01/04/2025

Vulpes Vulpes berated me privately about not promoting the Dick Gaughan box set aggressively enough here… Trust me, I’ve been busy throwing track down in front of the train these past 9 days, promoting it on social media, scrambling to create new ‘extras’ because things keep selling out etc etc. That said, here’s a ‘9 days in’ PR sheet about where we’re at: £76,000+ / nearly $100,000. It really is a phenomenon – and tremendously heart-warming, to know that a lifetime of fabulous music and activism informed by values like compassion, social justice and peace will be appreciated anew, and that great amounts of ‘new old’ music and scattered rarities will be polished up and made easily accessible. 🙂

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Dick Gaughan – R/evolution: 1969–83

Phenomenal success of crowdfunding campaign (9 days into 30 days) to restore folk legend’s early repertoire and re-establish his legacy

Unable to convince any record labels that there was a market for a box set on Scottish folk icon Dick Gaughan – who retired after a stroke in 2016 and now lives modestly, off the grid, in Edinburgh – Belfast music biographer Colin Harper decided to do it himself. The proposed R/evolution: 1969–83 (7CD/DVD) » Continue Reading.

30/05/2025

Few bands have left as distinct a mark on the musical landscape as Horslips. Emerging in the early 1970s, they more or less created ‘Celtic Rock’, drawing from Irish traditional music and British/American rock, crafting a sound that was both timeless and radical.

The BBC captured the band in the 1970s and again during their unexpected Indian summer return in the 2010s. At The BBC gathers these vital recordings – spanning nearly 50 years – into one definitive collection.

Disc 1 (1973–74) – Live BBC performances from Radio 1 In Concert, Old Grey Whistle Test, and John Peel Show, capturing Horslips’ early energy and innovation.

Disc 2 (1979–2019) – A 1979 Radio 1 In Concert set, a 2010 unplugged session, and their final 2019 recording, Sideways to the Sun.

Disc 3 (2011) – The BBC Radio Ulster mix of their orchestral concert with the Ulster Orchestra, featuring The Táin, The Book of Invasions, and I’ll Be Waiting.

Disc 4 (1979 Bonus Disc) – Unreleased Short Stories, Tall Tales studio mixes from Windmill Lane.

Disc 5 (DVD) – Old Grey Whistle Test clips, 1974 documentary footage & 2011 fan-shot concert videos.

Disc 1 begins the journey in 1973–74, landmark years » Continue Reading.

19/03/2025

Dick Gaughan – R/evolution: 1969–83 Advance notice of Kickstarter campaign (due in mid-March)

Music biographer Colin Harper is launching a Kickstarter campaign in mid-March to crowdfund R/evolution: 1969–83 – a 7CD+DVD Dick Gaughan box set, with all proceeds going to the Scottish folk icon, who was forced to retire after a stroke in 2016.

For complex reasons, seven of Gaughan’s 12 albums from 1972–88 have never or only briefly been on CD and are not on digital platforms, nor available to third-party licensors. Of the other five, only one – the classic Handful of Earth (Topic, 1981) – has been remastered/re-presented in the past 28 years. The Harvard Tapes (Greentrax, 2019), a 1982 concert, was a welcome but isolated archive release in recent years. Where other artists of similar vintage see their names and music kept alive by reissues, anthologies, use of music in films etc., this hasn’t happened with Gaughan. To a new generation of people who might be interested, it’s almost as if he never was.

‘I found myself thinking about this late last year,’ says Colin Harper. ‘It felt alarming – upsetting, in fact – that such an incredible artist who had seemed to be » Continue Reading.

21/02/2025

Available from an internet near you from Friday 21st February, ‘The calm beyond the storm’ is a single lifted from the recent ‘Infodemic’ album. A spokesperson for The Eisenhowers claims that the lyric advocates switching off ‘the signal and the noise’ to escape from the digital landscape of relentless social media and information overload. Like we all need to devote time to creating our own reflective headspace, or something. Hope you like it. The video link will appear in the comments.

24/03/2025

Friends, I’m going to need your help in a few weeks – especially friends in the music world, for whom some of this might resonate. That help will be sharing links on your own FB pages and elsewhere.

I’ll be launching a crowdfunding campaign that involves aiming for a significant sum of money. I won’t be taking any of it – my role is philanthropic – but I’ll be thrilled if the target is reached: it will allow to happen a project of preservation, celebration and remuneration around a partly ‘lost era’ of work from one of the great artists of the 20th century, in my view.

