This review is written by Dai Woosnam, daigress@hotmail.com, 7/04
Some of us spent the early Seventies in a haze of smoke and
staggered about under the influence of various other illegal
substances. As a result, we have a similarly hazy memory of the
plethora of artistes who worked up and down the Folk Circuit.
But you’d have needed to be COMATOSE for several years in order for
Decameron not to have made an impact on you. From 1972-1975 they were
possibly the biggest “box-office” band (Steeleye and Fairport excepted)
performing under the FOLK banner.
They produced four albums: the first, strangely delayed until 1973, the
second came out in 1974, and one each in the following two years. And
by 1976, a decision was made to call it a day.
But anyone who saw them will like me never forget them.
They oozed quality, and had no real peers. What they did, no other band
even remotely emulated. By that I mean the combination of instruments
voices and vocal styles.
Listening to their material again after all these years, I can now see
that a lot of what they did was not quite as ORIGINAL as I recall
feeling it was at the time. You can hear major influences at work here:
CSN&Y, Beachboys/Jan&Dean-type West Coast surfin’ sounds
etc….but perhaps these are not so much “influences” as candidates for a
gentle parody or two.
But as we learn from the informative liner-notes, the band would
practise harmony on the long journeys between gigs. Indeed, they would
beat time on the dashboard of their Ford Transit. And as a result, they
got mighty good at it, and could authentically produce a variety of
vocal harmonies, and could change musical horses in mid-stream … or, if
you prefer, mid SET.
Thus it was that their gigs always left me feeling that the time had
gone very quickly: that was inevitably because they did not go in for
repetition, and thus the sheer VARIETY of their performance made one
never think of looking at one’s watch.
It is great to hear Decameron again. Alas their first album “Say Hello
To The Band” is out of bounds for this anthology: apparently -
according to veteran music journalist Paul Weir (responsible for much
of the liner booklet) the tapes are “lurking undiscovered in a
vault somewhere"! And so it is that this double CD basically consists
of the total output of albums 2-4, with a few bonus tracks thrown in. A
couple of live tracks from “Reunion” concerts and the aforementioned
“West Coast” stuff that they’d made under the alias of The Magnificent
Mercury Brothers.
It is a pity that their first album is out of the reckoning, but if ONE
album has to be out of the equation, let it be the first and not the
second, “Mammoth Special”. This was the album that really pulled up
some trees for them: and this is the one I recall in a dozen
bed-sitters next to the hookah pipes.
Listening to their output all these years later, some things become
self-evident. Johnny Coppin’s voice really WAS that remarkable and
pure; some of their sounds have dated somewhat and haven’t travelled
too well down the years; the Coppin/Bell songs are respectable stabs at
memorability rather than top-drawer; and above all, it is clear to me
that Decameron were a band to “see perform”, rather than “listen to
recordings of” some 30 years later.
In live performance there were no better. And thus this
twin CD will be a “must” for all those people who remember them as
nostalgically as I do. But if you are too young to have seen them, then I would probably say
save your money for something special. This is merely
(“merely”? Ha!) “very pleasant”.
The album is available worldwide from Sanctuary Records of London, Englandwww.sanctuaryrecordsgroup.co.uk -info@sanctuaryrecords.co.uk.
Dai Woosnam
Grimsby, England
daigress@hotmail.com
Copyright © 1998-2008 Kevin & Maxine’s Celtic & Folk Music CD Reviews. All rights reserved.
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