Alan Stivell played the final of this festival. Electric, electrifying, eclectic, superb harp playing by Stivell himself, great organ by Pascal Stive, and if Dan Ar Braz did not play the guitar (I do not remember) the guitarist was as good as he is.
I planned to upload both this album and the 1973 "from Celtic Roots", but that one happened to be posted a couple of days ago on phrockblog. Anyway "Live a l'Olympia catches the spirit of that night in Rotterdam perfectly.
Alan Stivell - 1972, Live a l'Olympia
A: The wind of Keltia / An dro / The trees they grow high / An alarch's / An durzhunel / Telenn gwad / The foggy dew
B: Pop plinn / Tha mi sgith / The king of the fairies / Tri martolod / Kost ar c'hoad / Suite sudarmoricaine
with scans, cue
Tri Martolod was used (sampled) in a French Top Ten hit a couple of years ago. I forgot the name. Maybe someone recognizes it.
Download using the code of the month february: zcxkas.
Some albums just appear at the wrong moment. The music might be excellent, but when it does not get enough attention, it is all over. Some years are so crammed with excellent records, that some very good music might hardly be noticed. 1970 was such a year, and the album almost nobody now ever heard of is the eponymous debut album of Gypsy. They were the house band for eight months in the 1969-1970 season of The Whiskey A Go Go in West Hollywood. A five piece band with multi-instrumentalists and three singers. They sure must have been a very good live band.
The first album was a double album, and a single taken from it (Gypsy Queen part I and II) even entered the Billboard top 100. The new name of the band (they were the Underbeats), the titles of the album and the single, it all feels very planned as if marketing was certain they had found future superstars. They were wrong. The post-hippie psychedelic, proto-prog sound, with strings added later by the producer, two lead guitars, sometimes sounding like CSNY, then like Santana: it is sometimes beautiful and exciting but it lacks focus.
I really think they would have struck it big with a better producer. But the first album is still very, very good, and so is the second (except for a rather boring drum solo).
CD's are rather difficult to find. Here in Europe they were reprinted on the for me obscure (German) Walhalla label, and I have only found one shop in Munich that still sells them. They made two more albums, but I have not yet seen them for sale. Rips with cues and partial scans (from a torrent) - use the code of the month.
Gypsy - 1970
Gypsy Queen - Part One / Gypsy Queen - Part Two / Man Of Reason / Dream If You Can / Late December / The Third Eye / Decisions / I Was So Young / Here In My Loneliness / More Time / The Vision / Dead And Gon / Tomorrow Is The Last To Be Heard
In the Garden - 1971
Around You / Reach Out Your Hand / As Far As You Can See (As Much As You Can Feel) / Here (In The Garden) Part One / Here (In The Garden) Part Two / Blind Man / Time Will Make It Better
John Barleycorn (must die), as a song, is very nice. Everybody will have heard it at least once, I guess. It was popularised by Traffic on the album "John Barleycorn must die". Steve Winwood has arranged it as a kind of lament about the death of John Barleycorn.
Traffic, John Barleycorn (must die). 1972.
It is also a very strange and macabre song. Dating back to at least the 16th century it tells the story of the growth and harvesting of barley (the grain used to make beer and whiskey) in an allegorical way. The barley has become a person, John Barleycorn, who is ritually murdered by three kings, dismembered and buried in a field, only to grow up again in the spring.
This allegory must have survived hundreds of years before it was first written down in the 16th century. It is a survival of Indo-European pre-christian beliefs and practices: the ritual sacrifice of people. Victims have been found preserved in peat deposits and bogs throughout northern Europe. They suffered the so called threefold killing: the victims have been stabbed, strangled and drowned. The practice was widespread through Europe: Julius Caesar wrote in De Bello Gallico about sacrificial victims that were burned inside a large haystack. Similar practices by Slavs or Russians have been found by archeologists and have even been described by an eyewitness, a 10th century Muslim traveller to Kiev.
But the song is not a lament, it is story telling that might even be called cheerful. Maybe that is why, of the many versions I have heard, that I really like the version by the John Renbourn Group. It is bright, you can almost dance to it, and the arrangement is very clever, almost like a canon.
