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FAIRPORT CONVENTION
Featuring Sandy Denny
West Hollywood 1974 [ JF Archive Series Vol. 16, 1CD]
Live at The Troubadour, West Hollywood, CA; January 29, 1974 (9pm set). Fairly good mono audience recording.
Thanks to taper JF; JEMS; BK; and kneesfudd for sharing the show at Dime.
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Uploader’s notes:
- Quite fine mono AUD with some distortion.
- Warts: Repaired dullspots and dropouts but surely missed a few. #01 fade in at start not missing any music. Distortion increases around 20 mins (possibly due to the band playing louder, tho’ since the recorder had ALC, it doesn’t really make sense).
- Fairport played the Troubadour from Tuesday January 29 thru Sunday February 3, 1974.
- On 1974-01-29 Fairport played two shows and Eric Kaz was the opening act.
Notes on officially released material from Fairport’s January 29 to February 3, 1974 Los Angeles Troubadour run. The RELEASED material all seems to be from February, probably all from the February 1 early and late shows. “The Airing Cupboard Tapes ‘71-’74″ features “It’ll Take A Long Time” & “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” (labeled February 1974). The Sandy Denny anthology “A Boxful Of Treasures” features “John The Gun” & “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” (from 1974-02-01).
The “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” box has “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, “Solo” & “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” (noted as February 1974, with a different version of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” than on “A Boxful Of Treasures”). The sometimes considered semi-legit (after all, Fairport sold them at Cropredy one year!) “From Past Archives” boot CD has “She Moves Through the Fair” & “Like an Old Fashioned Waltz” (noted as February 1974).
Island’s 2005 “Like an Old Fashioned Waltz” reissue CD contains “Like an Old Fashioned Waltz” (February 1974 & same as the “From Past Archives version). Disc 17 of the The “Sandy Denny” 19 CD box is “Live at the LA Troubadour 1974″ (marked “live tracks sequenced as a concert performance”, all of which seem to be from the February 1 shows & not the same as this January 29th set). CD2 in the “Rising For The Moon” deluxe version is “Live at the LA Troubadour, 1974″, all of which seems to be replicated in “The Seventh Disc” of the worth-drooling-over new 2017 collection “Come All Ye”, excepting 1 track.
“Come All Ye” labels the material “February 1, 1974″ & has an “alternate version” of “Down Where The Drunkards Roll” which is presumably from the other set that same night. Lastly, in case you aren’t confused yet, the “Live at the L.A. Troubadour” Fairport album was 1970, not 1974. Hopefully I’ve not missed anything. I compared the aforementioned versions to this January show & there isn’t any overlap.
JF Archive Series Vol. 16 via JEMS aka DimeTravel 374 - Thanks to the original taper, JK, the fine traders & tape historians at JEMS! Also, thanks to BK at JEMS for the extensive notes & to DIMER gv0000 for additional concert info. Corrections welcome.
Great to hear another set from the Troubadour. I enjoy these early days of Sandy back in the band. Introduced with “We’ve got someone special with us”, she joins the band for tracks #06-09. Sandy returned to Fairport as a guest on December 15, 1973 at the Rainbow Theatre & the following night at Croydon’s Fairfield Hall.
She officially re-joined the group, rather on the spur of the moment, for their January 1974 tour in Japan, New Zealand & Australia immediately followed by the Los Angeles shows, including this one from the first night, which appears in circulation here for the first time ever, thanks to JEMS. The master is lost so this is as good as it gets. The taper, to save tape, would copy his masters to a reel and re-use the cassettes. One nice thing about this set is that it features 5 songs which I don’t believe have been heard before from the Troubadour run - “Polly On The Shore”, “Bring ‘Em Down”, “Tokyo” & “Sir B. McKenzie’s” & “Fiddlestix”. As is so often the case, sincere thanks to DIMER gv0000 for his informative date investigation. The gentleman stated “Fairport was at the Troubadour Tuesday January 29 until Sunday February 3, 1974. Sandy Denny is mentioned in an ad from a February 1 newspaper, but not in an ad from the January 27 L.A. Times. The January 27 ad & the January 29 newspaper listing for the show lists John Martyn as the opener, HOWEVER the January 31 review of either a January 29 or January 30 show list Eric Kaz as the opener, as does a February 1 newspaper ad. The January 29 newspaper listing notes 2 shows at 9:00 & 11:00 pm. So, they did play the Troubadour on January 29, probably 2 shows & Eric Kaz was most likely the opener.” So, another Fairport recording for your extensive libraries, and a good one at that. Listen, enjoy, show appreciation, share, give, spread peace.
