Can we talk about these obscure 70s singer-songwriters featured in the newest Record Collector Magazine (and others if you wish)

i have this on mp3; it's nice... i'll ysi something later.

Kevin Coyne can never be mentioned enough.

Christopher Columbus Said The World Is Like A Ball Spinning Round In Endless Circles It's Not Flat At All People Laughed And Said You Poor Fool Now What's Your Game And He Said You're Never Gonna Make It That Way

so i just found the Keith Christmas album out in the ether and it's fabulous. i was sort of worried because all of the artists featured were British. i was hoping it wasn't gonna be too twee psych-folky, but the album is really good. it's got a bit of a country touch. sorta kinda reminds me of John Martyn? the last song has a total acoustic freakout for like 5 minutes. tweaky picking, slapping the guitar like it's tablas. pretty awesome.

i really like him. I've Got "Second Contribution" (one of my favorite album covers). i think it's a pretty awesome album. i've also got "Contribution" which is pretty similar to second. and i've got "Spaced" (another cool cover with him in a glowing space suit) which is a really weird album. it's less folk and more soul-jazz. it's got fender rhodes (oh wow, just found out that Joe Sample played keys on this!!) and some funky drumming. one side is pretty much all instrumental. there are some heavy breaks on it and DJ Shadow sampled an accapella section for part of "Midnight in a Perfect World". i also found "Rumplestiltskin's Resolve" for a buck at the local thrift store, but i brought it home and it was the wrong record :(

finally, i can't emphasize how much i LOVE LOVE LOVE the two Armando Piazza albums i have where Shawn played lead guitar on. amazing acid folk albums.

anyway, I recommend this. the music is good, the packaging (great repros of the original LP sleeves) and the liners just astounding.

i wouldn't characterize anything on this cd (or in the liners) as "astounding." would be afraid of overselling what is to my mind not much more than a curio. i mean, the cd is an interesting object...an attempt to sort of chart a particular stylistic that the compilers seem to argue spins right off from joni mitchell's second lp. some of these ladies are still at work singing in coffehouses. i'm a bit confused by the fact that the same people who might make a beeline for the door (if not make faces) if one of them popped up at your local starbucks hand over $20 for this cd because of the tasteful packaging and trendiness (well-deserved i suppose) of the label.

anyway all that snark aside what i find most interesting about this is the crossover between christian-folkies ("song for life") and the sort of hippie-ish stuff we're more familiar with. i mean, i guess this all has to do with the New Spirituality which bled over into certain New Churches and so on... still i wasn't expecting so much religiosity on this record. in a way it's much more interesting as a snapshot of 1970s america than any records by the bigshots like joni etc. doesn't mean i'll be listening to it all that much, i suspect.

Ian, last time I was in Academy that Marc Brierley record was up on the wall and extremely expensive. You should listen to it. It kills.

Are Sunbeam affiliated to Radioactive Records?

Yeah, I've listened to it a few times. $265 is RIDICULOUS, though. It's not /that/ good. It's maybe $75, $80 good.

He wrote me an email in response to a review I wrote last year:

"Although I knew Jackson [C. Frank] subsequent to the Transatlantic EP - I hadn't heard him play before that. Cat [Stevens] I knew before he made records - he was a very good writer, but in the days when I knew him, he was in my audiences and not the other way round - and finally - I still have never heard a Tim Buckley record - so any similarities are coincidental. It's true there was a "sound" that was dominant in the London folk clubs. It was influenced by a mixture of the Traditional English folk sound emanating from Cecil Sharpe House. Also there was the amazingly powerful influence of Davy Graham. Burt Jansch really harnessed that as a compelling combination. That's certainly where my first song writing attempts came from. But before that, I was a big frequenter of the poetry circles of London, led by people like Peter Porter. Anyway - just some extra history for you to spray around sometime!

I've written a couple of new songs in the past couple of years -doesn't sound like much output - but having just come back from a holiday in Italy where there was a Steinway to tinkle on, I reckon it would be wonderful to have a go at something new."

He has a website and appears to be running some kind of PR firm these days.

Rhino Handmade's reissue of Loudon Wainwright's 1st 2 albums was on a single disc, not 2. Suicide Song on Album II is a particular favourite of mine - John Peel used to play it a lot. It's about time his 2 Arista albums (T-Shirt and Final Exam) got a CD release.

Duncan Browne's Immediate CDs have been reissued, and there is also a career-spanning compilation called Journey.

David McWilliams was an Irish singer-songwriter who had a big hit in the UK with Days of Pearly Spencer, then faded from view. He was played a lot on Radio Caroline because his record label had the same owner. There are a couple of CD compilations of his stuff available - quite good.

Now if someone would reissue Alasdair Clayre's album on CD....

Enjoying Chris Smither's Don't It Drag On, a Christgau A- from '72.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTreyRyUCH4

Good "No Expectations" cover, too.

i love that record!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sX4AWtddN3Y/UPbbfFs2DQI/AAAAAAAAAJs/e4dAh9uH7g0/s1600/TSTTBBlog.jpg

just cos I have this playing now and really digging it - ppl who fuck w/ the stuff itt should try and hear this when it lands

In July 1969, Beau released the very first record on John Peel’s Dandelion label, the single ‘1917 Revolution”’. The gifted singer/songwriter went on to record two critically acclaimed albums for John Peel’s label with the two men building a strong mutual respect. Twelve Strings To The Beau has however remained unreleased for 38 years.

Beau’s material varies from the striking folk guitar of ‘1917 Revolution’ to heavier tracks such as ‘Silence Returns’, which continues to capture significant worldwide attention. The past few years have seen a renewed interest in all things Beau with the highly praised reissue of his debut album and the release of his excellent Edge Of The Dark unreleased collection. Beau is also a prolific songwriter with several hundred songs to his name, his most famous being ‘The Roses of Eyam' as recorded by Roy Bailey.

Here’s a little known twist to his story. In 1975, with 12-string guitar in hand, Beau travelled to Heywood in Lancashire to record in the Tractor Sound Studio, that legendary Dandelion band Tractor had just opened. Tractor had already backed Beau on some of his most enduring tracks including the startling ‘Silence Returns’ from his Creation album.
The recordings were a chance to test the studio but things were going so well that Beau decided to record a full album in the studio. The results were quite simply superb.

Just as Beau was looking to release the album his life took a new twist with a promotion at work and the associated upheaval of his family to the other end of the country. He then made the decision to only really concentrate on songwriting and the odd show, so the album was put on the shelf and left to gather dust for 38 years.

A random blog post in 2012 regarding the Creation album, and a live performance for Chris McGranaghan of Those Old Records, finally made the crucial connections that led to Twelve Strings To The Beau being released as the fourth album on The Sound of Salvation label in Mach 2013.

It may have been a very long wait for the third studio album to see the light of day, but it’s certainly been a worthwhile wait. This is a warm and endearing album from the heyday of a unique British songwriter; and as such it certainly doesn’t disappoint.

huh just as I pressed submit he sang something about "negroes in the woodpile"