John Renbourn, a classically trained guitarist with interest in Early Music, started playing jazz/blues/folk music in the 60's, shared an appartment and already recorded with Bert Jansch, before they started The Pentangle. After the break up of Pentangle, John toured with Jacqui McShee and three other musicians, calling themselves the John Renbourn Group. They recorded two studio and one live album, very fine and refined music.
A Maid in Bedlam (1977)
Black Waterside / Nacht Tanz - Shaeffertanz / A Maid in Bedlam / Gypsy Dance - Jews Dance / John Barleycorn / Reynardine / My Johnny Was a Shoemaker / Death and the Lady / The Battle of Augrham - Five in a Line / Talk About Suffering
Remastered as Castle CMRCD1247 in 2004
flac, cue, scan
The Enchanted Garden (1980)
Belle Qui Tient Ma Vie-Tourdion / The Truth From Above / Le Tambourin / The Plains Of Waterloo / The Maid On The Shore / Douce Dame Jolie / A Bold Young Farmer / Sidi Brahim
Reissued on CD as Shanachie SH 79074 in 1990
Beautiful collection of medieval, renaissance and folk music, with some interesting Indian flavours.
flac, scans, cue
Live in America (1981)
Castle CMRCD1247 - 2005 Remaster
There is also a 1996 compilation of the first two records on Edsel EDCD 472, called appropriately: John Barleycorn.
It is hard to imagine now, but in the 70's Folk (Rock) was so popular in the Netherlands, that each year the Rotterdam Folk Festival was held in a weekend in June in the prestigious classical concert hall "De Doelen" in Rotterdam. It had three podia: one in the lobby, one in the small hall that was usually reserved for chamber music, and one in the big hall where the podium is big enough for a 120 person symphony orchestra.
I think it was 1978 that I went there. Very little can be found about it on the Internet, so this is mainly from my memory. The last evening the programme in the main hall had Fungus, the Albion (Dance) Band, and Alan Stivell. There were other bands, but I do not remember the names.
Fungus
Let's first focus on Fungus. It was the first Dutch folkrock band, a five man band founded by singer Fred Piek. The first album with mostly traditional songs: Fungus - s/t (1974, Negram) was their biggest success. The A side contained Dutch songs and instrumentals, the B-side English material. Fred Piek sounds a little like Dave Swarbrick IMO, so it is interesting to compare the Fungus version of Poor Ditching Boy with the Fairport Convention version.
"Kaap'ren Varen" from this album was a minor hit in the Netherlands. It's a well known children's song about the Flemish pirates from Dunkirk. And although it is called a traditional, the music is probably early 20th century.
Three more albums followed but they never had the success of the first. By 1978 they struggeled on as a trio, and in 1979 the band made a farewell album and called it a day. Fred Piek continued with a duo, the "Amazing stroopwafels", that scored another hit with Oude Maasweg (Manhatten Island Serenade).
B-side: Farewell To Tarwathie / Irish Girl / Two Brethren / Farewell to Whiskey / The Poor Ditching Boy** / Ye Mariners All
All songs traditional, except * Sido Martens and ** Richard Thompson
d/l Fonus Lp-5248, with scans and cue.
1975 - Lief ende Leid
1976 - Van de Kiel naar Vlaring
1977 - Mush-rooms
1979 - De Kaarten zijn Geschud (farewell album)
2000 - The Fungus Collection (the first 4 albums on 2 CD's: still available from Fred Piek's website).
Otherwise the albums have never been reissued on CD, but copies on CD are available by mail order from a Dutch Music Archive (www.fonos.nl). I do not know how they are made, but I must assume that they are high quality copies from the LP's, not from any master tape. Anyway, that is the copy I used (I only have the first album at this moment).
I have not been able to find much image material, here is a newsclip from Dutch television (Fungus and Bots - Popfestival Nederlandse lied - 1976):
and another, Oude Maasweg (Manhatten Island Serenade) by Amazing Stroopwafels (1982):
