Sandy Denny & Fotheringay - Kralingen Pop Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 6-28-1970

Here's something I just discovered for the first time to other day, so it goes to the top of my list of albums to post. Technically, it's a concert by the band Fotheringay. But since more people know the band's main singer Sandy Denny, I'm billing it in the post title to "Sandy Denny and Fotheringay."

Sandy Denny is arguably the most famous, and the best, of all British folk singers in the modern era. She was a member of Fairport Convention in the late 1960s, then had a second stint in the 1970s. But she released more music as a solo artist, until her death in 1978 at only the age of 31. She was a part of the band Fotheringay for just the year of 1970, and just one studio album. 

I like Denny's music with Fotheringay over most of her solo work. The reason is, while her voice sounds great on any given song, the songs often are too similar to each other for my tastes. with a lot of midtempo ballads. But with Fotheringay, she shared lead vocal and songwriting duties with her husband Trevor Lucas, leading to more variety, and they did more uptempo material that she usually did on her own, leading to even more variety. The fact that they covered a Chuck Berry song in this concert, "Memphis, Tennessee," shows they weren't afraid to rock.

This entire concert has been officially released on the compilation album "Nothing More: The Collected Fotheringay." There's another officially released concert by the band, "Fotheringay Essen 1970," but the set list is almost the same, and this has better sound quality.

The sound is really good, and the performance is too, except for one problem. For some bizarre reason, the "Nothing More" album had the applause fade out after each song, then they put in a couple of seconds of silence before fading in the next song. Happily, this was something I was able to fix. There was enough dead time between songs for me to get rid of the fade-ins, fade-outs, and silences, and keep the applause going continuously between songs so it sounds more like the concert that it was. I also generally boosted the applause, since it was quite low.

One disappointment is that the concert is rather short, at just 43 minutes long. But it seems to have been the whole concert. I'm guessing Fortheringay was an opening act, so they didn't get to play for over an hour like headlining acts typically did (and still do).

The reason this concert came to my attention is because I was digging around for material to make BBC albums for Sandy Denny and/or Fotheringay. So that'll be coming before long as well.

01 The Way I Feel (Fotheringay)
02 The Sea (Fotheringay)
03 Too Much of Nothing (Fotheringay)
04 Nothing More (Fotheringay)
05 I’m Troubled (Fotheringay)
06 Two Weeks Last Summer (Fotheringay)
07 talk (Fotheringay)
08 The Ballad of Ned Kelly (Fotheringay)
09 The Banks of The Nile (Fotheringay)
10 talk (Fotheringay)
11 Memphis, Tennessee (Fotheringay)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/552uMFW9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/cf6iKD1WhU2Uznw/file

There are a good number of color photos of Sandy Denny, but far fewer of her as part of the Fotheringay band. To make the cover, I ultimately chose to take a couple of screenshots of the band during an appearance on the German TV show "Beat Club." I couldn't find a single screenshot that clearly showed the faces of both Sandy Denny and Trevor Lucas. So I combined two screenshots in Photoshop. There's another band member directly behind Denny, but you can't see much of him other than the neck of his guitar.

In February 2025, I improved the cover with the help of the Krea AI program.

Fairport Convention - You're Gonna Need My Help - More BBC Sessions, 1967-1969

A few days ago, I posted a Fairport Convention concert from 1968. That reminded me that I have another album of the band playing for the BBC that I haven't posted yet. The reason I didn't post it until now is because these are all songs they played for the BBC on other occasions, which I have posted. So these are extra versions, basically. However, the sound quality is generally excellent (with a couple of exceptions), and any 1960s music from this band is good, in my opinion. So here it is.

All but three of the versions here have been officially released. The three unreleased ones are "I'll Keep It with Mine," "Percy's Song," and "You're Gonna Need My Help." But they're from BBC sessions, and they sound as good as the others. 

Ironically, the worst sounding song here is the last one, "A Sailor's Life," even though it has been released. It's the only live performance here, from an unknown location in 1969.

One of the songs, "Fotheringay," has a BBC DJ talking over the intro. But I've used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music. That's why it has "[Edit]" in the name.

