Steeleye Span - (2/3) 30 June 1971. Live on Ainsdale Beach nr Southport, England.

[mickigoe]

Agree with all that , Steve - especially the celebrity status point - these wonderful people knew that neither commercial killing nor universal fame would ever come their way but that was never a consideration. Sweeneys Men pioneered the revival in Ireland before Terry Woods joined Steeleye and they , with The Johnstones , popularised the music and dragged us away from The Clancy Brothers !! Happy 2012 , mate.

[SteveFE62]

Ten Man Mop has to be one of the most brilliantly recorded and engineered albums ever. It doesn't come over from this clip but the original recording has the toughest and hardest acoustic fingerpicking accompaniment ever laid down, as well as the guttiest fiddle sound. Good to hear your comment mickigoe, i kind of like the idea that it is a true original air and not invented by the bloody English :-)

[mickigoe]

@SteveFE62 I'm not a musician Steve but these reels are as good as I've ever heard. I lived with traditional music all my life but didn't truly love it until I saw the Fairports while working in England in '69 - Swarbs , Thompson and Sandy blew my mind and won my heart. The English traditional revival of the late 60s / early 70s was the high-water mark for music in my view. For example , what could be finer , more majestic than Peter Knight here - and he's English ! Rest my case :)

[SteveFE62]

@mickigoe The nice thing about Peter is that he's genuinely a friendly and approachable guy, no airs and graces despite being an awesome musician. It maybe bears repeating that the most talented people are often the nicest as well. It tends to be the less talented wannabes that are up themselves. I saw Steeleye sometime in the 80s at St David's Hall in Cardiff and they were just walking around the audience afterwards, chatting to fans and being real people.

[SteveFE62]

@mickigoe

No arguments from me over the trad revival, it produced some magical music. Irish as well as English (I'm thinking of Sweeney's Men in particular - I lived in Clare like I may have said and ran into Johnny Moynihan more than once over there, just at people's houses and the like. Great guy and another brilliant musician, for whom the music was the thing, not celebrity status. F*ck me I didn't even realise who I was talking to or the things he'd done, he was that unassuming!)

[SteveFE62]

The funny thing is, I'm English but lived five years in Co Clare and played a hell of a lot of music in the bars there, and *nobody* but nobody I met had ever heard of a tune called Dowd's Favourite (a couple mentioned one called O'Dowd's but it wasn't really the same) and when I'd play it for them on banjo or mandolin they still didn't recognise it, couldn't hook in with the chord changes and were generally clueless. Which makes me wonder if it was a Steeleye invention? Fckin great tune tho!

[mickigoe]

@SteveFE62 Hi Steve , I'm Irish and I heard this reel often when I was a boy - and when I bought Ten Man Mop I recognized it immediately - maybe Terry Woods gave it to them - I have a hunch it's in the south Sligo/Michael Coleman tradition cos I grew up in that region - visit Gurteen and Seamus Tansey might jam it with you , if he's still about :)

[Migglyman]

the memories flood back within the sound

[mickigoe]

Always adored that reel change at 2.04

[dullsvillain]

Oh dig it