Welcome back to The Recycling Bin, our summertime series dedicated to retreading the Dollar Bin's already wobbly tires.
We are creeping up on the blog's two year anniversary and, during that run, more time has been spent in the FCU (that would be the Fairport Convention Universe, not three of the four letters most required to describe what any reasonable person has to say about the state of our country's leadership at this moment) than on any other topic outside of the Shakeyverse.
Check out where all things Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny related got their start here in the bin:
Fairport Convention's Angel Delight
This album has never looked promising.
John, Paul and George didn't break up and then let Ringo call himself The Beatles; Lou, Cale, Sterling and Mo didn't want what's his name to make a record and claim it was by the Velvet Undergound. And Dave Swarbrick had about as much of a right to lead Fairport Convention in 1970 as Lepidus had to lead the Roman Empire in 48 BCE.
Well, let's dive back into the dollar bin and find out.
A year earlier, when Sandy Denny left Fairport to form Fotheringay with her loser boyfriend, and Ashley Hutchinson beat his own retreat to assemble the first and greatest incarnation of Steeleye Span, there was still plenty to love about Fairport Convention. Richard Thompson, the band's gawky genius, was writing increasingly uncanny and harrowing songs. Now Be Thankful and Farewell, Farewell are so good that it seems like the band's pimply medieval apprentice had snuck off with the spell books and everyone's maidenhead. He was even learning, reluctantly, to sing.
What's more, the band's producer, Joe Boyd, was still firmly in the mix. Boyd had already played a role in many of the greatest records from the whole wonderful era, from The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter to Five Leaves Left. Thompson and Boyd made the band still vital.
What's even more, Fairport had already shown it could weather change. Two lead singers had already come and gone prior to Denny decamping. And, just before she left, they turned a fatal car crash into Liege and Leif, the founding, and greatest, record in the history of Folk Rock.
But in 1971, after a solid and occasionally brilliant 5th record and a (retrospectively anyway) historic tour of the US that saw Fairport blowing away Linda Ronstadt before inviting her on stage to play whatever she wanted with them, Thompson followed his muse right out of the convention's Full House and left Swarb in charge. Boyd was no fool; he hightailed it out of there as well.
Dave Swarbrick, a homely but masterful fiddle player hooked on "diet pills" (as in Speed), was now the front man of one of the greatest rock bands in history. Uh-oh.
The cover for the next record, Angel Delight, is fitting: there they are, (see above), the lads left behind by everyone important, grinning savant-like midst the remains of a burnt out house. The joke is apt but discouraging: see here, the cover declares, the losers left behind in the wreckage.
And just take a look at these hobbits !
Seriously, doesn't this look like a Multiverse alternative of Aragorn (that's Thompson, in the middle) with Tolkien's plucky halflings? Moving right to left we've got the drummer, Dave Mattacks, standing in for Merry: Mattacks is the awkward, moody one in the fellowship with a forever kink in his neck, too shy to take off his looking glasses or his granddad's coat.
Next up it's Dave Pegg, oddly tall for a hobbit, whose grandfather, legend has it, once rode a horse.
Beside Aragorn/Thompson we've got Swarb himself. Forever enveloped pipe smoke, he's a merry trickster whose sideburns run all the way down his four foot frame to his giant, hairy feet.
Finally, there's Simon Nicol at furthest left. After Thompson leaves he's the only guy not named Dave in the band, and they all lived together! Just imagine the conversation at dinner.
Nicol, looking up from his kippers on toast: "Dave?"
All three Daves, eagerly: "Yes Simon?"
Nicol: "Never feckin' mind."
Though Nicol was the only founding member left at this point, he was just 20, a young Took still not old enough for pipe weed. Clearly he's the only guy in the band with a chance of one day getting himself an elf wife.
Without Thompson, Denny, Boyd, Hutchings or even Ian Matthews, there's none of Frodo's constipational anxiety, let alone Gandalf's enormous eyebrows, left to be found in this band. If there's a ring of power to protect they've already lost it.
But drop the needle on side 1 and Angel Delight sounds instantly promising. Swarb's has clearly learned to sing and we bounce along merrily to the opening track, Lord Marlborough. Perhaps these hobbits know the way to Mordor after all!
Don't get too excited. Track 2, Sir William Gower, finds them playing like Fatty Bolger. The song surely records the exploits of yet another British miscreant, war hero or goofball but it's hard to care when the noodling melody sounds like the band is sitting in an 80's middle school circle at midnight, crank calling confused old ladies who happen to answer the seven digit meandering melodies the boys are making up on their parents' push-button phone. Swarb calls out the numbers while the other boys cackle and chase: 7! 8! 3! 4568! "Hello!" Swarb hollers into the phone. "Sorry to call so late mam. May I speak with a Sir William Gower please? What's that now? Wrong number? Well, what about a Mr. Head? First name Dick?"
The boys may fall over laughing but the song is a plodding bummer. So let's skip ahead to some greatness. Wizard of the Worldly Game isn't a dollar store tabletop Harry Potter knock off for 2-4 players that currently ranks last on Board Game Geek. It's a downright magestic song. Youtube contains zero tracks from this entire album (perhaps Muggles are forbidden to hear Angels Delight unless they brave the dollar bin) so I can't play it for you here. But it's lovely, with Swarb's tenor rising from tender to belting as the boys emerge from their respective holes on Bagshot Row to encircle him in stately harmony. Nicol is no Thompson on the electric guitar, but he knows it, and his solos here are patient and wonderful.
Journeyman's Grace, one of several songs co-written by Thompson before his departure, wraps up side 1 and it's a barnburner, with lyrics that are as oddly captivating and ineffable as anything Thompson would go on to write in his prestigious career:
Leave my weary flesh and bone to a circle made of stone
Take me to the mountains for my pleasure.
And if the dead man won't depart, drive a stake into his heart
And let me ere deliver him his leisure.
The band hands the song's lead vocals back and forth like a hot tater, and listen to Swarb on the final chorus, hitting a high note and holding on like a puffed up Disney rooster.
Let's wrap up this visit to the dollar bin with a concert performance of the song from this era. Watch Swarb shuffle! Turns out the guy's yet another Fairport genius, and the band is in good hands after all.
