Fairport Friday - Liege & Lief

 

I very nearly forgot to put this on today. Indeed I even had another post scheduled which I've had to rearrange.

That would have been an absolute travesty in that Liege & Lief  the band's third album from 1969 (just squeezing in in December) is generally regarded as their greatest album.

The Virgin All - Time Top 1000 Albums book of 1998 goes one further placing it at number 1 in a list of The All Time Top 50 Folk Albums. What We Did on our Holidays comes in at number 5 with Unhalfbricking at number 6. Their three albums from 1969 in the top six. Says it all really.

It was their first album that was almost entirely inspired by traditional British music with the band's arrangements of traditional songs or new material written and performed in a similar style. It is seen by some as the first folk rock album. 

Whereas it never got as high in the album charts as Unhalfbricking (17 as opposed to 12) it hung around for 15 weeks beating its predecessor's 8.

It is their highest in Virgin's all-time top 1000 albums at 149.(What We Did is at 301 and Unhalfbricking at 341) The blurb highlights that is was a catharsis for the band following the crash that I mentioned last week and was the first album where fiddler Dave Swarbrick was permanently involved..

The 6 band members and those featured on the cover are Swarbrick, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchins  and the new drummer Dave Mattacks

Stay tuned for the final instalment next week (if I remember!)

Apologies for all the stats

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Fairport Convention - Tam Lin