New songs on Pandora

If you're in the USA, and you're allowed to listen to the World of Parchment Radio Station we set up on Pandora you can now hear the following tracks:
•'The Dangling Conversation' by Simon & Garfunkel
•'Go Your Way' by Anne Briggs
•'High Low And In Between' by Townes Van Zandt
•'Soldier Of The Heart (Live)' by Judee Sill
•'Tomorrow Is A Long Time' by Judy Collins

They sound like interesting tracks. Sadly here in the UK, we're blocked from listening to the Pandora service and haven't been able to hear how the station's developing for a long time. Originally, it proved a great way of exploring the influences and legacy that led to some great music!

Caedmon live in 2010!

Not since discovering River six years ago has there been such an event. Caedmon were a lost legend, known to a hardcore of folkies and one-time fans. When I first heard their work, on an illicit down-load, I was blown away.

At the weekend the band, with all its members, played together in public for the first time in 32 years, gathering in the centre of Edinburgh. And there is even a new album in the pipeline.

As they re-created the sound of their legendary album, it became possible to see how it was done: a cello played like a fiddle; a folk ensemble playing in harmony with a rock guitarist; members with the talent and versatility able to magic up a mandolin, ukelele or accordion as the moment required; and those amazing Gaelic folk-rock melodies.

They were forgotten for a period of 12 years after the members packed up their student life in Edinburgh and set off for real jobs. In 1978 that folk-rock was not fashionable, especially acid folk as it came to be called. They have been of interest here because some analysts classify them together with Parchment as having been the only two Christian acid folk bands, both playing in the 70s, mixing electric guitar, acoustic, mandolin and more.

Watching them live, you could see a band that enjoyed doing what it did, not quite recognising the unique sound and corps of songs they had created. And don't forget in 1978 Celtic rock was only two years away. U2 were about to emerge as were Big Country.

As they played there were few signs of that 32 year gap. The extra performers on the stage - their children - indicated the passage of time. We saw musicians playing together, enjoying re-creating their former sound but also enjoying trying out new songs, adding the experiences of life to their one-time youthful exuberance.

So from our party these were the favourites:
Aslan - 2 votes
Old Kings (new song) - 1
Give Me Jesus - 1.
The last is my choice - even though it's not their composition and is a traditional spiritual. The rendition was  anthemic with vocalist Angela Webb (Naylor) joined on stage by her daughter.

Of the new songs I might have voted for Four Winds, performed by electric guitarist Jim Bisset, and telling, I think, a moving story in powerful lyrics. I'm sorry they didn't play Second Mile, my all-time favourite. Another time?

I hope they continue to play together. I hope some folk festival - Cambridge? - gives them the starring role they deserve.

Some updates

There's been quite a lot of activity involving two of the bands we've been taking an interest in.

Firstly Caedmon have announced plans for the first live gigs of the reunited band. They are to take place in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 7th and the 8th. Details on their website. Looking forward to it!

Caedmon have also now made all the tracks of their original, highly valued album available for listening on their site - along with some of their new material.

Dana Lee Winner, formerly Dana Lee Price, has also made many of the Dave and Dana songs available for listening on her website. There are 13 tracks from the original albums together with some of her new material.  At a guess, I think it is all the original material written by the duo - with the covers of other artists omitted, presumably for copyright reasons. That means you get amazing tracks like Come on In, He's Not a Rumour and Right Track but you still have to find the albums to listen to equally amazing versions of songs like Empty-Handed and Still Waters.

Our tracking shows that, even though it's four months since we last posted anything, interest in Parchment and their legacy is still high with many daily visits to this site. Let's hope this encourages others!

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.

Happy New Year!

A year ago I set out a number of resolutions for this site and sadly many of them were never fulfilled. But it didn't matter because a great many other things happened and 2008 proved just as interesting a year as 2007.

Let's look first at what I set out to do:

• I promised to post more material from Buzz. Sorry, haven't got round to it.
• I called for more reviews of Parchment's work and indeed found an intriguing blog review of Shamblejam. And there were features on one or two of the band's songs.
  
• I wanted to continue to find out about the Grapevine label and its artists - and yes, that enjoyable search has carried on.
• I wanted to know more about Trinity Folk, the first incarnation of Parchment. Maybe one or two clues emerged but there's still a story waiting to be told.
• And then there was Roundabout 2008, part of Liverpool's year of European culture. We completely missed the long awaited reunion in July, which featured the Rycroft cousins, and I see we've missed a couple more events in the autumn and another chance to hear Keith Rycroft perform.

As I said at the outset of this blog, it's a hobby, fitted into the corners of my life. Nevertheless I hope it continues to encourage others the way it encourages me. It's got going over the last couple of years because people have joined in and shared their memories, their love of the music that has emanated from Parchment and the musicians associated with the band and even how it may help point to God.

Next: so what did we get up to in 2008 and how did I managed to find 28 postings about an obscure band that folded 30 years ago?

Happy New Year and I hope it's even better than yesterday!

Where the Cross and the Manger Meet

This is a song from River's third album Shadow and Flame.

It's a great song, written by Sue Rivers Mack, aka Sue McClellan of Parchment.

"....A saviour born to show eternal life begins
Where the cross and the manger meet."

Here's a link to the full lyric.


HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Pandora

I've noticed a number of visitors trying to access the Pandora "world of Parchment" radio station we created some time ago. Many will have been disappointed because, for some reason, Pandora's activities have been restricted to the USA recently. The issue appears to be something to do with copyright licensing.

