STRAWBS

More than a collection of antiques and curios.

I'm not sure where Strawbs leader Dave Cousins dug up this great sounding live artifact that was recorded at the same time as the Just Collection Of Antiques And Curios live album from 1970. This single CD is twice its length for starters and really shows off new boy Rick Wakeman much better than the Antiques And Curios album. Standout tracks include "The Man Who Called Himself Jesus", "The Battle", another excellent take on "The Antique Suite", and a stunning 9 minute version of "Where Is This Dream Of Your Youth". The last song featuring a 5 minute organ tour de force by Wakeman.

The band at this time was Cousins on acoustic guitar, electric guitar and lead vocals, Tony Hooper on acoustic guitar and co-lead vocals, Richard Hudson on percussion and sitar, John Ford on bass and vocals, and Wakeman on organ, grand piano, harpsichord and celeste.

Wakeman is, of course, stellar on organ and piano. Something that faded into the background with his future synth and mellotron workouts with Yes, whom he joined shorty after recording with the Strawbs on the From The Witchwood album, which followed the aforementioned Antiques And Curios album. 4 stars.

Review Nº 859

"The Collection" is a compilation album of Strawbs that was released in 2002. It has a selection of some of the best tracks of Strawbs that were taken from several albums all over their great and extensive career. It covers the career of Strawbs since the beginning of it in 1969 with their eponymous debut studio album till 1976, the time of Strawbs' tenth studio album "Deep Cuts". It has also two non-albums' tracks that were originally only released in the format of singles.

"The Collection" has eighteen tracks. From "Strawbs" we have two tracks "The Man Who Called Himself Jesus" and "Oh How She Changed". "The Man Who Called Himself Jesus" is an interesting song with strange lyrics about the return of Jesus Christ to the World. It's a good controversial song that due to the lyrical content was quickly banned from the airplay by the BBC. "Oh How She Changed" is a simple and short beautiful song where all the elements, the vocal and the musical performances, are perfectly mixed. From "Dragonfly" we have only one track "I Turned My Face Into The Wind". It's a piano and cello driven song. It was written after a walk in Yorkshire that brings some darker pastoral feeling imagery of the English traditional countryside. From "Just A Collection Of Antiques And Curious" we have two tracks "Song Of A Sad Little Girl" and "Martin Luther King's Dream". "Song Of A Sad Little Girl" is a nice song that shows some intricate acoustic guitar performed and a perfect interplay between Wakeman and Cousins, which stands as one of the best examples of Wakeman's integration with Strawbs. "Martin Luther King's Dream" is a short track, a kind of a folk troubadour song that benefits from the newly acquired rhythm section and backing vocals from Ford and Hudson and the brief performance by Wakeman on organ. From "From The Witchwood" we have two tracks "I'll Carry On Beside You" and "Witchwood". "I'll Carry On Beside You" is a song with a great folk tune where we can feel the vocal power and the instrumentation. It sounds more like a typical classic country folk song that we can listen to on the radio. "Witchwood" is a calm beautiful song in the style of the Medieval and Celtic music. It has a wonderful pastoral melody that can catch the attention of everybody. It's one of the highlights on that album. From "Grave New World" we have two tracks "Benedictus" and "Heavy Disguise". "Benedictus" is a very well constructed song with a delightful organ break in the middle. This is a great opener and one of the best songs on that album. "Heavy Disguise" is a short song with a great tune and good lyrics. This is a song well performed, with a brass section played by the Robert Kirby Silver Band that gives to it a special feeling. From "Bursting At The Seams" we have two tracks "Part Of The Union" and "Lay Down". "Part Of The Union" is a well made and funny song. Lyrically, the song is very satirical about the power of the trade unions in the U.K. It's a controversial song misunderstood and poorly received by many union activists. "Lay Down" is a good strong pure rock song, very enjoyable, well sung, with lots of Mellotron and a good guitar solo too. This is a song made in a more commercial vein to be a big hit. From "Hero And Heroine" we have only one track "Shine On Silver Sun". It's a typical and classic song from the band with excellent vocal harmonies, a good Mellotron work and a very catchy piano strong harmony. From "Ghosts" we have two tracks "Grace Darling" and "Lemon Pie". "Grace Darling" is a beautiful piece with a fantastic keyboard performed and a beautiful and majestic choral accompaniment provided by a school choir. It's one of the most beautiful celestial ballads I've ever heard. "Lemon Pie" is a catchy song in Strawbs most folk traditional roots. The song was written about Cousins' then girlfriend and future wife. From "Nomadness" we have only one track "Tokyo Rosie". It was made to be listened on the radio stations and be a big hit. Despite is a vulgar commercial song, is pleasant enough to hear due to its funny and catchy rhythm. From "Deep Cuts" we have only one track "I Only Want My Love To Grow In You". It's a nice song written to be a hit single, a good effort with a simple but largely enjoyable melody and a great vocal performance too.

