. And this is something that needs to be pointed out at this point — it is impossible to follow every single individual in this narrative as they move between bands. There is enough material in the history of the British folk-rock scene that someone could do a 500 Songs-style podcast just on that, and every time someone left Fairport, or Steeleye Span, or the Albion Band, or Matthews’ Southern Comfort, or any of the other bands we have mentioned or will mention, they would go off and form another band which would then fission, and some of its members would often join one of those other bands. There was a point in the mid-1970s where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport Convention while Fairport Convention had none. So just in order to keep the narrative anything like wieldy, I’m going to keep the narrative concentrated on the two figures from Fairport — Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson — whose work outside the group has had the most influence on the wider world of rock music more broadly, and only deal with the other members when, as they often did, their careers intersected with those two. That doesn’t mean the other members are not themselves hugely important musicians, just that their importance has been primarily to the folk side of the folk-rock genre, and so somewhat outside the scope of this podcast. While Hutchings decided to form a band that would allow him to go deeper and deeper into traditional folk music, Sandy Denny’s next venture was rather different. For a long time she had been writing far more songs than she had ever played for her bandmates, like “Nothing More”, a song that many have suggested is about Thompson: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Nothing More”] When Joe Boyd heard that Denny was leaving Fairport Convention, he was at first elated. Fairport’s records were being distributed by A&M in the US at that point, but Island Records was in the process of opening up a new US subsidiary which would then release all future Fairport product — *but*, as far as A&M were concerned, Sandy Denny *was* Fairport Convention. They were only interested in her. Boyd, on the other hand, loved Denny’s work intensely, but from his point of view *Richard Thompson* was Fairport Convention. If he could get Denny signed directly to A&M as a solo artist before Island started its US operations, Witchseason could get a huge advance on her first solo record, while Fairport could continue making records for Island — he’d have two lucrative acts, on different labels. Boyd went over and spoke to A&M and got an agreement in principle that they would give Denny a forty-thousand-dollar advance on her first solo album — twice what they were paying for Fairport albums. The problem was that Denny didn’t want to be a solo act. She wanted to be the lead singer of a band. She gave many reasons for this — the one she gave to many journalists was that she had seen a Judy Collins show and been impressed, but noticed that Collins’ band were definitely a “backing group”, and as she put it “But that's all they were – a backing group. I suddenly thought, If you're playing together on a stage you might as well be TOGETHER.” Most other people in her life, though, say that the main reason for her wanting to be in a band was her desire to be with her boyfriend, Trevor Lucas. Partly this was due to a genuine desire to spend more time with someone with whom she was very much in love, partly it was a fear that he would cheat on her if she was away from him for long periods of time, and part of it seems to have been Lucas’ dislike of being *too* overshadowed by his talented girlfriend — he didn’t mind acknowledging that she was a major talent, but he wanted to be thought of as at least a minor one. So instead of going solo, Denny formed Fotheringay, named after the song she had written for Fairport. This new band consisted at first of Denny on vocals and occasional piano, Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Lucas’ old Eclection bandmate Gerry Conway on drums. For a lead guitarist, they asked Richard Thompson who the best guitarist in Britain was, and he told them Albert Lee. Lee in turn brought in bass player Pat Donaldson, but this lineup of the band barely survived a fortnight. Lee *was* arguably the best guitarist in Britain, certainly a reasonable candidate if you could ever have a singular best (as indeed was Thompson himself), but he was the best *country* guitarist in Britain, and his style simply didn’t fit with Fotheringay’s folk-influenced songs. He was replaced by American guitarist Jerry Donahue, who was not anything like as proficient as Lee, but who was still very good, and fit the band’s style much better. The new group rehearsed together for a few weeks, did a quick tour, and then went into the recording studio to record their debut, self-titled, album. Joe Boyd produced the album, but admitted himself that he only paid attention to those songs he considered worthwhile — the album contained one song by Lucas, “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, and two cover versions of American singer-songwriter material with Lucas singing lead. But everyone knew that the songs that actually *mattered* were Sandy Denny’s, and Boyd was far more interested in them, particularly the songs “The Sea” and “The Pond and the Stream”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “The Pond and the Stream”] Fotheringay almost immediately hit financial problems, though. While other Witchseason acts were used to touring on the cheap, all packed together in the back of a Transit van with inexpensive equipment, Trevor Lucas had ambitions of being a rock star and wanted to put together a touring production to match, with expensive transport and equipment, including a speaker system that got nicknamed “Stonehenge” — but at the same time, Denny was unhappy being on the road, and didn’t play many gigs. As well as the band itself, the Fotheringay album also featured backing vocals from a couple of other people, including Denny’s friend Linda Peters. Peters was another singer from the folk clubs, and a good one, though less well-known than Denny — at this point she had only released a couple of singles, and those singles seemed to have been as much as anything else released as a novelty. The first of those, a version of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” had been released as by “Paul McNeill and Linda Peters”: [Excerpt: Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”] But their second single, a version of John D. Loudermilk’s “You’re Taking My Bag”, was released on the tiny Page One label, owned by Larry Page, and was released under the name “Paul and Linda”, clearly with the intent of confusing particularly gullible members of the record-buying public into thinking this was the McCartneys: [Excerpt: Paul and Linda, “You’re Taking My Bag”] Peters was though more financially successful than almost anyone else in this story, as she was making a great deal of money as a session singer. She actually did another session involving most of Fotheringay around this time. Witchseason had a number of excellent songwriters on its roster, and had had some success getting covers by people like Judy Collins, but Joe Boyd thought that they might possibly do better at getting cover versions if they were performed in less idiosyncratic arrangements. Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway went into the studio to record backing tracks, and vocals were added by Peters and another session singer, who according to some sources also provided piano. They cut songs by Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “You Get Brighter”] Ed Carter, formerly of The New Nadir but by this time firmly ensconced in the Beach Boys’ touring band where he would remain for the next quarter-century: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “I Don’t Mind”] John and Beverly Martyn, and Nick Drake: [Excerpt: Elton John, “Saturday Sun”] There are different lineups of musicians credited for those sessions in different sources, but I tend to believe that it’s mostly Fotheringay for the simple reason that Donahue says it was him, Donaldson and Conway who talked Lucas and Denny into the mistake that destroyed Fotheringay because of these sessions. Fotheringay were in financial trouble already, spending far more money than they were bringing in, but their album made the top twenty and they were getting respect both from critics and from the public — in September, Sandy Denny was voted best British female singer by the readers of Melody Maker in their annual poll, which led to shocked headlines in the tabloids about how this “unknown” could have beaten such big names as Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. Only a couple of weeks after that, they were due to headline at the Albert Hall. It should have been a triumph. But Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway had asked that singing pianist to be their support act. As Donahue said later “That was a terrible miscast. It was our fault. He asked if [he] could do it. Actually Pat, Gerry and I had to talk Sandy and Trevor into [it]… We'd done these demos and the way he was playing – he was a wonderful piano player – he was sensitive enough. We knew very little about his stage-show. We thought he'd be a really good opener for us.” Unfortunately, Elton John was rather *too* good. As Donahue continued “we had no idea what he had in mind, that he was going to do the most incredible rock & roll show ever. He pretty much blew us off the stage before we even got on the stage.” To make matters worse, Fotheringay’s set, which was mostly comprised of new material, was underrehearsed and sloppy, and from that point on no matter what they did people were counting the hours until the band split up. They struggled along for a while though, and started working on a second record, with Boyd again producing, though as Boyd later said “I probably shouldn't have been producing the record. My lack of respect for the group was clear, and couldn't have helped the atmosphere. We'd put out a record that had sold disappointingly, A&M was unhappy. Sandy's tracks on the first record are among the best things she ever did – the rest of it, who cares? And the artwork, Trevor's sister, was terrible. It would have been one thing if I'd been unhappy with it and it sold, and the group was working all the time, making money, but that wasn't the case … I knew what Sandy was capable of, and it was very upsetting to me.” The record would not be released for thirty-eight years: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Wild Mountain Thyme”] Witchseason was going badly into debt. Given all the fissioning of bands that we’ve already been talking about, Boyd had been stretched thin — he produced sixteen albums in 1970, and almost all of them lost money for the company. And he was getting more and more disillusioned with the people he was producing. He loved Beverly Martyn’s work, but had little time for her abusive husband John, who was dominating her recording and life more and more and would soon become a solo artist while making her stay at home (and stealing her ideas without giving her songwriting credit). The Incredible String Band were great, but they had recently converted to Scientology, which Boyd found annoying, and while he was working with all sorts of exciting artists like Vashti Bunyan and Nico, he was finding himself less and less important to the artists he mentored. Fairport Convention were a good example of this. After Denny and Hutchings had left the group, they’d decided to carry on as an electric folk group, performing an equal mix of originals by the Swarbrick and Thompson songwriting team and arrangements of traditional songs. The group were now far enough away from the “British Jefferson Airplane” label that they decided they didn’t need a female vocalist — and more realistically, while they’d been able to replace Judy Dyble, nobody was going to replace Sandy Denny. Though it’s rather surprising when one considers Thompson’s subsequent career that nobody seems to have thought of bringing in Denny’s friend Linda Peters, who was dating Joe Boyd at the time (as Denny had been before she met Lucas) as Denny’s replacement. Instead, they decided that Swarbrick and Thompson were going to share the vocals between them. They did, though, need a bass player to replace Hutchings. Swarbrick wanted to bring in Dave Pegg, with whom he had played in the Ian Campbell Folk Group, but the other band members initially thought the idea was a bad one. At the time, while they respected Swarbrick as a musician, they didn’t think he fully understood rock and roll yet, and they thought the idea of getting in a folkie who had played double bass rather than an electric rock bassist ridiculous. But they auditioned him to mollify Swarbrick, and found that he was exactly what they needed. As Joe Boyd later said “All those bass lines were great, Ashley invented them all, but he never could play them that well. He thought of them, but he was technically not a terrific bass player. He was a very inventive, melodic, bass player, but not a very powerful one technically. But having had the part explained to him once, Pegg was playing it better than Ashley had ever played it… In some rock bands, I think, ultimately, the bands that sound great, you can generally trace it to the bass player… it was at that point they became a great band, when they had Pegg.” The new lineup of Fairport decided to move in together, and found a former pub called the Angel, into which all the band members moved, along with their partners and children (Thompson was the only one who was single at this point) and their roadies. The group lived together quite happily, and one gets the impression that this was the period when they were most comfortable with each other, even though by this point they were a disparate group with disparate tastes, in music as in everything else. Several people have said that the only music all the band members could agree they liked at this point was the first two albums by The Band. With the departure of Hutchings from the band, Swarbrick and Thompson, as the strongest personalities and soloists, became in effect the joint leaders of the group, and they became collaborators as songwriters, trying to write new songs that were inspired by traditional music. Thompson described the process as “let’s take one line of this reel and slow it down and move it up a minor third and see what that does to it; let’s take one line of this ballad and make a whole song out of it. Chopping up the tradition to find new things to do… like a collage.” Generally speaking, Swarbrick and Thompson would sit by the fire and Swarbrick would play a melody he’d been working on, the two would work on it for a while, and Thompson would then go away and write the lyrics. This is how the two came up with songs like the nine-minute “Sloth”, a highlight of the next album, Full House, and one that would remain in Fairport’s live set for much of their career: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth”] “Sloth” was titled that way because Thompson and Swarbrick were working on two tunes, a slow one and a fast one, and they jokingly named them “Sloth” and “Fasth”, but the latter got renamed to “Walk Awhile”, while “Sloth” kept its working title. But by this point, Boyd and Thompson were having a lot of conflict in the studio. Boyd was never the most technical of producers — he was one of those producers whose job is to gently guide the artists in the studio and create a space for the music to flourish, rather than the Joe Meek type with an intimate technical knowledge of the studio — and as the artists he was working with gained confidence in their own work they felt they had less and less need of him. During the making of the Full House album, Thompson and Boyd, according to Boyd, clashed on everything — every time Boyd thought Thompson had done a good solo, Thompson would say to erase it and let him have another go, while every time Boyd thought Thompson could do better, Thompson would say that was the take to keep. One of their biggest clashes was over Thompson’s song “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”, which was originally intended for release on the album, and is included in current reissues of it: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”] Thompson had written that song inspired by what he thought was the unjust treatment of Alex Bramham, the driver in Fairport’s fatal car crash, by the courts — Bramham had been given a prison sentence of a few months for dangerous driving, while the group members thought he had not been at fault. Boyd thought it was one of the best things recorded for the album, but Thompson wasn’t happy with his vocal — there was one note at the top of the melody that he couldn’t quite hit — and insisted it be kept off the record, even though that meant it would be a shorter album than normal. He did this at such a late stage that early copies of the album actually had the title printed on the sleeve, but then blacked out. He now says in his autobiography “I could have persevered, double-tracked the voice, warmed up for longer – anything. It was a good track, and the record was lacking without it. When the album was re-released, the track was restored with a more confident vocal, and it has stayed there ever since.” During the sessions for Full House the group also recorded one non-album single, Thompson and Swarbrick’s “Now Be Thankful”: [Excerpt, Fairport Convention, “Now Be Thankful”] The B-side to that was a medley of two traditional tunes plus a Swarbrick original, but was given the deliberately ridiculous title “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”] The B. McKenzie in the title was a reference to the comic-strip character Barry McKenzie, a stereotype drunk Australian created for Private Eye magazine by the comedian Barry Humphries (later to become better known for his Dame Edna Everage character) but the title was chosen for one reason only — to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the song with the longest title. Which they did, though they were later displaced by the industrial band Test Dept, and their song “Long Live British Democracy Which Flourishes and Is Constantly Perfected Under the Immaculate Guidance of the Great, Honourable, Generous and Correct Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She Is the Blue Sky in the Hearts of All Nations. Our People Pay Homage and Bow in Deep Respect and Gratitude to Her. The Milk of Human Kindness”. Full House got excellent reviews in the music press, with Rolling Stone saying “The music shows that England has finally gotten her own equivalent to The Band… By calling Fairport an English equivalent of the Band, I meant that they have soaked up enough of the tradition of their countryfolk that it begins to show all over, while they maintain their roots in rock.” Off the back of this, the group went on their first US tour, culminating in a series of shows at the Troubadour in LA, on the same bill as Rick Nelson, which were recorded and later released as a live album: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth (live)”] The Troubadour was one of the hippest venues at the time, and over their residency there the group got seen by many celebrities, some of whom joined them on stage. The first was Linda Ronstadt, who initially demurred, saying she didn’t know any of their songs. On being told they knew all of hers, she joined in with a rendition of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”. Thompson was later asked to join Ronstadt’s backing band, who would go on to become the Eagles, but he said later of this offer “I would have hated it. I’d have hated being on the road with four or five miserable Americans — they always seem miserable. And if you see them now, they still look miserable on stage — like they don’t want to be there and they don’t like each other.” The group were also joined on stage at the Troubadour on one memorable night by some former bandmates of Pegg’s. Before joining the Ian Campbell Folk Group, Pegg had played around the Birmingham beat scene, and had been in bands with John Bonham and Robert Plant, who turned up to the Troubadour with their Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page (reports differ on whether the fourth member of Zeppelin, John Paul Jones, also came along). They all got up on stage together and jammed on songs like “Hey Joe”, “Louie Louie”, and various old Elvis tunes. The show was recorded, and the tapes are apparently still in the possession of Joe Boyd, who has said he refuses to release them in case he is murdered by the ghost of Peter Grant. According to Thompson, that night ended in a three-way drinking contest between Pegg, Bonham, and Janis Joplin, and it’s testament to how strong the drinking culture is around Fairport and the British folk scene in general that Pegg outdrank both of them. According to Thompson, Bonham was found naked by a swimming pool two days later, having missed two gigs. For all their hard rock image, Led Zeppelin were admirers of a lot of the British folk and folk-rock scene, and a few months later Sandy Denny would become the only outside vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin record when she duetted with Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” on the group’s fourth album: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “The Battle of Evermore”] Denny would never actually get paid for her appearance on one of the best-selling albums of all time. That was, incidentally, not the only session that Denny was involved in around this time — she also sang on the soundtrack to a soft porn film titled Swedish Fly Girls, whose soundtrack was produced by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow?”] Shortly after Fairport’s trip to America, Joe Boyd decided he was giving up on Witchseason. The company was now losing money, and he was finding himself having to produce work for more and more acts as the various bands fissioned. The only ones he really cared about were Richard Thompson, who he was finding it more and more difficult to work with, Nick Drake, who wanted to do his next album with just an acoustic guitar anyway, Sandy Denny, who he felt was wasting her talents in Fotheringay, and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, who was more distant since his conversion to Scientology. Boyd did make some attempts to keep the company going. On a trip to Sweden, he negotiated an agreement with the manager and publisher of a Swedish band whose songs he’d found intriguing, the Hep Stars. Boyd was going to publish their songs in the UK, and in return that publisher, Stig Anderson, would get the rights to Witchseason’s catalogue in Scandinavia — a straight swap, with no money changing hands. But before Boyd could get round to signing the paperwork, he got a better offer from Mo Ostin of Warners — Ostin wanted Boyd to come over to LA and head up Warners’ new film music department. Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records and moved to LA with his fiancee Linda Peters, spending the next few years working on music for films like Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, as well as making his own documentary about Jimi Hendrix, and thus missed out on getting the UK publishing rights for ABBA, and all the income that would have brought him, for no money. And it was that decision that led to the breakup of Fotheringay. Just before Christmas 1970, Fotheringay were having a difficult session, recording the track “John the Gun”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “John the Gun”] Boyd got frustrated and kicked everyone out of the session, and went for a meal and several drinks with Denny. He kept insisting that she should dump the band and just go solo, and then something happened that the two of them would always describe differently. She asked him if he would continue to produce her records if she went solo, and he said he would. According to Boyd’s recollection of the events, he meant that he would fly back from California at some point to produce her records. According to Denny, he told her that if she went solo he would stay in Britain and not take the job in LA. This miscommunication was only discovered after Denny told the rest of Fotheringay after the Christmas break that she was splitting the band. Jerry Donahue has described that as the worst moment of his life, and Denny felt very guilty about breaking up a band with some of her closest friends in — and then when Boyd went over to the US anyway she felt a profound betrayal. Two days before Fotheringay’s final concert, in January 1971, Sandy Denny signed a solo deal with Island records, but her first solo album would not end up produced by Joe Boyd. Instead, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens was co-produced by Denny, John Wood — the engineer who had worked with Boyd on pretty much everything he’d produced, and Richard Thompson, who had just quit Fairport Convention, though he continued living with them at the Angel, at least until a truck crashed into the building in February 1971, destroying its entire front wall and forcing them to relocate. The songs chosen for The North Star Grassman and the Ravens reflected the kind of choices Denny would make on her future albums, and her eclectic taste in music. There was, of course, the obligatory Dylan cover, and the traditional folk ballad “Blackwaterside”, but there was also a cover version of Brenda Lee’s “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”] Most of the album, though, was made up of originals about various people in Denny’s life, like “Next Time Around”, about her ex-boyfriend Jackson C Frank: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Next Time Around”] The album made the top forty in the UK — Denny’s only solo album to do so — and led to her once again winning the “best female singer” award in Melody Maker’s readers’ poll that year — the male singer award was won by Rod Stewart. Both Stewart and Denny appeared the next year on the London Symphony Orchestra’s all-star version of The Who’s Tommy, which had originally been intended as a vehicle for Stewart before Roger Daltrey got involved. Stewart’s role was reduced to a single song, “Pinball Wizard”, while Denny sang on “It’s a Boy”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “It’s a Boy”] While Fotheringay had split up, all the band members play on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. Guitarists Donahue and Lucas only play on a couple of the tracks, with Richard Thompson playing most of the guitar on the record. But Fotheringay’s rhythm section of Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway play on almost every track. Another musician on the album, Ian Whiteman, would possibly have a profound effect on the future direction of Richard Thompson’s career and life. Whiteman was the former keyboard player for the mod band The Action, having joined them just before they became the blues-rock band Mighty Baby. But Mighty Baby had split up when all of the band except the lead singer had converted to Islam. Richard Thompson was on his own spiritual journey at this point, and became a Sufi – the same branch of Islam as Whiteman – soon after the session, though Thompson has said that his conversion was independent of Whiteman’s. The two did become very close and work together a lot in the mid-seventies though. Thompson had supposedly left Fairport because he was writing material that wasn’t suited to the band, but he spent more than a year after quitting the group working on sessions rather than doing anything with his own material, and these sessions tended to involve the same core group of musicians. One of the more unusual was a folk-rock supergroup called The Bunch, put together by Trevor Lucas. Richard Branson had recently bought a recording studio, and wanted a band to test it out before opening it up for commercial customers, so with this free studio time Lucas decided to record a set of fifties rock and roll covers. He gathered together Thompson, Denny, Whiteman, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Pat Donaldson, Gerry Conway, pianist Tony Cox, the horn section that would later form the core of the Average White Band, and Linda Peters, who had now split up with Joe Boyd and returned to the UK, and who had started dating Thompson. They recorded an album of covers of songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Otis and others: [Excerpt: The Bunch, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The early seventies was a hugely productive time for this group of musicians, as they all continued playing on each other’s projects. One notable album was No Roses by Shirley Collins, which featured Thompson, Mattacks, Whiteman, Simon Nicol, Lal and Mike Waterson, and Ashley Hutchings, who was at that point married to Collins, as well as some more unusual musicians like the free jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill: [Excerpt: Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band, “Claudy Banks”] Collins was at the time the most respected female singer in British traditional music, and already had a substantial career including a series of important records made with her sister Dolly, work with guitarists like Davey Graham, and time spent in the 1950s collecting folk songs in the Southern US with her then partner Alan Lomax – according to Collins she did much of the actual work, but Lomax only mentioned her in a single sentence in his book on this work. Some of the same group of musicians went on to work on an album of traditional Morris dancing tunes, titled Morris On, credited to “Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield”, with Collins singing lead on two tracks: [Excerpt: Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield with Shirley Collins, “The Willow Tree”] Thompson thought that that album was the best of the various side projects he was involved in at the time, comparing it favourably to Rock On, which he thought was rather slight, saying later “Conceptually, Fairport, Ashley and myself and Sandy were developing a more fragile style of music that nobody else was particularly interested in, a British Folk Rock idea that had a logical development to it, although we all presented it our own way. Morris On was rather more true to what we were doing. Rock On was rather a retro step. I'm not sure it was lasting enough as a record but Sandy did sing really well on the Buddy Holly songs.” Hutchings used the musicians on No Roses and Morris On as the basis for his band the Albion Band, which continues to this day. Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks both quit Fairport to join the Albion Band, though Mattacks soon returned. Nicol would not return to Fairport for several years, though, and for a long period in the mid-seventies Fairport Convention had no original members. Unfortunately, while Collins was involved in the Albion Band early on, she and Hutchings ended up divorcing, and the stress from the divorce led to Collins developing spasmodic dysphonia, a stress-related illness which makes it impossible for the sufferer to sing. She did eventually regain her vocal ability, but between 1978 and 2016 she was unable to perform at all, and lost decades of her career. Richard Thompson occasionally performed with the Albion Band early on, but he was getting stretched a little thin with all these sessions. Linda Peters said later of him “When I came back from America, he was working in Sandy’s band, and doing sessions by the score. Always with Pat Donaldson and Dave Mattacks. Richard would turn up with his guitar, one day he went along to do a session with one of those folkie lady singers — and there were Pat and DM. They all cracked. Richard smashed his amp and said “Right! No more sessions!” In 1972 he got round to releasing his first solo album, Henry the Human Fly, which featured guest appearances by Linda Peters and Sandy Denny among others: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”] Unfortunately, while that album has later become regarded as one of the classics of its genre, at the time it was absolutely slated by the music press. The review in Melody Maker, for example, read in part “Some of Richard Thompson’s ideas sound great – which is really the saving grace of this album, because most of the music doesn’t. The tragedy is that Thompson’s “British rock music” is such an unconvincing concoction… Even the songs that do integrate rock and traditional styles of electric guitar rhythms and accordion and fiddle decoration – and also include explicit, meaningful lyrics are marred by bottle-up vocals, uninspiring guitar phrases and a general lack of conviction in performance.” Henry the Human Fly was released in the US by Warners, who had a reciprocal licensing deal with Island (and for whom Joe Boyd was working at the time, which may have had something to do with that) but according to Thompson it became the lowest-selling record that Warners ever put out (though I’ve also seen that claim made about Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, another album that has later been rediscovered). Thompson was hugely depressed by this reaction, and blamed his own singing. Happily, though, by this point he and Linda had become a couple — they would marry in 1972 — and they started playing folk clubs as a duo, or sometimes in a trio with Simon Nicol. Thompson was also playing with Sandy Denny’s backing band at this point, and played on every track on her second solo album, Sandy. This album was meant to be her big commercial breakthrough, with a glamorous cover photo by David Bailey, and with a more American sound, including steel guitar by Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers (whose overdubs were supervised in LA by Joe Boyd): [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”] The album was given a big marketing push by Island, and “Listen, Listen” was made single of the week on the Radio 1 Breakfast show: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Listen, Listen”] But it did even worse than the previous album, sending her into something of a depression. Linda Thompson (as the former Linda Peters now was) said of this period “After the Sandy album, it got her down that her popularity didn't suddenly increase in leaps and bounds, and that was the start of her really fretting about the way her career was going. Things only escalated after that. People like me or Martin Carthy or Norma Waterson would think, ‘What are you on about? This is folk music.'” After Sandy’s release, Denny realised she could no longer afford to tour with a band, and so went back to performing just acoustically or on piano. The only new music to be released by either of these ex-members of Fairport Convention in 1973 was, oddly, on an album by the band they were no longer members of. After Thompson had left Fairport, the group had managed to release two whole albums with the same lineup — Swarbrick, Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks. But then Nicol and Mattacks had both quit the band to join the Albion Band with their former bandmate Ashley Hutchings, leading to a situation where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport plus their longtime drummer while Fairport Convention itself had no original members and was down to just Swarbrick and Pegg. Needing to fulfil their contracts, they then recruited three former members of Fotheringay — Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, Donahue on lead guitar, and Conway on drums. Conway was only a session player at the time, and Mattacks soon returned to the band, but Lucas and Donahue became full-time members. This new lineup of Fairport Convention released two albums in 1973, widely regarded as the group’s most inconsistent records, and on the title track of the first, “Rosie”, Richard Thompson guested on guitar, with Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Rosie”] Neither Sandy Denny nor Richard Thompson released a record themselves in 1973, but in neither case was this through the artists’ choice. The record industry was changing in the early 1970s, as we’ll see in later episodes, and was less inclined to throw good money after bad in the pursuit of art. Island Records prided itself on being a home for great artists, but it was still a business, and needed to make money. We’ll talk about the OPEC oil crisis and its effect on the music industry much more when the podcast gets to 1973, but in brief, the production of oil by the US peaked in 1970 and started to decrease, leading to them importing more and more oil from the Middle East. As a result of this, oil prices rose slowly between 1971 and 1973, then very quickly towards the end of 1973 as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. As vinyl is made of oil, suddenly producing records became much more expensive, and in this period a lot of labels decided not to release already-completed albums, until what they hoped would be a brief period of shortages passed. Both Denny and Thompson recorded albums at this point that got put to one side by Island. In the case of Thompson, it was the first album by Richard and Linda as a duo, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Today, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, and as one of the two masterpieces that bookended Richard and Linda’s career as a duo and their marriage. But when they recorded the album, full of Richard’s dark songs, it was the opposite of commercial. Even a song that’s more or less a boy-girl song, like “Has He Got a Friend for Me?” has lyrics like “He wouldn’t notice me passing by/I could be in the gutter, or dangling down from a tree” [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “Has He got a Friend For Me?”] While something like “The Calvary Cross” is oblique and haunted, and seems to cast a pall over the entire album: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “The Calvary Cross”] The album itself had been cheap to make — it had been recorded in only a week, with Thompson bringing in musicians he knew well and had worked with a lot previously to cut the tracks as-live in only a handful of takes — but Island didn’t think it was worth releasing. The record stayed on the shelf for nearly a year after recording, until Island got a new head of A&R, Richard Williams. Williams said of the album’s release “Muff Winwood had been doing A&R, but he was more interested in production… I had a conversation with Muff as soon as I got there, and he said there are a few hangovers, some outstanding problems. And one of them was Richard Thompson. He said there’s this album we gave him the money to make — which was I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight — and nobody’s very interested in it. Henry the Human Fly had been a bit of a commercial disappointment, and although Island was altruistic and independent and known for only recording good stuff, success was important… Either a record had to do well or somebody had to believe in it a lot. And it seemed as if neither of those things were true at that point of Richard.” Williams, though, was hugely impressed when he listened to the album. He compared Richard Thompson’s guitar playing to John Coltrane’s sax, and called Thompson “the folk poet of the rainy streets”, but also said “Linda brightened it, made it more commercial. and I thought that “Bright Lights” itself seemed a really commercial song.” The rest of the management at Island got caught up in Williams’ enthusiasm, and even decided to release the title track as a single: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Neither single nor album charted — indeed it would not be until 1991 that Richard Thompson would make a record that made the top forty in the UK — but the album got enough critical respect that Richard and Linda released two albums the year after. The first of these, Hokey Pokey, is a much more upbeat record than their previous one — Richard Thompson has called it “quite a music-hall influenced record” and cited the influence of George Formby and Harry Lauder. For once, the claim of music hall influence is audible in the music. Usually when a British musician is claimed to have a music ha

