|
Genre: folk-rock
Rating: **
(2 stars)
Title: All
Around My Hat
Company: Chrysalis
Catalog: CHR-1179
Year: 1975
Country/State: UK
Grade
(cover/record): VG/VG
Comments: original
inner sleeve; minor ring wear
Available: 1
GEMM
catalog ID: 4469
Price: $10.00
|
Maddy Prior: vocals
Tim Hart: dulcimer, guitar, vocals
Bob Johnson: guitar, vocals
Rick Kemp: bass, vocals
Peter Knight: violin, keyboards, vocals
Nigel Pegrum: flute, drums
Always mentioned as one of their better
records, I think it stands the test of time and sounds just as good today as
in '75 when it was released. The harmonies, melodies and general tone of the
session is the Span relaxed and comfortable. And you just can't argue with
the cover art. This one is a British pressing, but I don't think there are
any differences between this and the stateside product.
- Black
Jack Davey
- Hard Times of Old England
- Cadgwith Anthem
- All Around My Hat
- Gamble Gold (Robin Hood)
- Wife of Usher's Well
- Sum Waves
- Dance With Me
- Batchelors Hall
The biggest selling of all Steeleye Span albums is also their hardest
rocking record. They sound like would-be competitors to the
Who on the opening bars of "The Wife of Usher's Well," and Robert
Johnson's electric guitar grinding out power-chords like nobody's
business. The vocals have their usual elegance, the harmonies soaring
exquisitely, but between the choruses the guitar puts out lots of wattage.
The guitar competes with Maddy
Prior's voice for dominance on tracks like "Hard Times of Old
England," "Batchelors Hall," and "Dance With Me."
There's some more traditional sounding material here, including the lovely
"Cadwith Anthem," "Batchelor's Hall," and "Gamble
Gold (Robin Hood)," where the group returns to acoustic instruments. A
single of the upbeat title track also made the charts in England, and the
overall sound was the work of producer Mike
Batt, who gave the band a raw, stripped-down style, with only the
smallest touching up, with the very lightest of overdubbed strings.
All Around My Hat is a 1975
album by Steeleye
Span, their eighth and most commercially successful.
The title track was Steeleye Span's biggest hit single, reaching number 5
in he UK
charts, with Black Jack Davey as a B-side,
though the recording is actually more of a combination of the original with
another song, "Farewell He".
The album cover and back feature illustrations of the band members' faces
presented very elongated, when the album is looked at from the correct
angle, however, the images appear normal.
The title track is an Irish rebel song.
Let's begin by
getting "Commoner's Crown into perspective. On the whole it wears well
-I've repeatedly returned to it, and found it a much better proposition than
when I first heard it.
I find it works best,
through, as a synthesis of Steeleye's output up to that point, since it
contains somewhere along the line most of the ideas and themes the band had
tinkered with; for the average Steeleye fan, there is no doubt that it is a
fine album indeed and its sales, though initially disappointing, have
reflected this - it is now their best-selling album after "Now We Are
Six"
On the other hand, it
seemed to indicate that Steeleye were running out of steam; it began to seem
as though they'd got nowhere else to go.
Thus "All Around
My Hat" sees the band, now recharged with a new manager and producer,
trying to relocate their sense of direction. They tackle the album
positively and single-mindedly, even if this has necessarily entailed
forsaking a certain balance in the songs.
The pace is hot, and
never lets up; Steeleye are faster and brasher than ever before. Give us a
little more bite, said the critics and this is just what has happened.
I'm not altogether
sure whether all this works entirely (and certainly Steeleye's origins in
traditional folk music are becoming ever more murky), but I feel it succeeds
in one important respect.
Apart from "Sum
Waves", an instrumental selection of some venom, they have just laid
down one fine song after another, songs which without exception contain
effective and memorable choruses. Why, virtually all the tracks here are
potential singles and, as I understand it, that always was the best way to
compile an album.
Hence - and this is
my point - the selection of the material, together with the type of
production that Mike Batt (Mike Batt?) has provided means that this album is
more commercial than the rest of Steeleye's work put together. There are
songs here which seem ideally suited for been blasted out of car radios.
Many of the songs are
already familiar from their last round of concerts and their current
television series (which as so far been disappointing, has it not?). For
starters there's "Black Jack Davy", for the love of whom a lady of
noble birth forsakes her family and finery. Maddy Prior takes the lead
vocal, and there's a lusty male voice chorus, oddly reminiscent of the Monty
Python team. It's indicative of what is to follow; Batt has used horns in
several places, and Strings on a Steeleye Span record? When they've already
got Peter Knight?
"Hard Times Of
Old England" (the band have retained their penchant for the traditional
song that is still contemporary) has a mandolin introduction, heavy drumming
and a nice guitar break from Bob Johnson. A west country song, "Cadgwith
Anthem" is done accapella, though Batt effectively throws in a French
horn towards the end.