"The Collection" has also two non albums' tracks "Let's Keep The Devil Outside" and "Will Ye Go". Both were initially released as singles and later were also released as two bonus tracks on the remastered editions of "From The Witchwood" and "Bursting At The Seams", respectively. These are two really nice additions to this compilation album.

Conclusion: "The Collection" is a good and interesting compilation album of Strawbs, really. It covers the career of the band since the beginning of it, from 1969 to 1976. It has tracks from all the first studio albums of the band, if we forget the album "All Our Own Work", which isn't properly a Strawbs' album but a collaboration album with Sandy Denny. So, some of their best tracks are present here because they were written in their golden era, an era that belongs to this period of time. Of course I'm talking about "Just A Collection Of Antiques And Curious", "From The Witchwood", "Grave New World", "Bursting At The Seams", "Hero And Heroine" and "Ghosts". But, besides the tracks of these albums, we have also some great tracks from albums less good and two tracks previously only released as singles.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

Like their previous album, "Hero & Heroine", "Ghosts" is the second and last with the lineup of Cousins, Lambert, Cronk, Coombs and Hawken, the latter of which left after this album after Cousins wanted to do yet another shift in their style which proved to be a big mistake as their popularity began a slow sink. Hawken had gone from being a piano only player to having to embrace synths and the mellotron and ended up loving the sound.

These 2 albums mark the pinnacle of their harder rock prog era. While the other 4 would carry on for a few more albums, they never captured the same sound. By the time "Bursting At The Seams" came out in 1973, some of their UK audience began to slip and they started having better success in North America. "Hero & Heroine" did great in the US and it went platinum in Canada so it made sense to hit gold again and they did so with this album. I like "Hero & Heroine" for many reasons but it is like they tightened up their grip and the band sounds like they were in sync.

I like the electric guitar sound that is unique to Strawbs and Dave Lambert really starts showing his stuff on the title track "Ghosts" where he shared lead vocals with Cousins and what I believe is his best guitar solo. This is a great prog songs with a few shifts. That was a great start and the next track "Lemon Pie" is a better pop track and more appropriate for this albums than many of the pop songs on "Hero & Heroine". "Starshine / Angel Wine" I have no real opinion on and "Where Do You Go" is a good song. Side 2 starts out with what I consider the best Strawbs song ever, "The Life Auction." The hard hitting instrumental "chorus" if you will is a great riff and it is a rocker as well as prog heavy.

Lambert's "Don't Try To Change Me" is another great song that is good like "It's Just Love" off "Hero & Heroine." The final tracks are the softer ones one would expect from Strawbs' folkish side. I wish they would have ended with another solid harder song. Incidentally this lineup would come back in 2004 and release "Déjà Fou" which is pretty decent. These people definitely were the hardest rocking version of Strawbs and this album "Ghosts" is solid!

In 1979 I first heard this album not knowing a thing about the band. I do not believe they are like Genesis, Yes or Crimson; Strawbs is a band that Dave Cousins remained the only constant member of. Other than a few members attempting to turn the band into a pop group (see below), they have landed between folk, rock and prog since their years adapting to electric instruments. They are unique. The group picture on the back of this album made me think these guys came from Fairyland! Being a big Genesis, Yes, Rush, etc. fan (prog rock), I was impressed on the first listen. Is this an in-your-face blowout of prog genius? Not really but it is a good album. For the Strawbs it is my favorite along with Ghosts; both have great tracks and ones a little too folksy to me. .

