Sunday, June 17, 2007

Cheap Red Wine In My Drunken Brain

The other day I uploaded some albums by the Dransfield brothers and, since I used to know Barry quite well, emailed him to check that it was OK to do so.

His reply included the comment that "our stuff...is all mainly still in the hands of Dave Bulmer and he never pays us anything anyway". I thought nothing much of that but a few days later, on a whim, I googled "Dave Bulmer"... and what a can of worms I discovered.

I'm not going to say much more than that right now, because I don't know the truth, except that there is a heck of a lot of vitally important, and extremely good, folk music that is unlikely to see the light of day in the near future. Hence the uploading of this album. I'm going to post all the Leader and Trailer stuff I can and hope that somehow he's convinced to re-release them and let the artists have their just desserts. Sadly, for Tony Rose it's too late, and Nic Jones could probably have used some royalties... Read more here...

If you don't know this album, do yourself a favour and listen - then go and buy some other Watersons stuff. Norma you probably know about, the family band is almost all unaccompanied traditional folk song (though among the very best of its genre), and the two albums that Lal made with her son Oliver Knight (Once In A Blue Moon and A Bed Of Roses) are absolutely wonderful. Go buy them, ay least!!! Also, the songs on Bright Phoebus have been recorded by an array of folk stars for an album called 'Shining Bright' which I've ordered from Amazon but haven't heard yet.

Lal & Mike Waterson - Bright Phoebus (1972)

Interesting thing - somewhere down the line I seem to have obtained MP3s of Bright Phoebus. I *have* ripped my vinyl, and I thought I'd posted the mp3s somewhere, but these rips are definitely *not* from my vinyl. I know that because there's an irrepairable jump in 'Danny Rose' on the album, and it misses the words "...his original gun...", so it sounds like "...this is h*nn, never been shown...". If anyone has an MP3 of that track that skips there, it's *my* rip from *my* vinyl. The version posted below doesn't do that, so it ain't my rip. Thanks to wherever I got it from!

01 - Rubber Band
02 - The Scarecrow
03 - Fine Horsemen
04 - Winifer Odd
05 - Danny Rose
06 - Child Among The Weeds
07 - The Magical Man
08 - Never the Same
09 - To Make You Stay
10 - Shady Lady
11 - Red Wine And Promises
12 - Bright Phoebus

http://rapidshare.com/files/36658855/phoebus.zip

BTW a similar situation exists with Green Linnet - the label that released many of the best Irish albums on CD (including Andy Irvine Paul Brady) but never paid the artists any royalties...

Green On Red - Gravity Talks (1983)

Another album that has, inexplicably, never been released on CD as far as I'm aware.

01 - Gravity Talks
02 - Old Chief
03 - 5 Easy Pieces
04 - Deliverance
05 - Over My Head
06 - Snake Bit
07 - Blue Parade
08 - That's What You're Here For
09 - Brave Generation
10 - Abigail's Ghost
11 - Cheap Wine
12 - Narcolepsy

http://rapidshare.com/files/36658847/Green_On_Red.zip

14 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Quite the story on Dave Bulmer. You haven't got any of these Nic Jones LPs being held back from CD release, have you? Would love to hear some of that.

Thanks for the Watersons!

3:02 am  
Blogger Witchseason said...

Hi

No, I don't have any of the Nic Jones albums. I'm afraid that, apart from Bandoggs & The New Victory Band, I'm not a huge fan of his work. Fine, innovative guitarist, yes, but never sufficiently fond of his voice to buy his solo albums.

Watch out for more Trailer albums in the future though...

7:53 pm  
Blogger Wagner said...

I'm sorry to have to tell you that Gravity Talks has been released on CD in 2006. It is available from Glitterhouse records in Germany- www.glitterhouse.com.

And it's still a great album

10:44 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gravity Talks was released in 2003 by Wounded Bird in the US, and is available on Amazon and Amazon UK among other e-tailers. Perhaps you might take down your share so as to encourage small, indie reissue labels to continue digging up such otherwise unavailable material?

7:02 am  
Blogger Witchseason said...

Don't know how I missed that - you're right.

File removed from RS server.

5:04 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

FWIW, both Bright Phoebus and
No More Forever have been
illegitimately released on CD
by Bulmer's C.M. Distribution.
Martin Carthy just about spit
in my face when i told him i
had a copy of Bright Phoebus
on CD, but not really *at* me.
he went on to villify Bulmer,
& to tell me that i could and
should freely copy Bright
Phoebus and give it away to
anyone who'd listen to it.

3:19 am  
Blogger treefrogdemon said...

Pleased that MC approves, cos I just downloaded bright Phoebus, and thank you very much!

Can you get the Albion Band's Light Shining, I wonder?

Jocelyn

6:10 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Seeing these kind of posts reminds me of just how technology truly is ever-permeating in this day and age, and I think it is safe to say that we have passed the point of no return in our relationship with technology.


I don't mean this in a bad way, of course! Societal concerns aside... I just hope that as the price of memory drops, the possibility of copying our memories onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It's a fantasy that I dream about all the time.


(Posted on Nintendo DS running [url=http://knol.google.com/k/anonymous/-/9v7ff0hnkzef/1]R4i[/url] DS qqPost)

3:10 pm  
Anonymous cgm said...

Thanks for Bright Phoebus. There's something spooky about this record, which I'd never heard before. Even the cheerier tunes cast weird shadows... and as for the darker songs: what nastiness is "The Scarecrow" about ? Not one for the squeamish, at any rate. Thanks again for this great post.

10:51 pm  
Anonymous John said...

Sir, many thanks for "Bright Phoebus" - it really is as good as people say. I'm now off to try hunting down a vinyl copy! Tragedy that it isn't commercially available and a travesty that (especially) Lal Waterson never got to see any royalties from it. Any chance of you putting up the BBC R4 "Lost Albums" show again? It's not on the R4 website any more and I'd really love to hear it. Can't seem to find it anywhere else... Or maybe you could e-mail it to me? I'd be very grateful.
Cheers,
John
robinson (dot) in (dot) space (at) hotmail (dot) com

2:55 pm  
Blogger mike said...

Thanks for making this available. We have just got back from an amazing Carthy/Swarbrick gig, where my partner also asked Martin about the availability of Bright Phoebus. Martin's reply was almost identical to the anonymous commenter above; he said that the rights to the CD reissue had been obtained by a "bastard", who was effectively robbing him of royalties, and that people should get hold of free copies instead. So glad to have found this zip, and even gladder to be enjoying it guilt free!

11:16 pm  
Blogger Grilly said...

hello. Any chance you could repost the Bright Phoebus link, as the file seems to have been - well, to put it one way - 'de-filed'.
appreciative thanks,
grilly.

8:03 pm  
Blogger Witchseason said...

No, sorry. The blog is closed and I don't upload or share any more. It was too much hassle and I got too much grief. Why not pressurise Dave Bulmer's estate to get it released properly?

9:36 am  
Blogger Grilly said...

Shame, but I understand. Hopefully the existence of the bright Phoebus tour will be pressure enough.

Thanks

3:06 pm  

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