Comments on: The 1978 Album

By: Moira Hanson

Moira Hanson — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:27:23 +0000

How is Angela ? When I was an animal nurse in Halifax she worked with us for a time and that’s how I got my Caedmon LP. Its journeyed a bit with me – I went to Canada last year with thoughts of living there – decided against it and amongst the few items I brought back with me to the UK was my Caedmon LP. Pass my best wishes to Angela if she remembers me – I was the Scottish one who liked folk music!!

By: Bruce Brown

Bruce Brown — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:37:47 +0000

Re: older recordings remastered:
I’m a recording engineer by trade and would be very interested in helping restore any previously unpublished live or studio recordings. I would also love to try to produce copies of “Ten Maidens Fair” and “Give Me Jesus” that are not clipped.

By: grimtraveller

grimtraveller — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:37:40 +0000

To Ken,
Yes, definitely a Cockburn connection. A grim traveller in dawn skies……I discovered his music by accident about 21 years ago and it just knocked me out. Still does, actually.

By: Sam

Sam — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:38:04 +0000

I’ve just listened to my copy in iTunes (loaded from an original CD) and I hear the same (“en maidens fair…” and just the first part of a strum missing). I guess if anyone has a record and record player (that won’t be Jim) they could check whether it afflicts them as well. Whilst Simon (I think) has the master tapes I don’t think any of us is near anything that could play them (would David H’s tape deck do it?).

IIRC the original tapes went off to be mastered with a note reading “noise gating required on some endings”. It may be that there was some overenthusiastic gating used on the beginnings as well.

By: Bruce Brown

Bruce Brown — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:45:48 +0000

After considerable effort, I finally got a CD of “Caedmon.” I
noticed that the first split-second of “Ten Maidens Fair” and “Give Me
Jesus” are clipped. I wondered if this was a manufacturing error or
if the master tapes were somehow damaged?

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:50:24 +0000

Thanks for your contribution Grimtraveller. Have I spotted a Bruce Cockburn connection? Isn’t there a song of his under that title?

His ‘Wondering Where the Lions Are?’ is a particular favourite of mine. And have you noticed the similarity (in looks and talent) between him and our own Simon P Jaquet?

Ken

By: grimtraveller

grimtraveller — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:09:17 +0000

I find the history of the making of albums to be such a joy….and surprize. You hear these fantastic albums with near mythic reputations and really mind boggling sounds and arrangements…..and discover years later that these great artifacts were put together by a group of students or unrelated musicians who never stayed together that long and were recorded in a front room somewhere !
I was reading up on the recording of a truly great LP, “The Truth” by D.R. Hooker and was amazed to discover that the band on the album weren’t a band at all but a fledgling group of musicians that only rehearsed for a short while before recording that tour de force.
Caedmon’s album, because christian bands in Britain were few and far between at the time {though interestingly, Scotland had a few of the more edgy groups that made records in the early 70s/late 60s } is all the more interesting. I have to say that it would be interesting regardless of when it came out though. It stands up there with anything I’ve heard in the folk rock dept of the time, be it Fairport, Horslips, Spud, Steeleye, Parchment, Waterfall and others. I’ve long felt that fame, big budgets, great instrumentalists/singers, state of the art studios and hot dog producers count for nothing at the end of the day……if you simply don’t have the songs. And whether they are brilliantly recorded or not, good songs will nearly always shine through. And Caedmon’s album has those in droves. It’s well recorded too !
I can’t quite remember how I first came to hear of the album. Last year, or maybe the back end of 2006, having thought I had a pretty comprehensive knowledge of “christian” rock of the late 60s and 70s, I discovered that in fact I did not !! And I subsequently, over a period of 18 or so months discovered literally hundreds of groups of that era that I’d never heard of and lo and behold, despite what John J. Thompson says in his good book “Raised by wolves”, that most of these groups didn’t record, actually, bucketloads of them did. In all kinds of circumstances, {be they buddies in a bedroom, groups using downtime in “real” studios, bands recording as a means of testing studio equiptment, students playing while at college/university and laying down an album of their reportoire, outfits just recording live at a gig} people layed down their music and I am grateful that they did. Perhaps a little selfishly, I’m kind of glad that these artists stayed outside the mainstream and didn’t kowtow to commercial constraints (well, some of them didn’t ! ). It gives a slightly different slant to the music and where they were coming from and also gives a certain retrospective kudos to it all. I hope that doesn’t sound daft, but I know what I mean !
Great album, in every way.