Artist: Bert Jansch

Bert at his best, 2009-08-21
Having had this album on vinyl since the mid seventies i can only say the cd version is superb.A great mix of berts own songs and great arrangements of traditional songs.His versions of pretty saro and the curragh of kildare are highlights of an album packed with highlights.Berts own Daybreak and One to a hundred are as evocative has anything he's ever written.Couple this with some great playing from bert and rod clements et al and you've got a very fine album indeed.Buy it and see why we still rave about him after over forty years of playing

Artist: Bert Jansch

Vintage Jansch, 2010-07-17
Classic period Jansch. It's so nice to have this stuff from old vinyls available again. Repro quality sounds perfect to me.

Artist: Bert Jansch, John Renbourn

Inspired, 2007-07-15
Why does Amazon attribute this to Bert Jansch? If ever you were looking for an inspired collaboration of two equal partners, then surely this delivers the goods. More than forty years on and it still gives me shivers. I have several versions of 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' and this version stands with the best of them. 'Stepping Stones' continues to make me wince with delight, though I must have heard it a hundred times. And 'After the Dance' always leaves me wanting more. John Renbourn came up, less than two years later, with 'Sir John Alot Of Merrie Englandes Musyk Thyng And Ye Grene Knyghte', surely one of the most cringemaking titles ever contrived but also a seminal and utterly brilliant album which I still rank amongst my top ten of all time. Virtually simultaneously, the first of the Pentangle albums was released. Three gems.

Artist: Bert Jansch

Great, 2010-02-08
I love this. Discovered the album on Spotify, brought on Amazon.
The music is great and the recording is perfect.

Artist: Bert Jansch

One of the Best, 2010-03-11
This is one of my favourite Jansch CD's and it is a Classic which you will enjoy and be safe with. Enjoy it for now as in his later years Bert loses the plot.

Artist: Bert Jansch

Outstanding, 2010-03-11
Classic Bert thank God it's not one of his new CD's. If you love Bert as he was before he went all weird then this is for you. It is almost a relief to play this CD.

Artist: Bert Jansch

Strange and Beautiful, 2008-11-15
This is a weird , strange and magical release which seems to come from some deep and dark place in Berts soul . Absolutely impossible to get a true handle on this , its been fascinating and beguiling me for ages.
An absolute classic.

Artist: Bert Jansch

after all these years, 2009-08-15
After all these years it's great to have this on CD. (There was Three Card Trick which had selections from the 3 Charisma albums)The opening sequence of tracks is one of Bert's very best.

Artist: Bert Jansch

Five star review 10 star album, 2008-08-11
Ok let's get the guest star issue over with first.

Yes they are wyrdy beardie folkies but speaking as one who loves the lysergic twist this is not a bad thing. Beth Orton has a modicum of beatastic fame and has come out the other side relatively unscathed. The Espers crew know how to spook things up deliciously. Love that Cello. Devendra is just Devendra and keeps things mellow, So far so wyrd,

All of this frippery obviously keeps young Bert atuned to the contempoary ether because this is a fine album. The title song is the best one here; it is a belter and stands in my top 5 Bert tunes (I accept I have not heard all of 304 odd or something but a fair smatterring over the years.) Anyway the hairs on my neck tell me it's a goody.

As regards the vocals - they're rough and ready. They do what they say. On "Katie Cruel" Devendra and Beth work magic but if you are expecting precision singing you've come to the wrong CD.

The beauty and strength of this CD is the diversity of tone even if the moods is maintained. I am not a fan generally of guest stars, figuring that they obscure the main event (Come in Carlos Santana) but here they add and compliment - and it works a treat. At times it is a bit like a fab home made compilation. Bert's playing is spot on and joyful - when compared on a a scale of dourness 1-5, Bert usually ranks just below Gordon Brown - but here he must only be a 3.5.

On "Texas Cowboy USA" is a bass driven polemic about Bush Jnr - yes really! Even the his Bobness should cover this. "Magdalina's dance" an instrumental features the banjo and brings to mind Sufjan Stevens - again contemporary stuff that is rooted in the past. What goes around comes around.

Not everyones cup of tea, granted. Not everyone likes and 18 year old malt. That said, can we arrange a whip round for a new set of ears for those who only gave this less than 5 stars?

I commend this CD to the house.

Artist: Bert Jansch

A piece of history, 2010-03-14
I saw Bert Jansch in the winter of '63 at the Bluebell Inn Folk Club in Hull. I was at school and was progressing from Beatles three-chord bashes to Kingston Trio three-chord flingerstyle without any syncopation. Jansch was introduced by The Watersons, who hosted the club, as a new guitar player from Edinburgh. The only song I remember from that gig was Running From Home, which he played twice, the second time in response to a request from the audience. It was a revelation. I had never heard syncopated clawhammer before and I had to learn it. The album came out some time later, about a year I think. In the meantime I had got the basics of syncopated clawhammer from Joan Baez's House Carpenter, so when the album came out I spent hours trying to work out & play Running From Home. I got the syncopation, tuned the bass string up a semitone to make the thumb-fretting easier and I was away. I gradually learned most of the other tracks, culminating in Veronica, which is still something I enjoy playing both on record and on my guitar. I still have the scratchy original on vinyl. Jansch spawned so much. OK, Davy Graham was more of an innovator and, I suppose, technically superior, and Jansch developed the traditional arm of his repertoire after listening to and learning from Anne Briggs, but Jansch wrote beautiful songs and his guitar was always tasty and subtle. And this record started it all off. Without this, John Renbourn might have struggled to get out of the clubs, Davy graham might not have got so well-known so quickly and hundreds of amateurs like me might have never got beyond the Kingston Trio. So, God bless you, Bert, and thank you. This album is a piece of history.