In onda Fabio Barbieri. Musiche: Doves, Michael Head and the Strands, Bonnie Prince Billy, Patterson Hood, Jim White and Trey Blake, Cure, Vashti Bunyan, Toumani Diabate, Anouar Brahem, Anja Lechner, Django Bates and Dave Holland, Stefano Bollani Trio.

"Lookaftering" Well, we talked about doing the thing and the fact of the matter is, the British-born Vashti Bunyan started doing the thing pretty early. In the 1960s, while studying at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford, Bunyan was expelled for focussing more on making music than on drawing. So she went home and started making music. When her mother's hip actress friend got the 19 year old Bunyan a face to face with the Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham, he was properly charmed and handed her the Stones track "Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind" to record. And so she did. Backed by her own song "I Want To Be Alone," "Some Things" featured Jimmy Page on guitar, but it didn't turn as many heads as Bunyan had hoped. She did another single, sang on a Twice As Much album, and appeared in a documentary about swinging London. So the ball was rolling. Bunyan and her fella hit the road in search of an artistic community and she ended up Holland, The Scottish Highlands and the Cumbrian Mountains. Her journey informed the songs for her debut album Just Another Diamond Day, which is fabulous, but was too fabulous for the time it was released. Look, sometimes the world just has to catch up and it did. But it took 30 years. Bunyan was so disappointed by Diamond Day not really troubling the charts, she hung up her guitar, lived in the Scottish Borders in cottages occupied by the Incredible String Band and raised three kids, putting her music career on mothballs, seemingly for good. The world was quietly catching up however, and Diamond Day had sneakily become a cult classic. It was re-released in 2000 and with Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart championing her work, Bunyan was introduced to a whole new generation, who adored her. Since then, she's recorded two more albums--Lookaftering and Heartleap--and she's appeared on albums by Banhart and Animal Collective, she appeared at London's Royal Festival Hall with The Heritage Orchestra () as part of Massive Attack's Meltdown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(festival)), she wrote a memoir, and was the subject of a full-length documentary. So she's back. Yes. No. I mean, sort of. But I also mean yes. Confused? You won't be for long. To commemorate Lookaftering's 20th anniversary, DiCristina Records is releasing an expanded edition of Bunyan's sophomore album and it's packed with demos, live stuff, fabulous liner notes, lyric sheets and paintings by Bunyan's daughter. Bunyan's music is hard to classify--it's bedroom pop that isn't pop and wasn't recorded in a bedroom but it's got this hushed and fractured quality that's filled with mysterious power. This conversation is a real treat and in the end, there's an unexpected walk across the rooftops that's really cool. IG: @vashtibunyan www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereoembersmagazine.com) www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) Stereo Embers IG: @emberspodcast Bluesky: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

British singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan is celebrating her 80th birthday with a new edition of her 2005 record ‘Lookaftering’, including added demos, live versions and sleeve notes from its producer, Max Richter. The lyric booklet features paintings by Bunyan’s daughter, which beautifully brings to life the wistful, dreamy tracks. Robert Bounds sits down with Vashti Bunyan to discuss the cult reception to her work and how a new generation breathed new life into her music.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I've wanted to do this episode for a long time; not just the subject matter, but my guests as well. Today I'm talking about making sophomore albums with Vashti Bunyan and Lucy Kruger; two people who have vastly different experiences making their second albums. Lucy has done it twice with her bands Medicine Boy and Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys. But they were both very different approaches from one another.  Vashti took a different route. She waited 35 years to make her sophomore album. In fact, she said that, between the disappointing reception to her debut and the extended gap between the two albums, her second album, Lookaftering, didn't feel like a second album at all. This was a fun topic, but I had been looking for a reason to have Lucy & Vashti on together for years. And the reissue of Vashti's second album, Lookaftering, complete with live or demo versions of almost every song on the album, was the perfect reason. And we go a bit beyond sophomore albums because that's what happens when you're enjoying a casual conversation. Check out Lucy Kruger's latest album, A Human Home, on Bandcamp or wherever you get music. Follow her @lucy_kruger to keep up with her. Pick up Vashti Bnyan's reissue of her sophomore album, Lookaftering, on Fat Cat records, Bandcamp, or wherever you buy music. Follow her on Facebook or on Instagram @vashtibunyan. Follow the podcast @PerformanceAnx on socials. Our merch is available at performanceanx.threadless.com. Coffee money is happily accepted at ko-fi.com/performanceanxiety. Now let's talk sophomore albums with Lucy Kruger & Vashti Bunyan on Performance Anxiety on the Pantheon Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My irregular series on artists, albums or movies that were either denied classic status at the time or who have been forgotten from the conversation since. Here a look a 60s UK folk music genius who branched out into astonishing music in the 1970s (see also Nick Drake, John Fay, Vashti Bunyan...). A walk through his life and career through the lens of four totemic albums from that period, including the absolutely essential for anyone releases, Solid Air (10/10) and One Word (10/10).

In one of the most remarkable music stories of our time, Vashti Bunyan's terrifying and beautiful experience as part of a travelling community set the light for her debut album Just Another Diamond Day in 1970 - an album that wasn't truly discovered until 30 years later. Now about to reissue her second wonderful album Lookaftering, she reflects on her life with forgiveness, surprise and gratitude. Photo: Christopher Fernandez Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Diamond Day” is a charming 1970s folksong by English singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan. The lyrics about a sweet family farm inspired Caitlin Carnahan, today's guest, to borrow its title for her business, Diamond Day Bouquet. The farm specializes in unique and old-fashioned, garden-style flowers grown organically and with love. Caitlin has developed an expertise growing for […] The post Episode 686 – An autumn flower farm tour + conversation with Caitlin Carnahan of Diamond Day Bouquet, based on Washington's Olympic Peninsula appeared first on Slow Flowers Podcast with Debra Prinzing.

