Fairport diaspora post Liege and Lief

I'd second the recommendation for Richard and Linda (esp. I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight and Pour Down Like Silver) but also Richard Thompson's unfairly maligned Henry the Human Fly. John and Beverley Martyn's Stormbringer might be another place to turn.

Does anyone like the very first Fairport album (w/o Sandy Denny)? It's listenable, but I can't say it's made me very enthusiastic.

I love the Ashley Hutchings liner notes for these new reissues. I just need to track down Unhalfbricking now(i have an old copy), and I'
ll have all 4 essential albums.

The only mid-70's Fairport I've heard is part of Fairport Nine — a dud, to my ears, so I wonder if "extreme caution" means I should avoid the stuff that has no Denny or Thompson at all.

also, search Plainsong, Iain Matthews' post-fairport group, esp. In Search Of Amelia Earhart
also Shirley Collins & The Albion Band, and The Albion Country Band's first record, Battle Of The Field

nine is about half-dud, half-decent but if you really dislike it, you probably are not gonna be into anything from that same era by fairport

new batch of Full House era clips up on youtube......AWESOME!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmTm-Wxm8R4&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFS2pjDYL-8&mode=related&search=

Check out the Trader Horne album. It's cute lil' thing with Judy Dyble and one of the dudes form early Them.

fotheringay, people.

I just got that first Fairport album, w/o Sandy Denny, and it's spotty and weird, but absolutely listenable. I'll add more thoughts when I've digested it all, but the first half is pretty madcap.

Please feed back your thoughts.

I've had this album for nearly two years and never really got into till I listened to it again almost at random on itunes last night and it blew me away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwAwA9Hh6tA&feature=related

The best post L&L Fairport I've heard is Rising for the Moon.

In other words, the one with the most Sandy Denny on it!

that is a very schizo album, they had no real clue how to integrate sandy's songs into the sound they had going, plus the production is way too slick for them.
"one more chance" is incredible though

Yes, doesn't really work as a Fairport album, interesting for Sandy fans tho

well I like it

absolutely love the first Fairport. played it endlessly, obsessively in exactly the same fashion that I did when I first bought Liege and Lief and What we Did...

Aside from Richard & Linda, I think Ian (Iain) Matthews has the richest solo output, after his departure from Fairport.

Before The Moon (live 74) is prob the best representation of the Rising For The Moon-era Fairport.

The official live album is not very good

http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/fairport/images/largerec/beforethemoon.jpg
this one? i dig it.

No, this one:

http://www.strawbsweb.co.uk/related/fother/live.jpg

hmm, haven't even heard that ...

jerry donahue certainly doesn't seem to approve of it

I think my favorite Fairport song of all is the studio version of 'Sloth' from Full House

& searching for that, found them playing an almost shockingly mellow version live on french television in 1970. in part 2, the section where they really just floor it in the studio version, they almost seem to want to go for it but then instead they just float back down like a feather that keeps sinking down even after it hits the floor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG61mq9OXNQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwiuJtm-p1Q

when those clips first showed up a couple years back they were in color
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3yND440N-M&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH6O6ySa5Pk

Awesome, thanks for posting! I really love the Full House era of the band.
Just came across this random recording, haven't listened, but I'm curious.

FAIRPORT CONVENTION - WLIR Radio 1972 (FM)
WLIR Radio 1972

WLIR Radio Studio, Hempstead, New York
January 1, 1972
Remastered excellent stereo FM broadcast of the shortest-lived Fairport lineup
No Artwork

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=83VVPQL8

Track List:
1. Walk Awhile
2. Dirty Linen
3. Sloth
4. Flatback Caper / O'Callaghan
5. John Lee
6. Time Is Near
7. The Hanging Song
8. My Girl
9. Maybe It's You
10. Matty Groves
11. Get On Up
12. Sir B. McKenzie's Daughter
13. Country Pie

Dave Swarbrick - violin, vocals; Roger Hill - guitar, vocals;
Dave Pegg - bass, vocals; Tom Farnall - drums

weird transitional lineup before fairport/fotheringay merger

yeah! i guess roger hill and tom farnall don't actually appear on any albums?

