Defend the Indefensible: Nick Drake

(translation: wtf with this thread?)

sometimes the string arrangements get in the way but they can be very gorgeous at times ("hazy jane 1"). he was not afraid to experiment, even if it did mean falling flat ("poor boy").

concentrating on the richness of bryter layter and the stark desolation of pink moon alone, i find very few faults/missteps on these two records. and he was certainly better than 80% of the accoustic folk rock at the time. his first album is my least favorite; however, it must have caught the ears of both richard thompson and john cale who play on his second record... and their opinions/respect is worth more to me than anyone on ILM frankly.

tunage = open mic night snoozefest. intricate fingerpicking + really inventive tunings = noodling.

voice = a sustained exercise in counterfeit timidity

he did have good suits.

I'm not sure he fits into the "Defend the Indefensible" category. That's more for people like, ummm...., the Fixx or Sugar Ray or Raffi, Master of the Pan Flute. You may not like Nick Drake, but there's an awful lot of people who do (and not in a "guilty pleasure" sort've way that caters to "Defend the Indefensible" threads).

I've been noticing a lot of Drake-hatred here lately (well, this thread and Chuck Eddy, who believes mop-head metal also-rans Kix are more tuneful than the late Mr.Drake). Personally, while his is definetely 'mood music' (if you're not in the mood for it, you'd best steer well clear of it), I find it pretty strikingly emotive, atmospheric and quite lovely. I can't understand what people could find to hate about it. I can see people tiring of cult of prescient doom that has sprung up around Drake, but I believe his music would still be quite moving even if he hadn't prematurely shuffled off this mortal coil (though that fact does make tracks like "Black Eyed Dog" that much more chilling).

His guitar playing was quite interesting too.

So basically, no one's made a defense in terms you would accept.

and how is pointing out the "gigantic fan bases/undeniable influence/inherent longevity/etc." of Sugar Ray any different than pointing out the "gigantic fan bases/undeniable influence/inherent longevity/etc." of nick drake?

Besides the fact that Nick Drake's stuff has been around longer than Sugar Ray's there isn't any difference. I'm not sure what you're trying to catch me on here, especially since I wasn't the one who used Sugar Ray as a DtD candidate.

The point is that if there's general critical acclaim for an artist (as there is for BOTH Sugar Ray and Nick Drake), they are not good candidates for a DtD thread because there's already a defense that everyone knows about. The entire premise is "Most people think this musician/band suck(s); tell me why most people are wrong." How does Nick Drake fit into that?

it's not that i don't accept it, it's just that I'm sure people have more to point to than his guitartistry & general well-likedness (& in fairness some people have pointed out lyrics and instrumental breaks & mood stuff that they like - which makes more sense to me)

The entire premise is "Most people think this musician/band suck(s); tell me why most people are wrong." How does Nick Drake fit into that?

fine, how is: 'I think he sucks, tell me why I'm wrong' then? am i allowed to ask that?

since when is general consensus & 'we hold these truths to be self-evident' logic such an important factor to take into consideration on ILM?

*the defense will now take a 15minute coffee break

- He didn't allow Chris DeBerg to be in his band in high school. Thanks fucking god.

No.

since when is general consensus & 'we hold these truths to be self-evident' logic such an important factor to take into consideration on ILM?

Ignoring the fact that the entire point behind these threads is to go against general consensus, have you not read any ILM posts in the past 18 months?

It's not an important factor to consider in the context of ILM per se, only in the context of a Defend the Indefensible thread. Maybe you should have worded the thread title differently. In any case, his music is lovely.

If you hate Nick Drake, you hate little Baby Jesus.

For my part, I'd first been exposed to Drake through mp3s (Pink Moon came first), which lead to burning a copy of Way Beyond Blue off of friends. The first thing that struck me about his music was that the melodies are soothing to the ear and the nerves after a rough day. The second thing was that his lyrics spoke of pain and loss long before it became fashionable to be a solo songwriter.

Great Nick Drake songs: Road, Which Will, Northern Sky. WTF is up with this thread? He doesn't need to be defended, he's one of the greats, even without going into the guitar playing.

