29 October 2010 - RE-OPENING

Some of these albums were posted in parallel with Countess Vanessa's Castle, I know it's a bit confusing for everyone - me included - but sometimes a sprinkle of madness doesn't disturb... does it?


Your COUNTESS

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Wednesday 17 November 2010

Dear Friends, and dear Visitors, and also dear UN-friendly people,

A “few” words for you all together:
I started these blogs of mine exactly one year ago, on the 20th November 2009. Since then, many things have happened, many troubles but also many satisfactions. Whom ever of you liked to follow the chronology (real good friends like Fabio, Peter, Gurnemanz, Ellen and Christina) know exactly what I mean.

Since last December, after I opened this new Pilot Blog, the Countess Vanessa’s Castle, things had started to develop much better, without the continuous and extremely disgusting messages of schizophrenic people, (the top of them was this one named “Maeshyfryd”, you can still read all his attack-of-delirium-tremens scribbled stuff on my first blog:

As a final-solution enterprise (which he was extremely proud of), as you can read, in his lust-of-might agony, maeshyfryd reported my blog as an abuse-blog, and as a consequence, I decided to close it. Right after, I re-opened these new ones. The fact is that some other people – if not him again – must have followed his example.  In coins, I have received FIVE mails from DMKA, the text is always the same, and you can read it here:
(the colour brown wurde absichtlich ausgewählt)
**********************
Blogger DMCA takedown notification
support@blogger.comBlogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium C... 28 ott
Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again. A bit of background: the DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. If you believe you have the rights to post the content at issue here, you can file a counter-claim. For more information on our DMCA policy, including how to file a counter-claim, please see http://www.google.com/dmca.html. The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling Effects at http://www.chillingeffects.org. We do this in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). You can search for the DMCA notice associated with the removal of your content by going to the Chilling Effects search page at http://www.chillingeffects.org/search.cgi, and entering in the URL of the blog post that was removed. If it is brought to our attention that you have republished the post without removing the content/link in question, then we will delete your post and count it as a violation on your account. Repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account including deleting your blog and/or terminating your account. If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel.
Sincerely, The Blogger Team

****************************
I actually suggest you all to skip it, because we are here for the love of MUSIC, of the ART, not for a trainload of recited codes, or for a list of organized punishments, not for the love of DESTRUCTION, but rather for the sake of CREATIVITY, to present it to the posterity as integral as possible. 
And throughout - possibly - the centuries to come.
It takes ART to make ART. 
It takes CULTURE to make CULTURE.
It takes PROGRESS to make PROGRESS.
It takes MUSIC to make MUSIC.
Not OBSCURANTISM.
Not a cathalogue of organized punishments.
We are supposed to destroy in order to RECONSTRUCT something better.
Not destroying for the sake of giving death to the forms of ART we love.
You may say: "It's the law and it must be respected"
Yes, I know, but in my modest opinion I see that this law is only a bad-composed law, a bad-engineered  law.
It's a law that doesn't work, doesn't bring new lymph neither to the artists nor to the audiences.
An artist needs support, publicity, airing, etc, otherwise he/she is doomed to remain unknown.
And in my modest opinion, bad laws are supposed to be changed.


************
Back to our dmca, it all got started with the bootleg of Captain Beefheart, they removed it from the server, then it was the turn of other albums, and then things went on and on…
Now, I don’t want anymore to receive stuff like that. This must be the last time! I have a lot of other things to do, to follow my work, lead a normal life with the woman who is my Lady, but most of all I need my sleep at night, troubles are not lacking in my life, I really have no will to increase the number.  Maybe I'm too old (I have already passed the half-century of age, small secret that at this stage I have no problems to reveal), or maybe too annoyed, really, but the task is not worthy anymore.  As you all know, I did all this not for my personal incoming, I am fundamentally a purist, I never gained a coin from all this (I even refused to apply any kind of publicity to my pages!), but I did it rather for the huge love I bear to the music I love, and for the pleasure in sharing it with other real music lovers.

So, in short, I'm closing, and this time for good.


The only Blog that I think I will keep opened is the “Diary”, because it doesn’t hold entries related to posted albums.

Of course, Friends remain Friends, I deeply cherish the marvellous contacts I have with them. Thanks to the activity of my blogs, I had the chance to get in touch with new wonderful people, in some cases there are oceans separating us, nevertheless with a few of them we even met in person! …. But for the others, what else can I say, other than “I’m sorry, but the Inquisition stroke again”… ?
"Malleus Maleficarum slaughtered and tortured" - evergreen lines, by Peter Hammill.

Thank you all for your presence, happy to know that it was a magic time for you as well as it was for me.

Your COUNTESS VANESSA

Sunday 7 November 2010

BROTHERS FOUR - panorama, while scanning their albums...


I'm currently preparing a retrospective on the Brothers Four albums, it will take obviously some time because they are many and all worthy of being posted. For the time being, here's a parade of some record sleeves, just a preview, meanwhile waiting....




