My top 10 musical (re)discoveries - 6 months into 2011

For me, 2011 has already been a great year for discovering/rediscovering music. Thought I'd share a list of my favourite musical (re)discoveries ... and as the more observant of you will notice there are in fact 12, and not 10. To be honest I could probably have listed more but decided to restrict myself to a single album by each artist. The UK and US links after each album take you to amazon.co.uk or amazon.com respectively where these fantastic albums are available, usually at bargain prices and also many with bonus tracks.

Incredible String Band - The 5000 Spirits  UK / US

Pentangle - Basket of Light  UK / US

Bridget St. John - Songs For the Gentle Man  UK / US

Bert Jansch - It Don't Bother Me  UK / US

Donovan - Hurdy Gurdy Man  UK / US

Captain Beefheart - Safe As Milk  UK / US

Trees - The Garden of Jane Delawney  UK / US

John Renbourn - Another Monday  UK / US

Mr Fox - Join Us In Our Game  UK / US

The Holy Modal Rounders - 1 and 2  UK / US

Tom Rapp - Sunforest  UK / US

Fairport Convention - Unhalfbrickling  UK / US

No question about it ... there's a definite folk/acid folk theme going on here and the majority of these great albums were brought to my attention by 2 excellent books, Electric Eden by Rob Young, and Seasons They Change by Jeanette Leech.

    

Theme Thursday: Soft

I was initially stumped by this week's Theme Thursday, Soft. Believe it or not I was about to post photograph of a strawberry from my garden, which accidentally came out in soft focus when I was trying for a detailed close-up. However, something made me look up from my computer screen and I caught sight of The Doors - Soft Parade. Of course once I'd noticed this, great albums by each of The Soft Boys, Soft Cell and Soft Machine all sprang to mind, now leaving me with a decision of which to post for this week's theme.

The Doors - Soft Parade, c.1969

Bizarrely, well bizarrely to me anyway, I chose The Doors - Soft Parade. I didn't choose this because it's my favourite Doors album or because it has some standout tracks. I chose it because when I looked at the track listing I cannot honestly say I know any of the tracks, so the reason for choosing it is that I'm now listening to it to refamiliarise myself with it.

    

This week I have mostly been listening to The Holy Modal Rounders

Trying to manage 4 blogs simultaneously, I tend to find that one of them gets left for a few weeks. This has definitely happened to this blog as recently my focus has been going into my vintage postcards blog and my In Search of Space blog. So, it's about time I put this right. Over the past few weeks I've been reading Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk which has opened my eyes to some great music from the late 1960's and early 1970's so far. I've even managed to track some of it down and am now the proud owner of The Holy Modal Rounders 1+2. I was a bit 'nervous' buying it as I thought that the tracks I'd heard on lastfm may not be representative, but it is a really great compilation ... slightly quirky, as I guess it was meant to be, but great nevertheless.

Other recent purchases include the excellent Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica, Sandy Denny - Sandy, Nico - Chelsea Girl, and Bert Jansch - It Don't Bother Me. All of these are brilliant albums, even the Nico one which again I was a bit 'nervous' about as she tends to polarise opinion (bit like marmite I guess) and I have read some fairly harsh reviews. But, as with marmite, I like Nico.

    

Acid and Psychedelic Folk

After procrastinating for much too long about whether to buy it, I have now bought Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk by Jeanette Leech. Initially the book didn't cover much that I was not already aware of, but now that I'm about 90 pages in, it has alerted me to some fantastic bands I'd never heard of before, as well as providing some interesting new information on bands and artists with whose work I was already familiar. 

 Probably the most interesting 'new' band to me was an outfit called The Holy Modal Rounders, musical contemporaries and collaborators with The Fugs, who I had heard of. Musically they are almost impossible to categorise, but the little I've heard to date on lastfm would seem to fit into the country-folk-psychedelic bracket, although even that seems inadequate. Other artists whose description in the book has been sufficient to get me searching around the web for more info and albums includes Michael Hurley and Pat Kilroy. Pat Kilroy's Light of Day album is especially good, and again another album that's really hard to classify. Plus I've 'rediscovered' Jackson C Frank, who I 'found' several months ago but seemed to have forgotten all about.

I'll post again as the days go by and I make my way through the book, and 'discover' more great music. For now, here's a small selection of what I've been listening to as a result of the book.

from amazon.co.uk ...

    

and also from amazon.com ...

    

Tom Rapp - Sunforest (Pearls Before Swine)

In my previous blog post I extolled the virtues of Pearls Before Swine so was over the moon last week when I came across a copy of Sunforest by Tom Rapp. I must have played it every day since I bought it and have not grown tired of it yet. Not knowing much about Pearls Before Swine, the sleeve notes filled some important gaps, and verifying what I originally found hard to believe that Tom returned to his studies to become a lawyer, in fact a Civil Rights lawyer, after the release of this album, and then went into a bit of a musical hiatus for 30 years. I can't comment on whether this is the best starting point for Pearls Before Swine, but it's my starting point and seems a pretty good one too. CD is readily available from amazon (see below) ...

amazon.co.uk  /  amazon.com  

  

A few more musical discoveries: Tudor Lodge, Mellow Candle, Pearls Before Swine

As regular blog readers will know, I tend to get quite excited when I 'discover' something old, particularly from the late 1960's or early 1970's, that I've never hear before. A couple of weeks ago it was Sunforest and Linda Perhacs, which I'm still listening to, but this week it's been augmented with Tudor Lodge, Pearls Before Swine and Mellow Candle. Tudor Lodge and Mellow Candle were both fairly short-lived bands, making just one album each at the time, but reforming a few times since. Tudor Lodge's eponymous debut album came out on Vertigo in 1971, but as far as I can tell there has been no material since. Similarly, Mellow Candle's 1972 album on Deram, Swaddling Songs, would appear to be their own recorded output, although members like Clodagh Simonds have appeared elsewhere, Fovea Hex being the most notable.

Pearls Before Swine however have released a considerable amount of material dating back to their 1967 debut album, One Nation Underground and ending with 1973's Sunforest album, after which their leader, Tom Rapp, would seem to have left music to become a lawyer.

It always amazes me when I come across great music I've never heard before. I am slightly concerned that one day it will just dry up, and there will be nothing else old for me to discover, but thankfully no sign of that at the moment.

Related CDs on amazon.co.uk ...

    

Related CDs on amazon.com ...

    

Since transferring a lot of my music to digital format, my web site has a list of my records and CD's for sale

My Neil Young top 10

When I was a kid, many, many years ago now, I used to make all sorts of top 10 music lists. I always found it really hard to keep it to just 10 tracks or 10 albums, so invariably I ended up making lists for a specific genre or decade, but even that became tricky at times. I have not done this for years, but following a vinyl revival evening at a friend's house last week, we got talking about favourite artists, favourite albums, favourite tracks, etc., and that has inspired me to create a few 'top 10' lists. Given that the conversation was mainly about Neil Young, I thought it appropriate to list my first top 10 dedicated to the man himself.

1. Harvest Moon
2. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
3. My My (Hey Hey) Out of The Blue
4. Birds
5. Out On The Weekend
6 . Rockin' in the Free World
7. Like a Hurricane
8. Comes a Time
9. The Old Laughing Lady
10. Ohio

Listen to mp3 extracts on amazon.com ... or amazon.co.uk