Unless something really extraordinary occurs between now and December, 'Bright Phoebus' by Lal & Mike Waterson will be my reissue of 2017. On its original release in September 1972, the LP was met by a wall of anger and bafflement from a devout folk establishment that believed exclusively in the passing down of traditional songs from generation to generation and held no truck at all with singers who wrote their own material. That Lal & Mike's remarkable set of self-written songs were frequently, if indirectly, informed by that very tradition was a fact apparently overlooked by all but a very few, less blinkered souls.
During the course of its 40+ years of unavailability, 'Bright Phoebus' has steadily gained a reputation for being the lost masterpiece that it truly is. I've had an iffy quality bootleg CDr of the album for around 25 years and had long since given up any hope of ever holding a bona-fide copy in my hands, but thanks to the good folk at Domino Records, here it is. The full story of how the songs came to be written and how the recordings came to be made is brilliantly told by Pete Paphides in the accompanying booklet (read an excerpt here), plus there is also a deluxe edition of the reissue which includes a further 12 previously unreleased performances from the period.
If you have any interest at all in the English folk and folk-rock scenes of the late 1960's and early 1970's, you really do need to hear this album. Richard Thompson, Martin Carthy, Ashley Hutchings, Tim Hart, Maddy Prior, Dave Mattacks, Bob Davenport and Norma Waterson all lend their considerable respective talents to the recordings, which gives you some idea of the quality threshold we're talking about. And then there's the songs. It's all about those songs. By turns they're dark, desolate, mysterious, beautiful and even, as in the case of the title track, positively jaunty. I honestly can't recommend 'Bright Phoebus' highly enough.
55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of
my life...so far.
So at the very end of 1970 I was given a
record player, then for my birthday in 1971 I
received one of those new fangled cassette
tape recorders. It felt like I'd achieved
almost total independence - could life get any
better? Meanwhile, in 1972, a ridiculous
amount of great records were being released,
some became the soundtrack of my life then
('Virginia Plain', 'Silver Machine', 'Take Me
Bak 'ome', 'I Can See Clearly Now', 'Rocket
Man', 'School's Out', 'John I'm Only Dancing',
'American Pie', 'All the Young Dudes',
'Mother & Child Reunion', 'Walk on the Wild
Side', 'You Wear It Well' and many more), while
others I discovered retrospectively, the
following year or even later. In fact I'm
still bumping into great music that I've never
heard before, from 1971, 1972 and
1973. It was a rich period.
And of course, in
1972 there was T.Rex. Read about my first LP,
'The Slider' (here) and memories of my first gig (here),
(here) and (here).
Let's leave music momentarily though, to discuss the
thorny subject of my waistline. The eagle eyed
amongst you might have noticed from the photo
in the previous post, that by 1971 I had
started to fill out a little, but by 1972 my
growth spurt had temporarily stopped, erm,
spurting - in an upwardly direction at least.
I continued to grow in an outwards direction
though - just look at this black and white
Polaroid, taken in November 1972! Count those chins!
So as I'm spoiled for
choice when it comes to selecting a song to represent this pivotal year, I thought I'd throw in
a bit of a curveball. In addition to being a big year
for several of the names I've already
mentioned, 1972 was a massive year for Donny
Osmond. 20 years later, I met Donny Osmond
and i'll tell that tale one day, but for now
I'm not focusing on the mawkish monster solo
hits, but his parallel career as a member of
The Osmonds. The Brothers had a run of three
rockin' singles during this period, which
made me and my pals briefly sit up and take
notice. The third was 'Goin' Home', issued in
1973. In the middle is the one we all know,
'Crazy Horses' from October 1972. The first
of the run, 'Hold Her Tight', came out in the
Summer of '72 and, though I didn't know it at
the time, tips its hat very strongly towards
Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song'. Ignore the
date on this brilliant clip, it's definitely
1972 all the way.
