Audio CD review:
Fairport Convention - Faiport Unconventional

Fairport Convention - Faiport Unconventional

Band: Fairport Convention Title: Faiport Unconventional Rating: Release Date: 2005-04-05 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Meet on the ledge, (overture) Cropredy, 1990 2: Wings, Cropredy, 1997 3: If I had a ribbon bow, single, 1967 4: Lay down your weary tune, 1st Radio Session,'67 5: A Shattering Live Experience, BBC Radio session, 1969 6: Nottamun Town, alternative version, 1968 7: Si Tu Dois Partir, radio recording, 1968 8: Come all ye, Liege & Lief out-takes, 1969 9: Tam Lin, Liege & Lief out-takes , 1969 10: Dirty Linen, Cropredy, 1988 11: Staines Morris, Philadelphia Folk Fest, 1970 12: Journeyman's Grace, 1970 13: Angel delight, Cropredy, 1997 14: Time is near, Roger Hill/Tom Farnell lineup, 1972 15: Polly on the shore, live, 1973 16: Rising for the moon, BBC session, 1974 17: Reynard the Fox, TV performance, 1987 18: Rubber band, Simons Records, 1980 19: Naked Highwayman, Bottom Line, 1998 20: The wood and the wire, Cropredy 1999 21: The Crowd, Woodworm, 2002 22: One sure thing, (excerpt) Sound Techniques, 1967 - Fairport's first demo recording 23: Sir B McKenzie, 1976 24: Suzanne, 1968 25: Time will show the wiser, 1968 26: Mr Lacey, Dutch TV, 1969 27: Reno Nevada, French TV, 1968 28: Percy's song, 1968 29: Dear Landlord, 1968 30: I don't believe you, 'Nine' out-take, 1973 31: The deserter, BBC, 1970 32: Farewell to a poor man's son, BBC-TV Babbacombe Lee, 1973 33: Sad song, The Manor Sessions, 1972 34: Autopsy, 1968 35: Maverick Child, David Rea / Tom Farnell line-up, 1972 36: Fiddlestix, Australian single, 1973 37: It's now or never, with Steve Tilston, 2000 38: The lady is a tramp, BBC Top Gear, 1968 39: General Taylor, Live in Chicago, 1972 40: Accountancy Shanty, Live in Hull, 1989 41: A sailor's life, Southampton, 1969 42: Sir Patrick Spens, 1969 43: Wat Tyler, York, 1992 44: Flowers of the forest, London 1977 45: Fotheringay, Symonds on Sunday, 1969 46: To Althea, Cropredy 1984 47: Red and gold, Cropredy 1996 48: Lord Marlborough, El Pea, 1971 49: Adieu Adieu, TV performance, 1976 50: Here's to Tom Paine, Weston-super-mare, 1997 51: Bonny Bunch of Roses, Live in Australia, 1977 52: Breakfast in Mayfair, Sandy Denny/Simon Nicol vcls, 1973 53: Battle of the Somme, Troubadour, 1970 54: Summer before the war, BBC In Concert, 1990 55: Get Together, 1967 56: Genesis Hall, Cropredy, 1993 57: Jewel in the crown, Apollo 1995 58: Walk awhile, Bumpers, 1970 59: John Gaudie, Bottom Line, 1998 60: Hexhamshire lass, Capital Radio, 1976 with Dan ar Bras 61: Slip jigs and reels, Oxford Apollo, 1995 62: Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman, Broughton Castle, 1982 63: Crazy Man Michael, Rehearsal Tape, 1969 64: Rosie, Melbourne Assembly Hall, 1996 65: Farewell Farewell, Fairport rehearsal tape, 1969 66: Now be thankful, BBC Sounds of the 70s, 1970 67: Hiring Fair, Cropredy, 1989 68: Stranger to himself, Live, 1974 69: Sloth, Live, 1974 70: Who knows where the time goes, BBC Radio, 1968 71: Matty Groves, specially-compiled multi-version 72: Meet on the Ledge, BBC Radio, 1968

