Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
Martin Carthy
Martin Carthy
(Fontana, 1965)
Debut solo album by Mr Norma Waterson, MBE. How can someone so respected be so underrated?
Martin Carthy’s reputation as the facilitator/cheerleader of the English folk revival sometimes outweighs that of his records. Paul Simon and Bob Dylan both saw him in the early ’60s and went away changed (Bob Dylan’s Dream, from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is a straight steal from Carthy’s arrangement of Lord Franklin), but there’s more to him than some kind of Britfolk Zelig/Baptist. His debut album’s most transfiguring performance – an exquisite Scarborough Fair – encapsulates his ability to harmonise tradition with innovation (his guitar part alone could reduce Roy Keane to tears), a kind of instinctive taste that’s served him well through later stints in Steeleye Span and more outré fusions like Brass Monkey. The big-booted voice can alarm those who prefer their folk ethereal, but it’s the very earthiness of it that anchors MacColl/Seeger’s Springhill Mine Disaster and fills it with such tangible sorrow and terror. Carthy once told me exactly how and why he loved Dylan’s Blind Willie McTell (“It’s about corruptibility”), showing all the forensic qualities that have made him such an outstanding scholar and interpreter of songs. But in the end it’s his empathy – miraculously bestowed upon dying miners and magician’s apprentice alike – that keeps you coming back to Martin Carthy.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 04/05/2008
Further Listening
Martin Carthy – Shearwater (Pegasus, 1972)
The Watersons – For Pence And Spicy Ale (Topic, 1975)
Billy Bragg – Brewing Up With Billy Bragg (Go! Discs, 1984)
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