Peter Bellamy - Oak Ash & Thorn, Top Folk LP, Nice Copy

	£		62
	$		82

Peter Bellamy - Oak Ash & Thorn

(Argo ZFB11 1970 UK LP )

A set of songs written and associated with Rudyard Kipling performed by ex-Young Tradition member Peter Bellamy. Performed very much in a trad folk style with lots of unaccompanied singing from Bellamy as a solo performer and occasionally with other Young Tradition members Royston and Heather Wood and Robin Dransfield, Bellamy accompanies himself with guitar and concertina on some tracks, others have accompaniement from Barry Dransfield on violin.

Nice album for trad folk fans and one which is getting hard to find in nice condition.

Tracks:

Frankie’s Trade

Poor Honest Men

Cold Iron

Sir Richard’s Song

The Looking Glass

Oak Ash & Thorn

King Henry VII And The Shipwrights

The Brookland Road

A Three Part Song

The Ballad Of Minepit Shaw

Our Fathers Of Old

Philadelphia

Condition: Sleeve EX/ Record EX

Sleeve:

Standard Decca single sleeve design made of thin card laminated on the front only. Manufactured by Graphis Press Ltd.

The front sleeve with it’s lovely colourful fantasy design is in nice shape, it’s extremely clean with no writing or tears anywhere. There is one very minor lamination craese in the bottom right corner. The laminate itself is clean and clear producing a nice reflective surface.

The rear sleeve is unlaminated white card which does show some slight signs of wear but nothing serious, actually it’s more dirt than wear caused by being handled over the years. For the most part the sleeve is clean, with no tears, creases or writing anywhere. At arms length in a PVC sleeve (which I’ll supply) it looks just fine.

The spine is square, clean and unworn with all of writing clearly readable.

The top seam is totally unworn.

The bottom seam is also totally unworn.

Record:

The record itself is manufactured from good quality thickish vinyl which reproduces the sound extremely well. As with most records manufactured by Decca it’s an excellent pressing. The vinyl is extremely clean, it has been cleaned using a professional Moth record cleaning machine which has removed any dirt or dust which was present leaving a record which looks and sounds very nice indeed. Seen under normal light the vinyl has that lovely glossy sheen that only sparsely played records have with no surface marks visible at all. When placed under a very revealing harsh lamp the occasional light hairline mark is revealed but these are few and are nothing to worry about anyway as they’re caused by just taking the record in and out of the sleeve and are totally inaudible.

The two labels are pretty much perfect, very clean, no tears, no writing, no stickers, no discernible spindle wear. The matrix numbers stamped into the dead wax are ZRG 3369 1G and ZRG3370 1G.

When placed upon the turntable the record is flat and fit’s the spindle tightly. This is a very quiet record with a lot of unaccompanied singing so any surface noise would be very apparent. Thankfully though the record plays every bit as good as you could hope for with no suface noise noticeable at all throughout the entire record, something to thnak Decca’s pressing plant for, if this had been pressed by Saga or Stable it would have sounded dreadful. As it is the sound is clear and clean and even when turned up quite loud there is no hint of any surface noise. This is as good a copy of this record as you are going to find easily and should not be missed.

What you can expect from me:

Fast friendly communication, quick postage with good strong packaging and the record will be exactly as described above, if you disagree with my description of the condition then a full refund is available (sorry, no refunds if you don‘t like the music!).

What I expect from you:

Good communication and quick payment, any disagreement’s (not that I’m expecting any!) can be settled amicably.

Payment and postage:

I’d prefer cheques from UK buyers but paypal is available if necessary, overseas buyers must use paypal. I’m not responsible for any parcel after it leaves my hands, I will have proof that the parcel as posted and will help in any way I can in any dispute between you and the postal authorities but the decision on whether to insure a parcel or not is yours and as such the responsibility for the parcel is yours too.