folk rewind
A buyers’ guide to The Waterboys 1981-1990
The Waterboys are an act that for too long have laboured with being associated with just one song and one album, at least by the majority of people outside their fan base. What makes it even more baffling is the fact that that song is not even on that album. It’s probably fair to say …
Not Forgotten: Jethro Tull – Heavy Horses
Where to begin? The beginning I guess. My beginning. Or at least as far back as I can remember. You might be surprised to find out that I didn’t get into music until my early teens. Throughout my childhood, my parents, particularly my dad, were always playing albums, but none of them permeated into my …
Not Forgotten: Smog – A River Ain’t Too Much to Love
For the first minute or so there’s nothing but melancholic acoustic guitar and a far away harmonica. It’s moving, deeply moving. Then comes Bill Callahan’s voice, and you’re utterly invested. By the time he released A River Ain’t Too Much to Love in 2005, Callahan has been recording under the identity of Smog since the …
Not Forgotten: Jethro Tull – Crest of a Knave
Like many acts from the 60s and &0s, when the 80s rolled around Jethro Tull struggled with something of an identity crisis, desperately trying to blend the traditional core values of their sound with new and exciting possibilities that the latest technology offered. The result was a genuine mixed bag of albums, from the synthetic …
Not Forgotten: Marty Robbins – More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs
Such is the high regard that 1959’s Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs is held, that the fact that the late great Marty Robbins released another 43 albums in his lifetime (and a further two posthumously) is often overlooked.Perhaps inevitably, the snappily titled More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, is not dissimilar to Robbin’s best known …
Classic Album: Jethro Tull – Songs From the Wood
The rise of punk triggered a wide variety of reactions among more established acts. Led Zeppelin nodded in approval, and continued to be Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd channelled their own disenfranchised feelings into the bleak Animals. A few other acts underwent underwent various identity crises, with some attempting to go ‘pop’ with mixed success (Emerson, …
Not Forgotten: Cat Stevens – Tea for The Tillerman
Maybe it was a reaction to being a social misfit during my school days, but while my contemporaries were falling underneath the spell of various grunge and hip hop acts back in the early 90s, I had started to pay more and more attention to my parents’ album collection. As teenagers during the 70s, they …
Not Forgotten: Bob Dylan – Christmas in the Heart
Ah, Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart. Oh how music fans far and wide chuckled at the idea of one of the 20th Century’s song writing icons deciding that it would be a shrewd career move to release an album of traditional Christmas Carols and festive favourites. Down the decades Christmas albums in general have …
Not Forgotten: Jethro Tull – Stand Up
For many fans 1969’s Stand Up is where the Jethro Tull’s story really starts. That’s not to say that their debut, This Was, wasn’t any good, but Stand Up is where Jethro Tull started to sound like no one other act than Jethro Tull. In the few months that split the release of This Was …
Classic Album: Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited
Imagine the shock of hearing Highway 61 Revisited the first time in the mid 60s. You’re a Bob Dylan fan, you like his politicised songwriting as it fit in neatly with your ideals and opinions. Sure his material has become slightly less political over recent albums, but he’s still a great songwriter. You can even …