Dick Gaughan was a folk music giant – a singer *and* instrumentalist of astonishing, singular quality, whose early career was mostly based on traditional music, moving more into songs of his own time in the mid-80s. He was brilliant at all of it and a man of rare compassion and optimism in his worldview.

His first album was released in 1972, his last in 2008. His career ended with a stroke in 2016. He is off the grid and legally blind, unable to play an instrument – but that remarkable » Continue Reading.

23/02/2025

Sensational jazz writer and classy old-school Modern jazz quartet leader Simon Spillett has a new album out – ‘Up In Town’. It’s a big deal, because he has a long held antipathy to recording, often loathing the results, but rather likes this one.

He’s also ‘up in town’ on 23 February at Pizza Express Jazz Club, Soho. His quartet has been having a good run lately – including a recent sold out Ronnie Scott’s. But his punters clearly don’t like pizza. The show looks like being for a ‘select’ audience. If you’re within travelling distance, give it a go.

Here’s what Simon (not as dour as some may think) has to say about the show on his social media page:

Pizza Express Jazz Club Soho Sunday February 23rd 2025 A concert by the Simon Spillett Quartet launching its new album ‘Up In Town’ (Mister PC Records) featuring the music of Tubby Hayes. As well as the quartet with Pete Billington, Alec Dankworth and Pete Cater and the opportunity to purchase the new album ahead of its official release date there are a host of attractive diversions including:

* Italian cheese on toast * unpronounceable desserts * a range of » Continue Reading.

28/01/2025

Sounding the Century: The Exhibition gathers paper ephemera, record sleeves, photographs and original artwork to highlight the life and achievements of Bill Leader, the prolific sound engineer and record producer. The experience of viewing is designed to complement the experience of reading Sounding the Century, the projected eight-book series by Mike Butler. The books and exhibition between them tell the whole story of the British Folk Revival.

Bill Leader was born on Boxing Day, 1929, in Newark, New Jersey, to Londoner cousins of Irish heritage. The Depression drove the family back to England and, during the Blitz, Bill’s father’s factory was ordered to evacuate to Keighley, West Yorkshire. Bill co-founded the Bradford branch of the Workers’ Music Association with Alex Eaton. This left-wing front believed in social change through music. Topic Records, its record label, existed to supply members with a monthly 78rpm record of Shostakovich and factory choirs or some such. Bill maintained the association upon moving to London in 1955 and volunteered to record folk singers for Topic. It was at just the moment when folk music was deemed a suitable vehicle for the workers’ struggle, and, coincidentally, folklorist Kenneth Goldstein identified a gap in the » Continue Reading.

20/12/2024

My good pal Mark Case has created this seasonal promo for recent releases on the splendid Madfish imprint. I was delighted to have worked with Mark, and Madfish, this year past on the Fairport Convention 12-disc set featured in the promo. I’ll be involved in at least three Madfish projects next year (Horslips at the BBC 4CD+DVD, Martin Carthy at the BBC 20CD and a mystery Horslips item later in the year) – and perhaps more. Exciting!

19/07/2025

My Christmas has come early with the announcement of a reunion show by Fareham’s finest septet.

Their two proper albums have made it to Spotify, final odds-and-sods round-up, Tremendous Magic: Lost Songs 2008​-​2012, is still on Bandcamp.

Tickets are only a tenner. See you down the front.

25/04/2025

Pentangle: The Albums: 1968-1972 boxset to be released on vinyl for the very first time via Svart Records on 16th April 2025

1968 to 1972, saw the release of 6 studio albums from Folk’s first supergroup Pentangle. Featuring the songwriting talents of guitarists Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, alongside bassist Danny Thompson, drummer Terry Cox and singer Jacqui McShee, their innovative folk-fusion encompassed elements of jazz as well as pop, which left a lasting influence and legacy.

The first 5 albums were released on legendary Folk label Transatlantic, while Solomon’s Seal (1972), on the Reprise label, was their final album with the original line-up.

Now for the first time ever, these albums are available as a 14LP deluxe box set. Each album has been expanded with a wealth of bonus material, including choice selections from contemporaneous solo LPs by Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, out-takes and live tracks. Across the package, there is an impressive amount of 22 recordings which are previously unreleased on LP. Some of the albums are being reissued on vinyl for the first time in decades with Solomon’s Seal last being released as an LP in 1977, shortly followed by Reflection in 1980.

Each » Continue Reading.

