Unheard Vinyl 2: Fairport Convention "What We Did On Our Holidays"

[imomus]

I established the rules of this game in Unheard Vinyl 1, which took me blindfold through a first listen to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis. For the second installment I've chosen (from the vinyl collection I've been paying to store and transport around the world, yet haven't heard half of) What We Did On Our Holidays by Fairport Convention. As before, there's a possibility that I'll find this album a revelation, but also the possibility that it'll leave me cold.

Okay, I vaguely know that Fairport Convention is a British folk band containing Richard and Linda Thompson. Ten years ago I wrote about a Richard Thompson solo album called Mock Tudor, hoping it would be fake folk, or at least combing the reviews for productive tensions between the fake and the folk, my big preoccupation at the time. Thompson and Momus, I concluded at the time, "end up making different shades of half-timbered Mock 'n' Role".



So let's examine Richard's past. What We Did On Our Holidays is a Fairport Convention album on the Island label with an attractively spidery line drawing on a predominantly black sleeve. Not sure what the title refers to -- it almost suggests the album is the result of some kind of sabbatical. The sleeve is good, anyway.

I quite like the first track, which is soft and acoustic, with lovely backing vocals, not unlike certain Momus songs. The female vocalist (is it Linda?) is a little too warbly-folky for my taste, but I really like the gentle ambience. Not sure what the song is about.

Track 2 completely shatters the atmosphere with a bar-room blues stomp and horrible twiddly guitar solos. It sounds like a bad Glam Rock track. "Please, Mr Lacey, let me work your lovely machine". God, this is like Status Quo going slightly folky! I wish they'd stayed in the soft, gentle mode of the first track! Machine noises (cutting machines? Sewing machines?) do add some interest, making it slightly musique concretey before the hackneyed verse returns.

I wonder what year we're in here? I'd guess 1975.

The third track has harmony vocals which remind me of The Byrds or something. This is pretty dismal soft rock, and I don't like how they're changing style from one track to the next, yet never doing more than superficial parodies of each.

Now they're doing a slide guitar blues-gospel interlude, sort of ghostly. It isn't really compelling on any level, this album, though there are some "tasty guitar licks" here and there, if you like that sort of thing. I'm trying to work out why the sleeve has so many references to touring; a funny drawing of the band playing a gig with "noticeably worse sound" for Essex University students who live in ivory towers.

This track sounds like Talking Heads circa Road To Nowhere, except more mellow. Are those accordions zydeco? But the chords never do anything interesting, and the vocals are mixed far back. "Hey, come and make it easy, come and make it back...". I thought Richard Thompson was meant to be a bit of a dab hand with a lyric, but I just don't hear anything interesting being said here. Maybe I need to crank up the volume.

Side One ends with a Linda song. Her vocals sound like -- is it Judy Collins? A bit religiose. Oh my god, this is a cover of "I'll Keep It With Mine", which is a famous song by... Bob Dylan, no? His version works, this one just sounds like it's being sung in church. Why did they bother? And why do this English group sound so blandly American in their guitar-playing?

Just cheated as I flipped the album over and looked at the date on the label: 1969. And now there's a slightly psychedelic track more suited to that year. Mixed far down in the background of this song about rain are some rather nice deranged recorders and pizzicato string plucks. Possibly synth, actually. This is the best track since the first one, but that's not saying much. It could be one of the more laidback numbers from Hair, the rock opera. I like the background noodling better than the main track.

I don't like these big stacked multi-tracked vocals, Steeleye Span-style, using fifths to evoke some sort of medieval feel. Lyrics all about kings, queens and bosoms. "Ten thousand stood around me, but still I was alone, took my hat in my hands but still I was cold, Ten thousand got drownded that never was born" (it sounds like). Then a Ravi Shankar-style sitar and tabla solo with John Cale-like viola-scrubbing.

A man sings the next track, which has harpsichord arpeggios running alongside the normal, very 60s-sounding vocal harmonies. There's some sort of proto-Prog thing going on in some of the breakdowns, twiddly interlocking parts. The influence of The Byrds is all too clear; was Fairport Convention at this point just a Byrds tribute band or something? I wish they'd do something more British, and more purely folky, like June Tabor albums (I used to love June Tabor).

