PRESERVED UNCANNED

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.