NO ROSES, Shirley Collins Albion Country Band 1971 1st

	£		42
	$		56

furtlefinch Store


NO ROSES, Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band, Pegasus LP 1971 PEG 7

 No Roses - Shirley Collins & the Albion Country Band

produced by Ashley Hutchings

Original Pegasus 1st release, 1st pressing, 1971

Blue label, PEG 7

On the record is PEG7A - 1U and PEG7B - 1U

Gatefold sleeve.

Ok (gulp) here goes another of my very own LP collection, treasured and hoarded, and played regularly, through the years. Old friends really. Bt the time has come, so here's your chance to bid for a really rare piece of English folk history.

I've just played this through - it is unscratched and plays well both sides, without any jumps and just a few crackles at the beginning of side 2.

Inside sleeve is Ok, just a bit creased with a little sunning.

The outer sleeve has a few marks and slight darkening, but is generally in great condition - even the spine is only cracked where the gatefold opens with no losses. if this was a book dustwrapper I would describe it as 'vg+'. 

OK, so you've formed Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, and with them the whole folk-rock genre, and you were at the heart of what over 30 years later was going to be voted the best folk record of all time - Liege and Lief. So what do you do next?

Well, all that was just for starters for Ashley Hutchings, and the launch of his real work, and his search for a distinctively English new folk tradition can be traced back to this album, No Roses, that he produced for his wife, Shirley Collins.

I would argue that there has been no more influential British folk record ever produced. It is hard to remember that up till that time, folk was pretty much all Celtic (when it wasn't American). Go to any festival or club at the time and the British stuff would be jigs, reels and Scots and Irish ballads.

The Albion Country Band - a great name for an ambitious project, combining English mysticism with the back room of a pub - changed all that. The members, said to be a random mix of whoever turned up, were in fact pretty much a who's who of the best of British folk at that time - various Fairports and exes including Richard Thompson, Maddy Prior, the Watersons, Barry Dransfield, and John Kirkpatrick just to pick a few.

Out of all this came not only the Albion Band in its various guises, but also the Morris revival (Morris On), the barn dance/ceilidh revival (Kickin' up the Sawdust), the folk influence on theatre (Mysteries, Lark Rise), and arguably the whole English folk-rock genre and folk revival. I've no doubt that the inspiration went much further afield too - I wonder if the Oyster Band heard Hal An Tow here first for example.

The tracks themselves are excellent - Fairport-like but with a harsher and more authenticially English-sounding edge (which was the aim), and Shirley Collins's voice is as always, superb and distinctive (Billy Bragg recently described her as 'a national treasure').  Several are dark, dealing with murders and transported convicts, but there are some jollies as well.

I'm feeling very pleased with myself that I had the foresight to buy this when it first came out. The first issue is now a great rarity. There are versions with a purple label (this one is blue), but I'm not sure which is the first.

Anyway, I've enjoyed writing this, and good luck with the bidding!

Check out my other items - more LPs to follow soon!