I have a big soft spot for the goofy-ass song "Angel Delight". Definitely post-Denny and post-Thompson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9WQFAQNQOs

Hey, does anyone here like latter-day Fairport? Like, Dave Swarbrick era stuff (80s and beyond)? I haven't heard a note by the band post-Sandy, but someone was telling me about a 1981 live release that I should hear.

great albion band doc from 1979
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUJXwowVn1E

& jimmywine - i haven't delved into much late fairport. so much of it, though! i have a hard time telling what's what -- seems like there are endless live albums?

haven't listened to it and suspect it might not be all that anyway but there's a hell of cast on this murray head album:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voices_%28Murray_Head_album%29

lots of ex fairports, fotheringays, yardbirds etc

simon jeffes too!

ha, are jeff beck and richard thompson playing on the same tracks? that would be something.
i've been digging swarbrick's first couple of solo albums, so nice, awesome cover art too
https://cdn.discogs.com/ZACCjzMSyy5cETsjk51ypNgdCYA=/fit-in/600x450/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(96)/discogs-images/R-4184320-1438969311-8362.mpo.jpg

The solo Sandy Denny set at Ebbets Field (in this case, actually a club in Colorado) is worth seeking out; isn't there a legit album of the whole band recorded there? How is it? Maybe her set was during the same gig?
I really really like Fotheringay 2! Even when people other than Sandy are singing!

speaking of Swarbrick, I still need to check out Sandy & the Strawbs, right?

Or Strawberry Hill Boys, as they were still known then, I guess (diff line-up than the more "famous" combo, maybe)

yeah the sandy and the strawbs stuff is great (though swarbrick isn't involved)

and here's that ebbets field gig if anyone wants to check it out: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/104257415447/sandy-denny-ebbets-field-denver-colorado
the official fairport thing (before the moon) was recorded the next month. guess sandy was just hanging around denver in those days?

Fairport Convention : "The Man They Could Not Hang" from 1975 (Babbacombe Lee doc)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF2H5iaJoWw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-xW_BlLXe4

I do like what i've heard of post Fairports Ashley Hutchings the 1st 3 Steeleye Span lps and teh Albion stuff. Live and studio.
LOve Battle of the field which has an inner glow taht reminds me of kosmische stuff. & the live stuff I've heard with Richard & Linda Thompson onboard where they cover the Left Banke among others.

Richard & Linda tHompson are great. I still haven't really heard the later 70s stuff apart from Shoot Out tH e Lights but the mid 70s studio and live is fantastic.
Richard on his own can be jawdropping when he's electric and interesting when acoustic.

I got a couple of interesting videos of the 1976 Fairports in different line ups Rockpalast and a scottish tv thing where tehy were a 4 piece.

Richard & Linda's 8-disc Hard Luck Stories is just out, Erlewine reviewed it for Pitchfork:

From a certain perspective, the tale of Richard and Linda Thompson—a partnership that intertwined romance and creativity—is itself a hard-luck story, one plagued by missed opportunities and bad breaks, and culminating in a public divorce.

The eight-disc box set Hard Luck Stories (1972-1982) tells this tale in full, adding a host of rarities to the six studio albums the duo released during their decade as collaborators. It’s the rare box set where the rarities feel integral to the compilation’s impact, tying up loose ends and illuminating areas previously shrouded in darkness.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/richard-and-linda-thompson-hard-luck-stories-1972-1983/

Amazon US list price: $299.99. Oh well, maybe they'll do one of those Best of the Box samplers. If I were going to buy a related box, it would be one for much less, like FC's Complete BBC, or Fotheringay's Nothing More, though of course there is something more, as usual: another live set has since come out, maybe legit---I enjoy Fotheringay 2, earthier than expected, rolling along on English back lanes, seems like, even with some big city session players in there too, and want to get the debut, but have only found it in the box, which does seem appealing, if you want that much, incl. very similar live sets, I suspect---wiki sez:
A four-disc collection, Nothing More: The Collected Fotheringay, was released on 30 March 2015. This is the most comprehensive compilation of the group’s recordings, and contains, in addition to all the tracks on Fotheringay and Fotheringay 2 as both final studio versions and demos/alternate takes, the complete live concert set from Rotterdam in 1970 (including several previously unreleased tracks), seven Fotheringay tracks recorded in session for BBC radio (which had previously circulated only as bootlegs), plus a DVD disc containing 4 performances by Fotheringay recorded for the German "Beat-Club" TV series in 1970, which considerably augment the otherwise sparse known TV footage of Sandy Denny in particular.

how the hell has the S/T album by The Bunch not been mentioned in this thread yet? almost as essential as the Fotheringay records, and more fun IMO

That R&L box is 'currently unavailable' on Amazon UK. Rhino fucked things up with it over here because they have US rights for SOTL, and have made it hard to import. FWIW, you can probably still get the three Island remasters (w/extras) and the archival live album for about $40 total new.

The Rough Trade link in the Pitchfork review comes out to $103 before shipping.

