Nick Drake Appreciation - Album By Album & All Things Nick Drake*

Narcissus · Apr 8, 2021

CaptainFeedback1 said: ↑

Just stumbled across this thread, I'm in!

I'll write a bit about when and why and everything when I have more time, but I'm looking forward to working through this thread.
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CaptainFeedback1 said: ↑

I still have my copy in the loft. Was great to read something more in depth on ND in pre-internet times. It's amazing 'cult' he is/was considering how perfect his songs are. Inaptitude cited the Belle & Sebastian quote and, while it was hyperbole, you can see the point!

I can still clearly remember the first time I heard ND. I was 17 and over at my friend Adrian's house during the summer. We were smoking and listening to some of his older brother's cool records. Adrian played Bryter Layter and I production instantly held me rapt, waiting ... and then Hazey Jane II (pretty unrepresentative...) blew me away. Perfect. That whole album is perfect, as are the other two. I love them all equally, but Bryter Layter was my intro so I have a soft spot for it. I got the Fruit Tree box soon after. Faultless.

So many exquisite melodies, amazing guitar playing and string arrangements...

I won't name names in case someone likes something that I consider painfully mediocre, but I sometimes use Nick Drake's music as an example of why I can be damning of what I consider to be rubbish music, however popular it may be. How was/is he so underappreciated?? I probably haven't worded that too well but hopefully you get my point!
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Welcome, dig deep, take your time, you have written some lovely words already.

I had that copy of mojo too, kept in a dust jacket. I hope I have it scanned and stored somewhere. It is a great display of how well Mojo appreciated Nick Drake, with about 4 dedication issues thus far!

Anyway, this thread is a beast, which doesn't bite.
Happy reading.

Icewater_7 · Apr 8, 2021

lemonade kid said: ↑

Tuck Box...Review

Nick Drake: Tuck Box /Pitchfork

The posthumous marketing of Nick Drake's music has been arduous and fitful, a decades-long attempt at setting right what everyone agreed went horribly wrong the first time. His new box set Tuck Box, the latest and possibly final repackaging, includes studio albums Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, and Pink Moon as well as two compilations of rarities.

Nick Drake did not lead a colorful life. Shy, abstracted, and bad with eye contact, he shuttled quietly from boarding school to prep school to Cambridge and made few friends along the way. The most rebellious act of his youth was a note politely informing his tutor he was leaving school. His musical career was a disaster, but not a funny or entertaining one—his albums were simply ignored and audiences talked obliviously through his live gigs. He moved back home, fell into a deep depression, and one night, either by accident or on purpose, took too many pills. When he died, there was almost nothing to feel good about.

This has proved a difficult predicament for the record labels charged with profiting off his legacy. The posthumous marketing of Nick Drake's music has been arduous and fitful, a decades-long attempt at setting right what everyone agreed went horribly wrong the first time. First there was 1979's overpriced Fruit Tree box, which bombed. Then came the slightly more successful 1985 best-of Heaven in a Wild Flower and 1986’s Time of No Reply, a collection of rare and officially unreleased tracks. His cult profile rose modestly through the 90s, but it wasn’t until 2000, when “Pink Moon” famously found its way into a Cabrio commercial, that Nick Drake's fortune as a "penniless genius" finally received its uplifting footnote. Since then, there has been a flurry of release activity, all of it packaging the same tiny body of work spanning six years. Nick Drake is finally famous, but it took the record industry 40 years to figure out how to make it happen.

