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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fairport's First,
By
This review is from: Fairport Convention (Audio CD)
Long out of print, as I discovered after trading in the Polydor vinyl album some years ago, this re-mastered reissue includes bonus tracks including their first single, a cover of Maxine Sullivan's 1940 recording of If I Had A Ribbon Bow. The best track is probably the Dylan-influenced and rather psychedelic It's Alright Ma, It's Only Witchcraft.Among the other original material, some of it dating from Richard Thompson's previous band, is a fair smattering of well-chosen songs from contemporary performers. Joni Mitchell was virtually unknown and unreleased on record in 1967 when this album was recorded and her own versions of the two songs here did not appear until her second album, Clouds, in 1969. The Fairports knew her as she had been in the UK at the invitation of their producer, Joe Boyd, and she had played some British dates supporting the Incredible String Band. Emitt Rhodes was still performing in the obscure group the Merry-Go-Round when they recorded Time Will Show The Wiser to open the album. Dylan's Jack O'Diamonds was actually a poem which turned up on the liner-notes of Another Side Of Bob Dylan. He had given it to an actor friend called Ben Carruthers at the Savoy, who had used it in a TV play called A Man With No Papers, and subsequently recorded it with his group Ben Carruthers And The Deep, aided by Jimmy Page and Nicky Hopkins, on a flop single. One Sure Thing was a cover of a little-known duo called Jim and Jean (Jim Glover and Jean Ray). There is no clue from this eclectic mix of songs featuring Ian Matthew and the very underrated Judy Dyble that they were to virtually reinvent folk-rock with Sandy Denny just a couple of years later. I saw the band a couple of times around the time of this album and, much as I enjoyed their later albums, rather miss these styles of playing in their music. Their version of Suzanne used to feature alternate verses sung by Ian Matthew and Sandy Denny but the May 1968 version here sadly falls between Judy Dyble leaving and Sandy Denny joining, but you can hear the dual-vocal version from their August 1968 Top Gear session on Heyday
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An embryonic band feeling their way, but still a fine album,
By
This review is from: Fairport Convention (Audio CD)
The early Fairport Convention were a folk-rock band in the American Byrds / Lovin' Spoonful sense of the term, rather than the sense of the electrified traditional music that they would later come to embody. They were billed as England's answer to Jefferson Airplane which wasn't that far off the mark as the music on their first three albums is very similar to the pre-psychedelic Jefferson Airplane. This is their first album, as if you didn't know, and shows the band in a very embryonic form; compared to later work the music sounds rather thin and underproduced, although you can already hear the superlative musicianship that would characterize their glory years. The music is half group compositions and half cover versions of songs by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell among others. The band showed their characteristic good taste in their choice of cover versions, kicking off the album with a storming cover of Emitt Rhodes' 'Time Will Show The Wiser'. This is probably the highlight of the album but there are plenty of other fine moments, notably the brilliant 'Jack O' Diamonds', an exceedingly pleasant 'Chelsea Morning' and the Dylan pastiche 'It's Alright Ma, It's Only Witchcraft'. There are also a few duff moments: I've always found 'The Lobster' tedious and 'M1 Breakdown' is simple filler. Although Judy Dyble and Ian MacDonald (aka Matthews) shared lead vocal duties, Dyble's presence isn't very noticeable other than on the three Joni Mitchell cover versions. She had a pleasant enough voice, and very tuneful, but not a strong one; it is no surprise that the band replaced her soon after the album's release.The repackaging job is quite excellent with an informative booklet containing loads of unltra rare photos of the band in their earliest days. The four bonus tracks are welcome. Another reviewer commented on their quality, but you have to ask how many unreleased songs from the band's earliest days are there? It is very interesting to hear the band's first single 'If I Had A Ribbon Bow' which sounds even less like the Fairport that we know and love than their first album does. Taken purely on its own merits, 'Fairport Convention' is a fine late 60s mellow folk-rock album. We only judge it harshly in retrospect because we know that less than a year later they would release the superlative 'What We Did On Our Holidays'. If you're a fan of Fairport Convention, getting this is a no-brainer; both the music and the fine repackaging make it a must-have. If you're not familiar with Fairport Convention's work, try 'Liege And Lief', 'Heyday' and 'What We Did On Our Holidays' first and then give this one a go.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very different to their subsequent work...,
By coca-ebola (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fairport Convention (Audio CD)
Yet despite that, it's not a mere curio for collectors, it's an album with a lot to offer.Judy Dyble's certainly no Sandy Denny, but despite her unreliability onstage (all too evident on that Cropredy 2002 live disc), she doesn't tarnish this album at all - her voice blends nicely with Iain's and she handles the Joni Mitchell/Jim & Jean songs appealingly. Apart from frequent doses of Richard's untamed blues-rocking early guitarwork (and to think he'd be inventing a new language for the instrument in a few years!), the most remarkable thing about the album is the quality of the original songs. `If' sound like the Byrds during their '66-'67 peak. There are two underrated Richard-penned ballads, `Sun Shade' and `Decameron' (the latter reminds us that he always had depressive tendencies, even before the Scratchwood disaster). `...Witchcraft' may be a Dylan parody but at least it's a subtle one - and with some fine guitar work. And - the great lost song on the album - `The Lobster'. Co-written by Richard and two ex-schoolmates (!) it's a mini-epic, virtually prog-rock before the term was invented. And it focuses on the guitarist himself, whose contributions point towards his more mature (post-Full House) style. In the `hushed' and `frantic' segments alike, he perfectly defines the phrase "not-a-note-out-of-place".
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