After having done a great deal of reading up on the band and listening to other albums, this one and "Ghosts" are the best and the ones that most closely resemble prog rock in my opinion. I am not into folk music so their past stuff and things they have done recently are not to my liking much. The album before this one was "Bursting At The Seams" and having heard "Part Of The Union" I wondered how on earth this could be the same band! Rick Wakeman had since come and gone joining Yes. Richard Hudson and John Ford formed a writing team and in a 2006 interview with many of the past members, Ford, Cousins and Lambert all agreed that it was a matter of serious musical differences which caused the split.

Hudson / Ford wanted pop songs and hit singles and Cousins being the only original member and leader did not want to sell out. Dave Lambert who joined the group on that album ended up siding with Cousins and Lambert was brought in to take Strawbs from, their folk roots to a more hard rock style. It is funny to note Lambert was a long haired hippie who was known for resembling one of his favorite guitarists, Pete Townshend though Lambert is a far more gentle soul. He was the peacemaker trying to keep the band together. Hudson / Ford wanted to kick out Cousins and steal the name but that went over like sick in a space suit and they were out along with Blue Weaver (keys).

So in came Rod Coombs (Stealers Wheel) on drums, Chas Cronk on bass and John Hawkin on keys. Hawken had only been a piano player and had tried to walk out of the business but the Daves knew what they wanted. He did reluctantly embrace synths and the mellotron and by the time he left after "Ghosts" he had a love for the machine. This band immediately clicked musically and in personality. All members contributed to the music and the results was this album. It is not perfect but it is for sure a great album with the songs that take it beyond the pop realm.

Autum is a great beginning starting out instrumentally well and I love the mellotron. Coombs wrote "Sad Young Man" which is okay. I did like "It's Just Love" strangely enough. It is a Lambert penned song (lead vocals too) and I do like the upbeat rhythm and the middle is a wonderful surprise as it suddenly takes it into a dramatic, soft shift just to come back into the beat. I like his voice better than Cousins but Strawbs would not be Strawbs without Cousins' voice. The song that was supposed to be the hit single was "Shine On Silver Sun" and it perhaps my least favorite. It has a bit of a twangy country guitar and really is the most awkward song in the mix.

Side 2 starts out strong with one of the best songs they have ever penned, "Hero & Heroine". I love the prog sound in this one and the songs on both sides of it again just do not fit and that is what makes the album not as good as it could have been. "Midnight Sun" is just not at all a song that should have been on the same album as "Hero.." "Out In The Cold" also leaves me cold.

From there the rest of the album ends well with "Round & Round followed by "Lay A Little Light On Me" which starts out slow but drops into a prelude into the last track "Hero's Theme" which is an instrumental. So "Autum", "Hero & Heroine", "Lay A Little Light On Me" & "Hero's Theme" are the prog entries and "It's just Love" is the pop song that is best.

Strawbs has to have their folksy stuff on each album but it is great to see this band really pout out some solid music in the prog. I think that the songs on "Ghosts are more consistent but this album is definitely one of their best. This lineups 2 albums are on my opinion are the best.

The proper debut album by the Strawbs (setting aside the recordings they made with Sandy Denny which were shelved and then rereleased in 1973 as All Our Own Work), the proggier side of their prog-folk blend hadn't really developed at this point, but this remains a set of endearing late 1960s-style folk rock with just enough experimental notes to hint at the more adventurous work which was to come on subsequent albums. Dave Cousins has his vocal style locked down right from the start, and the particular atmosphere of albums like From the Witchwood can already be detected here in a rough draft. Strong, but better was to come.