It's worth revisiting this dubious history while considering Tuck Box, the latest and possibly final repackaging. Alongside his three studio albums—Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, and *Pink Moon—*this boxed set includes the 2004 compilation Made to Love Magic, (itself a barely altered repackaging of Time of No Reply) as well as Family Tree, a 2007 collection of Nick Drake's home recordings with a few short, haunting songs by his mother, the folk singer and poet Molly. There is not a single second of new or unreleased music waiting for you inside this handsomely designed object, in other words; the packaging, which replicates the wooden box that Nick Drake’s mother used to send him cakes in while he was at Marlborough College, is the sole original flourish

What Tuck Box offers, then, is simply another chance to revisit Nick Drake's short, sad story. Because Drake died in desolation and obscurity, and because his music grows more influential every year, there will never quite be a bad moment to rediscover him. His three studio albums have settled into cultural totems, albums that anyone hoping to know something about rock history buys sooner or later. Even 40-odd years later, their thumbprint remains unique, a strange and compelling mix of timeless poetic melancholy on the one hand, and cloistered, pampered schoolboy modernity on the other. They sit completely to the left of all rock music, which Drake could care less about; his version of a garage band was a group of boys at his boarding school, one of whom was the grand-nephew of John Maynard Keynes. (Their name was the Perfumed Gardeners.)

Drake was influenced instead by British folk royalty like John Martyn and Bert Jansch, or Ashley Hutchings of the Fairport Convention. When he recorded his debut, 1969’s Five Leaves Left, he must have felt, at least momentarily, that he was joining their ranks. It was Hutchings who had enthusiastically approached Drake in local pub The Roundhouse, offering to pass his information along to the legendary manager Joe Boyd. Drake's entrance into the business, at least, was effortless and auspicious, and he was joined in the Sound Techniques recording studio by a few of his personal heroes. The warm, rounded upright bass playing is from Danny Thompson, a founding member of the Pentangle. Richard Thompson plays the pearly guitar leads. Listening to “Time Has Told Me”, the first song on his debut album, is to hear to what might very well be the happiest and most fulfilling moment of Nick Drake’s professional life.

Even as a 20-year-old, Drake's vision for his music was strikingly assured. He was nervous, fumbling, and difficult to engage in conversation in the studio, but he knew what he wanted. He calmly insisted that Boyd and John Wood hire arranger Robert Kirby, a fellow student at Cambridge. Bewildered, they obeyed, and were rewarded with the breathtaking string chart for “Way to Blue”. With its clean lines and grave elegance, "Way to Blue" suggests the philosophy that would distinguish Nick Drake’s music over the years and damn it during his lifetime: in Joe Boyd’s words, it simply “was not reaching out to you." Drake was painfully English, and showiness wasn’t really in his nature. But profundity glowed from his music.

This approach extends to his guitar playing, which was so obsessively perfect it almost escapes comprehension. You will never hear a single string buzz. It's not the sort of virtuosity that quiets a chattering crowd, but once you've attuned to the absolute silence, it quickly grows otherworldly. Even on densely packed fingerpicking runs like "Day Is Done", each note sits in the mix like a stone at the floor of a clear pond. He was a frighteningly flawless player, in a way that served to magnify his incorporeality: There is no surviving video of Nick Drake playing live or talking. He died in 1974, but his physicality is as remote to our modern imagination as Gustav Mahler's.

His concerns were similarly otherworldly and timeless, informed by a childhood of English Romantic poets. The futility of knowing the mind of another was a persistent theme in his lyrics, which looked right past people to stars, trees, eternity. “Who can know the thoughts of Mary Jane?” Drake muses. “Who can know the reason for her smile?” His music viewed human behavior and its peculiarities with quizzical detachment, even when the case study is Drake himself: “So I'll leave the ways that are making me be/ What I really don't want to be,”, he sings on "Time Has Told Me". Sizing up the enormity of this task, examining how it might be accomplished—these were not really his philosophical concerns. They overwhelmed him or they simply didn’t interest him, but either way, they came to trip him up, as they do us all.

When it was released in the fall of 1969, Five Leaves Left went unnoticed. Island Records had done it no favors. The packaging was insultingly botched; two songs—"Day Is Done” and “Way To Blue”—were switched in the tracklisting and “Three Hours” was mistakenly titled “Sundown”. But Drake was also complicit; he began his first ill-fated tour behind the faltering album, and between songs, he would tune his guitar for minutes on end to stony, uncomfortable silence. He often walked off dejected before finishing his set. He disappeared into dope smoke, a predilection that was slowly hardening into a crutch. He blew off radio sessions and interviews and slowly began retreating into himself. It was under these circumstances that he ventured back into the studio for Bryter Layter, his second full-length.

