[.ca] A Choice Selection

David Cousins picks 16 songs for your listening pleasure:
I actually picked this album up in Strafford-on-Avon as it was the first Strawbs CD I ever came across. Since then I have slowly been picking up their various albums, but there are still a few on this collection that I only have on this one. Originally the Strawberry Hill Boys, the Strawbs were the most folk-oriented of the progressive rock groups I came to admire in the Seventies. The lineup for the ground changed markedly over the years, with singer/guitarist David Cousins the sole constant. Critics see to have a preference for the Strawbs in the early Seventies when the group consisted of Tony Hooper, John Ford, Richard Hudson and keyboard virtuoso Rick Wakeman, but there are only three tracks from that period on this album--"Song of a Sad Little Girl," "A Glimpse of Heaven," and "The Hangman and the Papist"--and none of them exactly give Wakeman a chance to shine. Then again, the explanation for that would seem to be that Cousins selected the tracks for this album, which does include "Part of the Union" as representative of the Ford & Hudson element of the band. Cousins was the heart and soul of this group, but I like some of the secondary stuff Dave Lambert wrote and thought that the keyboard playing of John Hawken better suited the Strawbs style than Wakeman, who was off doing something completely different with Yes. When Hawken left the group in 1975 after "Ghosts," the title track of which probably marks his best contribution to the group, it marked the end of the glory days for the group (the liner notes say Hawken decided to leave, but elsewhere I have read that he was jettisoned for economic reasons; either way, it was a grievous wound). The sixteen selections offered up on this album are certainly representative of the different styles of the Strawbs over that decade. "Benedictus" and "Tears and Pavan" capture the folk sound while "Hero and Heroine" and "Autumn" with its three parts, evince its ambitions in the progressive rock area. Then there are the massive riffs of "Down By the Sea," which was a big hit in Albuquerque when I was in college and which was the group's big finale in performance (one small quibble with the album is that "The River," the song that always preceded it in performance, is not used to do that same duty here). The Strawbs did not enjoy the commercial success of Emerson, Lake & Palmer or Yes, nor did they have the classical pretensions of Renaissance, but they have to be at the top of the next niche when it comes to English Progressive Rock from that decade. Those of us who discovered and enjoyed them on this side of the pond during those years certainly remember the hardest drinking band in England with a special fondness. If you enjoy "this type" of music, then this choice selection can serve as an adequate introduction to the Strawbs.

• Lay Down
• Lemon Pie
• Lady Fuchsia
• Autumn: Heroine's Theme/Deep Summer's Sleep/The Winter Long
• Glimpse of Heaven
• Hangman and the Papist
• New World
• Round and Round
• I Only Want My Love to Grow in You
• Benedictus
• Hero and Heroine
• Song of a Sad Little Girl
• Tears and Pavan: Tears/Pavan
• To Be Free
• Part of the Union
• Down by the Sea