Dave and Dana - the complete discography

Satisfied - Bradley Recording Company,1975
Come on In, Pilgrim - 1976
Morning Star, Grapevine - 1978
Right Track, Rivendell - 1980
Be Still, cassette only - 198?

Some great new music by Dana Lee Price, now Dana Winner, can be found at her website here.

We know this because Dana has been on the site this weekend, sharing some of the history of the duo and her experience of working with Sue McClellan and Grapevine. Her postings are here and here.
Last year we heard from the other half of the duo, Dave Price - details here.

* Additional note: Come on in is now available as a download at The Ancient Star Song.

Some Grapevine downloads

The Ancient Star Song has been busy uploading a number of rare Jesus music albums from the 1970s and early 80s including two Grapevine productions.

These are:
Alan Shiers Lamplighter 1980 GRV135
Sonrise Before My Eyes 1976 GRV105

There is also an album from Grapevine's parent label Pilgrim, which used the Parchment members as its production team during this period.
Resurrection Plain Or Salted 1977 Pilgrim 434

New music from Caedmon!

More fantastic news about Caedmon, the second most obscure band of the 70s and the alternative acid folk gospel band from the period, a kind of parallel Parchment from Edinburgh.

The reformed band has laid down four full tracks and you can hear them on their Myspace site along with some of the originals (Aslan, Beyond the Second Mile, Maker Man). There is every indication they might produce work as good as the original.

This was our report of their reunion last year

Carol, John and Aubrey

This folk trio feature on the Sound Vision in Concert album with Trinity Folk. We did a feature on Sound Vision in November and mentioned the work of Carol, John and Aubrey. Now Aubrey has visited the site with some info. It seems they all hail from Essex, UK.

Green Anthem

A copy of Reynard's Green Anthem just sold on e-bay for £51. This was the first time I've seen a cover shot of the Liverpool electric folk band's second album, released in 1979, and featuring classics such as Leviathan, Gadera Moor and Angel Wings.

A YouTube tribute

This may be the first tribute to the band on YouTube. The song, Don't Let the Morning Come, is from Shamblejam.

Spring is sprung

Today is a glorious spring day in the UK and what better way to celebrate it than to get out the old copy of Light Up the Fire - the album - or even the CD, get out the elderflower cordial and give it a spin at full volume. It just reeks of spring.

From the moment when "colours of day dawn into the mind" , we're off through the park and letting  the fruit grow.

Then it's  over by the waterfall/ I'll come when I hear you call/ at your next convenient sunrise.

In the park it's time to ride on the  roundabout and very soon  the green blade rises, the greatest spring song of all.

Then we're looking forward to the carelessness of summer  (it's a cheating game to play) and heralding  summer's coming and the warm smile of the sun.


And all the while the mandolin hums and the guitars strum and pluck out melodies. The sound has never been bettered!

Light Up the Fire launched!

There was a time when members of Parchment performed together as a band and there was no song called Light Up the Fire in their repertoire. They were known as Trinity Folk. This is a cutting from a Buzz special in 1972 when the band, newly renamed Parchment, discussed the release of their first single, which was "not really representative" of their style.

Great picture of the band too. Note the dobro, mandolin and guitar.

The Archivist

The Archivist is a remarkable collection of reviews of "Jesus Music", spanning 1965-1980, produced by a man called Ken Scott.

I can't find out how many albums he reviews but estimate it is about 3,000. His latest edition, just out, includes 800 additional reviews. You can find it here and purchase it from the Lulu service.

His review of Parchment begins "the group would... contribute four essential lps of British progressive folk-rock". The words have been widely quoted on the web.

I bought the latest edition in the hope of plugging some of the holes about the Grapevine label. Astonishingly, despite high praise for Grapevine's output, he has not managed to collect the whole label. For instance the terrific Unity is missing and coverage of the parent Pilgrim label is also patchy. In spite of that Archivist is a remarkable treasurehouse of information about the output of this era, full of  interesting judgements. For instance Whitsuntide Easter is a "Dutch heavy acid folk monster" that's by far the "best LP on this great UK label".

  So I'll be drawing on it over the course of the year, especially as I have several Grapevine album reviews to post.

pf

Another Dave and Dana

A curiosity I came across some time ago when tracking down Grapevine duo Dave and Dana's excellent albums.

I had found four albums, and then a fifth album came up called Dave and Dana R Victorious. This was stored in the University of Florida Library. It turned out there was another gospel duo called Dave and Dana, Dave Van Cise and Dana Arnold, and it was they who had recorded this eight song album. The album cover shows the duo, "clad in white, holding hands and smiling at the camera," the library said. It was recorded by the Dove Gospel Recording Service in Florida and undated.

Review of 2008

 My thanks first of all to those who contributed and helped with the site last year, notably John Pac of Parchment and former Parchment roadie Dixie Dean.

The big story of 2008 was the discovery of the lost third album. John Pac announced it with four words "it's lost no more". This site was privileged to get a listen of the missing album and John later supplied full details of authorship of the tracks. You can follow the story of the discovery here.

This opened up new by-ways, especially evidence of the strong influence that Ry Cooder had on the band's choice of material. And journeys on YouTube also led to a video of the original writer of Pack Up Your Sorrows, Richard Farina, performing the song. Sadly the video was withdrawn shortly afterwards for copyright reasons.

The other big event of the year was the reunion of the band Caedmon - the 'other' Xian acid folk band. It's members flocked onto the site to to tell their stories before setting up their own website. There was no obvious direct link to Parchment but one was soon discovered!

We continued, slowly, cataloguing the material that's gathered on this site. It can be found here.

And we continued to explore the Grapevine label, which the members of Parchment ran in the late 1970s. The discovery of the year was MCC's exquisite Thursday's Child has Far to Go - although the first Grapevine album Ride! Ride! turned out to have an interesting story. And Grapevine star Dave Price popped up to tell us where he was.

Wishlist for 2009? First of all that it will be as interesting and eventful for this site as 2008 and 2007. Secondly, that a way will be found to circulate the lost album. Thirdly, another big find - perhaps some live footage or bootleg sound of the band performing?

And as time permits I will post other archive material and continue to pursue threads that grab my attention.