Vashti Bunyan
Posted by: Guido Fawkes on 07 November 2007
Vashti has a new album out that captures her singles and demos that she made in the 60s before she made the incredible Just Another Diamond Day album.
Having read the sleeve notes I can now appreciate what this album represents and my admiration for the talent that was and still is Vashti Bunyan is thoroughly enhanced by this release. True it is not Just Another Diamond Day, but then how many albums are as good as JADD.
There is an interview with Vashti here and Bedazzled TV has archive footage of Vashti singing her first single Somethings Just Stick In Your Mind.
Vashti (her real name which she has never liked) is a decadent of John Bunyan, the guy who wrote Pilgrim's Progress - a great read IMO.
There are some great reviews of JADD around
Imagine a world without irony or sarcasm where people dream of leaving the city and living in a caravan with only their families and animals for company; a world that's never heard of cocaine, Hip-Hop or eBay. Recorded in 1969 with people who assisted on the Nick Drake albums, JADD revels in its own, unwitting, uncoolness. Vashti sings in an unhurried, totally pure voice, accompanied by piano, guitar, whatever's around. It is a forgotten Brit-folk classic and you need it more than sleep or money..
In 1968, her career going nowhere, Vashti set off for an artist's community set up by Donovan on the Isle of Skye in a horse and cart with a dog and her boy friend in tow. The journey lasted a year and a half and ended when they discovered Donovan had given up on the whole plan and everybody had gone. What remained were a dozen tremendous songs that Vashti wrote on route that evoke a gentle, innocent, bucolic life that only ever existed in the played out fantasies of a few. Recorded in London with various straw-chewing reprobates from the Incredible String Band (Robin Williamson) and Fairport Convention (Dave Swarbrick) plus Nick Drake's string arranger Robert Kirby, Just Another Diamond Day was briefly released and roundly ignored, in 1970. Vashti, by now completely fed up with the game, went off to the west of Ireland and didn't come back until 2005 to record the superb album Lookaftering.
Vashti's sleeve notes for Somethings Just Stick In Your Mind are here and worth a read if you have the time.
BTW she insists she's a pop singer, not a folk singer - I don't care: her records are fantastic and she is a wonderful character.
Having read the sleeve notes I can now appreciate what this album represents and my admiration for the talent that was and still is Vashti Bunyan is thoroughly enhanced by this release. True it is not Just Another Diamond Day, but then how many albums are as good as JADD.
There is an interview with Vashti here and Bedazzled TV has archive footage of Vashti singing her first single Somethings Just Stick In Your Mind.
Vashti (her real name which she has never liked) is a decadent of John Bunyan, the guy who wrote Pilgrim's Progress - a great read IMO.
There are some great reviews of JADD around
Imagine a world without irony or sarcasm where people dream of leaving the city and living in a caravan with only their families and animals for company; a world that's never heard of cocaine, Hip-Hop or eBay. Recorded in 1969 with people who assisted on the Nick Drake albums, JADD revels in its own, unwitting, uncoolness. Vashti sings in an unhurried, totally pure voice, accompanied by piano, guitar, whatever's around. It is a forgotten Brit-folk classic and you need it more than sleep or money..
In 1968, her career going nowhere, Vashti set off for an artist's community set up by Donovan on the Isle of Skye in a horse and cart with a dog and her boy friend in tow. The journey lasted a year and a half and ended when they discovered Donovan had given up on the whole plan and everybody had gone. What remained were a dozen tremendous songs that Vashti wrote on route that evoke a gentle, innocent, bucolic life that only ever existed in the played out fantasies of a few. Recorded in London with various straw-chewing reprobates from the Incredible String Band (Robin Williamson) and Fairport Convention (Dave Swarbrick) plus Nick Drake's string arranger Robert Kirby, Just Another Diamond Day was briefly released and roundly ignored, in 1970. Vashti, by now completely fed up with the game, went off to the west of Ireland and didn't come back until 2005 to record the superb album Lookaftering.
Vashti's sleeve notes for Somethings Just Stick In Your Mind are here and worth a read if you have the time.
BTW she insists she's a pop singer, not a folk singer - I don't care: her records are fantastic and she is a wonderful character.