23/11/2024

My monthly vinyl playback sessions in the village cafe were paused in early 2020 by the great unpleasantness. The cafe is pretty small and is a lot busier since then, and I’m immunosuppressed so not keen on enclosed spaces packed with people and their germs.

One of the old hospital buildings has been renovated as a not-for-profit community resource with office space, meeting rooms, a yoga/dance studio, a microbrewery, pizzeria, cafe/bar and stage.

It is “soft-opening” tomorrow and Saturday, with the full opening in January.

I’m going to be playing records on a Rega Planar 3 from about 3pm until a DJ takes over at 6pm. We were supposed to be having live music in the evening, but the drummer double-booked himself. Insert your own joke about drummers and time-keeping here.

Anyhow, Saturday’s theme will be… Compilation Albums.

I will buy a cuppa for any AWers who turn up and introduces themselves.

In a longstanding tradition dating all the way back to 2021, the release of an Eisenhowers album is followed shortly thereafter by a collection of songs which, for one reason or another, didn’t quite make the final cut. In an alternative universe sometime in the 80s, these might have ended up being part of a double album, maybe with a gatefold sleeve designed by Hipgnosis, or whatever. ‘Infodemic’ is the companion piece to last year’s ‘Nudge Unit Blues’ (described by one reviewer as ‘deliciously sour’). The 11 songs in this collection lean heavily into some formative 80s influences like Simple Minds, David Bowie, Bill Nelson, Gary Numan and Japan. It’s available on Bandcamp and all the usual streaming services.

Just putting it out there… Twang rereleases are like buses (etc)

You saw this back in 2020 when some were quite nice about it. Well, due to, ahem, distribution problems it had to be withdrawn but now it rides again. Some tracks were rewritten, some just had a few tweaks to the mix. But I like so here it is.

Bandcamp: https://jonathanroberts.bandcamp.com/album/locked-down

Spotify:

I’m delighted to say that the crowdfunder / purchasing opportunity for Mike Butler’s latest volume in his eight-book series ‘Sounding the Century’ – on 1950s-70s British/Irish folk music producer Bill Leader and his circle of characterful associates – is now ‘live’.

As Mike has been abroad, with most of his sales in Britain/Europe, I’ve taken on the responsibility of organising the printing of the book and the mailing out to purchasers, and Norman Boyd – newly freelance designer, highly recommended – has very kindly handled the typesetting etc.

We’ve added two extra ‘rewards’ for those wishing to help Mike towards a fifth volume (I am taking zero monies from the enterprise – after costs, it all goes to Mike): a limited edition revised-packaging repress (50 units) of 70s folk-rockers Hunter Muskett’s 2014 comeback album ‘That Was Then…’ (the last album Bill produced); and a totally exclusive 68-page book by me (50 units), being an enhanced ‘lost chapter’ of my book on uilleann piping, focused on Bill’s adventures in that area.

More info, and a video message from Mike, in the link in the comments. 🙂

26/07/2024

With thoughts of long-gone AWer James Blaast, I notice Chrysalis Records are releasing remastered albums The Cutter & The Clan and Once In A Lifetime (Live) as a 2CD set, or just the studio LP as a Barry Grint half-speed master.

I first heard Once In A Lifetime in my first week at university, the first I had heard of Runrig.

Years ago, I worked with the now head of Chrysalis back catalogue on a Furniture CD. And their recent reissues from the Specials, Selecter, Sinead O’Connor, Blue Aeroplanes, etc have been magnificent.

Limited Edition 11CD+DVD Set. For the first time ever, fans can experience the timeless magic of Fairport Convention’s ‘second golden age’ all in one place with this meticulously crafted and comprehensive 11CD and DVD deluxe boxset ‘It All Came Round Again: Onstage and On Air 1982-90’. The set includes over 160 tracks, 57 of which are previously unreleased recordings.

Also included in this limited edition set is a replica festival programme signed by Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg, Dave Mattacks and Richard Thompson. This bespoke Madfish offering, curated by Bert Jansch/John McLaughlin biographer Colin Harper, is the definitive tribute to the legendary British folk-rock band’s enduring legacy.

The Fairport Convention legend was forged between 1967 and 1979 – 12 years, 16 albums, umpteen line-ups and four exhausted people at the end of it. In August 1980, the last line-up – Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg and Bruce Rowland – reunited for a day in a farmer’s field in Cropredy, Oxfordshire, establishing the iconic ‘Fairport’s Cropredy Convention’ festival in the process. Five relatively quiet years passed by before, in 1985 and by popular demand, a new recording and touring Fairport Convention assembled around Peggy and Simon. Everything moved up » Continue Reading.