More relaxed but heavy West Coast lead guitar "licks" a forthright, warbly lead from Linda (if it is Linda, I'm itching to look up Wikipedia and AllMusic, but must wait until the end of the side). I will never listen to this album again, I don't like it. I thought Fairport Convention were better than this. What The Incredible String Band was doing at the same time was vastly more interesting and compelling. This is just bland, craven and pious.

Now a duet, possibly between the two Thompsons. "Too many friends blown off this mountain by the wind". They're gonna be on the ledge, they say. More "tasty guitar licks" which are stereotypical in the extreme. But who knows how this sounded at the time? Did Peel play it on his Perfumed Garden show? Probably.

The album ends with a nicely sparse and unadorned guitar piece. But the whole thing just feels underwhelming, somehow. I can't believe anyone anywhere calls this a classic, or compelling, or essential. Let's go and see.

Having consulted reference materials: Okay, Richard Thompson was involved, but Linda doesn't seem to have been on the scene yet. The girl vocalist seems to be Sandy Denny. Richard Thompson's girlfriend of the time, Jeannie Franklyn, played on the album but was killed later in the year when the band's van crashed on the M1 motorway.

"Formed in April 1967," Wikipedia tells me, "Fairport rapidly developed from playing cover versions of American 'west coast' style music to an individual style which melded rock music with traditional English tunes and songs." That development away from West Coast blanditude is what this album has me craving. I should probably listen to their supposed masterpiece, Liege and Lief, released after the crash.

The last song, Meet on the Ledge, is apparently considered a classic, despite sounding like a slowed-down, blanded-out version of Manfred Mann's "The Mighty Quinn" (I've decided). (And by the way, did you know that Manfred Mann once covered a Momus song? They really did! Here it is being credited to them! Bastards!)

Joe Boyd on Richard Thompson's guitar playing: "He can imitate almost any style, and often does, but is instantly identifiable. In his playing you can hear the evocation of the Scottish piper's drone and the melody of the chanter as well as echoes of Barney Kessell's and James Burton's guitars and Jerry Lee Lewis's piano. But no blues clichés."

Hmm, beg to differ there, on the basis of this album. But that Wiki page on Thompson's solo career does make me want to hear his first solo album, "Henry the Human Fly". Embracing weirdness is exactly what this young man, pastiching his way through 1969, needs to do. Meanwhile, I'm off to watch the BBC documentary about Thompson, Solitary Life.



Update: Watched that, and while Mr Thompson seems a nice enough man, I have to say I find his songs -- the phrasing, the outlook, the music, everything -- completely horrible. In every single period. The track I liked on the Fairport Convention album was actually written by Sandy Denny. Only two Thompson-related things impressed me, that Henry the Human Fly sleeve and his conversion to Sufi Islam in the mid-70s, resulting in the beautiful sleeve for Pour Down Like Silver, in which Thompson, dressed in robes, radiates spiritual integrity.

Comments

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Sandy Denny's signature song. It's a gem:



Pity she died so young.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

You might want to check out some of the artists on my friend Greg's label, Language of Stone (http://www.languageofstone.com/)--particularly Orion Rigel Dommisse (http://www.myspace.com/orionrigeldommisse) and Festival. (http://www.myspace.com/linzyandlexi) He's on tour in Europe with them right now.

Never got into Thompson. Boring.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Have no problems with folk but a whole heap of problems with folk-rock (although my iPod is currently stuffed full of it). The chunky good-heartedness of Fairport Convention always makes me profoundly depressed. Can't stand all that uncomfortable cultural forelock tugging to America either. You feel that at any moment they'd be far happier ditching the hey-nonny-no's and embarking on a bog standard 12-bar blues.

But perhaps that is why their music sounds so so forced? Perhaps the British traditional music was just put in to add colour and differentiate them from any number of other Byrds copyists and Dylan fans?

For me, British folk gets more interesting with the solo women - the already mentioned June Tabor, Anne Briggs, Shirley Collins and Sandy Denny (once she set out on her own). And, to demonstrate that a more comfortable transatlantic mix is possible, then the work of Davy Graham, Pentangle and John Martyn sounds far more coherent and imaginative.

Don't get The Incredible String Band at all though, despite many attempts to understand. All those fluffy animals and toadstools and cod spirituality. I just want to slap them round the face and tell them to grow up.

[(Anonymous)]

Didn't Dylan write "I'll Keep It With Mine" for Nico? I like her version best, in any case.

lol

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

[eptified.livejournal.com]

The thing I like that Richard Thompson does is his perennial 1000 years of popular music tour, where he puts those flexible guitar skills to use playing a disparate bunch of good songs by other people. His own work never grabbed me.

