FAIRY FOLK SPELL - Demos 2011

A new and very good-sounding folk band based in Vienna has just sent me some samples.

Four poly-instrumentists, Chris, Eva, Steve, Klaus.

Soon to appear here

BERT JANSCH

... Just devastated for the death of one of my heroes...

Here is a modest anthology, packed in a hurry.

Some of his songs I love most.

The difficult thing was deciding what numbers to exclude...!

http://tinyurl.com/5v3as55

TITLES:
angie - blues run the game - chambertin - fresh as a sweet sunday morning -
go your way my love - kingfisher - lady nothing  - looking for a home -
moonshine - needle of death [1974 version] - nottamun town - of love and lullaby -
oh my father - ring-a-ding bird - rosemary lane - silly woman - the bright new year -
the first time ever i saw your face [1972 version] -
there comes a time - wishing well - yarrow

[NOTE: This is a torrent link. I'm not keeping it for long here, so go for it.]

THE SIX BERT JANSCH ALBUMS I PREFER

"It don't bother me", "Birthday blues", "Rosemary lane", 

"Moonshine", "L.A. turnaround", "A rare conundrum"

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Some other read-only links that may be interesting:

http://countess-vanessas-diary.blogspot.com/search/label/BERT%20JANSCH

http://louvreghost.blogspot.com/search/label/BERT%20JANSCH

http://louvreghost.blogspot.com/search/label/PENTANGLE

V

LIMELITERS - Panorama on their discography

For me one of the best folk trios of the 60's

Practically each album is a must for folk music lovers.

As usual, this is just a parade of some of their albums, no links for downloads, sorry

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Here you can see two of their absolute best albums:

"Fourteen 14 K folk songs" (RCA, 1964)
and
"London Concert" (RCA, 1965)

- UNDER CONSTRUCTION -

COUNTESS V

PROG & FOLK BLOGGERS REUNION!

TWO FANTASTIC OLD FRIENDS OF MINE [Mr. F. and Mr. F.] visited me last weekend! :-)
TWO GIGANTIC VYNIL COLLECTORS (mid-50's thru mid-80's).
I preferred not to put myself in the same frame, although I'm an ex-blogger as well today.  I got permission to publish this foto, but I cannot say their names here; enough to know that putting all their LPs together, you can practically find EVERY good album (of a certain artistical importance) you want.
.

Many of their LPs have toured the world and made other music lovers happy :-)
BLESSINGS TO YOU
Hopefully we will meet again soon, 3some, 4some, etc :-)

Yours ever

Countess V.

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RICHARD THOMPSON and AL STEWART - strange double album packages for the USA

In order to dissolve any doubt about the release of these two double albums...

[The two pictures above: "GUITAR, VOCAL - A collection of unreleased and rare material 1967- 1976" ]

The double album "Guitar, Vocal" gathers a couple of Fairport songs ("Time will show the wiser" and "Throwaway steet puzzle") both already officially published. In addition, we have a group of unissued/alternate/live songs, etc. spanning Thompson's career till 1976. So we have again some Fairport numbers, some by Thompson solo, or accompanied by his live band, or in couple with Linda. Among the tracks, the famous "Poor will & the jolly hangman", refused at the time of "Full house" (shame because I would have much more rather traded it for the extremely boring "Flowers of the forest"!) and later included (for its first official release) on Fairport's "Live at the LA Troubadour 1970" LP, on Help, issued 1975. Therefore, whoever is interested in these rare/live/unreleased songs, must have this "Guitar, Vocal" double album.
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The two pictures below: "LIVE (more or less)"

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About the "Live (more or less)", we start with an excerpt of the liner notes: "One of 1974's best albums never really reached these shores but it finally does here."  It's sadly true, the album we refer to is "I want to see the bright lights tonight", for me the most beautiful ever done by Richard & Linda Thompson, published by Island (see cover fotos). How odd to imagine that such a great album was not officially released in the USA, only two years later Island thought to fill the gap (better late then never).
 Therefore, the first of these two discs is the exact reprint of "I wanna see the bright lights...", and the second is a selection of rare/live/unreleased material, taken from the "Guitar, Vocal" album.
So if you already have the "I wanna see the bright lights" album, and you only look for all that those rarities, you'd better want to search for "Guitar, vocal", the double "Live" is not for you, as obviously, for reasons of space, it can't be complete.
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the two pictures below:
"I WANT TO SEE THE BRIGHT LIGHTS TONIGHT"
(Island, 1974)

For collectors: don't forget that the first edition included an inner bag with lyrics, as you can see.

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A similar operation was done by RCA/Janus in America and Canada for Al Stewart: on the wake of the gigantic success of "Year of the cat" in 1977, they thought to make a belated release of one of his best albums, his second "Love chronicles", originally published in UK by CBS, in 1969. 

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[the next three pictures: "Love chronicles", the first original UK edition on CBS, 1969]

They hastened to make a double album, "The early years", a package where one disc was the exact reprint of "Love chronicles" and the other disc was an anthology of Al Stewart's CBS period between 1967 and 1970.

This double album was released in UK by RCA as a single LP, as a simple anthology of CBS material.

Your  COUNTESS  V



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:

http://folk-impossible.blogspot.com/

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)

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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

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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.


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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

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

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

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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

LINDA COHEN - Leda (Poppy, 1971)

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

Your COUNTESS

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

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

NOEL MURPHY - Murf (Village Thing, 1973)

On its way

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

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

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

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...

RALPH McTELL - panorama of a Folk Grand 1968-1979

Under construction