Too Many Bootleg-Quality Recordings As such, this box was a major disappointment. I am a huge Fairport fan, but am not a collector of low-quality, archival recordings. Luckily, I got it used for about half price, but wouldn't buy it again. I keep it mainly for the very nice booklet (which I think you can buy separately from Free Reed). Way too many bootleg-quality archival recordings here for my taste. And because it is not chronologically compiled, the music keeps jerking back and forth from stuff that sounds like it was recorded off you big sister's transistor radio in 1968 to some fairly good stuff. They shoud congregated the low-quality stuff so you at least could have gotten used to it. These bootleg-type recordings should be compiled on a special CD and sold to the really hard-core collectors. Then create a nice box set for the rest of us that we will actually want to listen to more than once or twice. The sad thing is that such a fine job was done on Fairport's Heyday and House Full CDs of old radio & live recordings. Indeed, those are right at top of my favorite Fairport albums list. So did Free Reed just not want to put time and money into improving the archival recordings on this box, or were they beyond repair? If the later, very little of it should have been used. Compare this to the Fleetwood Mac Live in Boston 3-CD set, which knocks my socks off at how much better the CDs are than the old vinyl albums. Somebody actually invested a lot of love and care in that restoration project, taking the tapes into the studio and greatly improving them. Free Reed should take note. . Birthday Present! Yay! The 180-page book, which covers Fairport's history from beginning to present (well, presstime; given the band's background, there's always the nervous feeling that any listing of personnel more than about a day old could be seriously out of date)(And, indeed now, some years later, it *is*), including commentary on each album at the appropriate points. This is one of the most incredible boxed sets i've had the good fortune to own; Free Reed look rather like a British Bear Family on the basis of this set and of others listed in the catalog that came with it. While certainly respectful of the band's history and influential position, and obviously friendly with the members, author Nigel Schofield doesn't fall into the trap of being overly reverential, and is not above more-or-less gently twitting them when it becomes obvious that they don their trousers unipedally in a manner not dissimilar to the rest of us. The Cropredy memories book is a nice touch; having been there in '90 and '92, i can attest that it is A Lot Of Fun, even in a downpour (and didn't we just have one in '90). Pete Frame's "Fairport Family Tree" is an expansion of the one he did entitled "Resolving the Fairport Confusion", which is reprinted in his first "Family Trees" book (and, in a streamlined form, on the cover/inlay of the "History of Fairport Convention" compilation), which followed the band up till their breakup in '79. In order, presumably, to get in all of the most-directly-related data on Fairport's lineups and its members' other projects, and related bands and projects, some of the more peripheral material included on the original tree is MIA -- i find a minor mention in a note of "The Bunch", but they do not appear as a separate entry on the chart as such, and he doesn't number the various incarnations of Fairport and Steeleye Span referenced, as he did on that earlier rendering. All the same, a fantastic piece of work. (You have to see it to appreciate how densely packed it is with information. ) He ends it with a note to the effect that, if they make any more lineup changes they can just ". . . (something) well get themselves a new biographer. . . " Great package. Seems as if there ought to be something else to talk about, though. . . Oh, yeah -- the music! Disc 1 -- "Fairport -- A History"; a chronological overview of the history of the band, using lesser-known versions of their standards. Disc 2 -- "Rareport Convention"; hard to find and unreleased material from many sources, including private collections and radio and TV sessions. Disc 3 -- "A Fairport History"; sixteen folk tracks that take us back and narrate/coment on various key moments in British history. Disc 4 -- "Classic Convention"; which is rare and non-standard versions of what is described as the "core Fairport reportoire", including a completely outrageous version of "Matty Groves", which was created by editing together a whole bunch of versions in chronological order and intercut with a radio police drama narrative version of the story. The sound quality on some the cuts on this set is less-than-pristine (i noticed this particularly on at least one cut which was obviously recorded from an AM radio broadcast, with severe peak distortion). This could be a bit off-putting if this were your first exposure to Fairport, but, since at least one reason to have this collection is for the historical/completist value of the performances it documents, many people (i confess to being one) will be happy merely to have these 72 tracks in any form at all. That said, most of the cuts are at least decent-sounding, ranging upward to pristine. I, like any Fairport fan, can list a number of items i would like to have seen included on these discs, if only to have them all in one place, but many or even most of them -- Simon's practical joke on Swarb, which appears on the 30th Anniversary box set, for instance -- are already available in more-or-less accessible form, somewhere. This set is, mostly, The Other Stuff. . . and i'm glad to see it. (Back when the British original of this became available, i mentioned it to my wife and a week later, it was my birthday present. ). You can see a complete list of all Fairport Convention discography, or go back to the Fairport Convention tabs