I'm making a concerted effort these days to use these new audio editing programs to redo ALL the BBC performances that had DJ talking over the music. I'll be writing more about that later. But note for now that not only did I fix this one song on this album, but in recent days I've fixed all such instances on all the Fairport Convention albums I've posted. Furthermore, I fixed the volume balance between songs, and redid the mp3 tags. So you might want to redownload everything from this band for some improvements here and there.

I also renamed all the band's BBC albums, adding "Volume 1," "Volume 2," etc... I updated the cover art with these changed names too. This one doesn't get a volume number, since it's extra versions that are not in chronological order like all the other albums in the series.

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 One Sure Thing (Fairport Convention)
02 Time Will Show the Wiser (Fairport Convention)
03 Autopsy (Fairport Convention)
04 Meet on the Ledge (Fairport Convention)
05 I'll Keep It with Mine (Fairport Convention)
06 Percy's Song (Fairport Convention)
07 You're Gonna Need My Help (Fairport Convention)
08 Fotheringay [Edit] (Fairport Convention)
09 A Sailor's Life (Fairport Convention)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15115257/FairprtC_1967c-1969_YoureGonnaNeedMyHlpMoreBBSessions_atse.zip.html

There aren't many good photos of the band from around this time period. I used a photo taken from the same photo session as the album cover for the "How to Treat Another Heart" stray tracks album, taken in Sandy Denny's parent's backyard.

Fairport Convention - Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 9-13-1968

Fairport Convention has made a lot of great music over the years, and they're still going as I write this in 2021. But for me, their peak was in 1968 and 1969, while they had both Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny in the band. This version recorded many songs for the BBC that survived, but until relatively recently, I never knew of any actual live recordings that had survived in good quality.

The good news is, such a thing does exist, in the form of this bootleg. The bad news is that it's quite short, at only 22 minutes long. But still, that's better than nothing. Only one song from this concert has been officially released. "Mr. Lacy" came out on the relative obscure compilation "Fairport Unconventional." But that version sounds the same as the bootleg one, so I used the same source all the way through.

I had refrained from posting this concert here because the sound quality was pretty rough. But the main problem was that the vocals were too low. Now that I'm using the sound editing programs Spleeter and X-Minus, I realized this is another concert I could improve. I'm not marking the songs with "[Edit]" because every track was edited with one of those programs, even the talking tracks to lessen the hiss there.

The end result? Okay, it's still rather rough. But it's markedly better than before, and I think it's very listenable. It certainly sounds better than I'd expected for any live recording of the band from 1968. The key is that these songs were recorded by the Dutch TV network VPRO and played on TV at the time. There clearly was more to the show, since the band mentioned coming back for a second set. But this is all we've got, in any form, thanks to it getting on TV.

Iain Matthews does all the talking between songs. Matthews and Denny do most of the singing, though Thompson sings lead on "If It Feels Good, You Know It Can't Be Wrong." It's also interesting to hear how very small the crowd was. Based on the applause, it sounds like only a dozen or two people

There's one other bootleg of this band from 1968 that I know of. The sound quality is significantly worse. It's a short recording from the Whittlesey Barn Barbeque two months before this. Most of it isn't listenable for my ears. But I rescued one song from it that sounds passable, helped by the fact that I boosted the lead vocals for that one too. It's a cover of Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." I'd added that as a bonus track.

Oh, regarding the date of this concert, it may or may not be true. This bootleg is generally listed as taking place in September 1968. I dug a little deeper and found the band's visit to the Netherlands that month was very short, from September 11th to September 14th. The show could only have taken place on the nights of September 12th or September 13th, so I guessed!

This album is 22 minutes long, not including the bonus track. 

UPDATE: On January 26, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. The song list is the same. However, I ran all of the songs through the MVSEP "denoise" filter, to get rid of hiss. I think they sound better now.