C'est au Royaume de Belgique que se pose la #SessionLive avec 2 ovnis, Thomas Jean Henri dit Cabane et la violoniste Catherine Graindorge. (Rediffusion) Notre 1er invité est l'artiste belge Cabane pour la sortie de l'album Brûlée.Cabane est le projet du musicien et photographe belge Thomas Jean Henri. Après un premier album Grande Est la Maison, Thomas Jean Henri revient aujourd'hui avec la deuxième partie d'une œuvre qu'il construit comme un triptyque. Le deuxième album de Cabane réunit les voix des Anglais Kate Stables (This Is The Kit) et Sam Genders (Tunng). Un casting dont il rêvait depuis longtemps et qui est porté au service de chansons aux frontières de la folk et de la pop orchestrale. Loin des humeurs du monde, Brulée sera un abri pour les amoureux de Nick Drake et de Vashti Bunyan ou encore de toutes celles et ceux touché·es par la délicatesse de Mark Hollis, Sufjan Stevens ou Robert Wyatt.C'est en 2015 que Thomas Jean Henri a posé les fondations de Cabane, un projet transdisciplinaire où il y associe musique, photo et vidéo.Le single Today a été accompagné par une exposition abritant et amplifiant le clip de ce premier extrait de l'album. L'expo a été accueillie par la galerie dédiée à la photographie, L'Enfant Sauvage, à Bruxelles. Thomas y a présenté les 365 clichés qui, montés bout à bout, jour après jour, constituent le clip de Today. « Du dimanche 9 janvier 2022 au lundi 9 janvier 2023, j'ai mené un rituel photographique en me rendant tous les jours à la place Poelaert à Bruxelles, à 3,8 km de chez moi, pour y photographier le ciel avec mon appareil argentique moyen format. Nous vivons tous les mêmes journées… Mais en gardons-nous les mêmes souvenirs ? ». Thomas y a proposé à ses visiteurs de repartir avec une photo, en échange d'un souvenir écrit de leur main. Pour nous faire patienter, Thomas nous a distillé tout au long de l'automne 2023 une série de titres inédits issus des sessions d'enregistrement de son premier album (The unreleased series Pt.1).Titres interprétés au grand studio- Today Live RFI- All we could do, extrait de l'album- Dead Song Live RFI.Line Up : Thomas Jean Henri, guitare, Kate Stables, chant.Son : Mathias Taylor et Benoît Letirant.► Album Brûlée (Cabane Rd 2024)YouTube - Instagram. Puis nous recevons la violoniste Catherine Graindorge pour la sortie de l'album Songs for the Dead.Après son passionnant EP en duo de 2022 avec Iggy Pop The Dictator, la compositrice et musicienne belge Catherine Graindorge revient avec un album d'ensemble lumineux où elle collabore avec Simon Huw Jones (And Also theTrees). Des chansons instrumentales et vocales sur la vie, l'amour et la mort. Inspiré par les mythologies et les élégies des Grecs aux Beats. Histoires et mythes. Ils se répandent comme des rivières dans nos vies, nos cultures. Certains sont anciens, d'autres plus récents, mais tous contribuent à nous façonner, à nous guider et à nous consoler sur les chemins de la vie, de l'amour et de la mort. Ils ont un pouvoir tranquille, et c'est ce que Catherine Graindorge explore dans son nouvel album Songs for the Dead. Un nouvel album en hommage au poème ‘A Dream Record' d'Allen Ginsberg « Le poème m'a touché, il m'a fait réfléchir sur l'art, la vie et la réalité, et j'ai donc décidé de construire l'album autour de lui ».Dans cette œuvre, Allen Ginsberg, rêveur, rend visite à Joan, l'épouse décédée de l'écrivain William Burroughs, qui l'a tuée alors qu'elle tentait prétendument d'imiter Guillaume Tell et de tirer un verre sur sa tête. Le couple rit et parle d'amis communs comme si elle était encore en vie. Mais la réalité de la tombe revient et le rêve s'évanouit.« Je ne savais rien de Joan Vollmer, mais le poème dit tout de nos vies. Quelque chose peut arriver et il n'y a pas de retour, sauf dans nos rêves, lorsque les morts viennent nous rendre visite. Comme dans le mythe d'Orphée et d'Eurydice. Dans les yeux d'Orphée, Eurydice semble vivante un instant, mais un seul regard suffit pour qu'elle disparaisse dans le monde des morts. Il veut la ramener à la vie par l'amour qu'il lui porte ».Titres interprétés au grand studio- Joan Live RFI- The Dictator, extrait duo avec Iggy Pop voir le clip - Orpheus Head, extrait de l'album- The Unvisited Garden Live RFI.Line Up : Cyrille de Haes, contrebasse, Catherine Graindorge, alto + voix.Son : Mathias Taylor, Benoît Letirant.► Album Songs for the Dead (Glitterbeat 2024).YouTube - Facebook.

C'est au Royaume de Belgique que se pose la #SessionLive avec 2 ovnis, Thomas Jean Henri dit Cabane et la violoniste Catherine Graindorge. (Rediffusion) Notre 1er invité est l'artiste belge Cabane pour la sortie de l'album Brûlée.Cabane est le projet du musicien et photographe belge Thomas Jean Henri. Après un premier album Grande Est la Maison, Thomas Jean Henri revient aujourd'hui avec la deuxième partie d'une œuvre qu'il construit comme un triptyque. Le deuxième album de Cabane réunit les voix des Anglais Kate Stables (This Is The Kit) et Sam Genders (Tunng). Un casting dont il rêvait depuis longtemps et qui est porté au service de chansons aux frontières de la folk et de la pop orchestrale. Loin des humeurs du monde, Brulée sera un abri pour les amoureux de Nick Drake et de Vashti Bunyan ou encore de toutes celles et ceux touché·es par la délicatesse de Mark Hollis, Sufjan Stevens ou Robert Wyatt.C'est en 2015 que Thomas Jean Henri a posé les fondations de Cabane, un projet transdisciplinaire où il y associe musique, photo et vidéo.Le single Today a été accompagné par une exposition abritant et amplifiant le clip de ce premier extrait de l'album. L'expo a été accueillie par la galerie dédiée à la photographie, L'Enfant Sauvage, à Bruxelles. Thomas y a présenté les 365 clichés qui, montés bout à bout, jour après jour, constituent le clip de Today. « Du dimanche 9 janvier 2022 au lundi 9 janvier 2023, j'ai mené un rituel photographique en me rendant tous les jours à la place Poelaert à Bruxelles, à 3,8 km de chez moi, pour y photographier le ciel avec mon appareil argentique moyen format. Nous vivons tous les mêmes journées… Mais en gardons-nous les mêmes souvenirs ? ». Thomas y a proposé à ses visiteurs de repartir avec une photo, en échange d'un souvenir écrit de leur main. Pour nous faire patienter, Thomas nous a distillé tout au long de l'automne 2023 une série de titres inédits issus des sessions d'enregistrement de son premier album (The unreleased series Pt.1).Titres interprétés au grand studio- Today Live RFI- All we could do, extrait de l'album- Dead Song Live RFI.Line Up : Thomas Jean Henri, guitare, Kate Stables, chant.Son : Mathias Taylor et Benoît Letirant.► Album Brûlée (Cabane Rd 2024)YouTube - Instagram. Puis nous recevons la violoniste Catherine Graindorge pour la sortie de l'album Songs for the Dead.Après son passionnant EP en duo de 2022 avec Iggy Pop The Dictator, la compositrice et musicienne belge Catherine Graindorge revient avec un album d'ensemble lumineux où elle collabore avec Simon Huw Jones (And Also theTrees). Des chansons instrumentales et vocales sur la vie, l'amour et la mort. Inspiré par les mythologies et les élégies des Grecs aux Beats. Histoires et mythes. Ils se répandent comme des rivières dans nos vies, nos cultures. Certains sont anciens, d'autres plus récents, mais tous contribuent à nous façonner, à nous guider et à nous consoler sur les chemins de la vie, de l'amour et de la mort. Ils ont un pouvoir tranquille, et c'est ce que Catherine Graindorge explore dans son nouvel album Songs for the Dead. Un nouvel album en hommage au poème ‘A Dream Record' d'Allen Ginsberg « Le poème m'a touché, il m'a fait réfléchir sur l'art, la vie et la réalité, et j'ai donc décidé de construire l'album autour de lui ».Dans cette œuvre, Allen Ginsberg, rêveur, rend visite à Joan, l'épouse décédée de l'écrivain William Burroughs, qui l'a tuée alors qu'elle tentait prétendument d'imiter Guillaume Tell et de tirer un verre sur sa tête. Le couple rit et parle d'amis communs comme si elle était encore en vie. Mais la réalité de la tombe revient et le rêve s'évanouit.« Je ne savais rien de Joan Vollmer, mais le poème dit tout de nos vies. Quelque chose peut arriver et il n'y a pas de retour, sauf dans nos rêves, lorsque les morts viennent nous rendre visite. Comme dans le mythe d'Orphée et d'Eurydice. Dans les yeux d'Orphée, Eurydice semble vivante un instant, mais un seul regard suffit pour qu'elle disparaisse dans le monde des morts. Il veut la ramener à la vie par l'amour qu'il lui porte ».Titres interprétés au grand studio- Joan Live RFI- The Dictator, extrait duo avec Iggy Pop voir le clip - Orpheus Head, extrait de l'album- The Unvisited Garden Live RFI.Line Up : Cyrille de Haes, contrebasse, Catherine Graindorge, alto + voix.Son : Mathias Taylor, Benoît Letirant.► Album Songs for the Dead (Glitterbeat 2024).YouTube - Facebook.

This week on Transmissions, we're sitting down with a genuine legend: Joe Boyd, author of And The Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music, out September 24 from ZE Books. On the front cover of the book Brian Eno—a venerated saint in the Aquarium Drunkard canon—declares: “I doubt I'll ever read a better account of the history and sociology of popular music than this one.”  Joe Boyd's career is the stuff of myth. As a producer, he's worked with a murder's row of collaborators, including Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, R.E.M., Richard and Linda Thompson, Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, 10,00 Maniacs, and many more. In 2006, Boyd released a memoir, White Bicycles – Making Music in the 1960s, which documented his time in the studio during that decade, but And the Roots of Rhythm Remain casts an even wider net, exploring the overlap of musical cultures and the complicated, human negotiations that undergird creative synthesis.  As you'll hear in the early part of our talk, Joe played a pivotal role Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury's music writing journey. In 2008, Woodbury reviewed a Nick Drake box set for the sorely missed Tiny Mix Tapes. The piece also included an email interview with Boyd, whose responses were insightful and in-depth—an experience that inspired Woodbury to chase after interviews. So this conversation picks up the thread some decade and a half later, detailing not only Boyd's new book, but also his experiences with Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, Vashti Bunyan, and many more adventures. Aquarium Drunkard is supported by our subscribers. Head over and peruse our site, where you'll find nearly 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.  Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard

C'est au Royaume de Belgique que se pose la #SessionLive avec 2 ovnis, Thomas Jean Henri dit Cabane et la violoniste Catherine Graindorge. Notre 1er invité est l'artiste belge Cabane pour la sortie de l'album Brûlée.Cabane est le projet du musicien et photographe belge Thomas Jean Henri. Après un premier album Grande Est la Maison, Thomas Jean Henri revient aujourd'hui avec la deuxième partie d'une œuvre qu'il construit comme un triptyque. Le deuxième album de Cabane réunit les voix des Anglais Kate Stables (This Is The Kit) et Sam Genders (Tunng). Un casting dont il rêvait depuis longtemps et qui est porté au service de chansons aux frontières de la folk et de la pop orchestrale. Loin des humeurs du monde, Brulée sera un abri pour les amoureux de Nick Drake et de Vashti Bunyan ou encore de toutes celles et ceux touché·es par la délicatesse de Mark Hollis, Sufjan Stevens ou Robert Wyatt.C'est en 2015 que Thomas Jean Henri a posé les fondations de Cabane, un projet transdisciplinaire où il y associe musique, photo et vidéo.Le single Today a été accompagné par une exposition abritant et amplifiant le clip de ce premier extrait de l'album. L'expo a été accueillie par la galerie dédiée à la photographie, L'Enfant Sauvage, à Bruxelles. Thomas y a présenté les 365 clichés qui, montés bout à bout, jour après jour, constituent le clip de Today. « Du dimanche 9 janvier 2022 au lundi 9 janvier 2023, j'ai mené un rituel photographique en me rendant tous les jours à la place Poelaert à Bruxelles, à 3,8 km de chez moi, pour y photographier le ciel avec mon appareil argentique moyen format. Nous vivons tous les mêmes journées… Mais en gardons-nous les mêmes souvenirs ? ». Thomas y a proposé à ses visiteurs de repartir avec une photo, en échange d'un souvenir écrit de leur main. Pour nous faire patienter, Thomas nous a distillé tout au long de l'automne 2023 une série de titres inédits issus des sessions d'enregistrement de son premier album (The unreleased series Pt.1).Titres interprétés au grand studio- Today Live RFI- All we could do, extrait de l'album- Dead Song Live RFI.Line Up : Thomas Jean Henri, guitare, Kate Stables, chant.Son : Mathias Taylor et Benoît Letirant.► Album Brûlée (Cabane Rd 2024)YouTube - Instagram. Puis nous recevons la violoniste Catherine Graindorge pour la sortie de l'album Songs for the Dead.Après son passionnant EP en duo de 2022 avec Iggy Pop The Dictator, la compositrice et musicienne belge Catherine Graindorge revient avec un album d'ensemble lumineux où elle collabore avec Simon Huw Jones (And Also theTrees). Des chansons instrumentales et vocales sur la vie, l'amour et la mort. Inspiré par les mythologies et les élégies des Grecs aux Beats. Histoires et mythes. Ils se répandent comme des rivières dans nos vies, nos cultures. Certains sont anciens, d'autres plus récents, mais tous contribuent à nous façonner, à nous guider et à nous consoler sur les chemins de la vie, de l'amour et de la mort. Ils ont un pouvoir tranquille, et c'est ce que Catherine Graindorge explore dans son nouvel album Songs for the Dead. Un nouvel album en hommage au poème ‘A Dream Record' d'Allen Ginsberg « Le poème m'a touché, il m'a fait réfléchir sur l'art, la vie et la réalité, et j'ai donc décidé de construire l'album autour de lui ».Dans cette œuvre, Allen Ginsberg, rêveur, rend visite à Joan, l'épouse décédée de l'écrivain William Burroughs, qui l'a tuée alors qu'elle tentait prétendument d'imiter Guillaume Tell et de tirer un verre sur sa tête. Le couple rit et parle d'amis communs comme si elle était encore en vie. Mais la réalité de la tombe revient et le rêve s'évanouit.« Je ne savais rien de Joan Vollmer, mais le poème dit tout de nos vies. Quelque chose peut arriver et il n'y a pas de retour, sauf dans nos rêves, lorsque les morts viennent nous rendre visite. Comme dans le mythe d'Orphée et d'Eurydice. Dans les yeux d'Orphée, Eurydice semble vivante un instant, mais un seul regard suffit pour qu'elle disparaisse dans le monde des morts. Il veut la ramener à la vie par l'amour qu'il lui porte ».Titres interprétés au grand studio- Joan Live RFI- The Dictator, extrait duo avec Iggy Pop voir le clip - Orpheus Head, extrait de l'album- The Unvisited Garden Live RFI.Line Up : Cyrille de Haes, contrebasse, Catherine Graindorge, alto + voix.Son : Mathias Taylor, Benoît Letirant.► Album Songs for the Dead (Glitterbeat 2024).YouTube - Facebook.

C'est au Royaume de Belgique que se pose la #SessionLive avec 2 ovnis, Thomas Jean Henri dit Cabane et la violoniste Catherine Graindorge. Notre 1er invité est l'artiste belge Cabane pour la sortie de l'album Brûlée.Cabane est le projet du musicien et photographe belge Thomas Jean Henri. Après un premier album Grande Est la Maison, Thomas Jean Henri revient aujourd'hui avec la deuxième partie d'une œuvre qu'il construit comme un triptyque. Le deuxième album de Cabane réunit les voix des Anglais Kate Stables (This Is The Kit) et Sam Genders (Tunng). Un casting dont il rêvait depuis longtemps et qui est porté au service de chansons aux frontières de la folk et de la pop orchestrale. Loin des humeurs du monde, Brulée sera un abri pour les amoureux de Nick Drake et de Vashti Bunyan ou encore de toutes celles et ceux touché·es par la délicatesse de Mark Hollis, Sufjan Stevens ou Robert Wyatt.C'est en 2015 que Thomas Jean Henri a posé les fondations de Cabane, un projet transdisciplinaire où il y associe musique, photo et vidéo.Le single Today a été accompagné par une exposition abritant et amplifiant le clip de ce premier extrait de l'album. L'expo a été accueillie par la galerie dédiée à la photographie, L'Enfant Sauvage, à Bruxelles. Thomas y a présenté les 365 clichés qui, montés bout à bout, jour après jour, constituent le clip de Today. « Du dimanche 9 janvier 2022 au lundi 9 janvier 2023, j'ai mené un rituel photographique en me rendant tous les jours à la place Poelaert à Bruxelles, à 3,8 km de chez moi, pour y photographier le ciel avec mon appareil argentique moyen format. Nous vivons tous les mêmes journées… Mais en gardons-nous les mêmes souvenirs ? ». Thomas y a proposé à ses visiteurs de repartir avec une photo, en échange d'un souvenir écrit de leur main. Pour nous faire patienter, Thomas nous a distillé tout au long de l'automne 2023 une série de titres inédits issus des sessions d'enregistrement de son premier album (The unreleased series Pt.1).Titres interprétés au grand studio- Today Live RFI- All we could do, extrait de l'album- Dead Song Live RFI.Line Up : Thomas Jean Henri, guitare, Kate Stables, chant.Son : Mathias Taylor et Benoît Letirant.► Album Brûlée (Cabane Rd 2024)YouTube - Instagram. Puis nous recevons la violoniste Catherine Graindorge pour la sortie de l'album Songs for the Dead.Après son passionnant EP en duo de 2022 avec Iggy Pop The Dictator, la compositrice et musicienne belge Catherine Graindorge revient avec un album d'ensemble lumineux où elle collabore avec Simon Huw Jones (And Also theTrees). Des chansons instrumentales et vocales sur la vie, l'amour et la mort. Inspiré par les mythologies et les élégies des Grecs aux Beats. Histoires et mythes. Ils se répandent comme des rivières dans nos vies, nos cultures. Certains sont anciens, d'autres plus récents, mais tous contribuent à nous façonner, à nous guider et à nous consoler sur les chemins de la vie, de l'amour et de la mort. Ils ont un pouvoir tranquille, et c'est ce que Catherine Graindorge explore dans son nouvel album Songs for the Dead. Un nouvel album en hommage au poème ‘A Dream Record' d'Allen Ginsberg « Le poème m'a touché, il m'a fait réfléchir sur l'art, la vie et la réalité, et j'ai donc décidé de construire l'album autour de lui ».Dans cette œuvre, Allen Ginsberg, rêveur, rend visite à Joan, l'épouse décédée de l'écrivain William Burroughs, qui l'a tuée alors qu'elle tentait prétendument d'imiter Guillaume Tell et de tirer un verre sur sa tête. Le couple rit et parle d'amis communs comme si elle était encore en vie. Mais la réalité de la tombe revient et le rêve s'évanouit.« Je ne savais rien de Joan Vollmer, mais le poème dit tout de nos vies. Quelque chose peut arriver et il n'y a pas de retour, sauf dans nos rêves, lorsque les morts viennent nous rendre visite. Comme dans le mythe d'Orphée et d'Eurydice. Dans les yeux d'Orphée, Eurydice semble vivante un instant, mais un seul regard suffit pour qu'elle disparaisse dans le monde des morts. Il veut la ramener à la vie par l'amour qu'il lui porte ».Titres interprétés au grand studio- Joan Live RFI- The Dictator, extrait duo avec Iggy Pop voir le clip - Orpheus Head, extrait de l'album- The Unvisited Garden Live RFI.Line Up : Cyrille de Haes, contrebasse, Catherine Graindorge, alto + voix.Son : Mathias Taylor, Benoît Letirant.► Album Songs for the Dead (Glitterbeat 2024).YouTube - Facebook.

When I started this show five years ago, I made a short list of artists I wanted to feature.  Near the top of that list was the British musician Vashti Bunyan. Vashti Bunyan released her beautiful album “Just Another Diamond Day” in 1970, and it was almost immediately buried in time.  She'd had her fair share of disappointment in the music business and walked away from it altogether, until some three decades later when people like me discovered her music for the first time.  Suddenly, Vashti was in demand, and her music career was back on track.  In her recent memoir, “Wayward” from White Rabbit publishing, she chronicles her early days in the pop music world, collaborations with members of The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, her unbelievable horse and wagon journey throughout the UK that inspired her first album, and her unlikely return to the music world. Vashti speaks with me today from her home in Scotland. This the Season 9 premiere, and also the first episode since Low Profile has joned the Ruinous Media Network. It was produced by Markly Morrison, edited by Rose Nielsen, with artwork by Jack Habegger. Low Profile is supported by you on Patreon. The program receives in-kind support from Olympia, WA independent businesses San Francisco Street Bakery, Rainy Day Records, Old School Pizzeria, and Three Magnets Brewing Company.

Dan tempts fate when he calls winter out for being a chicken $h1t in December, then they make-up when he plays a full show of 'Winter' songs. Included: Be Your Own Pet, Of Monsters and Men, The Head & The Heart, Bright Eyes, Vashti Bunyan, a couple winter bike riding stories and much more.

  1.ª parte:   1 - Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place - Flown 2 - Hilary Woods - Acts of Light - Where The Bough Has Broken 3 - James Heather - Reworks: Vol2 - Meant To Be ((Voces8 Rework) 4 - Antonymes - The Gramophone Suite - Coming Into Silence 5 - David Norland - Glam Tear Stain - Agate Or Barium 6 - Rosa Anschütz - Interior - By Gaining Many Somethings 7 - Arvo Pärt, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir - Tractus - Pärt: Littlemore Tractus 8 - Julia Kent - Temporal - Through the Window 9 - Spencer Krug - I Just Drew This Knife - The Shadow 10 - Federico Mosconi - Nocturnal - At 1.00 A.M. 11 - Om Vega, Kris Vango - All Around Me - All Around Me 12 - Bersarin Quartett - Systeme - Gespenster 13 - Mia Joy - Celestial Mirror - More Green 14 - Vashti Bunyan, Devendra Banhart - Light In The Attic & Friends - How Could You Let Me Go (Madelynn Von Ritz aka Lynn Castle Cover)   2.ª parte:   15 - Blonde Redhead - Sit Down for Dinner - Rest of Her Life 16 - Dakota Suite / Dag Rosenqvist / Emanuele Errante - What Matters Most - Broken Things Are The Glue Of The World 17 - Dakota Suite / Dag Rosenqvist / Emanuele Errante - What Matters Most - Now That You Know 18 - Full Of Hell, Nothing - When No Birds Sang - Like Stars In The Firmament 19 - Slowdive - Everything is Alive - Andalucia Plays 20 - Ryuichi Sakamoto - Monster (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) - Monster 1 21 - Sun's Signature - Sun's Signature (Extended) - Make Lovely The Day 22 - Laura Veirs - Phone Orphans - If You Could Hold Someone 23 - Steve Gunn, Bridget St John - Light In The Attic & Friends - Rabbit Hills 24 - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You - Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You 25 - Jolie Laide - Jolie Laide - Blue as Blue 26 - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads - Henry Lee (feat. PJ Harvey) 27 - Micah P. Hinson - ¡Oh No! - ¡Oh No! 28 - Nils Frahm - Late Night Tales - Them 29 - Mega Bog - End of Everything - Anthropocene   * imagem de (image by) Larry Fink

