Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Vashti Bunyan - Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind


from FatCat Records website:

…‘Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind’, is a comprehensive compilation of early recordings dating from the period prior to Vashti’s classic ‘Just another Diamond Day’ album which was originally released 1970. Titled after Vashti’s (Jagger/Richards-penned) debut single which opens the compilation, this double-album represents an attempt to both open out and draw a line under the past, and also to try to set the record straight about the disparity between how Vashti viewed (and still views) herself against the way she has been popularly perceived. Widely construed as a folk singer - a tag she fundamentally disagrees with - these recordings instead reveal Vashti as a pop singer, however ‘fragile’ and unique.
As Vashti explains in her liner notes to the album, “I have heard it said that Andrew Oldham took this fragile little folk-singer and tried to make her into a pop-singer against her will. No he didn’t. Too fragile for his world I might have been, but that was no fault of his… I wanted to bring simple acoustic music into mainstream pop”….
…The first disc gathers together the early singles (two of which were unreleased) and a set of taped demos recorded between 1965 - 67. Discovered via an industry friend by Rolling Stones manager/guru Andrew Loog Oldham, who gave her a Jagger/Richards song, (‘Some Things…’) Vashti was put in the studio to record the song accompanied by a full orchestra...
…Deliberately separated off from this first disc (and separated by a one minute gap of silence on the promo), the second disc comprises the entire, unaltered contents of a long-forgotten tape discovered at the last minute before mastering, whilst Vashti was searching for one of the master reels for disc one. Featuring just Vashti’s voice and guitar, unadorned and with no overdubs, the twelve songs here were rattled out one after another with spoken introduction in one hour of time she’d borrowed the money for and booked at a studio in central London in 1964. Four of these songs were then run out to a 7” acetate (since lost/destroyed) which would serve as her demo. These were the first recordings Vashti had ever made of the songs she had written aged eighteen and nineteen. Considering they sat gathering dust in a shed and then in an attic for nearly forty years, the tapes are amazingly well preserved, and after baking reveal a stunning set of raw, pure, intimate recordings. At times it almost feels like you’re in the room with her; that these are songs sung for your ears alone…

Label: FatCat Records
Cat. #: FATCD59, FATLP59
Format: 2xCD, 2xLP
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
1-01 - Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind (02:18)
1-02 - I Want To Be Alone (02:51)
1-03 - Train Song (02:15)
1-04 - Love Song (01:59)
1-05 - Winter Is Blue (02:55)
1-06 - Coldest Night Of The Year (03:28)
1-07 - I'd Like To Walk Around In Your Mind (02:15)
1-08 - Winter Is Blue (Demo) (01:48)
1-09 - Girl's Song In Winter (01:37)
1-10 - If In Winter (100 Lovers) (01:47)
1-11 - Wishwanderer (Demo) (01:56)
1-12 - Don't Believe (01:37)
1-13 - 17 Pink Sugar Elephants (02:48)
2-01 - Autumn Leaves (01:55)
2-02 - Leave Me (02:24)
2-03 - If In Winter (100 Lovers) (01:19)
2-04 - How Do I Know (02:00)
2-05 - Find My Heart Again (01:59)
2-06 - Go Before The Dawn (01:54)
2-07 - Girl's Song In Winter (01:38)
2-08 - I Don't Know What Love Is (01:48)
2-09 - Don't Believe What They Say (02:12)
2-10 - Love You Now (02:10)
2-11 - I Know (01:34)
2-12 - Someday (02:05)

Links:
Vashti Bunyan
FatCat Records

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