Recently I stumbled upon an album that I didn't play for a long time when I was in the mood for Mellotron friendly prog, it's entitled The Strawbs - BBC In Concert. This legendary band (featuring Chas Cronk who later joined Steve Hackett solo) gained a lot of attention with their humorous hit-single Part Of The Union, it peaked at #2 in the UK charts, in 1973. But The Strawbs are hard to pigeonhole, their sound is unique. Singer Dave Cousins plays an important role, colouring the music in a very special way with his distinctive voice, from tender to powerful, with a lot of expression.

This BBC radio broadcast contains recordings from '73 and '74. The music frequently shifts between folky (acoustic guitars), classical (piano and harpsichord) and sumptuous symphonic rock outbursts (fiery electric guitar and majestic Mellotron evoking BJH and The Moody Blues). The 15 tracks on this CD include their best work, my favorites are Tears And Pavan, Down By The Sea (what a compelling Mellotron sound), Part Of The Union and Hero And Heroine.

If you are up to discover The Strawbs this is an excellent musical encounter.

The Strawbs at their absolute best. In this album, they begin to take a more serious step into progressive rock without abandoning their folksy spirit, introducing harder, more complex melodies mainly thanks to Rick Wakeman, whose keyboard work is immaculate (see Papist, Sheep and Shepherd's Song).

The album kicks off with a cool classic sing-along followed by the impressive title track, which evokes a strong feeling of connection with nature. Thirty days has a passable melody accompanied by a sitar, which will be present along the whole album. Flight feels like a long lost song from Pink Floyd's early post-Barrett times (in a *very* good way). Up to here, Wakeman has been sort of quiet, so I imagine anyone who may have bought this LP in search of his early works might be in the brink of desperation. But it's OK, since in the following tracks his raw talent will be "fully" released (or, at least, up to 60%). It's in this tracks where we get the best of the album. The bass is also not to be overlooked, making a superb duo with the keys in Sheep and Shepherd. After this last one we get to the acoustic In Amongst the Roses, an absolute beauty of a song, followed by the country-ish Carry on Beside you, which isn't unwelcome. The new release ends with yet another song, Keep the Devil Outside, a classic "Strawbsy" (if I may) sing-along of those which they composed with such ease. An overexploitation of these kind of songs without Wakeman along with ever more boring lyrics is the reason why I believe this is the peak of the band (not that Hero and Heroine and specially Grave New World don't have some jewels in them, though).

The only thing I miss in this record is some further development in some of the most "proggy" tracks, since some of the melodies are really good and could be experimented with a lot more. It feels like Wakeman doesn't really have the freedom to really explode and the whole thing is screaming for a 12 minute long epic which could easily fit in the whole thing. Maybe I'm just too much of a proghead. But overall an absolute masterpiece.

"Just a Collection of Antiques and Curios" is a live album release by UK folk rock/progressive rock act The Strawbs. The album was released in October 1970 through A&M Records. It´s the successor to "Dragonfly" from February 1970. Since the band´s eponymously titled debut album was released in May 1969, "Just a Collection of Antiques and Curios" is The Strawbs third album released in just 17 months. Quite a few lineup changes has taken place since the preceding album as cellist Claire Deniz and bassist Ron Chesterman have left. New in the lineup are John Ford (bass), Richard Hudson (vocals, drums, percussion, citar), and Rick Wakeman (piano, organ, harpsichord, celeste). The latter already guested on "Dragonfly", but has now become a full-time member of The Strawbs. The usual suspects are Dave Cousins (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, dulcimer) and Tony Hooper (vocals, acoustic guitar, tambourine).

The material featured on "Just a Collection of Antiques and Curios" was recorded live on the 11th of July 1970 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. The original version of the album features 6 tracks and a total playing time of 40:44 minutes, while the 1998 remaster adds 3 bonus tracks to the tracklist. One of them is "Forever", which is a studio track from a 1970 single, while the other two were recorded live at the same concert as the original material.

