Friday, October 18, 2013

Fairport Convention "Time Will Show The Wiser" (Bonus Video Friday)

Week three of Autumn Songs brings us to Fairport Convention, England's answer to Jefferson Airplane and Richard Thompson & Ian Matthews' earliest claim to fame.  I've probably stated it multiple times elsewhere in this blog, but my two favorite forms of music from birth to now were 1960's folk-rock and 1970's punk-rock.  Everything else I like grows out of those two forms. 

(sidenote question - Has there ever, in the history of television, been a rock & roll performer more 
 ill-at-ease onscreen than Fairport singer Judy Dyble in the first 35 seconds of this video clip?)  



inspirational verse; "I don't know which to go by; my mind or my heart /
And this is so confusing, it's tearing me apart" - Emmitt Rhodes, 1967 


ps. While we're (kinda) on the subject of folk-rock and pop music, the record from which Fairport Convention would have learned "Time Will Show The Wiser" was by a band called The Merry-Go- Round, led by Emmitt Rhodes, who later had a Beatle-esque (or, perhaps more accurately, a Paul McCartney-esque) hit in the 1970's with "Fresh As A Daisy."  I'm not sure if The Merry-Go-Round record was ever issued on CD or is available for download (in true SNL Weekend Update Drunk Uncle fashion, I don't do downloads - "Spotify me! Spotify me!"), but it's a prime example of the style of great elevated-Monkees style Southern California pop records that were totally obliterated by the Haight-Ashbury Summer Of Love ilk of (shudder) The Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service.  Once the hippies and nascent prog-rockers stuck their stoned maws into my beloved rock & roll things were just never gonna the same.  I believe to this day that rock & roll's most perfect form of expression was the 3-minute 45 rpm single.  If you could not make a statement in six minutes over two sides, that statement didn't need made.  Albums suck.

Actually the record I mainly blame for introducing pretentious navel-gazing into rock & roll is The Beatles' (hopelessly artsy, overrated) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but I'm not going to state that in print because I have roadie gigs coming up with Colin Gawel & The Lonely Bones and I don't wanna have to argue all night with Rick Kinsinger about that record. 


© 2013 Ricki C.

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