18/02/2024

There is no way of doing this that doesn’t seem ridiculous, but here it is… my friends Barry Devlin and Cormac O’Kane have made a documentary about me and my ‘world’. In a way, it has spun off (out of any normal sense of reason) out of the 35-disc Horslips box set that I curated for Madfish, released early last year.

Barry (Horslips alumnus, later an adventurer in the world of TV and film – scriptwriting, U2 promos, documentaries etc.) didn’t know me before that process. He didn’t know Cormac either – Cormac, an old friend of mine who has tolerated/aided/abetted my adventures in music recording for nearly 30 years, had mastered the Horslips box set.

Barry seemed to find our circle to be fun… and around June last year he decided that the world needed this documentary and set about creating it. Somehow, he convinced BBC NI to acquire it – and then convinced technological wizard and can-do man Cormac O’Kane to direct it, with Cormac’s mild-mannered studio sidekick Richard Brown roped in as editor. The whole thing has been made on wings, prayers and enormous goodwill. My contribution was organising a couple of interviews/performance things » Continue Reading.

Absolutely nobody needs a new podcast to listen to BUT if you have a few idle moments to spare, may I recommend mine, Can I Pod With Madness, a nostalgic trawl through old issues of (mostly) Kerrang, (occasionally) Metal Hammer and (in one instance) Q. Lots of tangents, barely any musical knowledge, and way too many mentions of Chris DeBurgh on a podcast that’s supposedly about metal, but we’re certainly having fun doing it.

(If you want to check out actual pages from the magazines you can see all that stuff on our instagram, without having to listen to us argue about where my copy of Rock Aid Armenia version of Smoke on the Water ended up).

01/12/2023

‘This utterly engrossing feast focuses on the ‘golden period’ of British jazz, when boundary-breaking and experimentation first broke through. Featuring large sleeve reproductions (both front and back), period reviews, historical overviews and vintage music press adverts, Labyrinth finally puts this music on the pedestal it rightly deserves’ – Jon Newey (editor, Jazzwise)

LIMITED EDITION BOOK NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!

BEAUTIFUL, EXCLUSIVE MICHAEL GARRICK COLD MOUNTAIN POSTER (REPRODUCING A LONG-LOST 1972 DESIGN) WITH THE FIRST 100 ORDERS!

Labyrinth is a massive hardback book, 375pp in length, printed on high-quality art paper, with an embossed cover and cloth quarter-binding, written by Richard Morton Jack (Galactic Ramble, Psychedelia, Nick Drake: The Life).

It celebrates over three hundred albums, offering detailed background info about each, alongside excerpts from original reviews and masses of high-quality images that reproduce their fabulous artwork and labels at near-full size. It also features a fascinating introduction by Tony Reeves (Mike Taylor Quartet, New Jazz Orchestra, Colosseum etc).

Covering abstract jazz, avant-garde jazz, serial jazz, free jazz, Indo-jazz, jazz-rock and more, it tells a story Britain should be proud of: open-minded and creative musicians pushing the boundaries of their art in the face of penury and indifference, and » Continue Reading.

BLURB:

Following their 25-year CD anthology The Weather at World’s End: 1997–2022 (Talking Elephant, 2023), Colin Harper’s Legends of Tomorrow release a new single, ‘The King is Dead (He Told Me Himself)’ (written by Colin) – ahead of the Northern Ireland studio supergroup’s first ever concerts, in December.

‘The King is Dead’ features a galaxy of Northern Irish music and media personalities: Mickey Rafferty (The Minnows) on vocals; Dave McLarnon (Shock Treatment) on backing vocals; Colin Harper on acoustic guitar; Linley Hamilton (Irish jazz colossus and broadcaster) on trumpet; Brian Houston (solo artist) on lead guitar; Cormac O’Kane (ex-New Brontës / award-winning recording engineer) on piano; Ali Mackenzie (solo artist/sideman of many) on bass; and Feargal O’Kane (ex-New Brontës / award-winning BBC NI arts TV producer) on drums.

All have recorded as Legends of Tomorrow many times before, and most will be involved in the December concerts, to be filmed by director Barry Devlin for an independent documentary for BBC NI.

About the song:

Colin Harper: ‘Brian Houston is one of my oldest friends in the » Continue Reading.