Yrs truly, Knees
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Fairport and Sandy Denny at the Troubadour
When I first saw the reel containing this show and marked by JF as coming from one of his audience masters, it didn’t register that he had captured something somewhat historic but it turns out he did. I knew vaguely that Sandy Denny left Fairport Convention in 1969 and returned in 1974.
Perhaps I was even aware that some early ’74 shows at the Troubadour were recorded and tracks were eventually released on the Sandy Denny box set and Rising For The Moon reissue. But it took hearing her voice on JF’s tape and some internet research to realize this recording predates by a few days the shows that yielded the aforementioned live tracks. In short, JF recorded the first US show on the 1974 tour to feature Sandy Denny, following dates in Japan and Australia.
Though originally recorded on cassette, JF’s Fairport recording was transferred from reel-to-reel. That’s because JF, due to tight budgets at the time (he was barely out of high school), routinely transferred his master tapes to reels in order to save tape/money. Because he recorded his masters in mono, he would dub the finished recording onto a single track of a reel, allowing him to fit four or more shows on one 7″ tape and reuse the cassette for the next show.
That wasn’t true in all instances, but it is for most. Yes, in hindsight, he is still kicking himself about it. And yet, based on the tapes we’ve transferred so far, JF did a fine job dubbing off his masters, and the Fairport reel doesn’t sound any worse for wear despite the one-generation loss.
Once again, our gratitude goes to JF, who reached out on DIME (you could be next!) and offered us his archive, which had been sitting in boxes, 6,000 miles away from where he lives today, for 20+ years. Like so many early tapers, he had great stories to tell and the memories flooded back as we sorted through tapes. We are pleased to be able to bring his work to all of you. Please let him know through your comments that you are, too.
Thanks as well to kneesfudd, an expert on the subject matter, who volunteered to handle post-production and posting on JEMS behalf. We so appreciate the support.
BK for JEMS
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Lineage:
Carefully remastered fixing various issues, without EQ or NR
Recording Information: unknown cassette recorder with automatic level controls with unknown microphone (mono) > master cassette > 1st generation reel-to-reel (copied by original taper JF way back when)
Playback (JEMS 2016 Transfer): 1st generation reel > Otari 5050 mkII azimuth-adjusted transfer > USBPre 2 > Audacity 2.0 capture (16/44) > IZotope RX 6 and Ozone 6 > wav
Remastering 2017-09-xx: wav > computer > Audacity [fades, manual one-at-a-time glitch, bump, pop, click, dropout & dullspot repairs, minimal volume adjustments, 3 averaged pitch (speed) fixes with single pass per segment after frequency analysis & with pitchpipe verification, NO equalisation or noise reduction] > CD Wave (track splits) > flacs (Trader’s Little Helper)
Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (320 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.
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Kindly email us if you encounter persistent problems downloading the files. Also email us if you have any rarities you’d like to share with our readers.
Track 01. The Hexamshire Lass 3:08
Track 02. Polly On The Shore 5:55
Track 03. The Hen’s March Through The Midden & The Four Poster Bed 3:26
Track 04. Bring ‘Em Down 11:23
Track 05. Tokyo 3:32
Track 06. John The Gun 5:40
Track 07. Who Knows Where The Time Goes? 7:15
Track 08. Down In The Flood 3:37
Track 09. Solo 5:43
Track 10. Sir B McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament 6:23
(consisting of Bonnie Kate/Up The Chimney/The Kilfenora Road/Biff, Bang, Crash/Tail Toddle/Boston Tea Party)
Track 11. Fiddlestix 2:49
59 mins
Lineup:
Dave Swarbrick - violin, vocals
Jerry Donahue - lead guitar, vocals
Trevor Lucas - rhythm guitar, vocals
Sandy Denny - piano, vocals (#06-09)
Dave Pegg - electric bass
Dave Mattacks - drums
Click here to order Fairport Convention releases.
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