These are just some of the albums that will take place here.  More to come.

Your COUNTESS V

Thursday 4 November 2010

PETER PAUL & MARY - Live at the Stadium, Sydney, 1964 (b/w Film, ca. 90')

A black and white film, 83 minutes of music with some short comedy sketch (for completists see Paul Stookey's performance on the official double live album, Warner Bros. 1964), never officially released, recorded through a broadcast on BS2, a Japanese TV network. Good video quality, steady images, stereo sound.  Long spoken parts by the smiling woman who presents the TV program... I might have easily taken them away, but I didn't, just my proverbial lazyness...


These stills are taken from the film, this collage is mine
*********************
I coudn't yet load this video on the server, due to its size (about 700 MB), but it's coming more or less soon.


Your COUNTESS

Thursday 13 May 2010

LINDA COHEN - Leda (Poppy, 1971)

No words to define this magnificent instrumental album: classical guitar and reverb effects with incredible sounds...

Your COUNTESS

Wednesday 5 May 2010

POLLY BOLTON BAND - Live in Cheltenham, 1992

POLLY BOLTON BAND:
Polly Bolton - vocals
John Shepherd - keyboards and vocals
Steve Dunachie - fiddle
A concert in two sets recorded at the Cheltenham Folk Club, 11 December 1992, very good audience recording. Polly was prey of a big cold that night, but luckily this didn't disturb her vocal rendition!
Not easy to detect each song title, I did my best to give names to as many as possible but some have no title at all, so far at least. 
Therefore, this is a partial list:
. 
 Intro/tuning
 Once I loved a lass 
Sally garden
Down in Yon Forest
John Shepherd's tunes
John Shepherd's song
Searching for lambs??
Died for love
Tunes
Tunes
Spencer the rover
The banks of the Bann
Jingle bang jingle
The lark in the morning
Bonny light horseman
Blackwater side

As usual, I have the habit to cut the spoken/introductory parts out of the real songs, and this concert is no exception.

Your COUNTESS





VIN GARBUTT - The valley of tees (Trailer, 1972) @320



On its way
This album comes from the collection of a great Friend,
thank you Manila!

LOVE
from your
COUNTESS

DUBLINERS - In concert (Transatlantic, 1964)





LACKEY & SWEENEY - Junk store songs for sale (Village Thing, 1973)

Billy Lackey with his fabulous Gibson J 200, probably  the 1965 issue

Monday 3 May 2010

PENTANGLE - Live at the BBC, 12 June 1970 (Video, 29 minn.)



Shreds and SVCD rips of this concert have already surfaced here and there on some blogs and on utube, but this is the complete concert, and in perfect video quality.  And a high quality audio as well, recorded on June 12th 1970, the period of "Cruel sister", with great versions of "Light flight", of "Hunting song" (a "13th Century rock'n'roll song", as Bert Jansch describes it) and a splendid combination sitar-banjo on "House carpenter", among the other gems. Maybe not everybody knows that "I've got a feeling" is a song completely based on a piece by Miles Davis, "All blues", which you can find on some of his early CBS LPs, starting from "Kind of blue" (1959). In my opinion, all these songs sound better than the respective originals studio recordings. Shame that this film doesn't even reach a half-n-hour time...
Now, if you take some time to search a bit through the blogs, you'll see some bootlegs around (AUDIO ONLY!) reporting this same BBC concert as recorded in 1971, but the right year is 1970.  Also, you will see that their title list shows SIX songs, while actually we should also consider an incomplete "I got a woman" at the end of the film, which BBC used as a background for the coda titles, therefore we should reckon seven titles all together.
So, always be picking when looking for bootlegs. ;)

For technical reasons I had to split the .avi file in 2 parts.


Your COUNTESS

Thursday 29 April 2010

NOEL MURPHY - Murf (Village Thing, 1973)



On its way

Tuesday 27 April 2010

TUCKER ZIMMERMAN - same (Village Thing, 1972) @320



This album by Tucker Zimmerman, the second, was released in two different countries, years and labels (in Germany on Autogramm, 1971, and in UK on Village Thing one year later). For those who know his first LP, "Ten songs" (Regal Zonophone, 1969), it might be difficult to recognize the author. There we have some very nice acoustic songs ("Roadrunner" and "Alpha centauri" above all) drowned among others with rock arrangements.  Here, instead, all the electrical gear and equipment have disappeared, this is a real folk album and I personally prefer it this way.  TZ sings and plays his 12 string guitar and other instruments (with P. Chapelle's help on track 5) - but I fundamentally think that these songs would render at their best where no other instruments are employed, first of all this kind of "vibrato children organ" (how can I otherwise define it?), which I find rather disturbing, especially tracks 1 and 6. Often the voice is brought to the verge of "falsetto", like on track 2, and many melodies shine thanks to their "not resolving" harmonical solutions, especially "Left hand of Moses". My favourite is "Canary island rain". I personally find it great that TZ had M° Goffredo Petrassi as a teacher for composition.
The vinyl is in quite good conditions, the scan is 320 bitrate MP3
Your COUNTESS

Friday 23 April 2010

PAUL SLADE - Dutchman (CBS, 1972)

Very good album, his second and best, many acoustic guitars and some too-electrical arrangement solutions, at times, but also a group of really beautiful songs, with "Train song" on top, for me....  Paul Slade recorded his first two LPs on CBS, the only ones with some real folky lymph in their veins; from 1974 he often recorded songs in French, not much common for an Englishman.  The title can be related to the (ghostly?) Vasseau drawing on the sleeve, from the legend of the cursed Flying Dutchman, which Heinrich Heine and Richard Wagner took inspiration from, about 150 - 170 years ago...

