Frost and Fire, Part 1 – SpaceAce Sunday Edition

When I sat down to search for a streaming link for our next SpaceAce Sunday, I realized that we, in fact, have two albums on The List with the title Frost and Fire: The Watersons’ 1965 folk debut, and Cirith Ungol’s 1981 proto-doom/heavy metal debut. Given that (a) The Watersons’ album contains a few Xmas/Xmas-adjacent songs, and (b) I, like many of you, am rather ambivalent towards the holiday season at best, I wanted to offer up both albums at this time of year as if they were both Xmas albums, even if one is only partially an Xmas album and the other can essentially only be considered an Xmas album due to proximity, or, say, in the sense that Die Hard is an Xmas movie because it takes place on December 24.[1] In doing so, we can each choose for ourselves what level of holiday music we want to expose our ears to. And, because SpaceAce Sundays are clearly limited to Sundays, we will first spotlight SpaceAce’s Frost and Fire, i.e., The Watersons’ album, and then, on December 24, we will spotlight Cirith Ungol’s take on the title.

The Watersons – Frost and Fire (A Calendar of Ritual and Magical Songs)[3] (1965, UK)

And so, today we go back to one of the first albums SpaceAce submitted to this project, number 481 in The List.

I think it’s fair to say that SpaceAce must’ve loved this band/family, seeing as this is the third album of theirs we’re looking at thanks to him. As noted in the liner notes by A. L. Lloyd[2] (who we met in a previous SpaceAce Sunday), this album collects traditional ceremonial songs, not just from around the winter solstice but from each season:

Seasons of anxiety, seasons of joy. The common people had their rites of propitiation and triumph, older than the rituals of the Church and closer bound to their daily lives. This record takes us through a year’s calendar, displaying songs that accompanied these ceremonies, season by season…

When the Christian church arose, it ranged itself against the beliefs and customs of the old nature worship, and prudently annexed many of the seasonal ceremonies. Thus the critical time of the winter solstice, a rich period for pagan ritual, became the season of the Nativity of the new god. The season of the great spring ceremonies became the time of his slaughter and resurrection. So it happens that in many songs on this record pagan and Christian elements are inextricably tangled…it’s necessary to recall that behind most of these calendar customs and the songs attached to them lies nothing more mysterious, nothing less realistic, than the yearly round of work carried out in the fields…For it’s due to their relation with economic life, not to any mystical connection, that the song-customs have persisted right up to our own time.

That’s the sort of Xmas songs I can get behind.

In memory of our dearly missed friend, let’s raise a glass and, if you wish to listen to this Frost and Fire, let’s take a listen together. Otherwise, let’s meet back here Tuesday for a more metal take.

• Songlink: The Watersons – Frost and Fire (A Calendar of Ritual and Magical Songs)
• Discogs: The Watersons – Frost and Fire (A Calendar of Ritual and Magical Songs)

[1]To be clear, Die Hard is most definitely an Xmas movie. I will not be taking any questions at this time.
[2]The liner notes are reproduced in full here.
[3]Note the cover of the US pressing that I’ve included here doesn’t include the subtitle found on the original UK cover, but this one is so much cooler looking (and, I believe, is the version SpaceAce owned).

#1001OtherAlbums #1960s #BritishFolk #ChristmasMusic #folk #folkMusic #holidayMusic #ListenToThis #music #musicDiscovery #Musodon #SpaceAceSunday #TheWatersons

SpaceAce Sunday | The Watersons – The Watersons (1966, UK)

The next album our dearly missed friend submitted to the project is number 1050 on The List.

I forgot to explain in our last SpaceAce Sunday that that album marked the first of the last group of SpaceAce’s contributions. From there until we reach the end of our SpaceAce Sundays (with the exception of next week), you may notice that each album was released in 1966. This isn’t an odd coincidence. When I had finished indexing the entirety of The List, I discovered something odd: of the roughly 1035 albums we had gathered up to that point, none of them had been released in 1966, the only entry for that year being a compilation that included some singles released in ’66. Granted, there was also no albums for 1962 (again, just a compilation with some ’62 singles) and then one or none for any year earlier than 1955, but the bare spot for 1966 seemed to really stand out to me, given the number of albums we had in the few years before and after.

And so, me being me, I tooted “was no one pressing records in 1966?”…and some lovely Mastodonians promptly provided evidence that, in fact, ALL of the records were pressed in 1966, lol, and we ended up adding 16 albums from that year to The List. SpaceAce is responsible for most of those, as he took a look at his gigantic vinyl collection on Discogs, sorted by year, and made a list of 10 albums from 1966 that were worthy of The List.