01 I Still Miss Someone (Fairport Convention)
02 talk (Fairport Convention)
03 Bird on a Wire (Fairport Convention)
04 talk (Fairport Convention)
05 If It Feels Good, You Know It Can't Be Wrong (Fairport Convention)
06 talk (Fairport Convention)
07 I'll Keep It with Mine (Fairport Convention)
08 talk (Fairport Convention)
09 Mr. Lacey (Fairport Convention)

It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (Fairport Convention)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rriZZkJh

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/i8xlR1n2NkNiWYk/file

I couldn't find any color photos of the band in concert in 1968. I decided the world needs at least one, so I colorized this one. (Heck, I was happy to even find a decent black and white one.) Apparently, it's from the summer of 1968. I assume the personnel from left to right is Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Iain Matthews, and Ashley Hutchings. Thompson has said he was very shy at this point in his career and often played his guitar solos with his back to the audience. It looks like this is such a case.

Fairport Convention - One More Chance - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: 1973-1975

I just posted an album of Fairport Convention at the BBC, from 1971 to 1973. This follows that one. In my opinion, 1971 to 1973 wasn't a great time for the band, since they'd lost both Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny and didn't find anyone worthy of filling those very big musical shoes. But in 1974, Denny came back. She didn't stay long, only through 1975, but her presence helped revive the band for a while. 

This album roughly corresponds with her second time in the band. She shows up from the fourth song through the last one. She sings most of the songs she was present for.

The previous album in this BBC series was easy to put together, since all but two of the songs came from the "Live at the BBC" box set. This one was considerably more tricky. Only four of the songs come from that. Some weren't performed for the BBC per se, but were done for other radio or TV shows. Of those other songs, five come from album bonus tracks, and one comes from a different box set. 

That leaves just one song that remains officially unreleased, "One More Chance." It was performed for a Dutch TV show, and the sound is pretty good.

Denny left the band again at the end of 1975 or early 1976, along with Trevor Lucas and Jerry Donahue. In my opinion, that marks the end of the band's best years. The adopted a much lower profile for the rest of the 1970s and pretty much didn't appear at the BBC during those years. So I'm ending the BBC series here.

01 Brilliancy Medley - Cherokee Shuffle [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)
02 George Jackson (Fairport Convention)
03 Six Days on the Road (Fairport Convention)
04 John the Gun (Fairport Convention)
05 The Devil in the Kitchen [Fiddlestix] [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)
06 Rising for the Moon (Fairport Convention)
07 Down in the Flood (Fairport Convention)
08 Breakfast in Mayfair (Fairport Convention)
09 Farewell to a Poor Man's Son (Fairport Convention)
10 One More Chance (Fairport Convention)
11 White Dress (Fairport Convention)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Q8F6F4gK

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/LCLuVYYDU8h4N2g/file

I had a really hard time finding any good photos of the band from the years Denny rejoined. I had to resort to taking a screenshot of a brief clip of the band playing on "The London Weekend Show" in 1975. The picture is somewhat low-res. If you know of a better one I can use, please let me know.

Fairport Convention - Reynardine - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1969

It's been a long time since I've posted any Fairport Convention, but I get around to everything on my "to do" list eventually. Here's the next from their late 1960s/early 1970s heyday, when both Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny were still in the band.

This is another album of BBC performances. The band has lots of great BBC material. It was enough for a four CD box set just of BBC stuff, and that didn't even cover all of it. I've taken that and broken it into more manageable album-length chunks of about 40 to 45 minutes each, organized chronologically.

The first seven songs here come from the box set I'd just mentioned. The last two are still officially unreleased. They're not actually from BBC performances. Instead, they were private rehearsals. But they sound just like the other tracks in terms of stellar sound quality as well as a lack of any audience noise. Plus, they're both key songs that don't duplicate any of the others. So I've added them in.

01 Autopsy (Fairport Convention)
02 Si Tu Dois Partir (Fairport Convention)
03 Percy's Song (Fairport Convention)
04 Reynardine (Fairport Convention)
05 Tam Lin (Fairport Convention)
06 Sir Patrick Spens (Fairport Convention)
07 The Lark in the Morning - Rakish Paddy - Foxhunter's Jig - Toss the Feathers (Fairport Convention)
08 Come All Ye (Fairport Convention)
09 Farewell, Farewell (Fairport Convention)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15115379/FairprtC_1969d_ReynrdineBBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo needs some explanation, because I did some editing. It's of Fairport Convention in concert in Copenhagen, Denmark, in November 1969. It features Sandy Denny in the foreground, with Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol in the background. The tricky bit is that it's actually two photos combined. One photo was pretty much like this, except Denny's head was bowed down in a strange position. I found another photo from the same series that had her head up in a much better way, but it was a close-up that didn't have Thompson and Nicol in the background. So I basically pasted in her head and part of her upper body from the close-up photo to overlay her bent head and create a better picture. The reason I did all that is because I've found very few good photos of the band in their heyday, especially in color.