Zuh?

There was no counterfeit timidity about Nick Drake, he was painfully shy and withdrawn according to all accounts. His sister said he had a skin too few (hence the title of a biography). So no counterfeitedness about his timidity at all. Furthermore I've heard recordings of his voice and that's what he sounds like, he has a very posh, gentle, fey accent.

So there's a start of a defence. At least a knocking down of one teh straw men raised.

Yeah, right

His best album, I'd say, is easily Bryter Layter because the sad/beautiful characteristics within both the lyrics and the music are strongest and most pronounced there. "What will happen in the morning when the world it gets so crowded that you can't look out the window in the morning?" is one of my favorite lyrics ever, though perhaps it sounds a bit silly on paper.

sorry people feel that way - but i am in fact interested in just that... and lots of people have done so with panache.

i can tell people are irked, but i still think its a worthwhile discussion to have. "good taste" is subjective anyway so I don't see how 'indefensible' is more offensive when applied to card-carrying canon-fodder than it is to artists that are generally seen as having no worth.

haha, well yeah, but it's on youtube and available through illicit channels. wonder if they will release it in a more sensible format...

some of it is on spotify (i guess i don't know how many track there are)

I never knew he'd done any Peel sessions.

oh lol it's on amazon mp3 for $5
worth it!

xp there had been a lo-fi snippet of it floating around for a while, but they found a much better source and put it out as an EP along w/ a really expensive book.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WY61R32?ie=UTF8&keywords=nick%20drake&qid=1453400663&ref_=sr_1_8&refinements=p_n_feature_browse-bin%3A625150011&s=dmusic&sr=1-8

OnkyoMusic/SevenDigital has it available as FLAC downloads as well, if FLAC is your thing. They're delightfully fuzzy versions, I love them.

it's kind of embarrassing to admit that i actually was slightly obsessed with nick drake a really long time ago. in retrospect, it probably wasn't a good thing, because a big part of the music i was writing at that time ended up sounding like his stuff. and i never did like the "copycats"; e.g., bon iver, etc. i don't see them as copycats, though, because their music always felt different.

are the peel session tracks that different from the stuff on time of no reply and made to love magic?

there's a flute on cello song.

I just wish he'd lived long enough to do the music for the Watership Down movie.

what's embarrassing about that

Three of the Peel session tracks are previously unreleased, yes. Cello Song, Bryter Layter, and River Man. The other two have turned up on bootlegs and possibly compilations before?

don't think they were ever officially released ever before, and the things on bootlegs were fragmentary and in cruddier sound quality iirc...

i have time of no reply and made to love magic, and i thought river man and cello song were on there, but i could be wrong. i've not listened to them in ages

i just listened to the peel session tracks. i hadn't realised it was more of a collector's item.

lovely hearing the music either way, though

yeah, not on either of those previous comps (though river man is pretty similar on made to love magic).

yeah, like you say, the biggest difference is the flute on cello song. possibly the best track on there? i guess i'll play some nd while i work now!

Amira, Queen of Creativity (upper mississippi sh@kedown)
Posted: January 20, 2016 at 4:59:09 PM
the fact he tracked most of his stuff guitar & vox live at the same time is so amazing

River man was recorded guitar and vox AND string orchestra live at the same time!

the only circulating peel stuff before this release was a 4 minute off-air excerpt with a minute of "time of no reply" and a couple minutes of "three hours".

there's a piece in a recent paris review that deals w/ nick by brian cullman

I tried to tell Nick how much I liked his album. It was later that week, we were in the kitchen at John and Beverly's, drinking tea, and there was silence everywhere. I mentioned a few songs, "Cello Song" and "River Man" and "Saturday Sun," and he nodded and stared at the table. After a few minutes, he started fumbling through his coat pockets. There was a smell of mint and tobacco, maybe cloves, and he was pulling out scraps of paper, guitar picks, rolling papers, and such. He looked up.
"Do you like chocolate?" he asked. He held an unopened bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate.