This is sad as Pandora offered an interesting collection of music, old and new, along with quite a sophisticated analysis. It introduced me to quite a number of bands and singers and led to the purchase of a number of CDs, It had just included its first Parchment tracks, from the Under the Silent Tree compilation CDs.

The last.fm radio site contains a Parchment page and a "Parchment" radio channel, largely based, so as I can see, on the Folk is a Four Letter Word 2 CD. Last.fm also has a small "Xian folk" group but the station doesn't seem to have the range of Pandora.

Sound Vision in Concert

This 1970 live album is the only live recording I've been able to trace of Trinity Folk or Parchment in concert. In spite of regular appearances at major events over the next eight years, the band were never again captured live on vinyl. Trinity Folk, at the time a four piece, played Working Man and Laugh ("I want you all to laugh") and also feature providing backing vocals and music to compere Judy MacKenzie.

A live album was made of a similar Sound Vision concert a year earlier in 1969 called Alive!. That featured a young Graham Kendrick performing in his beat band Whispers of Truth.

Aside from Trinity Folk (pictured here), the 1970 album has other interesting features, as I discovered when I ripped it to mp3 and listened to it a few times. Among the performers was a young folk trio called Carol, John & Aubrey, who sang folk harmonies, rather like Peter, Paul and Mary. When I first obtained the album in the early 70s I used to think their mid-60s style was rather dated but listening again, their songs have become interesting, if only for the lyrics. I've been unable to find out any more about this trio - perhaps they will stand up and identify themselves!

Their first song Sunday Morning is striking in itself - "He's the man in pinstripe trousers, never goes in public houses...goes to church on Sunday morning". The song describes a middle-aged man of impeccable virtue, especially by modern standards, but "deep inside there's something missing, something he can't explain."

On the face of it it's straightforward evangelicalism - going to church does not make you a Christian. But look at the youth of the performers and listen to it again. It's also a generational challenge from the young to the old. Listen to it now and you realise it is equally a challenge to that self-same generation, now middle-aged, still going to church but have they lost their First Love, their youthful zeal? How have they survived four decades? And where is the modern generation of youth challenging its elders?

Then there's their third song Hands. Here are the lyrics. The song is attributed jointly to the band and Doug Barnett:

Whose hands are these so fragile and white,
playing on Mary's cheek on this cold, lonely night?
These are the hands that flung stars into space,
made mighty oaks, gave the eagle its grace.

Whose hands are these?

Whose hands are these in compassion and care
stretched to the leper bound down with despair?
These are the hands that made all things good;
these hands can feel where no other hands could.

Whose hands are these ripped open by nails,
bound to a cross while the mid-day sun fails?
These are the hands that bought sin and set free,
bring to your life God's true liberty.

Note the third line. 12 years later it was "sampled" by Graham Kendrick (who played backing guitar at this concert) for his popular and evocative song Servant King. A quick google reveals that Kendrick's line "hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered" is now regarded as one of the most poetic phrases to emerge from modern Christian music. If indeed this is the original source of this striking phrase, it  has never been attributed.

There's a full tracklisting on Sound Vision now posted on the archive pages here.

The lost album - full credits

John Pac has supplied the full list of credits for the lost album:

1/ Money Honey (Jesse Stone)
2/ Wild, Wild Woman (John Pac)
3/ I Really Don't Mind/Jet Plane (Sue McClellan)
4/ Denomination Blues (Washington Phillips)
5/ Chicago North Western (Juicy Lucy)
6/ Fast Train (John Pac)
7/ Morning Love, Morning Freedom (Sue McClellan)
8/ How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live (Ry Cooder/ Alfred Reed)
9/ Tom (John Pac)
10/ You Mean a Lot to Me (Sue McClellan)
11/ We're Over Here (John Pac)
12/ People and Places (John Pac/Sue McClellan))
13/ A Matter of Time (John Pac)

Band members: John Pac, Sue McClellan, Jeff Crow

This shows the album had more original songs than I thought at first. Wild Wild Woman and Chicago North Western were to have been singles. I had tracked down several other "wild woman" songs but John's rendering of the concept compared with the best of them.

He says Wild, wild woman was not written for anyone in particular. Fast Train was written for his future wife, who lived in the west of England and Tom was written for his cat Mr Jinx.


There's still uncertainty about what will happen with the material. John's current thinking is that it's too unfinished to publish as a cohesive album. It would be a shame if the band's many fans never got a chance to hear any of it. If you're one of those, why not post your ideas here.

The Eurovision Entry

John Pac's been in touch about the lost album and revealed a fascinating snippet of information - the song People and Places was in fact written as an entry for the 1974 Eurovision song contest. John says it "did quite well" but didn't make the final six in the Song for Europe contest that was used to select the British entry. If it had made the shortlist, it would have been sung by Grease star Olivia Newton-John, who had been chosen by the BBC to represent Britain that year, and sang all the short-listed songs on primetime TV.

She went on to sing a song called Long Live Love, which, ironically, was a pseudo-gospel number. It didn't win - there was stiff competition that year. The winner was an obscure band from Sweden called Abba with a song called Waterloo.

Resisting the temptation to post a youtube video of Abba, here is the British entry. And here's a link to the sample of People and Places that's available with the Simply...Parchment CD (see left). I know which I prefer - but could Olivia Newton-John have sung the song as well as Sue McClellan? People and Places was, of course, re-recorded by the band for the Rehearsal for a Reunion album.

More on the lost album to follow...