Most of the material is pretty standard early 70s folk rock, but the addition of Wakeman brings some much needed variation and classical music influenced finesse to the recording. especially on his own penned "Temperament of Mind", which shows his diverse musical influences. It would have been interesting to hear more of his playing incorporated on the more regular folk rock tracks (he plays the intro to "Song Of A Sad Little Girl" and some nice organ on "Where is This Dream of Your Youth", but you won´t hear him that often other than that). "Just a Collection of Antiques and Curios" features a well sounding organic production (courtesy of Tony Visconti), but ultimately it´s not the most interesting Strawbs release. It´s a bit on the uneventful and dull side. A 2.5 star (50%) rating is warranted.

While rummaging through my album collection looking for a misplaced record, I stumbled upon this antique and curio from the Strawbs. It's a collection of outtakes and demos from the band's formative years up to the recording of the group's first album with A&M records in 1969. A number of songs are demos from the Sandy And Strawbs album from 1967. "Sail Away to the Sea", "On My Way" and "All I Need Is You", all recorded prior to Miss Denny joining the group, are fully formed and very quaint sounding even without Sandy's incredible voice. They don't hold a candle to the all All Our Own Work album recordings made with Sandy, but show just how good a songwriter and arranger Dave Cousins was at that early stage. These songs are fleshed out by founding Strawbs' members Tony Hooper on acoustic guitar and Ron Chesterman on stand up bass.

Demos for "The Man Who Called Himself Jesus" and "Martin Luther King's Dream" actually sound fresher and more dynamic to me than their later studio and live versions found on the "first" Strawbs' album from 1969 (Sandy And The Strawbs was not released in any form until 1973), and the live Antiques And Curios album from 1971, respectively.

There are few bluegrass style banjo and guitar instrumentals that are not my cup of tea, but do show what a virtuoso banjo player Cousins was. It also shows what a good guitarist Hooper was to keep up with Dave's manic picking. Demos for more epic songs like "The Battle" and "Where Is the Dream of Your Youth?" pale in comparison to their heavily produced studio counterparts, but still demonstrate just how completely put together these songs were before all the bombast was added in their studio incarnations.

What is most impressive about this compilation is the great sound quality of these old recordings. Mr. Cousins always seems to produce quality sounding archival material that really sounds if it was recorded yesterday. Preserves Uncanned is strictly for diehard fans but lucky are those fans that can enjoy these wonderful sounding old recordings. 3 stars.

With the release of Dave Cousins' new Strawbs outing The Magic Of It All, with its replacement musicians, I decided to backtrack on other Strawbs albums with musical chairs and found this album in my collection originally released in 1991. Ringing Down The Years finds Dave moonlighting from his job as a radio station program director and follows the similar sounding Don't Say Goodbye released a few years earlier. That album may be superior as it has less covers of past Strawbs songs but this album has a couple of bonified gems. The moving title track, an ode to the late Sandy Denny, and the very baroque "The King", with Kathy Lesurf of the Albion Band adding support vocals, genuinely stand out.

Two older once departed bandmates Richard Hudson on drums and Tony Hooper on acoustic guitar and backing vocals are onboard for this outing, with the superlative Brian Willoughby on lead guitar (replacing the great Dave Lambert who was reported to have been a ski instructor in Switzerland after his retirement from the music business). On bass and keyboards are new members Rod Derick and Chris Parren. All of the above are hold overs from the previous Don't Say Goodbye album.

If I have one big compliant against this album is its late 80s sounding production with loud cracking snare drums and muted bass, along with some new wave sounding synths, generally dragging the songs down. The two remakes, "Tell Me What You See In Me" and "Grace Darling" are especially affected by this as the new arrangements might have worked better in a more 70s production style. We'll never know. One song that does work well with the new wave accoutrements is the lead off track "Might As Well Be On Mars', which is a cover of a song of an obscure (to me) Canadian new wave group called the Pukka Orchestra. No wonder. "Afraid To Let You Go" is the better of two songs written by Parren/Hudson/Willoughby. The other being "Taking A Chance". The former sung by Parren and sounding similar to Dave Lambert, the second sung by Hudson. This does add a bit of continuity to the group's sound, whatever that's worth. As others might overlook the album's production I think that 3 stars is sufficient. Just don't look for any prog here.