Fast Folk - A Community of Singers & Songwriters

Richard Julian | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 26, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Smithsonian Folkways
• ASIN: B00005Y1U2
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #255,240 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Fast Folk Musical Magazine helped jumpstart the careers of musicians such as Shawn Colvin, Steve Forbert, John Gorka, Lucy Kaplansky, Christine Lavin, Richard Shindell, Suzanne Vega, and many others. This double CD set comprises honest, intimate versions of their songs, available in retail stores for the first time! Guided by the venerable Dave Van Ronk, singer-songwriter Jack Hardy formed Fast Folk in 1982 in New York City. The dominant theme in the 100-plus Fast Folk Musical Magazine issues was an emphasis on the song rather than the singer—music for its own sake. It quickly became an important showcase for the new folk scene, which continued to flourish for nearly twenty years. By drawing on both the new wave and the old guard of American folk music, Fast Folk developed into a significant chapter in the history of folk music. Compiled and annotated by Richard Meyer, Jack Hardy and Jeff Place.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ESSENTIAL (and a good intro.to contempor.singer songwriters), March 31, 2002

By 

Mois Benarroch - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fast Folk - A Community of Singers & Songwriters (Audio CD)

How would you react if someone told you that there is a versions of a Suzanne Vega or a John Gorka song recorded the same week it was written? A version of Greg Brown's "One Cool Remove" sung by Shawn Colvin and John Gorka? The first recordings by Rod Macdonald, recordings by Bob Dylan, Steve Forbert, Richard Shindell. Shawn Colvin, Pierce Pettis, Michael Jerling in some vault, recordings you have never heard of. This vault is the Fast Folk magazine and it includes 105 LP's, that's it, one hundred and five (more than 1000 songs!). And what is much more, you are probably going to find there recordings by many names you never heard of and have recorded a few obscure cd's worth looking for, others have only recorded one great song for the FF magazine, but were never heard of thereafter (I have been trying for years to find out who is that David Kessler, who recorded one of my favorite all time songs "Another Chance At Bliss", does anybody know????)

I have many Fast Folk recordings, but not all of them and over the years I made my own collection of favorite songs, 4 cdr with 70 songs, and here I get this dbl cd, with 36 songs and none of them are in my own compilations! And still, I find these two cd's to be highly enjoyable. This set include great versions of favorite songs, like Shindell's Courrier, Forbert 10,000 men, Suzanne Vega's Gypsy, as well as songs never recorded for released records like Gorka's "Geza's Wailing ways", and too many names to quote them all.

I liked this set a lot, of course there are many songs I would have liked to see before some that are actually on the set, but I can surely agree with more than 30 songs here, out of 36,
and I think any lover of great songwriting will love this set. I hope many people will buy it so that they can release other sets and covert this small beginning into a series like the KGSR's, Mountain Stage, Rare On Air and others. There are tons of great songs in the FF vaults, too many to be ignored.

About the liner notes: they include three essays on the FF magazine, and a biography of
each artist, + a complete discography by each singer. Amazing! I would have liked to see
the lyrics too, but then a man shouldnt ask for too much...