Roy Harper

Roy Harper is known by many only because he is friend with some famous rockstars: the Pink Floyd invited him to sing in their album Wish You Were Here and the Led Zeppelin dedicated to him a song on their third LP...but unfortunately there are few who know his visionary talent, the sweet bitterness of his voice and his songs.

In the sixties he was already present at the earlier free festivals, improvising with open chords on his acoustic guitar and declaiming poetries. In the year of Orwell this great outsider of the British folk and rock scene is still able to enchant, alone with his instrument, a crowd of people that gathered in such a magical place like Stonhenge, to celebrate the summer solstice.

One Man Rock And Roll Band is taken from the album Stormcock, from 1971, while Commune can be heard on the 1974 record Valentine.

Soon we'll see a couple of clips by the Hawkwind performing at the same festival.

Roy Harper - One Man Rock And Roll Band (1984)
Roy Harper - Commune (1984)

Password: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/

Cheers

Mirco

Stamping Ground

In America the golden season for music festivals ended up in late '69 with the Altamont's accidents, a few months after Woodstock. In the early seventies in Europe there was still space for some "good vibrations", as proved by the Kralingen Pop festival, near Rotterdam, on June 1970. The event, documented by the movie Stamping Ground, is often remembered as the European Woodstock, because of the presence of many artists that had already played on that historical three-days concert, like Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, Country Joe. But the Kralingen festival also showed how vital was the British scene on that period, offering great perfomances by bands like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, East Of Eden, Caravan, Fairport Convention, Family, T. Rex...

On this clip The Family play a tremendous version of one of their best tunes, the opening track of the album A Song For Me. The great vocalist Roger Chapman, in particular, offered a memorable, impressive and powerful perfomance.

Tyrannosaurus Rex were at a turning-point in their career. They had just shortened their name, that freaky guy on percussions, Steve Took, had just been replaced by Mickey Finn, leaving Marc Bolan as the only chief of the band. Marc embraced the electric guitar, his success as glam-popstar was just around the corner, but this song still has the naive freshness of his earlier compositions.

Family - Drowned In Wine (1970)

T. Rex - By The Light Of A Magical Moon (1970)

Password: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/

Bye

Mirco

Gong 2000

The Gong family, including old members like Gilli Smyth, Didier Malherbe and of course Daevid Alien/Allen, celebrated their first gig of the new millennium on April 2000, in a London club called the Subterania. This is how the event is described in the sleeve notes of the DVD from which I've ripped these videos off:
It was the beginning of a new cycle for Gong. A new album, a new label, a new drummer, a new sinthesizer wiz, and a new agency with the potential for a fresh management vision. This was our first gig of the 2000 naughty naughties & aside from three thoroughly distracted rehearsals we hadn't played together for five months. To add to the pressure the gig was going out as webcast and eventually would become a DVD & live CD.
Somehow when the day came we forgot all this & it all morphed into a huge fluorescent fancy dress party with a bunch of our old tribal pals & friends old & new in a club in Portobello Rd. - for years the epicentre of our London lifetimes.
They were promoting the new CD Zero 2 Infinity, but these are brilliant versions of two great classics from their old repertoire.
Take a look at Gilli on You Can't Kill Me, it seems to me that she was under the effect of something. What do you think?

Gong - You Can't Kill Me (2000)
Gong - Radio Gnome Invisible (2000)

Password: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/

See you

Mirco

John Martyn

One the most sensitive and talented British songwriters. The story tells that it was Bert Jansch who teached John Martyn the fingerpicking guitar technique, but folk and blues were just the starting point to create his personal musical and poetical world. He developed a peculiar style in playing the instrument, very percussive, and he often roughs the sounds with the use of an electronic effect called echoplex. His particular use of the voice reminds a little of Tim Buckley, and Tim, along with Nick Drake, is an artist to which he's often been compared.
These videos show two songs from a 1978 concert in London, broadcasted by the BBC for the Old Grey Whistle Test program. On that year John had just returned on the scene after a few years of break in the mid-seventies, just when he reached his creative peak with albums like Solid Air and Inside Out. The audience gave him a warm welcome; despite the melancholy atmosphere of his songs, he is a funny and entertaining guy on stage.
On most recent years John Martyn dealed a lot with electronic sounds and dance rhythms, but talent and poetry survived just the same.
The size of these files is huge, but they have a fantastic video and audio quality. Enjoy!

John Martyn - May You Never (1978)
John Martyn - Couldn't Love You More (1978)

Password: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/

See you soon

Mirco

Com'era Verde La Mia Valle

Un post diverso dal solito, ma quando ci vuole ci vuole...

C'è una valle in provincia di Sondrio, la Val di Mello, che è una specie di paradiso terrestre. Ora una certa GeoGreen S.p.A. ha intenzione di captare tutti i torrenti della valle per costruire due centrali idroelettriche. Se il progetto andrà in porto avrà un impatto terribile sull'ambiente, il paesaggio ed il turismo (quindi anche sull'economia locale). Forse firmare una petizione online non servirà a fermarli, ma vale la pena tentare.

http://www.valdimello.it/v2/User/asp/Vdm.asp?a=52

Grazie

Two Sides Of The Pentangle

The Pentagle were born with the meeting of two extaordinary British guitarists: John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. Both these virtuoso musicians have been able to match in a very original way different styles like folk, blues and jazz, giving an important contibution to the rebirth of British folk music in the sixties.

Thanks to Stefan Grossman's Vestapol Videos series we can see them performing as soloists too.
A very young Renbourn appears on an historical London club called Les Cousins, playing his version of the traditional I Know My Rider, that also appears, with the title I Know My Babe, on his 1966 album Another Monday. Bert Jansch plays and sings, live in a studio, Blackwaterside, another traditional, included on the Jack Orion LP, from 1966 too. This song has almost been stolen by Jimmy Page to compose Black Mountain Side, that instrumental track on the first Led Zeppelin's album. I don't know when and where Bert performed this, but he certainly looks older than he was in the Pentangle's years. Any additional informations are always welcome.

John Renbourn - I Know My Rider (1965)
Bert Jansch - Blackwaterside

Password: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/

Cheers

Mirco

The Pentangle

This blog exists since more than seven months and some of the earlier videos have already gone. On big request I've re-uploaded the very first clip I had posted here, a great live perfomance by The Pentangle in 1968. Still I haven't discovered from which TV program this comes from, but probably someone had the great idea to rip the video from this DVD.

Thanks to Stefan Grossman's Vestapol Videos, lovers of Pentangle and of folk music will soon find more interesting clips here.

Pentangle - Travelling Song/Let No Man Steal Your Thyme (1968)

Password: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/

Bye

Mirco