My favourite Richard Thompson Song Ever

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

Re: My favourite Richard Thompson Song Ever

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

Okay, it is a bit sentimental...

Re: My favourite Richard Thompson Song Ever

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't want to ruin this for you, but you could imagine Coldplay doing this song, couldn't you?

(Well, let's agree not to.)

[(Anonymous)]

You put on an album you've never heard before and are unlikely to have much sympathy with. By track two, you knew you didn't like it, but you still listened to the end. You then researched it on the Internet. You then watched a BBC documentary about a man who made a record you didn't like, which only reinforced your negative feelings about his music. You then posted copiously on your blog about this run-of-the-mill album that you didn't like, that's not considered a classic or anything, that even fans of the man don't think is his best work, that is fairly obscure these days and has no huge champions among contemporary musicians or critics.

You have too much time on your hands, Momus.

Re: My favourite Richard Thompson Song Ever

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

I don't want to ruin this for you, but you could imagine Coldplay doing this song, couldn't you?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I do have lots of time, especially for blindfold tests, yes!

I think there's a danger that everything on the internet becomes "elective affinities" -- you can now customize Google Search, your newspaper, your music streams, everything, with the ultimate effect that you'll never encounter anything that falls outside your taste tolerances. That "saves time", of course, but it also prevents you challenging yourself, expanding, or confirming why your tastes are as they are.

I think it's also important to listen to albums which are not canonical, to random sample the past. Because we live in the age of what I've called Epigone Pop, when people are cowed and awed by the achievements of -- especially -- the era from 1965 - 1975 in pop music. And it's rather liberating to realise that many albums released in that Golden Age were, in fact, rather underwhelming and derivative, just as they are now.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That said, I do expect to be blown away by one of these Unheard Vinyl albums. Maybe the next one, which I think is going to be Echo and the Bunnymen's Heaven Up Here.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

Bloody hell, Manfred Mann doing Momus!
I think you should repay the compliment by covering doo wah diddy diddy (in the joemus stylee!) ;-)

Re: lol

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

ROFL The woman in that last pic looks like 'Jet jaguar' from 'Godzilla versus megalon'!

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

"Because we live in the age of what I've called Epigone Pop, when people are cowed and awed by the achievements of -- especially -- the era from 1965 - 1975 in pop music."

TOO MUCH CULTURE.

[(Anonymous)]

Well I'll certainly be interested to hear what you think of that one - although I'm pretty surprised you don't know it. I'll take a guess that you won't like it, you'll find it a bit too overblown, too rock. Porcupine has more interesting sounds on it, I think.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Manchester was my city in the 80s, I tended to ignore the Liverpudlians -- Copey and the Bunnymen. They did impinge on my consciousness via Peel sessions, and I remember liking Killing Moon and Bring on the Dancing Horses. There was something good in the heavily-compressed, string-dense production too. Not sure if a whole album of the bunnies will jar or gel, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Heaven Up Here dates from before their lush strings period, it's a guitar-based rock album. Probably got more in common with Joy Division or early Cure.

[(Anonymous)]

You won't like Heaven Up Here. Guitar-driven teenage mope music. You'd have done better with Ocean Rain.

[bennycornelius.livejournal.com]

I've always found Richard Thompson rather troubling, but then my introduction to him was I Feel So Good - the lyrics suggest a cheque that the melody can't cash...

I think this Unheard Vinyl experiment is interesting stuff. The Bristol Momus Society do similar things, tackling some record called Joemus or something this weekend. I'm not sure the Brighton Momus Society, despite their extra membership of half a person (by the Smiths?) perform such worthy endeavours ;)

Ben

PS Ocean Rain is one of my favourite albums ever, for a number of odd and personal reasons.

Re: lol

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Thompson's 'Henry the Human Fly' sleave is just a really lazy, retro Tokusatsu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokusatsu) costume.