Fairport Convention - Eastern Rain - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1968-1969

I said I had a lot of Fairport Convention to get caught up on, and I meant it. Here's the third album from them today. The other two I posted were stray tracks collections. This one are all songs from official albums, but performances from the BBC.

Sandy Denny joined the band midway through 1968. All but two of the songs here are from 1968, but they're all from after Denny joined. She sings lead on most of the songs.

The vast majority of the songs here come from the early 1969 album "What We Did on Our Holidays." There's only two from "Unhalfbricking" ("Cajun Woman" and "Who Knows Where the Time Goes"). But some songs are from the other stray tracks albums I posted. In those cases, they had two different BBC performances of songs they never put on album, so I put one of those on a stray tracks album and another one here. "Reno, Nevada," and "If It Feels Good, You Know It Can't Be Wrong" are examples of that.

The great thing about late 1960s Fairport Convention was that they were an awesome covers band, but they also wrote some of the greatest songs of all time. Two classics are here in their unique BBC versions: "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" and "Meet on the Ledge."

I removed the BBC DJ talking over the start of "Eastern Rain" using X-Minus audio software to wipe the talking while keeping the underlying music. That's why it has "[Edit]" in the title.

01 Suzanne (Fairport Convention)
02 Eastern Rain [Edit] (Fairport Convention)
03 Fotheringay (Fairport Convention)
06 Mr. Lacey (Fairport Convention)
07 Meet on the Ledge (Fairport Convention)
08 She Moves through the Fair (Fairport Convention)
09 Reno, Nevada (Fairport Convention)
10 Book Song (Fairport Convention)
11 Nottamun Town [Acappella Version] (Fairport Convention)
12 Cajun Woman (Fairport Convention)
13 Who Knows Where the Time Goes (Fairport Convention)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15115297/FairprtC_1968e-1969_EastrnRainBBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

There's a serious lack of good Fairport Convention color photos from 1968, or even 1969. Luckily, I was able to find one I liked. The photo used for this cover comes from a concert in Copenhagen in 1968.

Fairport Convention - How to Treat Another Heart - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

Here's another stray tracks Fairport Convention album. The band had so many songs that didn't appear on their studio albums that this is the third such album I've made that at least partially is from 1968.

This is more of the same very good stuff. Like the last album in this series, most of the songs here are cover versions. I believe the only originals are "Shattering Live Experience" and probably "Billy the Orphan Boy's Lonely Christmas." (That one hasn't been officially released so I can't check the credits, but nobody else seems to have done a song by that name.)

The band still was very much fascinated with American folk-rock, doing songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, the Byrds, Gene Clark, and the like. But the last few songs are outtakes from the 1969 "Liege and Leaf," and one can seem them pivoting to their version of traditional British folk.

It's been a long time since I made this album, so I don't remember why I gave it the title "How to Treat Another Heart." I probably didn't think any of the song titles made for a good album title. The title I used are part of the lyrics to the song "Shattering Live Experience."

01 Bird on the Wire (Fairport Convention)
02 Billy the Orphan Boy's Lonely Christmas (Fairport Convention)
03 Tried So Hard (Fairport Convention)
04 You're Gonna Need My Help (Fairport Convention)
05 Shattering Live Experience (Fairport Convention)
06 Dear Landlord (Fairport Convention)
07 The Lady Is a Tramp (Fairport Convention)
08 Sir Patrick Spens (Fairport Convention)
09 Quiet Joys of Brotherhood (Fairport Convention)
10 The Ballad of Easy Rider (Fairport Convention)
11 Fly Me to the Moon [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qAcnn6CH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/i0Avbfs2yiZQzBe/file

The album cover photo comes from a photo session of the band in Sandy Denny's parent's backyard.

