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