This fantastic new biography of Sandy Denny by Mick Houghton is released on 5th March by Faber and Faber.

I’ve Always Kept a Unicorn tells the story of Sandy Denny, one of the greatest British singers of her time and the first female British singer-songwriter to produce a substantial and enduring body of original songs. Sandy emerged from the passionate, hard-drinking folk scene of the sixties – a world of larger-than-life characters such as Alex Campbell, Bert Jansch, Jackson C. Frank, Anne Briggs and her future husband, the Australian singer Trevor Lucas. She then laid down the marker for folk-rock when she joined Fairport Convention in 1968, recording three albums with them before her shock departure in November 1969 just ahead of the release of the last, the seminal Liege & Lief.

Universal Music have announced that both Sapphire and Piece By Piece are to be re-released in remastered and expanded format on both CD and heavy weight vinyl on 26th January 2015.

The press release states,

“Single disc, two-disc, double lp and digital equivalent releases which marked John Martyn’s return to Island Records in the mid-1980’s.

Universal Music Catalogue is pleased to announce the multi-formatted releases of Sapphire and Piece By Piece on January 26th 2015, two of John Martyn’s most overlooked albums and a return to the label he was most famously associated with following two album for WEA.

Both Sapphire, originally released in 1984, and Piece By Piece, 1986 are long deleted and ripe for reappraisal. Each album has been remastered and expanded, including some recently unearthed material, with a second disc as part of Island’s RePresents series alongside limited edition double vinyl editions.

JOHN MARTYN – No Man Is An Island

The Best Of The Island Years
****

Last year, Universal put out a fantastic 18 disc box set that contained pretty much everything the Scottish troubadour John Martyn released for Island Records between 1967 and ’87. It was a phenomenal achievement, tracing his evolution from the young folkie of London Conversation to the sensitive artist of Sunday’s Child, from the genre hopping muso of One World to the troubled alcoholic of Grace And Danger. Squeezing even more juice from Martyn now comes this four disc collection confusingly called The Best Of The Island Years, but which actually contains a series of alternate takes, unreleased songs and live performances culled from the original 18-disc set.

Nick Drake – Remembered For A While is a fantastic new book celebrating the life and music of Nick Drake. Press release;  “This is not a biography. It is, rather, an attempt to cast a few shards of light on Nick Drake the poet, the musician, the singer, the friend, son and brother, who was also more than all of these. We hope it will accompany all those in search of an elusive artist, who was as indefinable as the morning mist.”

Superbly presented with copies of hand written lyric sheets and never seen before photographs. Further information here.

Universal Music have announced The Best Of The Island Years, a  4 disc set due to be released on 3rd November 2014.

Press release - “The Best of the Island Years is a 4-disc digest version of last year’s, definitive 18 disc set covering John Martyn’s classic years with Island Records between 1967 and 1987.

All 56 tracks on the 4-disc edition capture Martyn at the height of his creativity on the label; all of them have been chosen from the out-takes, unreleased songs and rare live recordings that were first included on The Island Years 18CD Box Set. This collection features the best of the rarities from The Island Years and creates an exceptional collection of recordings for fans who have everything but the complete box set. It includes three songs which were

JOHN MARTYN’S CITY STRUGGLE

FOUR YEARS ago John Martyn came south from Scotland, and next February he will be moving back with his wife and family. Those four years have been a constant struggle against the oppression of the city, but considering his abject aversion to this kind of environment, he has succeeded in his task. He has made his mark produced several fine albums which bare the mark of an inventive, refreshing brain, and on the face of it are wholly irreconcilable with the confused conglomeration in which he lives.

So when his wife Beverley has their second child, they will be moving to Peebleshire, within a stone’s throw of the Incredible String Bands retreat, to escape a programmed routine which John analogises with the non-changing flight patterns of insects. The real break for John was the “Stormbringer!” album he made with Beverley – an album which extricated him well and truly from his folk club upbringing. But even then the

London Conversation Vinyl Release 21st July 2014.

Beginners, please.

A teenage greenhorn lays the foundation of Island’s folk-rock village. By Jim Irvin.

Debut albums can be a mixed blessing, perhaps a tentative wave hello, a flood of suppressed creative outpourings, or a clearing house for childish guff. They’re most fascinating when they wrong-foot posterity. Who could have extrapolated Radiohead’s In Rainbows from Pablo Honey or Tom Waits’ Mule Variations from Closing Time? Solidly in that subset lies John Martyn’s London Conversation, now back on vinyl (Universal ***). ILP 952, issued in October 1967, was the first release on the new pink Island label, marking the company’s shift from its reggae origins. It’s a jejeune thing – cut, so they say, in a couple of evenings for £158 – that bears almost no resemblance to his mature work, not in the sound or swing of the playing, the tone of his voice or the acuity of the writing. And the whiff of childish guff is strong on opening song