LONDON CONVERSATION

Somehow during my period of burgeoning interest in British Isles folk rock that began in earnest when I heard a concert recording of STEELEYE SPAN on radio in 1976 (and for reasons I won't go into thought it was RENAISSANCE!), I never picked up a JOHN MARTYN album and indeed was no more than vaguely aware of him. He appears to have gained almost immediate acclaim for his association with the likes of JOE BOYD and by extension FAIRPORT CONVENTION, but gained a more than cult following through some of his early 1980s releases, at a time when I was in despair at the exaggerated at the death of prog. If I heard him during these years, it made no impression.

As far as this debut goes, I will sum it up with an overly simplistic "you had to be there" trope. It's "nice", even pretty, sweetly personal in that slice of life manner, and an early pioneering effort for the singer/songwriter/acoustic guitar era, soon to be adopted by the more accomplished more engaging works of the likes of DONOVAN, CAT STEVENS. AL STEWART, NICK DRAKE, GORDON LIGHTFOOT (whose contemporaneous works were already in another class), and others far more obscure like NIGEL MAZLYN JONES and BOB THEIL. The influence of DYLAN is felt and he even covers the iconic "Don't Think Twice it's Alright" for further confirmation. To be fair, at least at this stage he sings better than most of these though their material and their voices might be more in sync than those of Martyn. Most importantly, they had a real identity.

Nonetheless, a few gems are scattered in here, like the opener "Fairy Tale Lullaby", "Ballad of an Elder Woman", and "Golden Girl", to which the aforementioned CAT must have listened on repeat while recovering from TB and without which his brilliant "Mona Bone Jakon" might never have existed. The rest is history, but I round up because, though I wasn't there, I probably should have been. Respect.