My performance at Cousins was forgettable. Nick's was memorable mostly for its awkwardness. Sitting on a small wooden chair, the kind favored in most third grade classrooms, he seemed to shrink, to recede further and further away from the microphone, as if we were all looking through the wrong end of a telescope. He hunched over a small mahogany guitar, a parlor guitar, and began fingerpicking with the ease and elegance and grace of the playing on his album, though he pulled the guitar tightly into himself, hugging it as he played, and the sound was distant and muffled and indistinct, as if he'd found a way to get up and walk out into the hallway and close the door on us while he sat there on the stage.
He began singing "Thoughts of Mary Jane," and you could hear the sound of the buttons on his jacket hitting the guitar, the sound of the chair creaking, and midway through, just as it seemed like he was getting warmed up and settling into the performance, he changed directions, changed songs. No one could tell if he'd forgotten the chords or lost the words or simply grown bored and decided to move on. He settled into a rolling guitar figure, beautiful and stuttered and strangely uplifting, and he began singing the opening lines to a new song, new to me at least:
Do you curse where you come from?
Do you swear in the night?
And then he would look away, even further away, and begin the pattern once again and continue the same words until they sprawled into a chant, slurred and strange and hypnotic:
Do you curse where you come from?
Do you swear in the night?
The words seemed a challenge, a prayer and a whispered threat all at once, a quiet British voodoo sung to an unseen moon and an all-too-present dark:
Do you curse where you come from?
Do you swear in the night?
You couldn't watch. But you couldn't look away. And then it was over. I don't remember if there was any applause, but I know that there were no celebratory drinks, there was no after party; the audience simply drifted off into their own version of the night.

jeepers

anybody read the new bio?

I buy these rolls of bags to collect my dog’s dogshit. When I get toward the end of the roll there’s a “three bags left” warning

! had no idea there was one

Nick Drake: The Life is the only biography of Nick to be written with the blessing and involvement of his sister and estate. Drawing on copious original research and new interviews with his family, friends, and musical collaborators, as well as deeply personal archive material unavailable to previous writers—including his father’s diaries, his essays, and private correspondence—this is the most comprehensive and authoritative account possible of Nick’s short and enigmatic life.

i'm sold. i was just listening to Five Leaves Left last week.

Also cited: his father’s diarrhea

the fuck?

Inspiration can come from anywhere.

Day Is Done... and so is my digestive system

Pink Moon

Time at the Urologist’s Has Told Me

Man in a shed

Black-Eyed Bog

Things Behind Yer Mum

River Man

Five Leaves (Of Bog Roll) Left

fantastic work everybody, we can be proud today

keeping in spirit with the horrible first post of the thread and indeed, the absurd notion that Nick Drake is in any way indefensible.

brilliant cover here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wc2eBue0SU

Flávio Tris - From The Morning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTPBGXJ4HWA

https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/nick-drake-the-making-of-five-leaves-left

Not much difference in price (CDs vs vinyl set). Interesting.

I never seen the attraction in masses of alternative takes tbh.

Same

Especially when they are all sandwiched into the main sequencing and not left for later

Geez, I was sure this was revived in advance of tonight's pink moon.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/12/science/full-pink-moon-april/index.html

Pink, pink, pink, pink, pink micromoon

I've been on a Nick Drake outtake spree lately so hyped for this (though I may be familiar with all of it)

such a perfect but frustratingly small body of work

I wish I hadn’t exhausted Five Leaves Left by overlistening to it as a teenager, but ah well. I think Pink Moon is the one for me now I’m much older — it’s so unvarnished and direct. What a crazy thing to have come from a 25 year old.

I did love the nineties Time of No Reply compilation too — I have a hard time thinking of those songs outside of that specific track order.

Speaking of which - I love Three Hours but I’ve always thought its positioning so early in the album is a bit of a bummer. It has very Penultimate Track vibes.

Having said that - the nerve of putting Way to Blue and Day is Done next to each other. Intense! I still remember first hearing them together over thirty years ago and thinking, bloody hell.