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.