Ironically, it was initially conceived as his "up" album, a poppy rejoinder to Five Leaves Left. Five Leaves was pastoral, written in the wooded confines of Cambridge. Layter was written in London, and was meant to reflect urbanity. It did, but only from the perspective of Drake's one bloodshot eye, peering out cautiously at the world. Over woolly saxophone on "At the Chime of a City Clock", he confesses "I stay indoors beneath the floors and talk with neighbors only/ The games you play make people say you're either weird or lonely". Over the peppy horn charts of "Hazey Jane II", Drake sings lightly of how it feels "when the world it gets so crowded that you can't look out the window in the morning." The city, on Bryter Layter, is one long harsh unpleasant noise occurring outside. Nothing good or stimulating seems to happen there.

The music, however, is brighter—this is the Nick Drake you can hear reflected in latter-period Belle and Sebastian. He rehearsed with a band for the first time, including other members of Fairport Convention, and the result is the most fulsome studio recording he ever managed. Some of the arrangement decisions remain bewildering—the gospel backup vocals, jazz-comping guitar and noodling piano crowding the space on "Poor Boy" remain as jarring now as they were when the album was released. On "Fly" and "Northern Sky", Drake worked with John Cale, and you can hear a more natural dynamic in their collaboration. It's either a shame or a relief they didn't work together longer: "Fly" and "Northern Sky"are the two most affecting songs on Bryter, but it's also likely Cale introduced Drake to heroin.

On Pink Moon, Nick Drake’s final official album, there is one single overdub: the piano part drifting over the title track. The rest is just Drake, his pristine, eerily perfect playing, his mumbling, and silence. Bryter had also sold poorly and received near-zero notices—the most favorable review compared it to "Classical Gas". By now, he hardly spoke to anyone; in between takes, John Wood remembers, Drake betrayed neither pleasure or displeasure. He simply sat. Keith Morris, the photographer who shot the album's photography, remarked that working with Drake was "like working with still life." The album was recorded in two evenings, by his bewildered crew, who were uncertain of what they were even making. When Drake was finished, he dropped the manila package, almost without a word, at Island Records.

A "pink moon" is a baleful symbol, a sign of impending death or calamity. On "Pink Moon", it's "gonna get ye all." On paper, this sentiment reads like vindictive rage, but on record, it sounds contemplative. Drake's voice never conveyed palpable anger or sadness; he had a slight, gentle voice and upper-class accent, the product of his upbringing, clipped and clean, and his guitar, as always, rang out with a crystalline purity. His music is so consoling that the darkness at its heart is not always accessible. It's almost impossible to hear the emotional abandon in Pink Moon, then, without the taste of his first two albums lingering on your mouth. It's only then that the bone-dry resonance of the guitars registers as slightly alarming, and the backdrop of silence suggests both the purity of Drake's vision and also something darker: like someone who has dropped out of the world, mumbling prophecies.

On "Place to Be", he remembers his youth only as a time he "didn't see the truth hanging from the door"; now, he is "weaker than the palest blue." "Know" consists of just four lines—"You know that I love you/ You know I don't care/ You know that I see you/ You know I'm not there." It sounds like a back-and-forth between Drake and the world at large. There is a stillness to Nick Drake's music that bewitches anyone who gets near enough, and Pink Moon is its purest expression. It remains the Nick Drake record most people begin with, and for good reason.