This month we head back to one of the rare years before any of us (even Tracey) were born and investigate our favourite songs of 1970. You can expect Prog, Folk, Pop, Reggae, Soul, Jazz, Country, & Metal. We've each chosen our 10 favourite songs of the year and sent them over to Colin's wife Helen, who put the playlists together and distributed them so we were each given a playlist of the 20 songs from the other two hosts, along with our own 10. We then ranked the playlists in order of preference and sent them back to Helen, who totalled up the points and worked out the order.She also joined us on the episode to read out the countdown, which we found out as we recorded so all reactions are genuine.Now, admittedly, in parts we're a little bit brutal to some of the songs in the list as we're three separate people with differing music tastes, but please remember that to be in this episode at all the songs have to have been in one of our top 10's of that year. Bands featured in this episode include (In alphabetical order, no spoilers here!) - Amon Düül II, Badfinger, Syd Barrett, Black Sabbath, James Brown, Tim Buckley, Vashti Bunyan, Carpenters, Chairmen Of The Board, Dave & Ansell Collins, Miles Davis, Deep Purple, The Doors, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, The Hollies, The Jackson 5, Carole King, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, Lee Marvin, Curtis Mayfield, MC5, Pink Floyd, John Sebastian, Simon & Garfunkel, Edwin Starr, The Stooges, Townes Van Zandt, & Scott Walker.Find all songs in alphabetical order here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3rGqXFzmixbgrzW9Q4sugS?si=00848dd580034aedFind our We Dig Music Pollwinners Party playlist (featuring all of the winning songs up until now) here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/45zfDHo8zm6VqrvoEQSt3z?si=Ivt0oMj6SmitimvumYfFrQIf you want to listen to megalength playlists of all the songs we've individually picked since we started doing best of the year episodes, you can listen to Colin's here – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5x3Vy5Jry2IxG9JNOtabRT?si=HhcVKRCtRhWCK1KucyrDdg Ian's here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2H0hnxe6WX50QNQdlfRH5T?si=XmEjnRqISNqDwi30p1uLqA and Tracey's here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2p3K0n8dKhjHb2nKBSYnKi?si=7a-cyDvSSuugdV1m5md9Nw The playlist of 20 songs from the other two hosts was scored as usual, our favourite song got 20 points, counting down incrementally to our least favourite which got 1 point. The scoring of our own list of 10 is now slightly more complicated in order to give a truer level of points to our own favourites. So rather than them only being able to score as many points as our 10th favourite in the other list, the points in our own list were distributed as follows -1st place - 20 points2nd place - 18 points3rd place – 16 points4th place – 14 points5th place – 12 points6th place – 9 points7th place – 7 points8th place – 5 points9th place – 3 points10th place -1 pointHosts - Ian Clarke, Colin Jackson-Brown & Tracey BGuest starring Helen Jackson-Brown.Playlist compiling/distributing – Helen Jackson-BrownRecorded/Edited/Mixed/Original Music by Colin Jackson-Brown for We Dig PodcastsThanks to Peter Latimer for help with the scoring system.Say hello at www.facebook.com/wedigmusicpcast or tweet us at http://twitter.com/wedigmusicpcast or look at shiny pictures on Instagram at http://instagram.com/wedigmusicpcast Part of the We Made This podcast network. https://twitter.com/wmt_network You can also find all the We Dig Music & Free With This Months Issue episodes at www.wedigpodcasts.com

Settle in on that lily pad and make sure to fluff up that dandelion pillow. This week on Funpoint!, we're talking about Vashti Bunyan's Just Another Diamond Day! Could you imagine a world without computer or sports car? Our pal Vashti did, and guess what: they got a worm there Slap City picks: "Come Here" by Kath Bloom, "Never Going Back Again" by Fleetwood Mac. Listen to our playlist here Join us in 2 weeks when we'll discuss our next pick, Dangerdoom's The Mouse & The Mask!

This episode of Funpoint! is titled "you'll be fine", which is an album by the band Hot Mulligan. We mostly talk about reddit and drake and max von sydow dying though. anyone else remember being child Slap City picks: "My Little Wish" by toe, "I Fell in Love With Princess Peach" by Hot Mulligan. Listen to our playlist here Join us in 2 weeks when we'll discuss our 43rd Patreon pick, Vashti Bunyan's Just Another Diamond Day!

James and Damien from The Murder Capital take me in at Reading Festival, talking Limp Bizkit, fisherman dads, wanting to sample Vashti Bunyan and a hot shot at 101 Part Time Jobs Bingo... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, David Harris, Holly Hazelwood and Eric Mellor are joined by special guest, Vashti Bunyan, to discuss her new book and how her music is definitely not folk. Support the show

She's written and recorded some of the greatest music of all time.  And her new memoir, “Wayward: Just Another Life To Live,” is an absolute must-read.   Considered the godmother of the freak-folk movement, as if underscore the point, Devendra Banhart used to write her name on his arm before he'd play shows.  In this episode, Vashti Bunyan talks with Discograffiti about: Her day-long collaboration with Nick Drake; Her true feelings about “Just Another Diamond Day”; And why she didn't write or sing for over 30 years.   NEXT WEEK: An interview with L'RAIN! CONNECT Join our Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: https://podfollow.com/1592182331 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw Web site: http://discograffiti.com/ CONTACT DAVE Email: dave@discograffiti.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hooligandave Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/davidgebroe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveGebroe CONTACT TODD ZIMMER: GRAPHIC DESIGN Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ToddZimmer and https://www.facebook.com/punknjunkradio Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_real_todd_zimmer/ and https://www.instagram.com/punknjunkradioshow/ #vashtibunyan #vinylcollection #jaggerrichards #andrewloogoldham #justanotherdiamondday #vinyl #devendrabanhart #joeboyd #music #fatcat #donovan #psychfolk #joannanewsom #indiefolkmusic #artistsbooks #indiemusic #jacksoncfrank #folkmusic #lush #aveytare #pandabear #goldenapplesofthesun #lookaftering #waywardjustanotherlifetolive #jimmypage #homeless #vashti #diamondday #heartleap #animalcollective  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/support

She's written and recorded some of the greatest music of all time.  And her new memoir, “Wayward: Just Another Life To Live,” is an absolute must-read.   Considered the godmother of the freak-folk movement, as if to underscore the point, Devendra Banhart used to write her name on his arm before he'd play shows.  In this episode, Vashti Bunyan reveals to Discograffiti:  Exactly what happened on her lightning-quick ride on the fame train during the early part of her career; What she did to sabotage her Jimmy Page-written single; And a blow-by-blow account of her 18-month period of homeless wandering. NEXT WEEK: Vashti Bunyan rates the bulk of her discography…including Diamond Day! Official playlist curated by Dave on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/17OLRbUm2H5Sp6mwUHD25Q?si=OCZQtlRVRfevoW8P8OkW8g Priceless Vashti & Robert Lewis footage from their travels: https://youtu.be/vhUcMIgJZXo “Winter Is Blue” segment from “Tonite Let's All Make Love In London”: https://youtu.be/JZ-RLaHSCA0 CONNECT Join our Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: https://podfollow.com/1592182331 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw Web site: http://discograffiti.com/ CONTACT DAVE Email: dave@discograffiti.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hooligandave Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/davidgebroe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveGebroe CONTACT TODD ZIMMER: GRAPHIC DESIGN Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ToddZimmer and https://www.facebook.com/punknjunkradio Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_real_todd_zimmer/ and https://www.instagram.com/punknjunkradioshow/ #vashtibunyan #vinylcollection #jaggerrichards #andrewloogoldham #justanotherdiamondday #vinyl #devendrabanhart #joeboyd #music #fatcat #donovan #psychfolk #joannanewsom #indiefolkmusic #artistsbooks #indiemusic #jacksoncfrank #folkmusic #lush #aveytare #pandabear #goldenapplesofthesun #lookaftering #waywardjustanotherlifetolive #jimmypage #homeless #vashti #diamondday #heartleap #animalcollective  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/support

José González, Vashti Bunyan and Erlend Øye discuss what draws them to create quiet music, how they approach playing it live, and its universal and trans-genre appeal. José González was born in Gothenburg in Sweden to Argentinian parents, and grew up listening to Latin folk and pop music. In 2003 he released his debut solo album ‘Veneer'. It featured a downtempo cover of The Knife's ‘Heartbeats' which became an international success after being featured on a TV ad campaign. He's celebrating the album's 20th anniversary with a run of shows this year. Vashti Bunyan is an English singer songwriter who began her music career in the 1960s. She left London for the Outer Hebrides, travelling in a wagon drawn by a black horse called Bess, and wrote an album about the trip called Just Another Diamond Day. It was released in 1970, but had little commercial success. Vashti withdrew from music for 30 years, but by 2000, the album had acquired a cult following, and the second phase of her musical career began. Erlend Øye is a Norwegian best known for being one half of the indie-folk duo Kings of Convenience. He's also front-man for the band The Whitest Boy Alive, is the co-founder of the independent label Bubbles Records, and plays extensively with trio La Comitiva.

Avant-folk icon Vashti Bunyan joins us for a chat about her memoir, “Wayward, Just Another Life to Live” which was critically acclaimed and well received in the UK, the book has made its way across the pond and is available for purchase in the U.S. Listen to us discuss her musical upbringing, being embraced by the 1960's Folk music scene, why she went away and how she found her way back to music. You can learn more about Vashti on her website anotherday.co.uk follow her on Instagram @vashtibunyan and on Twitter @vashtibunyan1 Don't forget to follow us on the socials @sinistergirlz Like, subscribe, rate the podcast 5 stars. We are on apple podcast, Amazon Music, Audible podcast and Stitcher.

In the early 70s, Vashti Bunyan went away. Frustrated with an industry unwelcoming of her talents, she eventually moved back to Scotland and raised three children. She never sang, and rarely missed it. It was a perfectly content life. But 30 years later, music once again came calling. The singer experienced a resurgence in interest at the turn of the millennium – more interest than she'd ever had the first go round. Last year Bunyan released Wayward: Just Another Life to Live, a memoir recounting one of music's most unique and fascinating careers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vashti Bunyan is an English singer-songwriter. Beginning her career in the mid-1960s, she released her debut album, Just Another Diamond Day in 1970. The album sold very few copies, and Bunyan was discouraged, and abandoned her musical career. By 2000, her album had acquired a cult following; it was re-released, and Bunyan recorded more songs, initiating the second phase of her musical career after a gap of thirty years. She subsequently released two more albums: Lookingaftering in 2005 and Heartleap in 2014.       Wayward, Just Another Life to Live In 1968, Vashti Bunyan gave up everything and everybody she knew in London to take to the road with a horse, wagon, dog, guitar, and her then-partner. They made the long journey up to the Outer Hebrides in an odyssey of discovery and heartbreak, full of the joy of freedom and the trudge of everyday reality, sleeping in the woods, fighting freezing winters and homelessness. Along the way, Vashti wrote the songs that would lead to recording her 1970's album Just Another Diamond Day, the lilting lyrics and guitar conveying innocent wonder at the world around her whilst disguising a deeper turmoil under the surface. From an unconventional childhood in post-war London to a fledgling career in mid-sixties pop, to the despair and failure to make any headway with her own songs, she rejected the music world altogether and left it all behind. After retreating to a musical wilderness for thirty years, the rediscovery of her recordings in 2000 gave Vashti a second chance to write, record and perform again. Vashti's Info  http://anotherday.co.uk// vashtibunyan Wayward, Just Another Life to Live.  (Links to find Vashti's Book) https://www.amazon.com/Wayward-Just-Another-Life-Live/dp/1474621937 https://www.whiterabbitbooks.co.uk/titles/vashti-bunyan/wayward/9781474621939/  

Today on Transmissions: Vashti Bunyan. Though her 1970 Joy Boyd-produced Just Another Diamond Day album was barely heard upon original release, its rediscovery by key members of the burgeoning freak folk scene in the mid-2000s helped make it a cult classic, a tender work of imagination and melody. Recently, Bunyan published her first book, Wayward: Just Another Life. It charts her youth in the orbit of the Rolling Stones, her musical and mental struggles, and details the horse-drawn cart journey across the countryside where the songs of Just Another Diamond Day came into shape. It is a vivid and touching read, sly, understated and emotionally expansive. Its quiet melancholy and endearing jokes feel a piece with her musical work. She joined us to discuss the book, that journey, and what it felt like to have her work rediscovered—and why she hates being called a “folk” singer.  This episode of Transmissions is brought to you by Dad Grass. Go to Dadgrass.com/Transmissions to try it out.