The side closes with
"The Wife Of Ushers Well", a song which couldn't find space on
"Commoners Crown". That was surprising then, and seems even more
so now as it's one of the most successful tracks. The tune is taken from
"The Gardener", off Tim & Maddy's "Folk Songs Of Old
England - Vol.II". It's where the Batt treatment is at it's most
sympathetic, but the fine vocals are a forcible reminder of where Steeleye's
unique attributes lie.
"All Around My
Hat" is the title track. (And that's something that reflects the wind
of change in the Steeleye camp - the use of one of the tracks as an album
title is a device they've previously avoided). It's well-chosen as the
single because, although not the best track, it contains the quintessence of
the Steeleye/Batt approach. Accapella vocals, Steeleye's trademark, are used
at the beginning and end and in between the band play at a pace that
suggests Batt must be chasing them with a meat cleaver.
The most successful
track is "Dance With Me" now that really is something; lovely
vocals from Ms.Prior, and a wonderful song into the bargain.
The album's very
different to It's predecessors. Meaty, beaty big and bouncy, sure; this is
the first Steeleye album that will give you a headache.
Were they ever meant
to sound like that? I'm not sure. The album's definitely worth purchasing -
"Dance With Me", "The Wife Of Ushers Well", "Gamble
Gold" and "Robin Hood" (where the arrangement is slightly
more delicate that elsewhere) are value enough - and at the moment it just
seems full of jewels.
I'm just worried that
it all seems too immediate, a bit to brash, and that it might not have the
staying power of their other albums. Mike Batt has certainly filled out the
sound in every way, but the production is geared to one overall sound; which
is good for the radio, but not always so good for the domestic hi-fi.
Anyway, the album's
major blunder has got nothing to do with the music.
The sleeve displays
grossly-distorted portraits of the members of the band and employs a device
known as Anomorphic projection. This means that if you hold the sleeve and a
second piece of cardboard in a certain juxtaposition and squint your eye in
a particularly painful way, and if It's the last quarter of the moon and it
hasn't rained for three days, you might just see the band portrayed
normally, as indeed they could have been in the first place.
Cheap 'n' nasty
gimmickry? You bet yer bodhran it is.
| Let's see, it must be about 20 years
ago, at least, when Maddy Prior came whirling down the aisles of the
Perth Concert Hall, spinning off the arms of those on the end seats
who leapt up for a quick jig and spin with British folk's leading
lady - sadly, her only real contemporary Sandy Denny would die from
a brain haemorrhage two years later, after falling down the stairs
in her home.
|
So reel we did, she all flowing dark hair and
flood of skirt. The quintessential folk moment. Just like
Bushwackers dances on the Esplanade on hot summer nights were the
essential Australian folk moment.
The song was Steeleye Span's biggest hit, All Around My Hat,
the title track to their eighth album which backed up after the
wonderfully successful Commoner's Crown that featured actor
Peter Sellers playing ukulele on New York Girls and was
preceded by Now We Are Six produced by Jethro Tull's Ian
Anderson and starring one D. Bowie on sax on To Know Him is To
Love Him.
Hat itself was produced by Wombles singer and renowned studio
persona Mike Batt. Point is Steeleye Span - along with Fairport
Convention, Pentangle and a host of offshoots - were the core of the
British electric folk boom that swept largest chunks of the Western
world for nigh on a decade crossing into the pop charts and
progressing into the rock market while retaining the essence of
their traditional roots and instrumentation.
It was all marvellous. One big folk family. And really it's been
there ever since, although not as high profile, of course.
| 
|
So 20 years or so later, and 27 since their
formation, here we are sitting in the lounge of the Sebel Town House
nattering about the best Steeleye Span disc in ages, Time. A
return to those halcyon days and that electricity. Steeleye plugged
in, gorgeously eclectic and loaded with supernatural songs flashing
wizards and witches, death, love, immortality, poetry and the
tradition in magnificent harmony-laden songs featuring four-part
harmonies.
And a reunited Steeleye Span at that. Gaye Woods, founding member
with Prior, back singing after bringing up her daughter and a
successful career as one-half of The Woods, Bob Johnson who loves a
good big ballad and a solid dose of sorcery and Peter Knight whose
violin reaches epic emotional peaks, particularly on the album's
opus magnus "Elf-Knight", a full-blooded tale where two
worlds collide, reality and fantasy, good and evil, spread over
eight minutes.
Prior, just the wrong side of 50 according to a few hasty
calculations, is wrapped up in a friendly deep blue track suit,
happily united with a beer and chatting like it was just yesterday.
The hair's streaked grey with no attempt to hide it, the instantly
recognisable face, not quite as, as a pair of spectacles alter the
countenance. Lovely lady.
