Good Bands That Won't Be Heard

Subject: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: Janie
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 12:59 AM

I'm thinking of all the local, excellent bands of the 70's and 80's in the folk genre(s), who self-produced a cassette or two to sell at local gigs and local festivals. Not big enough or well-known beyond their local areas to attract a label to press an LP. And probably didn't have the time, given they all had day jobs.   There was no internet, and certainly no youtube, myspace, etc.

Tapes wear out. Musicians themselves move on, grow, transition. And no one thought to appoint an archivist. Contact some of the musicians one can locate now who were in those earlier bands, and many of them don't know what became of the masters for those earlier cassette recordings of earlier bands they were in.

From my own local experience and history -Critten Hollow String Band. All of them are still around, but the early music they produced on cassette is not available. Can't order the cassettes and those early productions are also not available digitally or as a CD. Ditto the Bing Brothers, "Just For the Sake of It." Pomegranate Rose, Trapezoid, Back Porch String Band. (some of my own local examples.)

A lost history, imo.

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: Janie
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 01:09 AM

I expect many of the fine musicians here on Mudcat were part of similar fine local bands "way back when," who made and sold no longer available cassettes. I'd be interested in your perspectives on those "lost" recordings.

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 06:20 AM

The Gasworks, from Lancashire I believe. A wonderful duo, innovative, with some great self-penned songs, some serious ("Take to the hills", "Cider with Rosie") and some less so ("Verbalise your pre-orgasmic tension"). They produced one vinyl album for a year or two there in the early 1970s they shone in the Midlands folk clubs.

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: GUEST,erbert
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 07:12 AM

Archives..???

Too many of those long forgotten self financed 'indie/vanity' cassette albums
would have been recorded in local budget price studios
on master tapes that would have then been immediately erased and reused for the next paying studio client...

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: GUEST,Alan whittle
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 08:13 AM

Yes I saw the Gasworks at Birmingham Rep theatre at a folk festival not longer after I came to Brum in '71. I thought they were wonderful.

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 09:27 AM

I was living in Richmond, Va. back then and playin' in bands and doing coffee house and there were so many excellent bands that never got any radio time it's unreal... But bands were real fluid and most would come together, work up some nice material, get an audience and then break up... But that had alot to do with having to make a living which 99.9% bands never do...

B~

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 10:33 AM

That's something I never worked out, Bobert. Every musician I seemed to know seemed to get further than me - career wise. Tours, record deals, album reviews, critical acclaim.... I did hardly any of that stuff, and it was always a disaster if I did.

Still i always made a living. something which seemed to elude the guys getting all the plaudits. Odd business is music....!

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 12:05 PM

Good heavens! Just realised I can remember ALL the chorus to "Cider with Rosie"...

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 03:17 PM

Going back to Janie's original post, I think it might be quite nice to have a blog where people who were in those "good bands that won't be heard" in the folk genre (forgetting for a moment any definitions of "what is folk") could submit those long forgotten cassettes and have 'em put up (along with a bit of background and a few reminiscences for people to listen to. If there's enough interest from musicians who fit(ted) this description, I might even be interested in doing it...

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: Anne Lister
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 04:55 PM

I have at least one Gasworks album ....still love "Verbalise your Pre-Orgasmic Tension".

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: Janie
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 06:54 PM

That would be quite a project, SC, and a worthy one.



I was pleasantly surprised when I got home to find a couple of pm's from a Mudcat friend. She found "Just for the Sake of It" available in a UK music catalog. Also directed me to the Critton Hollow website, which I had not visited in a few months. Joe Herrmann has now made what he calls "bootleg" cd's of several of the early Critton Hollow recording originally put out on cassette. "By and By," is one of them. It was one of my all time favorite cassettes. I not only wore the orginal cassette out, I wore out the copies I made of it.

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Jan 11 - 07:50 PM

Sorry, Alan...

The only guy I knew back then who made it was Bruce Springsteen but everyone kinda thought he might... His bands were always better than everyone elses...

But no one else made it in music... Okay, maybe Robin Thompson, lead singer of a band called "Mercy Flight"...

I mean, there were some dynamite bands in Richmond back then: Feast, Morning Disaster, Pandora's Box, Thorn... And lotta dynamite bands outta DC: Fat, Claude Jones, The Cherry People, Tractor...

Where these folks now???

So I wouldn't worry too much about "not makin' it"... Lotta folks made it when they wanted to make it... Lotta it comes down to choice, too... I mean, I could be performing 3 'er 4 nights a week right now but...

...I don't want to... So I pick and choose... Hey, that's okay, too...

B~

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: GUEST,jeff
Date: 29 Jan 11 - 05:52 PM

In 1982 I saw Tapezoid in Meadville, PA USA at Allegheny College and they had several LPs on sale. I bought one as did a friend of mine. I'm sure at least 'their' stuff is available someplace. Maybe Rounder? They picked up alot of stuff from the late 70s early 80s. Philo, Flying Fish, etc. were all absorbed by Rounder. I'd start there.

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: Janie
Date: 29 Jan 11 - 10:21 PM

Their later stuff is available. I admittedly do not seem to have a knack for research. All I know to do is enter search terms in google.

Just went and searched again for "Three Forks of the Cheat," and in the process discovered the actual title was "Three Forks of Cheat." Can't find it in a format I can play, but apparently there are a few copies available here and there as lps or casettes.

That's good for me, and I appreciate the help in finding some of the oldest recordings of the bands I happened to name.   Still, in every locale there were really good bands who made recordings that are gone for good, except, maybe, in some one's very carefully kept private collection.

Of course, think of all the songs and musicians from the time people began making music. The capacity to record has been around how long? Traditional songs and traditional voices have always depended on the oral tradition, and what we sometimes refer to here as "the folk process." I guess if we heard a group do it, learned from them, and keep doing it with all the big and small individual variations, mistakes and misremberances, and then some one else learns it from us, then some else learns it from them, then....

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: Janie
Date: 30 Jan 11 - 02:32 AM

...And then there are still all those wonderful lost recordings.....See Spleen Cringe's thread and link to his newly created
http://www.lostfolktapes.com/index.html.

This is an endeaver that might take a good bit of time to grow and develop, but over time, could become a wonderful archive.

Hats off to you, Nigel.

Subject: RE: Good Bands That Won't Be Heard
From: GUEST,Martin Stirrup
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 06:57 PM

I was wondering what happened to GasWorks too... John Brown & Mick Draper... Couldn't find anything on the web but I did have the LP in the attic so I ripped it and set up a site for them a month or so ago

'Whatever happened to Gas Works'

http://www.gasworks.webs.com/

I don't think they'd mind... I knew them in clubs around East London in the late 60s and booked them when I ran the Cambridge Folk Club in 71/2.

Martin Stirrup

http://www.martinstirrup.force9.co.uk/