I'm also going to post his first album sometime soon - errands permitting.
Some good songs in it, but inferior to "Dutchman".

"Life of a man" (CBS, 1971)

Your COUNTESS VANESSA

Wednesday 7 April 2010

SPIROGYRA - The return of SPIROGYRA on stage, June 2010!

THE RETURN OF
SPIROGYRA
LIVE IN CONCERT at the UNION CHAPEL,
London, 6 JUNE 2010

The cover of Spirogyra's marvellous live album, recorded 1974, coming soon on these columns for you!

Love and gratitude to
MARTIN COCKERHAM
the great survivor of Progressive - Folk,
who leads the resurged group on stage for this concert
- more infos will follow -

Your COUNTESS





Monday 22 March 2010

MIKE COOPER - Trout steel (Dawn, 1971)

MIKE COOPER - Do I know you? (Dawn, 1970)

MIKE COOPER - Oh really!? (PYE, 1969)




MAGNA CARTA - Live in Bergen 1978


At the time it came out, rumours said that it was practically only available in Northern Nations like Scandinavia,  it was nearly a ghostly album for many many collectors and music lovers. Personally, I only managed to see two copies of this, the other is in the hands of a Magna Carta specialized collector, in Florence, Mr. G.R., whom I say hello to :-)
Songs like "Idle wind" and "Midwinter" have such a power to feel the ice of Artica in your veins...

Wednesday 10 March 2010

RALPH McTELL - panorama of a Folk Grand 1968-1979

Under construction










Monday 8 March 2010

JIMMIE SPHEERIS - Isle of view (CBS, 1972)



The original USA covers, front and back, and the slightly different UK edition.

A MASTERPIECE












Friday 5 March 2010

FRED WEDLOCK (1942-2010) - The folker (Village Thing, 1971)

Fred Wedlock died yesterday of a heart attack.
He was a folk singer, humorist, actor and more. To remember him, this is his first album he made
The title track is a funny re-elaboration of Simon & Garfunkel's hit "The boxer"




Sunday 28 February 2010

DEAR FRIENDS - Communication for the LINKS

MY DEAR FRIENDS, HELLO EVERYBODY!

I must apologize, but I have received so many requests of download links in these days, that I really have lost track of so many of them.
So I ask you a favour:  I need that you write me again a new email where you tell me again which LPs you want, the exact list one by one.

Yes, this method of using single comments and emails for requests, is a bit annoying for you and me, I know, but it's giving me the results I was hoping to get!
So, finally one good new, at last!
Thank you for your closeness, it's beautiful to be a blogger! - LOL!

 your
COUNTESS

Friday 26 February 2010

IRISH ROVERS - Live at CBC TV Center, Vancouver (Interfusion, 1972)

As you can see, the foto comes from UnmöglichFolk times ;)))

JOHNSTONS - same (Transatlantic, 1968)

JOHNSTONS - The travelling people [singles' compilation, 1966-69] (Hallmark/Marble Arch, 1969)

Chronologically, this compilation of singles stays between the LPs "The barley corn" and "Bitter green".

JOHNSTONS - "Give a damn" (Transatlantic, 1968) and "Both sides now" (Polydor, 1969)

The Johnstons started as a kind of sunshine-folk group, in 1966, they published a bunch of singles for the labels PYE (1966-67, most of which mono) and BigT (1968-70), and recorded their first LP for Transatlantic in  1968, "The Johnstons".  Their second album was this, "Give a damn" again in 1968, which included some of the original BIG T singles. 
Shortly after, for reason unknown to me, the labels Polydor (in UK) and Tetragrammaton (in the USA) republished the same tracks list of this Transatlantic album, including "My house" / "The wherefore and the why" (absent on the "Give a damn" LP), on a compilation entitled "Both sides now".
Therefore, practically, these two LPs contain the same songs, but "Give a damn" lacks the above mentioned single, while "Both sides now" lacks "Julia" and "Urge for going".  So, what I 'm going to post here is this: the complete "Give a damn" album with the songs "My house" / " The wherefore..." as bonus tracks.

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As to the Johnstons' early mono singles, the Marble Arch / Hallmark label packed them on a compilation album named "The travellin people" in 1969, where the songs are re-channeled into stereo. This LP will also soon appear.

XXX Your COUNTESS