A Lasting Spirit: The Collection [Original recording remastered]

Fairport Convention | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 19, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 3
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Castle Us
• ASIN: B0009RQROM
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #344,711 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist

British folk-rock band Fairport Convention started out in 1967 and over time has become a group that enjoys a unique relationship with its friends and fans. Beginning as a US folk rock influenced band, Fairport was always eager to draw from the best of intelligent contemporary songwriting, frequently including covers by Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell in their live sets. With the arrival of the great Sandy Denny, the band’s material became broader based thanks to the British folk songs that Sandy brought to the table.

The rest is history. The talented members of the band such as Ashley Hutchings, Dave Swarbrick and the legendary Richard Thompson together eagerly embraced the new music that Sandy Denny brought to their attention and the result was the emergence of new and fully formed British folk-rock.

Product Description

Through a mindboggling series of line-up changes, Fairport Convention have kept the spirit of British folk--and folk-rock--burning for nearly 40 years. This three-CD anthology carefully selects some of the rarest and most enticing jewels from the back reaches of their catalog, including full coverage of their triumphant appearances at the Cropredy festival. Disc 1: Sweet Days; Disc 2: Long Summer Days; Disc 3: Cropredays.

* A unique collection of Fairport Convention's live and studio work
* Digitally re-mastered from the original master tapes
* Includes extensive liner notes by Fairport Convention biographer Kingsley Abbott
* Released with the full support of the band

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ALWAYS GREAT MUSIC - BUT BUYER BEWARE!!, August 16, 2005

By 

Joseph A. Kengor (Somewhereville, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Lasting Spirit: The Collection (Audio CD)

Licking my lips I read the AMG review of this release - "a compilation of live performances from across the group's history, intermingling class concert recordings from as far back
as the late '60s with much more recent work from Cropredy".
As a Fairport fan I lept with joy at the thought of getting more unreleased live recordings. Now the Amazon review did suggest the possibility of some studio recordings included in this 3 disc set but was not specific.
This review will spell out the truth. This release contains only 9 unreleased cuts, the 1st nine on disc 1. The balance of disc 1 and most of disc 3 are from Cropredy '97. ALL of disc 2 are selected STUDIO tracks, mainly from The Five Seasons and Red & Gold albums. So to me, a Fairport recordinig collector, this 3 disc release is terribly redundant. It just depends how much one is willing to pay per unreleased cut. At this point, I feel I've been duped by reviews which did not inform potential buyers.
I really don't know the audience for which this recording was made. Completists will have most of this material already; folks new to Fairport should avoid this because it is not a good cross section of their recorded history, and it is not a good place to start.
My rating is for the package, not the music. The music, is, as always, suburb.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Blessing, October 26, 2005

By 

Laurence Upton (Wilts, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Lasting Spirit: The Collection (Audio CD)

This budget-priced 3CD box set spans thirty years of the Fairports' illustrious career and includes a few rarities, enough to make it a worthwhile purchase for someone with a couple of their regular albums and an interest in delving a little deeper.

Of greatest interest is the first disc, Sweet Days. This includes the first song they ever recorded in a studio, Both Sides Now, written by a total unknown called Joni Mitchell. Judy Dyble does a beautiful lead vocal, with Richard Thompson singing back-up (Iain Matthews had yet to join the band). At the session, on 10 August 1967, they also recorded an early version of One Sure Thing and If I Had A Ribbon Bow. This became their first single while the other two were consigned to the vaults.
 
Iain Matthews sings lead, with Judy provided harmony, on the opening track, Some Sweet Day, the old Everly Brothers song which was to have been the band's second single in 1968, but shortly after it was recorded Judy found herself out of the band and the single was shelved. The song was recorded again on 28 May 1968 for John Peel's Top Gear programme with new vocalist Sandy Denny, and Jackson Frank's You Never Wanted Me is taken from that same session (it is also on Heyday).

Night In The City and Marcie, both unreleased Joni Mitchell songs that were later to appear on Song To A Seagull, come from a 1968 radio broadcast of the David Symonds Show. Unfortunately these are from an AM signal, complete with buzzes, crackles and late fade-ins, but are good to hear as there are no official versions. 

Memphis Slim's You're Gonna Need My Help Someday comes from a later David Symonds session, February 1969, and is in far better quality. Again, there is no official equivalent and this version has not before been generally available. Fotheringay, from the same session, is a delight as it comes from a better source than the transcription copy used on Heyday, lacking both the distortion and the intrusive voice-over by Brian Matthew at both ends.
 
A month later they were in the studio for the Unhalfbricking sessions. Dear Landlord did not make it to the final cut, which had three other Bob Dylan songs. Sir Patrick Spens made its recorded debut on Full House, by which time Sandy Denny had left the band. The version here was recorded before she left and is not the BBC Top Gear version you may know but a stereo outtake from 1969's Liege And Lief, and is marvellous, featuring her lead vocal and piano and some tasteful phasing effects. I would have preferred more of these alternative recordings from the 1960s than the seven live recordings from 1997 that flesh out the rest of disc one.

Long Summer Days, the second disc, juggles tracks from Gladys' Leap (1985), Expletive Delighted! (1986) and The Five Seasons (1990), plus the Wishfulness Waltz medley from 1997's Who Knows Where The Time Goes, in what seem to be their standard released versions.

Cropredays, finally, features live recordings taken from their 30th anniversary concerts at the Cropredy Festival of 1997, with a shifting line-up of Fairport Convention members past and present including Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbrick, both in fine form. Interspersed are a couple from the 1995 Cropredy (Close To The Wind and I Heard It Through The Grapevine) and a 1997 version of Who Knows...? featuring Simon Nicol, from the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury.

There are copious notes with the box set but these are eulogical more than they are factual and unfortunately include little of the information I have added here or other details such as full line-ups for the various incarnations, making this a welcome but imperfect collection

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Actually, most of the 1st nine have been released, October 7, 2005

By 

Robert G. Daugherty (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Lasting Spirit: The Collection (Audio CD)

"Marcie" and "Night in the City" were released on an Ashley Hutchings compilation. Hard to find cuts poorly recorded. Great performances though.

The only one I've never heard before is "Both Sides Now" with Judy Dyble on lead vocals.

The 3 Joni Mitchell cuts are the only rare ones. All of the rest are readily available elsewhere. Most of this is just recycled tracks from the Cropedy 3 disc set.

Very bizarre compilation. Don't understand it at all.

Wish there was an easier way to get the 3 Joni Mitchell covers!