Yeah, the box set (which I have) was only pressed in limited quantities and is probably close to selling out. However there were a number of problems with the quality of the CDs in the initial pressing (extensively discussed on Hoffman, of course) so they will probably have to do another run to rectify those.

xxp Cool, I'll check for the expanded reissues, thanks!

Wrote this in '18:

Richard Thompson is an ever-riveting, never-showboating
featured team player ("Sloth" gets really dead-to-zombstring
strange: is it about wages of sloth, of a sloth? Both?) on
Fairport Convention's roiling, autumn-leaves-shanking
What We Did On Our Saturday, documenting a sometimes
alarmingly energetic hive of all surviving Conventioneers
who came to play--- which is most, incl. the founding line-up entire, I think
---their 50th Anniversary Concert
(taking things a little easier on Disc 2, but understandably
so, given the earlier waves).
Aye, the fearless geezers of 50th Anniversary Fairport
plunge ever forward into the highways and byways and
lanes and thickets and buildings and moats along the
deep ledge of their catalogue
---emerging at times into bare wide spaces with no visible obstruction,
though some may be felt (just go around ‘em
when it’s time).

Judy Dyble got there just in time, think maybe some others have died since?

Wrote this too:
Also in this (‘18) 50th year of FC, and released right before
said Anniversary concert (when they were
just headlining at the Cropedy festival, as usual),
we got Fairport and Friends’ (Fotheringay, Sandy Denny solo)
A Tree With Roots, gathering their Dylan covers, suitably
knotty and smooth enough when called for, even adding
a few kinks
----kicking off with their translation of “If You Gotta Go,
Go Now” into French language and cajun (?) music,
the latter pretty unusual on non-cajun radio in the 1960s,
but a UK hit nonetheless, their biggest ever, I think. They
(orig line-up, so sung by Judy Dyble, later crew with Denny
on lead vox) even covered “Jack O’ Diamonds." From the folk
song of that title, Bob Dylan took "Jack o' Diamonds is a hard
card to play, " for a long poem
on the back or sleeve of Another Side of Bob Dylan, but
apparently never recorded any musical application;
Ben Carruthers did, and gave D. a co-write credit.
Good discussion here, with links to both Fairport tracks and
Carruthers’
https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/8280
“Percy’s Song” is a rousing anti-anthem, like “Blowin in the Wind”:
both sway and march all ye right up through the brink
of unknowing. Percy’s friend bravely goes to confront the
mean ol’ judge who slams the book on P.: he’s the
reckless driver, killed people, case closed. Narrator goes
right into the Headline News True Crime trope
---how can this be, he was always such a nice boy
--- refrain:”Turn, turn to the wind and the rain”
---so familiar, this mystery, so off-the-record Relatable, but somehow never in
a country (or other) song?

That 1973 clip is pretty funny — just six years in and there's literally no one left from the original band. they could do lineup changes like no one else!

seriously y'all, The Bunch! that Dion & The Belmonts cover! as glorious as post-Fairport gets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsCfQPRc8kA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUpA91HOuXg

see also: Sandy and Linda singing co-lead on "When Will I Be Loved"

the R & L box set has some nice outtakes, Amazon Queen is as good as any song on Henry the Human Fly, not sure why that was cut except maybe he thought it was a little silly lyrically. Also, the fairport box from a few years back has a great The Bunch outtake of Buddy Holly's Think It Over with some choice Richard guitar work.

man that's fuckin annoying that that Bunch track isn't on the expanded CD reissue! I didn't know about that one.

Didn't know there was an expanded CD reissue---always meant to get that, thanks for reminders---from xgau's 70s Guide:
Rock On [A&M, 1972]
In which Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, and eleven other English folkies redo twelve American songs, and I bet the Silver Beatles loved every one of them. The conjunction brings out the passionately droll in all the principals, especially Denny and Thompson, but the great moments are "The Loco-Motion," with Linda Peters playing Little Eva, and "Nadine," which Tyger Hutchings delivers deadpan, as if reading off cue cards after a quick runthrough. B+ All that for a B+! Oh well, I always went by the descriptions, not the grades. Linda Peters is the future ex-Mrs. T., I see by the wiki.

the sandy / linda "When Will I Be Loved" is the greatest — annoying that there aren't more examples of them singing together.

my template for this stuff was always the tracklist of "Fairport Chronicles", which has stuff from The Bunch, Fotheringay, Angel's Delight, Full House, and the "Now Be Thankful" 7" as well as the Holiday/Unhalfbricking/Liege era