Fake the Fake

[(Anonymous)]

I'd like to see Fairport Convention critique one of your albums in a similar fashion. Can you just imagine them all rolling around on the floor laughing at Folktronic, shame their album didn't bring you a similar amusement.

good R. T. song

[graywyvern.livejournal.com]

he's very uneven, but i've always liked his "1952 Vincent Black Lightning":

Oh says Red Molly to James "That's a fine motorbike.
A girl could feel special on any such like"
Says James to Red Molly "My hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952.
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme"
And he pulled her on behind and down to Boxhill they did ride

Oh says James to Red Molly "Here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man.
For I've fought with the law since I was seventeen,
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine.
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you.
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride"

"Come down, come down, Red Molly" called Sergeant McRae
"For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery.
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside.
Oh come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside"
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
He said "I'll give you my Vincent to ride"

Says James "In my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl.
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeves won't do,
Ah, they don't have a soul like a Vincent 52"
Oh he reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
Said "I've got no further use for these.
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome,
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home"
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

m.

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

Even "Shaky Nancy"? Even "Nobody's Wedding"? Even "The New St. George"? (All on Henry the Human Fly Presents...)

Re: Fake the Fake

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That would be good! I always wanted to do that with my cousin, actually -- he'd critique a Momus record, I'd assess Del Amitri. Maybe our recent rapprochement could make this happen.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think that album is probably the one I'd like the most. Trouble is, the Peel-narrator and Thompson himself both skipped over it very fast in the documentary I saw, basically saying it was a mistake. Which the reviews at the time also said, I think. And which, of course, predisposes me even more to like it!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the intention isn't necessarily to like stuff, or find stuff to like, it's as much to define why I don't like something. I'm interested in that Gladwellian "blink" moment when taste operates and something is accepted or rejected. I want to trace that operating in myself in real time.

don't sit on my jimmy shands

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

I prefer the album after this called Unhalfbricking, even though it is Dylan soaked. It includes his Percy's Song (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy%27s_Song) which is rather beguiling. The song reflects the band's experience with the crash and is the tune Joan Baez sings as Dylan types in the late night hotel scene in Don't Look Back.

The period I find most interesting from Thompson's career is when he and Linda are effectively all over as a couple yet still touring their "love songs". Its very brutal in so many ways. Linda even lost her singing voice for a few decades. The beatific look belies a kind of desperation they seemed to exude in their strict early days of devotion.

I like that Richard Thompson apparently based his guitar style on listening to Jimmy Shand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Shand) 78's . All I have ar a few EP's!

Have you heard Manfred Mann's big band avant jazz sound of the late 60s?

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Maybe the next one, which I think is going to be Echo and the Bunnymen's Heaven Up Here.

Oh Christ--that's gonna hurt.

I don't think I can be objective about that album: it's flawed, but much beloved. I also suspect that "Heaven Up Here" only makes sense to those of us who underwent puberty next to a cold, dark northern sea.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I GIVE MY-SELF AN ULCER!

Ben's Brighton Momus Society slur?

[(Anonymous)]

Ben

we do such things on an hourly basis...our half a person is particularly industrious in this endevour.

ever yours

maf

ps. I do have to agree with you about Ocean Rain

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

The Angels Took My Race Horse Away (http://www.cheapsurrealism.com/sound/05%20The%20Angels%20Took%20My%20Racehorse%20away.mp3)

Re: don't sit on my jimmy shands

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I didn't know they'd had a big band phase, no!

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

I remember the day I brought this album home (Richard Thompson Starring as Henry the Human Fly)

I thought it was nearly perfect and I still do.

In the U.S. at the time The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers were rediscovering the roots of American country music. Jerry Garcia was playing bluegrass.

I felt that Fairport/Thompson/Hutchings were doing the same thing. But the roots were so much older and deeper.

Seemed like a good idea at the time

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

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Rock pedant

[(Anonymous)]

Is it ironical humor how in the same paragraph that you credit The Mighty Quinn to Manfred Mann, you complain of their having been credited with writing "A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy"?
The Mighty Quinn is a Bob Dylan song. Sorry to have to play the rock pedant.
By the way, I totally agree with your assessment of Fairport Convention.

Re: Rock pedant

[imomus.livejournal.com]

So those Mann bastards shafted Bobby as well as me?

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

I felt the same way. I like Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief, but most of Thompson's solo stuff leaves me cold. He's a brilliant guitarist, technically, but there's just too much nostalgia there most of the time. Do check out Henry the Human Fly; if you can make it past "Roll Over Vaughn Williams," I think you'll find it quite good!

Re: Rock pedant

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

And the kicker? Turns out that Quinn guy wasn't an Eskimo--he was Dominican!

Rock pedant - movie buff

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

You have too much time on your hands, Momus.

Jealous?