Fairport Convention - Night in the City - Non-Album Tracks (1968)

I've fallen behind where I want to be with posting Fairport Convention material. (I really should have posted all I have on their late 1960s and early 1970s stuff before posting Richard Thompson solo stuff.) I'm going to try to catch up in a hurry.

This is a stray tracks collection, avoiding all the songs on their official albums. But it's also almost a BBC compilation, because 8 of the 12 songs here come from BBC performances. The band had a very wide ranging repertoire. Thank goodness we have their BBC recordings, because in my opinion these songs sound just as good as many of the songs on their albums. The chief difference is their 1960s had a fair amount of originals, and these are mostly cover versions. There are a few originals here, however: "Throwaway Street Puzzle," "Now and Then," and " If It Feels Good, You Know It Can't Be Wrong."

But what covers they are! This is my favorite Fairport era, their first couple years when they looked to American folk rock as their main influence before getting deeply into British traditional folk.I like that era too, but I like this a bit more.

All the songs here are from the second half of 1968, meaning Sandy Denny was already in the band, and she sings most of the songs.

I've put one song as a bonus track, a cover version of Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." It's the only song here from a concert, and the song is much worse than for all the others. It's also the only song that's officially unreleased.

01 Suzanne (Fairport Convention)
02 Now and Then [Demo] (Fairport Convention)
03 Close the Door Lightly When You Go (Fairport Convention)
04 You Never Wanted Me (Fairport Convention)
05 Some Sweet Day (Fairport Convention)
06 Been On the Road So Long (Sandy Denny)
07 Marcie (Fairport Convention)
08 Night in the City (Fairport Convention)
09 Gone, Gone, Gone (Fairport Convention)
10 If It Feels Good, You Know It Can't Be Wrong (Fairport Convention)
11 Throwaway Street Puzzle (Fairport Convention)
12 I Still Miss Someone (Fairport Convention)

It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (Fairport Convention)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15115309/FairprtC_1968c_NghtintheCty_atse.zip.html

There are very few good color photos of Fairport Convention in 1968. This one definitely comes from 1968. But there are some other people in the photo in addition to the five members of the band at the time. According to the caption, it was taken in a public park, and the women in the middle of the back is Anthea Joseph, who was a pivotal early supporter of British folk-rock.

Fairport Convention - One Sure Thing - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-1968

I'm posting this second Fairport Convention album immediately after the other one I just posted to hopefully make clear my approach on dealing with the band's non-album tracks. That album contains all their songs that didn't appear on any of their official studio albums, including some BBC performances. This album makes up all their other BBC performances.

The first half of this album is from when July Dyble was the band's main singer. From the seventh track onwards ("She Moves through the Fair"), the rest of the songs have Sandy Denny as the band's main singer.

Actually, not all the songs on this album are BBC performances. I've added a few song demos here too, because I couldn't think of a better place to put them. The first two songs are demos by Judy Dyble. The seventh track (mentioned above) plus the last two are acoustic or demo versions by Sandy Denny.

All the songs here have been officially released, so the sound is great. And the performances are excellent too.

I'll continue this approach, with more albums of unique non-album songs, plus other albums of BBC performances, soon.

01 Both Sides Now (Fairport Convention)
02 One Sure Thing (Fairport Convention)
03 Chelsea Morning (Fairport Convention)
04 If [Stomp] (Fairport Convention)
05 Time Will Show the Wiser (Fairport Convention)
06 If I Had a Ribbon Bow (Fairport Convention)
07 She Moves Through the Fair [Acoustic Version] (Fairport Convention)
08 Some Sweet Day (Fairport Convention)
09 I Don't Know Where I Stand (Fairport Convention)
10 Nottamun Town (Fairport Convention)
11 Jack O'Diamonds [Edit] (Fairport Convention)
12 Fotheringay [Acoustic Version] (Fairport Convention)
13 Autopsy [Demo] (Fairport Convention)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8k5y962o 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/btHLJfyr9soxJIj/file

Good color photos of Fairport Convention in their early years are harder to find than hen's teeth. This isn't a great photo of the band - Sandy Denny isn't even in view - but it is of them from 1969.