ALBUM: The Best of the Strawbs (1978)
MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$$
Prog-folk? P-Folk? Folk-Prog? F-Prog?
I bought this 2-record album in Leesburg, FL, in about 1988 at a store I did well finding cool, unusual records such as the relatively obscure guitarist John Fahey and some early 1960s folk music such as Tom Rush. Unfortunately for me –and the store — is that we lived in Leesburg for only about a year as I moved to the downtown office of the Orlando Sentinel, making trips to Leesburg rare. Plus buying records was not in our budget.
This band for a while had Sandy Denny who did ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes,’ and was widely recognized as one of England’s top vocalists.
Future Yes-man Rick Wakeman was a Strawbs member on a couple of early albums in the early 1970s. He went on to become the famous keyboards guy for prog-rockers, Yes.
I don’t know what was the name of the group?
Yes.
No, I just want to know the name of the band he went to.
Yes.
Yes that’s what I want. What is the group’s name.
Yes.
OK, so who went to Yes?
Rick Wakeman.
Digressing again.
Denny went to Fairport Convention, a group similar to the Strawbs. Fairport featured Richard and Linda Thompson, whose crumbling marriage was channeled into one of the most heartbreaking break-up albums of all time, ‘Shoot out the Lights.’
So what about the Strawbs?
Perhaps the album cover liner notes best helps understand what this band was like. Michael Hooker, whom I don’t know, wrote this in the notes:
It’s something of a tribute to the slightly bizarre nature of that catchall pigeonhole known as British Rock that a group which originated as England’s answer to Flatt and Scruggs would go on to cite The Tibetan Book of the Dead as one of its prime influences. …
Yes.