Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Fhir A' Bhata
2. Green Grow the Laurels
3. Hold On To Me Babe
4. Blues Run The Game
5. Late November
6. The Optimist
7. Crazy Lady Blues
8. The Lowlands Of Holland
9. It Suits Me Well
10. The Music Weaver
11. Bushes And Briars
12. It'll Take A Long Time
13. Solo
14. Like An Old Fashioned Waltz
15. Who Knows Where The Time Goes?
16. Until The Real Thing Comes Along
17. Whispering Grass
18. Dark The Night
19. Next Time Around
20. Blackwaterside
21. John The Gun

Disc 2:

1. The North Star Grassman And The Ravens
2. Sweet Rosemary
3. The Lady
4. Bruton Town
5. Next Time Around
6. Blackwaterside
7. John The Gun
8. The Lady
9. Bushes And Briars
10. It Suits Me Well
11. Blackwaterside
12. The Music Weaver
13. The Sea Captain
14. John The Gun
15. Dialogue - Interview
16. The North Star Grassman And The Ravens
17. Crazy Lady Blues
18. Late November

Disc 3:

1. The North Star Grassman And The Ravens
2. Crazy Lady Blues
3. Late November
4. The North Star Grassman And The Ravens
5. Crazy Lady Blues
6. Late November
7. Sandy's Personal Diaries
8. Photo Gallery
9. Discography

Disc 4:

1. This Train
2. Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor
3. The Last Thing On My Mind
4. You Never Wanted Me
5. Been On The Road So Long
6. The Quiet Land Of Erin
7. Sweet Nightingale
8. Blackwaterside - Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson
9. The North Star Grassman And The Ravens
10. The Lady
11. It'll Take A Long Time

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15809 in Music
• Released on: 2007-09-10
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Live, Box set
• Running time: 208 minutes

Customer Reviews

Sandy at the Beeb
Although I've only given this 3 Stars it is an excellent product but the fact remains that the recording quality of some of it is such that it sounds as if it was recorded off the radio (and the medium wave at that) rather than for it. One for all Sandy Denny afficionados but not those unfamiliar with her work.

Flawed, perhaps, but still a rare gem
Really there's little to add to the two previous reviews, but if an additional review confirming the excellence of this package helps persuade anyone to check it out, so much the better.

My 5 star rating is not meant to suggest that what is included here is without flaws - it isn't by any means (particularly alas in terms of sound quality on some tracks), but the best of it (of which there is plenty) is very, very good indeed, and certainly among the very best recorded material by this much lamented artist.

Most of Sandy's solo albums were, by present-day standards at least, rather over-produced, the arrangements and studio production cluttering the delicate (but deceptive) simplicity of the material and the pure unadorned beauty of her voice, as well as overshadowing her own considerable abilities as a pianist and guitarist. What shines through here in the best material on the first two discs is these elusive qualities in abundance, helping to explain exactly why she was, and remains, so highly regarded.

As someone very familiar with her studio albums, who never managed to track down the previous short-lived release of her BBC material, this is a revelation and a joy that has been worth a wait of many years.

Ranks With Her Best Work
No sooner do Denny fans clear their credit cards of Fairport Convention Live at the BBC than out comes this rather lavish offering in the same smart livery. If, however, you are feeling once bitten and twice shy after the uneven quality of the Fairport set, should you really give in to temptation a second time? Well, yes, you really should.

Normally I'd count the DVD a "bonus" here rather than part of the set. With only eight minutes or so of actual live footage, it seems like a makeweight, but actually the footage (while very dated in presentation) is excellent musically. Moreover, a five-minute montage of photographs and a ten-minute sequence presenting her notebooks (which contained an intriguing mixture of song lyrics and drawings/doodles) means that the disc is not the waste that you might fear. Not a bad start at all.

The fourth disc here features off-air recordings. Their sound quality is not good enough and this alone will deter most casual listeners, but there are some rarities here that deserve repeated listening. Nevertheless, it's a short disc (only a little over half an hour) and this throws weighty responsibility onto the first two discs of the set.

The sound quality of this pair of CDs does dip occasionally, but mainly it varies from acceptable to excellent. More important, however, (and this is where the set starts to get very good indeed) the performances are consistently outstanding. The difficulty that I have with Sandy Denny's studio work is that it was very much of its time and the basic song was often arranged and embellished in ways that have not aged well to contemporary ears. Here, the first fifteen tracks of the first disc are presented sparely, with Denny backing herself on guitar or piano. The guitar-based tracks are good, but the piano-based ones are superb; on song after song I find that I prefer the unadorned version to its studio counterpart. While, for example, the great "Solo" from Like An Old-Fashioned Waltz will always be a wonderful song in its own right, it unquestionably sounds bombastic set beside the first, "genuinely solo" version in this set. To say the least, if you enjoy the album versions, you are going to find these performances compulsory listening. In fact, the chances are that this will become the music that you play to your friends to get them interested in Sandy Denny.

The second disc features two solo concerts from 1972. The second of these, unfortunately, has disappointing sound quality with notable modulation noise: all the more frustrating because the performances of duplicated songs have a slight edge over the first concert. That said, the first concert is very good, and I was certainly intrigued to hear "John The Gun" performed without band.

Overall, Island really justify their pre-release hype by delivering a Sandy Denny who is much closer to us and more accessible than ever before. Instead of being the last grudging purchase of a completist, this is the sort of archive trawl that kicks off one's enthusiasm all over again.