vashti bunyan

...back in the early sixties when vashti was an artschool beatnik grooving around london folky clubs she hooked up with andy loog oldham, immediately scored a tune from the glimmer twins and looked all set to be the latest swinging london pop sensation but a few things got in the way not least a girl by the name marianne who also had stones connections and an eager eye on the pop charts...this very nice addition to groovy loog and london (pre 'swinging' london is an incredibly hep place where the curious beatnik meets socialite, scoring some bread to loaf about on if they're lucky, artschool folkys meet with psychotherapists, scoring the newly emerging drug of the moment, L.S.D and visiting worlds that exist for a nano second or 'forever', leftover electrical mad scientists meet weirdbeard jazzbos fed up with knocking out trad that by '62/3 had no currency past aldermaston old timers, the jazz/folk shop collettes are recording visiting yankee folkys like richard farina and bob zimmerman who in turn is meeting some soho beatnix who were mixing 'jazz' ideas into the daily vibe, a cross pollination in dank basements drinking bitter ale where the world of R&B met phil spector big-beat whilst sipping whiskey and coke at mayfair clubs and tripped on grade A sandoz...east end london mods, the first class tickets of super modernism met chelsea rich bohos who were looking for street level kicks...cats in the know were digging john coltrane and ravi shankar and rev.gary davis aswell as having a blast at the crawdaddy digging the stones while blocked on whizz)...the first disk gets off and running with the aforementioned stones tune, that being the title track of an orchestral pop groove style followed on by a couple more singles and acetates all seemingly taken from the original discs which is kind of nice, like discovering some cache of otherworld marvels (not just listening to old studio tapes given a tweak and polish)...second disc is vashti and guitar and tape recorder laying down some tuneage for maybe private consumption or groundwork for future popstarism...dig that front cover with vashti being extra hep as lounge style mod hanging in the dead end real world where danger lurks, definitely a loog oldham idea of being street level urgent and sharp, living the life that was then seemingly being invented daily...much better than the usual folknik strum and warble, this has velvet collar dandyism written into the fabric...of course this wouldn't have been allowed daylight if she'd not been picked up by the vacuous credit card living generation who worship the past in its many glories and try desperately to connect to the real deal and this time they were spot on (interesting aside that marianne has managed to grab some retro worship with her weird take on decadent cabaret)...

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this!

    By the way, here's my blog:

    http://alchemicalmusic.blogspot.com/

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