The eleven songs on Pink Moon were not Nick Drake's final recordings, however. In the last year of his life, he would return to the studio, his fingernails long, his hair dirty, his clothes in shambles, to cut beginning tracks for what would have been his fourth album. They went poorly. Joe Boyd recalls that Drake, the flawless technician, was no longer able to play and sing at the same time, so the sessions limped agonizingly while he fumbled through guitar takes and then returned to sing, shakily. These four songs—"Black Eyed Dog", "Rider on the Wheel", "Tow the Line", and "Hanging on a Star"—are the only truly discomfiting records he ever made. On "Black Eyed Dog", he sang tremulously over some hammered harmonics about growing old and wanting to go home. Within four months, he was dead.

The most consequential material on Made to Love Magic remain these final tracks. The sundry unreleased tracks, such as the hallucinatory “Clothes of Sand” and the odd, jaunty “Mayfair", are interesting but inessential. The rest of the album is the usual posthumous footnotes tumble: A version of "River Man" recorded when Drake was still at college; a scrapped version of "Three Days" from the tentative early sessions of Five Leaves Left; an early alternate take of "Thoughts of Mary Jane", with distracted, noodly lead guitar playing from Richard Thompson. There are a handful of performances from Drake's first-ever public concert, the so-called "work tape" from his college days. They don't do much to enrich the Nick Drake story.

Family Tree, though, is odder and more interesting. The album, which was only released in 2007, compiles all the known existing home recordings of Nick Drake—music he recorded at his parents' house for fun or to kill time; rehearsals of Mozart trios with his aunt and uncle (he played clarinet). The 28 tracks consist largely of covers and traditionals, including a run through "All My Trials", sung with his sister Gabrielle.

Family Tree doesn’t give the world any classic lost Nick Drake music, but it does give the sensation, achieved with a little effort, of what it might have been like to sit in the Drakes' parlor in Far Leys. You can hear the actual clink of actual tea cups in the background of his cover of Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time". You get to hear Nick Drake messing about on guitar, which sounds better than anyone else's. His version of "Cocaine Blues" is enjoyable both because it's a looser and bluesier Nick Drake than we're used to, and also because of his pronunciation of "cocaine," which suggests a side of finger sandwiches.

Family Tree also includes two of his mother's haunting, intriguingly wayward songs. "Poor Mum" makes for an odd companion with her son's "Poor Boy"; "Joy as it flies cannot be caught", she sings, searchingly, her voice climbing into a breath-catching question mark. There is an unmistakable hint of the fatalism that trailed her son's music in these recordings, and in "Do You Ever Remember", she sings lines that could lead directly into "Time Has Told Me": "Time was ever a vagabond/ Time was always a thief/ Time can steal away happiness/ But time can take away grief."

This was Nick Drake's existential dilemma: He would rather ponder time than observe the present, would sooner gaze into the sea than engage with the people around him. School friends recall conversations about spirits and "the little people" as the only times they saw him animated. The rage he directed at his producer Joe Boyd for his failed career on "Hanging on a Star" ("Why leave me hanging on a star/ When you deem me so high"?) was in part the sound of someone realizing that their worldly woes have slowly blotted out their view of the stars, perhaps forever. "I could have been a signpost, could've been a clock," he mused on "One of These Things First"; this is the sentiment of someone who barely assented to the burdens of being a person. For such a soul, there can never be such a thing as a career. There can only be a legacy.
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Just out curiosity, went into Amazon to see if any copies of the Tuck Box were still for sale. There were and prices ranged from $170 to $200. I then looked at the reviews and was truck by a 2 star on so I’m going to try and paste it in here:
Tuck Box review
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2014
The music of Nick Drake is wonderful - the three albums released by Nick (Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, Pink Moon) are wonderful, a rich legacy left behind at the young man's premature death

However, this new box set offers no new music, and, really, the previous Fruit Tree box sets (the first with FLL, BL, PM, Time of No Reply, booklet of lyrics & essay on Hannibal; the later (2007) reissue with a nice dvd (A skin too few) and (another) book included with FLL, BL, PM) are probably cheaper to pick up now. Here in the states the full retail price on Amazon for this release seems to be close to $100 from Amazon

I'm not really sure who this box set is being marketed to. Most fans will already have the lot. Why Cally can't just put out the off air recordings of Nick playing the BBC, or outtakes from Five Leaves Left (with the original orchestration previous to Kirby stepping in)

This set doesn't even include "Plaisir d'amour" which appears on a UK compilation import (Collection)

Its great music, but there really needs to be a Fruit Tree II with everything thats already out there of Nick, or owned by the estate him playing at Aix en provence, him playing Michael Row the Boat Ashort at the odd party, home recordings of "Fly" being worked out (Brian Wells had a few takes of the track), work tapes from 68 that the late Scott Appell had from the family. I'm just surprised they're releasing this material one more time, no matter how good it is.