The first time I ever heard Vashti Bunyan was as the theme song for the Amazon Prime TV series Patriot a few years ago. But the song was so beautiful, I let it play through every episode. I did some digging to find out more about the song and was surprised to learn it had originally been released in 1966! The more digging I did on Vashti and her music, the more fascinated I became! Why had I never heard this beautiful music? Why was there a 35 year gap between her first and second albums? Why was there a 9 year gap between her second and third albums? Then out of the blue, I got an email: Would you like to do a podcast with Vashti Bunyan? What? Are you kidding me? This is proof of God! Of course I want to talk with Vashti Bunyan! She's written a memoir that answers all the questions I had and more. What is her connection with The Rolling Stones? Who were the amazing session musicians on her earliest work? Why the gaps between albums? Where did she go? What did she do? It's a fascinating story that could only have happened in 60's and 70's UK (or maybe San Francisco). For example, there's the one about meeting Donovan and taking a horse and cart across the UK to live in his artists' community. Or the one about getting performance advice from Devendra Banhart after not performing at all for about 40 years. And what happened to all of her instruments? Her book is a fun, easy read with wonderful stories about beautiful music. I highly recommend picking it up wherever you get books. Vashti recommends independent book deals, if possible. Follow her @VashtiBunyan on Twitter and Instagram. Check out her music wherever you can. Follow us @PerformanceAnx on Twitter & Instagram. You can support the show with coffee at ko-fi.com/performanceanxiety or with merch at performanceanx.threadless.com. And I hope you enjoy this talk with Vashti Bunyan as much as I did on Performance Anxiety on the Pantheon Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A special edition of the podcast this week, as we joined by three musicians who have released books. Howard Fishman's To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse is available now from Dutton. The book explores the life of converse, who remained largely unknown until her music was reissued in 2009 with the compilation, How Sad, How Lovely. Vashi Bunyan's music had its own renaissance around the turn of the millennium, when her album, Just Another Diamond Day was discovered by a new generation of musicians. Her memoir, Wayward: Just Another Life to Live is available now on White Rabbit. Ryan Walsh is the founder and front man of Boston-based indie band, Hallelujah the Hills. In 2018, Penguin released his Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, which explores the creation of Van Morrison's seminal album. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Transmissions, Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner, the psychedelic folk duo Elkhorn. Their new album, On the Universe In All Directions, finds Jesse once again at his familiar 12-string acoustic guitar, but instead of Drew joining with his trademark Telecaster, he's moved over to vibraphone and drums for this outing. Have no fear: the familiar Elkhorn magic is here in spades, but in brand new ways. The songs were born out of collaboration with New York consciousness group Psychedelic Sangha, and as JJ Toth puts it in his excellent liner notes, the sounds traverse “the valleys between fried cosmic psychedelia and American Primitive… splitting the difference between Popol Vuh's devotional drift and the outer reaches of deep-cut classic rock while constantly keeping one foot in the river of the Ever-Weird America; call it Six Degrees of Uncle Dave Macon.”  From Buddhism to Fahey, from time slips to Aquarium Drunkard itself, this conversation unfolds and wanders, we hope you enjoy it. Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? The incredible Vashti Bunyan, who joins us to discuss her vivid and deep book Wayward.

Vashti was discovered in the mid-60s by the Rolling Stones manager, recorded a seminal acoustic album in 1970, then quit music until her work was rediscovered in 2000, recording two albums and releasing an autobiography since then. We discuss "I Want to Be Alone" (a 1965 single), "Rose Hip November" from Just Another Diamond Day (1970), "Wayward from Lookaftering (2005), and the title track from Heartleap (2014). Intro: "Train Song" (1966 single); the singles were released on Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind (2007). More at anotherday.co.uk. Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support us on Patreon. Sponsor: Listen to The Psychology Podcast with Scott Barry Kaufman.

Vashti was discovered in the mid-60s by the Rolling Stones manager, recorded a seminal acoustic album in 1970, then quit music until her work was rediscovered in 2000, recording two albums and releasing an autobiography since then. We discuss "I Want to Be Alone" (a 1965 single), "Rose Hip November" from Just Another Diamond Day (1970), "Wayward from Lookaftering (2005), and the title track from Heartleap (2014). Intro: "Train Song" (1966 single); the singles were released on Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind (2007). More at anotherday.co.uk. Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support us on Patreon. Sponsor: Listen to The Psychology Podcast with Scott Barry Kaufman.

On this episode, Marc chats with Vashti Bunyan, writer, singer, songwriter, poet, artist, and author of the memoir "Wayward: Just Another Life to Live," released in 2022 on White Rabbit books.  It covers her entire life, with special focus on her 1968 journey across the UK, when she wrote songs that appeared on her 1970 debut album Just Another Diamond Day. Since its reissue in 2000, Bunyan made two more incredible records, and she writes about all of this in a voice very similar to that heard in her enchanting songs. We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Vashti Bunyan!

Shannon Lay is a singer, guitarist, songwriter and Sub Pop recording artist from southern California. Her newest release Covers, Volume 1, is a 9-song collection of cover songs that celebrate Shannon's influences as an artist and serve as a vehicle to share her artistic perspective with her listeners. In this episode, Joe and Shannon discuss her musical roots and what stemmed the idea to release a record of other people's songs. She also shares the process behind selecting the songs, how she recorded them and why she thinks releasing a collection of covers is important. The two delve into their mutual appreciation for John Dwyer, Elliott Smith and Vashti Bunyan and we hear a couple tunes. https://www.shannonlay.com/ https://shannonlay.bandcamp.com/ https://www.subpop.com/releases/shannon_lay/covers_vol_1 https://www.discountmirrorsstudio.com/about/ https://www.altamirasoundrecording.com/

Vashti Bunyan didn't know her 1970 debut album Just Another Diamond Day had reached cult status until the '90s, when she first typed her name into a search engine. In those 20+ years, many listeners had not only discovered the album, but found it quite profound. In 2000, it was re-issued on CD. The album is a signpost on the road to "alternative folk" - think Joanna Newsom, Animal Collective, and Devendra Banhart, all of whom have cited her as an influence and collaborated with her. Bunyan grabbed her guitar and started making music again. She released her album Lookaftering in 2005, followed by Heartleap in 2014. He autobiography Wayward, Just Another Life to Live, was issued in 2023. In this episode, Bunyan talks about her remarkable resurgence and discusses some key songs from her catalog. Find Vashti's book here. https://www.songfacts.com/ https://www.facebook.com/songfacts https://twitter.com/Songfacts http://pantheonpodcasts.com/ https://twitter.com/pantheonpods Hosted and Edited by Corey O'Flanagan https://twitter.com/ofe1818 https://www.instagram.com/coreyofe/ corey@songfacts.com Songfacts Podcast Spotify Playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3IThMW5yB8XnFh5cS2gTxR?si=KAhiqWRcSIy5uxb2sZPFTA This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vashti Bunyan in conversation with David Eastaugh https://www.whiterabbitbooks.co.uk/titles/vashti-bunyan/wayward/9781474621939/ In 1968, Vashti Bunyan gave up everything and everybody she knew in London to take to the road with a horse, wagon, dog, guitar and her then partner. They made the long journey up to the Outer Hebrides in an odyssey of discovery and heartbreak, full of the joy of freedom and the trudge of everyday reality, sleeping in the woods, fighting freezing winters and homelessness. Along the way, Vashti wrote the songs that would lead to the recording of her 1970's album Just Another Diamond Day, the lilting lyrics and guitar conveying innocent wonder at the world around her, whilst disguising a deeper turmoil under the surface. From an unconventional childhood in post-war London, to a fledgling career in mid-sixties pop - recording a single written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards - to the despair and failure to make any headway with her own songs, she rejected the music world altogether and left it all behind. After retreating to a musical wilderness for thirty years, the rediscovery of her recordings in 2000 brought Vashti a second chance to write, record and perform once more. One of the great hippie myths of the 1960s, Wayward, Just Another Life to Live, rewrites the narrative of a barefoot girl on the road to describe a life lived at full tilt from the first, revealing what it means to change course and her emotional struggle, learning to take back control of her own life.

Joel worked for various labels - Mushroom, Atlantic and Sony among them - and was the man who signed the Darkness. Training to become a psychotherapist, he began trading in rare records, travelling all over the country to buy collections and, during Lockdown, starting a special “mystery vinyl” service where he'd send people albums he thought they'd like based on their musical taste.   He talks here in fascinating detail about what an emotionally charged world this is, seeing people's entire life stories mapped out in records, becoming a “temporary custodian” of their past, learning about whole new areas of music and obscure genres that suddenly come into vogue and every aspect of what makes a record valuable. And the thrill of finding the odd “holy grail” (Vashti Bunyan's Just Another Diamond Day, rare Bowie first pressings etc), a process that involves “kissing an awful lot of frogs”. He even pulled out an album by a band neither of us knew, the 1970 psych-folk act Justine. Also featured – buying Roger St. Pierre's record collection, the magic “fallibility” of vinyl (eg personal messages on sleeves) and the Greatest Record Ever Made! Brighter Day Vinyl runs a weekly Flick-Through Thursday - at the same time Top Of The Pops used to be on! - where you can get to see what's currently on offer and you'll find all details about Joel's shop, its collection and what he buys and sells here …   https://linktr.ee/brighterdayvinyl @BrighterdayvnlSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, alongside a whole lot more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joel worked for various labels - Mushroom, Atlantic and Sony among them - and was the man who signed the Darkness. Training to become a psychotherapist, he began trading in rare records, travelling all over the country to buy collections and, during Lockdown, starting a special “mystery vinyl” service where he'd send people albums he thought they'd like based on their musical taste.   He talks here in fascinating detail about what an emotionally charged world this is, seeing people's entire life stories mapped out in records, becoming a “temporary custodian” of their past, learning about whole new areas of music and obscure genres that suddenly come into vogue and every aspect of what makes a record valuable. And the thrill of finding the odd “holy grail” (Vashti Bunyan's Just Another Diamond Day, rare Bowie first pressings etc), a process that involves “kissing an awful lot of frogs”. He even pulled out an album by a band neither of us knew, the 1970 psych-folk act Justine. Also featured – buying Roger St. Pierre's record collection, the magic “fallibility” of vinyl (eg personal messages on sleeves) and the Greatest Record Ever Made! Brighter Day Vinyl runs a weekly Flick-Through Thursday - at the same time Top Of The Pops used to be on! - where you can get to see what's currently on offer and you'll find all details about Joel's shop, its collection and what he buys and sells here …   https://linktr.ee/brighterdayvinyl @BrighterdayvnlSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, alongside a whole lot more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joel worked for various labels - Mushroom, Atlantic and Sony among them - and was the man who signed the Darkness. Training to become a psychotherapist, he began trading in rare records, travelling all over the country to buy collections and, during Lockdown, starting a special “mystery vinyl” service where he'd send people albums he thought they'd like based on their musical taste.   He talks here in fascinating detail about what an emotionally charged world this is, seeing people's entire life stories mapped out in records, becoming a “temporary custodian” of their past, learning about whole new areas of music and obscure genres that suddenly come into vogue and every aspect of what makes a record valuable. And the thrill of finding the odd “holy grail” (Vashti Bunyan's Just Another Diamond Day, rare Bowie first pressings etc), a process that involves “kissing an awful lot of frogs”. He even pulled out an album by a band neither of us knew, the 1970 psych-folk act Justine. Also featured – buying Roger St. Pierre's record collection, the magic “fallibility” of vinyl (eg personal messages on sleeves) and the Greatest Record Ever Made! Brighter Day Vinyl runs a weekly Flick-Through Thursday - at the same time Top Of The Pops used to be on! - where you can get to see what's currently on offer and you'll find all details about Joel's shop, its collection and what he buys and sells here …   https://linktr.ee/brighterdayvinyl @BrighterdayvnlSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, alongside a whole lot more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gillian Moore, author and Artistic Associate of London's Southbank Centre, and Ivor Novello-winning composer Gavin Higgins join Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey Boakye as they add five more tracks to the playlist in the penultimate show of this series. The journey takes them from the accordions of Texas to the mellow sounds of Portugal via the ploughed fields of Belgium and the raging seas of Suffolk, and they are joined on the line by the singer and composer Vashti Bunyan. Presenters Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey Boakye Producer Jerome Weatherald The five tracks in this week's playlist: Ay te Dejo en San Antonio by Flaco Jiménez Scherza Infida by George Frideric Handel Diamond Day by Vashti Bunyan Storm Interlude from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten Lilac Wine by Ana Moura Other music in this episode: Theme from Starsky & Hutch - Funky People Mix - by the James Taylor Quartet Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra by Gavin Higgins Do-Re-Mi by Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol Bluebell Polka by Jimmy Shand Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin Lilac Wine by Jeff Buckley Fanfare and Love Songs: Brightly by Gavin Higgins