And we're talking about Status Quo - that's right, messrs Francis
Rossi and Rick Parfitt's boogie boys of Paper Plane, Caroline,
Roll Over Lay Down (And Let Me In), Down Down, Whatever You Want and
Rockin' All Over The World fame. Classic stuff. Buy us a pint
then and let's get down.
Steeleye are going out in December as Quo's UK tour support. Pardon!
"They've done a cover of 'Hat'," she gurgles merrily,
"and I sang on the album. They also did a show at the Brixton
Academy and I went along and sang with them. It was great. I really
enjoyed it.
"Francis is great. He's a very direct man. Their most
satisfying quality is honesty in all things, both in their music and
in what they do. They're great to watch in interviews because if
Rossi's bored, he's going to look bored. He won't cover it. I always
thought that was wonderful because I'm really quite polite.
"And they get such terrible, terrible press and I don't know
why really because I like what they do. Everybody says it's that
straight thing. But it ain't easy. You ought to try doing it. When
we did the show, afterwards Rick wandered in and said 'oh, that arm
aches, you know'. There he was wringing it."
This leads on to in-ear monitoring, which does away with the
speakers stagefront. Simply, it's a couple of hearing aid-like
plugs, one in either ear. Only problem is you can't hear anything
else but what you're playing. The audience is a sea of movement
(hopefully) and silence. Prior's solved that by wearing one plug in
and taking a monitor on the other side.
Not our Francis.
"He has both of 'em in," she says, accent thickening,
"and he couldn't hear the audience. So they tried a few things
which didn't really work. So what he does know is take 'em out. So
these what look like hearing aids are dangling from his ears while
he chats to the audience. Only Rossi could do that, you know, with
his hair tied back. I don't know what the audience thinks they are.
They probably think he's hard of hearing..
"Anyway, when he's ready to do the next song he just pops them
back in: what an extraordinary thing to do. Nobody else would be
that un-conscious of themselves or their image. His image is kind of
a joke for him, which I find incredibly refreshing.
"We're both old dinosaurs, really."
Unlike the dinosaurs they haven't been wiped out by changing
climates - in taste, culture and sound. Cool doesn't matter when it
comes to Steeleye Span. They're way beyond cool. Folk, for that
matter, doesn't rely on anything else but the ability to dig the
roots of music and celebrate some weighty concepts. Lyrically, the
Span are as far out as the "X-Files" and Tolkien wrapped
together in an electric mesh.
And they bring weighty bunch of knowledge to play out their
historical dramas - real or unreal. Johnson has a Master's degree in
vocational psychology (of the supernatural), Woods has done a course
in Jung and Maddy is no slouch when it comes to that particular
philosopher.
Prior has a lovely way of looking at it all. A perspective.
"Traditional music comes round in a cycle. I've always seen it
like an ellipse. It never goes right to the centre; it never
completely disappears. It's always there. It's passing quite close,
right now. A bit like Halley's Comet.
"I think there's always an interest in historic quality and the
cultural, past at some level. Sometimes it's intellectual, sometimes
it's emotional. We have a lot of lyrics of ballads because the
literati took up collecting them. They, unfortunately, didn't
collect the tunes but that was because they were interested in the
ballad as a poem form.
"At least we had that. But we're very unpurist. We don't
pretend to be purists or to be carrying on the tradition. If you
understand the tradition as a museum piece that's not what we're
into or interested in.
"We're interested in it as the basis of where we come from.
There was no golden age. There was never a point where it was
entirely down to the man in the field singing the song.
"There has always been interest from outside, from court music,
from musicals. Throughout its history folk music has been influenced
by - as people always are - what they are hear.
"I think we've always tried to take the heritage and add
something new to it, with our own songs and the expression."
How they've done that, the balance between Johnson's modern
arrangements of ballads and the supernatural tales, Prior's
collection of more traditional tunes and Knight's self-penned epics
is a lengthy discourse that ends with the simple statement that
Steeleye Span is "a very democratic band".
"Nobody runs it," Prior chuckles. "It all comes into
the middle. Then everybody fights for their corner, basically."
And Maddy is still surprised their all still in there fighting.
Absolutely.
"You know, back then in 1969 I didn't even think I'd be alive
in 1996. I've never thought in terms of future. I live entirely,
seemingly, in the moment. I live as far ahead as the next tour.
"I don't think in terms of longevity. I'm not sure anybody does
really. I have known a friend actually who said 'well, I think we'll
move once more' which was the nearest to having some scope of
planning what you're going to do with your life.
"A lot of people seem to mooch through from one crisis to the
next really, which is more or less what we've done."
Maddy Prior takes a considered sip of her beer. "Well, I think
one must enjoy it being hectic for the length of one's life or one
wouldn't do it. It'd drive you insane. If you've been going this
long you either have to be totally jaded or you have to enjoy
it."
|
|