And so, here we are. If The Watersons sounds familiar in this context, it’s because we’ve already had a SpaceAce Sunday looking at this family, in particular the duo of siblings Lal and Mike. As mentioned in that previous spotlight, The Watersons consisted of Lal (or Elaine, as billed on the cover of this album) and Mike, their other sibling Norma, and cousin John Harrison. The album here is their second. Next weekend we’ll be taking a look at their previous album from 1965, the first album in fact that SpaceAce had contributed to The List – it’s a holiday-ish affair, so we had saved it for the holiday season. That said, for me at least, the a cappella tunes on this album already remind me of Christmas carols, so guess I’m getting an early start.

Happy listening, all. And thank you, J.

• Songlink: The Watersons – Early Days
  • Note: I can’t find a streaming link to just the 1966 album, but it is included in its entirety (and with tracks in the same order) in this 1994 compilation (tracks 7 to 17) that also features the same cover photo.
• This Die or DIY blog post has a download link (.rar format), if you’re into that sort of thing.
• Discogs: The Watersons – The Watersons

#1001OtherAlbums #1960s #BritishFolk #folkMusic #ListenToThis #music #musicDiscovery #Musodon #SpaceAceSunday #TheWatersons

The next album SpaceAce submitted to this project is a collection of holiday tunes, so we’re going to save that for a later SpaceAce Sunday and skip to the next, number 482 in The List.

This is a really lovely and eclectic collection of folk songs from the Waterson siblings. SpaceAce must’ve really dug what this family was doing, as he also submitted the first two albums by The Watersons, an earlier band that included both Lal and Mike along with their other sibling Norma, and cousin John Harrison. The Watersons had broken up in 1968 but would reform the same year Bright Phoebus was released.

I think SpaceAce would’ve had a lot to say about this one. As per the Wikipedia page, it had some really mixed reviews when it was released, presumably because it was a departure from the family’s typical work of singing traditional songs, featuring instead original songs, some of which were more poppy, some rather dark. To put in context of contemporaries, Ewan MacColl (who we met last SpaceAce Sunday) hated it, but Anne Briggs (who we’ll meet next SpaceAce Sunday) loved it. Since then, it seems to have become a bit of a holy grail, as it wasn’t repressed on vinyl until 2017, and then the re-release was pulled due to copyright issues. I wonder if SpaceAce had one of the original 1000 copies…

In memory of our dearly missed friend, let’s raise a glass and take a listen together.

• Youtube: Lal & Mike Waterson – Bright Phoebus
• Discogs: Lal & Mike Waterson – Bright Phoebus

https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/08/18/spaceace-sunday-lal-mike-waterson-bright-phoebus-1972-uk/

#1001OtherAlbums #1970s #BritishFolk #folk #folkRock #LalWaterson #MikeWaterson #SpaceAceSunday #TheWatersons

Norma Waterson remembered by Richard Hawley

#FolkMusic #NormaWaterson #TheWatersons — https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/dec/10/obituaries-2022-norma-waterson-remembered-by-richard-hawley?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

@tdnvl @accordionnoir
That said, except maybe #TheWatersons these are all more modern #EnglishFolk groups, rooted in trad but taking it forward. But they'd be the ones to follow to get answers to the #FolkMusic roots they're digging up

As to be expected, feelings will be divided and strong! 😹

❤️‍🔥🪗 Really, all I claim to know much about is the #Accordion

@tdnvl @accordionnoir lots of #Accordion and singers on my list of #FolkMusic #EnglishFolk #Lankum has talked about influences on their harmonies from English group singing

Singers like #TheWatersons
Their daughter fiddler/songwriter/collaborator #ElizaCarthy is crucial http://www.eliza-carthy.com/

The Unthanks chilling/stunning: http://www.the-unthanks.com/

The mighty BellowHead amplify quieter instruments to let rip the brass-band tradition on trad tunes 🎺 https://bellowhead.bandcamp.com

...

Got my copy of #FrostAndFire by #TheWatersons a couple of weeks ago. #TopicRecords reissue, 45 rpm, original sleeve and track notes by A.L. Lloyd.

#Traditional #folk songs, each corresponding to a season, sung with almost no accompaniment (one song has a single drum). While the melodies are timeless, it is an embodiment of #harmony that is transcendental.

I listened to it twice the day it arrived, and the songs immediately took hold of my life, with passages playing in my head constantly.