This peaceful gem of an album is viewed psychologically by Chris Levine. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/chris-levine/support

Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas are joined by Rohan Maitzen to discuss the new novel by Maggie O'Farrell, an ingenious and daring Browning version; and Sarah Hill charts musician Vashti Bunyan's epic walk from London to Scotland in search of freedom.‘The Marriage Portrait' by Maggie O'Farrell‘Wayward: Just Another Life to Live' by Vashti Bunyan‘Stories I Might Regret Telling You: A Memoir' by Martha Wainwright‘This Woman's Work: Essays on Music' edited by Sinéad Gleeson and Kim GordonProduced by Charlotte Pardy Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles meet Baroness Floella Benjamin - who became a household name in the mid 70s and 80s as the host of Playschool. She came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation from Trinidad and as well as TV presenting, she is a successful actor, writer and producer, a working peer and advocate for the welfare and education of Children, she is also a Dame and an OBE. We also have Aled Haydn Jones - the current head of radio 1 - who has spoken out about his rollercoaster journey to be a Dad, via a surrogate. Vashti Bunyan was an aspiring pop musician in the late 60s when she walked away from potential fame, and took a horse and cart to Scotland. Years later she searched online to realise she had a cult following. She joins us. Daniel Biddle was the most seriously injured survivor of the 7/7 terror attacks in London in 2015. He tells us of his journey since, physically back to the site of the attack, but also in developing opportunities for disabled people in the workplace. For her Inheritance Tracks, crime writer Karin Slaughter chooses You May be Right by Billy Joel and We Got the Beat by the Go-Gos, and we have your Thank you. Producer: Corinna Jones

Vashti speaks to Magnus about her new memoir, Wayward: Just Another Life to Live. From London in the Swinging Sixties to a hippie retreat in the Outer Hebrides: she and her partner travelled – slowly – by horse and wagon. She gave up music, disillusioned with the pop industry, until her 1970 album was rediscovered thirty years later.  This podcast is particularly exciting for us because, as we discovered while recording it, Vashti once worked in (what is now) John Sandoe's. The art room on the ground floor used to be a veterinary clinic; she worked there after leaving her record label in the 60s and leaving London altogether.  We have a number of signed copies so please telephone, email or order online if you would like one.  Edited by Magnus Rena  Music, in order:  Vashti Bunyan, I'd Like To Walk Around In Your Mind  Some Things Just Stick In your Mind  Train Song  Rainbow River  Rose Hip November  Just Another Diamond Day  Here Before  I'd Like To Walk Around In Your Mind 

Publisher Marigold Atkey and journalist Emily Rhodes join us for a discussion of Lessico famigliare, Natalia Ginzburg's novelistic memoir or autobiographical novel, first published in Italy in 1963 and most recently translated by Jenny McPhee as Family Lexicon (Daunt/NYRB). Ginzburg had a long and distinguished career in Italian literature, theatre and politics. This episode explores her fascinating life and asks why her work is finding new readers and admirers in the 21st century, amongst them Rachel Cusk and Sally Rooney. Also in this episode John enjoys How To Gut a Fish (Bloomsbury), a debut collection of short stories by Shelia Armstrong; while Andy reflects on Vashti Bunyan's pilgrimage to the Outer Hebrides, as recounted in Wayward (White Rabbit), her memoir of the 1960s and beyond. For more information visit https://www.backlisted.fm. Please support us and unlock bonus material at https://www.patreon.com/backlisted Timecodes: 13:00 Wayward by Vashti Bunyan 21:07 How To Gut a Fish by Shelia Armstrong 27:13 Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg

In this episode we welcome the wonderful Vashti Bunyan — all the way from her home in Edinburgh — and ask her about her magical music and the remarkable memoir she's just published.The "freak folk" legend — though she strongly disavows the "folk" tag — begins by talking of her early musical memories, among them meeting an unhappy Cliff Richard backstage in Blackpool in 1961. She describes her dream of becoming a pop singer in mid-'60s London, and how that led her to the Mayfair office of Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. Briefly and unhappily typecast as "a dark-haired Marianne Faithfull", she recalls the session for the Jagger-Richards song 'Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind', backed up in the studio by Jimmy Page & Nicky Hopkins.Vashti explains how she felt equally adrift in the world of folk, eventually dropping out of the London music scene to travel to the Outer Hebrides in a horse-drawn wagon. This is the journey she writes about so vividly in Wayward, leading circuitously to Joe Boyd producing her 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day. After a discussion of that exquisite record, she talks about why she neither wrote nor sang another song for 30 years… then admits how much it meant when younger admirers like Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart discovered the album in 2000, subsequently appearing on her Lookaftering (2005) and Heartleap (2014).With Nick Drake's final album Pink Moon turning 50 this year, we take Vashti back to the awkward afternoon she spent trying to write a song with him after Joe Boyd had introduced them. Along the way we hear clips of Joe speaking to Gerrie Lim about Nick's guitar playing and "romantic doom" in 1994.After paying our respects to Saints frontman Chris Bailey, we touch on highlights among the 120+ articles just added to the RBP library, including pieces about Charles Mingus (1962), Dusty in Memphis (1969), the Smiths (1987) and Fatboy Slim (1997). Jasper's selection of a recent Michael McDonald interview gives us the perfect excuse to explain to Vashti what "Yacht Rock" is… after which we hear a final clip from the Boyd interview.Many thanks to special guest Vashti Bunyan; Wayward is published by White Rabbit and available now. You can visit Vashti's website at anotherday.co.uk.Pieces discussed: Vashti Bunyan, Heartleap, Robert Kirby, Lost Ladies of Folk, Joe Boyd on Nick Drake, The Saints, Chris Bailey, Muddy Waters, Jimi and Janis, The Smiths, Fatboy Slim, Charlie Mingus, Dusty Springfield, Robyn, Ry Cooder, Duke Ellington, ESP Disk, Michael McDonald and Phil Collins.

In this episode we welcome the wonderful Vashti Bunyan — all the way from her home in Edinburgh — and ask her about her magical music and the remarkable memoir she's just published. The "freak folk" legend — though she strongly disavows the "folk" tag — begins by talking of her early musical memories, among them meeting an unhappy Cliff Richard backstage in Blackpool in 1961. She describes her dream of becoming a pop singer in mid-'60s London, and how that led her to the Mayfair office of Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. Briefly and unhappily typecast as "a dark-haired Marianne Faithfull", she recalls the session for the Jagger-Richards song 'Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind', backed up in the studio by Jimmy Page & Nicky Hopkins. Vashti explains how she felt equally adrift in the world of folk, eventually dropping out of the London music scene to travel to the Outer Hebrides in a horse-drawn wagon. This is the journey she writes about so vividly in Wayward, leading circuitously to Joe Boyd producing her 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day. After a discussion of that exquisite record, she talks about why she neither wrote nor sang another song for 30 years… then admits how much it meant when younger admirers like Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart discovered the album in 2000, subsequently appearing on her Lookaftering (2005) and Heartleap (2014). With Nick Drake's final album Pink Moon turning 50 this year, we take Vashti back to the awkward afternoon she spent trying to write a song with him after Joe Boyd had introduced them. Along the way we hear clips of Joe speaking to Gerrie Lim about Nick's guitar playing and "romantic doom" in 1994. After paying our respects to Saints frontman Chris Bailey, we touch on highlights among the 120+ articles just added to the RBP library, including pieces about Charles Mingus (1962), Dusty in Memphis (1969), the Smiths (1987) and Fatboy Slim (1997). Jasper's selection of a recent Michael McDonald interview gives us the perfect excuse to explain to Vashti what "Yacht Rock" is… after which we hear a final clip from the Boyd interview. Many thanks to special guest Vashti Bunyan; Wayward is published by White Rabbit and available now. You can visit Vashti's website at anotherday.co.uk. Pieces discussed: Vashti Bunyan, Heartleap, Robert Kirby, Lost Ladies of Folk, Joe Boyd on Nick Drake, The Saints, Chris Bailey, Muddy Waters, Jimi and Janis, The Smiths, Fatboy Slim, Charlie Mingus, Dusty Springfield, Robyn, Ry Cooder, Duke Ellington, ESP Disk, Michael McDonald and Phil Collins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode we welcome the wonderful Vashti Bunyan — all the way from her home in Edinburgh — and ask her about her magical music and the remarkable memoir she's just published.The "freak folk" legend — though she strongly disavows the "folk" tag — begins by talking of her early musical memories, among them meeting an unhappy Cliff Richard backstage in Blackpool in 1961. She describes her dream of becoming a pop singer in mid-'60s London, and how that led her to the Mayfair office of Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. Briefly and unhappily typecast as "a dark-haired Marianne Faithfull", she recalls the session for the Jagger-Richards song 'Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind', backed up in the studio by Jimmy Page & Nicky Hopkins.Vashti explains how she felt equally adrift in the world of folk, eventually dropping out of the London music scene to travel to the Outer Hebrides in a horse-drawn wagon. This is the journey she writes about so vividly in Wayward, leading circuitously to Joe Boyd producing her 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day. After a discussion of that exquisite record, she talks about why she neither wrote nor sang another song for 30 years… then admits how much it meant when younger admirers like Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart discovered the album in 2000, subsequently appearing on her Lookaftering (2005) and Heartleap (2014).With Nick Drake's final album Pink Moon turning 50 this year, we take Vashti back to the awkward afternoon she spent trying to write a song with him after Joe Boyd had introduced them. Along the way we hear clips of Joe speaking to Gerrie Lim about Nick's guitar playing and "romantic doom" in 1994.After paying our respects to Saints frontman Chris Bailey, we touch on highlights among the 120+ articles just added to the RBP library, including pieces about Charles Mingus (1962), Dusty in Memphis (1969), the Smiths (1987) and Fatboy Slim (1997). Jasper's selection of a recent Michael McDonald interview gives us the perfect excuse to explain to Vashti what "Yacht Rock" is… after which we hear a final clip from the Boyd interview.Many thanks to special guest Vashti Bunyan; Wayward is published by White Rabbit and available now. You can visit Vashti's website at anotherday.co.uk.Pieces discussed: Vashti Bunyan, Heartleap, Robert Kirby, Lost Ladies of Folk, Joe Boyd on Nick Drake, The Saints, Chris Bailey, Muddy Waters, Jimi and Janis, The Smiths, Fatboy Slim, Charlie Mingus, Dusty Springfield, Robyn, Ry Cooder, Duke Ellington, ESP Disk, Michael McDonald and Phil Collins.