Narcissus · Apr 8, 2021

Icewater_7 said: ↑

Just out curiosity, went into Amazon to see if any copies of the Tuck Box were still for sale. There were and prices ranged from $170 to $200. I then looked at the reviews and was truck by a 2 star on so I’m going to try and paste it in here:
Tuck Box review
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2014
The music of Nick Drake is wonderful - the three albums released by Nick (Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, Pink Moon) are wonderful, a rich legacy left behind at the young man's premature death

However, this new box set offers no new music, and, really, the previous Fruit Tree box sets (the first with FLL, BL, PM, Time of No Reply, booklet of lyrics & essay on Hannibal; the later (2007) reissue with a nice dvd (A skin too few) and (another) book included with FLL, BL, PM) are probably cheaper to pick up now. Here in the states the full retail price on Amazon for this release seems to be close to $100 from Amazon

I'm not really sure who this box set is being marketed to. Most fans will already have the lot. Why Cally can't just put out the off air recordings of Nick playing the BBC, or outtakes from Five Leaves Left (with the original orchestration previous to Kirby stepping in)

This set doesn't even include "Plaisir d'amour" which appears on a UK compilation import (Collection)

Its great music, but there really needs to be a Fruit Tree II with everything thats already out there of Nick, or owned by the estate him playing at Aix en provence, him playing Michael Row the Boat Ashort at the odd party, home recordings of "Fly" being worked out (Brian Wells had a few takes of the track), work tapes from 68 that the late Scott Appell had from the family. I'm just surprised they're releasing this material one more time, no matter how good it is.
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Very important post from you here which ties a few of our concerns together in a well worded case.

My opinion, it is either a rights issue, so the owner of the reel which contains Place to Be finger picked, will not sell to Cally for any amount of money. Same with others.

The Family tree idiocy is either a way to stop people from buying well made bootlegs, or Cally being a buisnesnes man before consideration of presenting a quality compilation of Nicks tender ouvre.

All you need in my opinion is the Hannibal Fruit Tree Box set on Vinyl, and the Made to Love Magic vinyl.

If you really want to get all, then there is one more option for you. Time Has Told Me Vol. I II & III bootleg.

Icewater_7 · Apr 8, 2021

alexpop said: ↑

Five Leaves Left
500 sounds to be accurate.
Reissued in 1979.
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Huh, then I really do have a rarity in my collection. Way too far back there to remember exactly where, but either at a used record store or a record convention I picked up a cheap used UK version of FLL because I wanted one that was closer to the original source. It was only last year I saw a first pressing go up in eBay for several thousand dollars. The listing described the mistakes on the label and jacket that Nick was so upset about when the record was first released. Well, I had to dig mine out and surprise mine had the right Island label design and all the mistakes in it. Sort of blew me away. The jacket is worn but the vinyl plays really strong. I’d like to keep it in the family and hope my heirs will too. Have to curate it in a write up for whenever our estate gets transferred. I want whoever gets it to know how important it was to me and its value in both music and collector’s interest.

Icewater_7 · Apr 8, 2021

Narcissus said: ↑

Very important post from you here which ties a few of our concerns together in a well worded case.

My opinion, it is either a rights issue, so the owner of the reel which contains Place to Be finger picked, will not sell to Cally for any amount of money. Same with others.

The Family tree idiocy is either a way to stop people from buying well made bootlegs, or Cally being a buisnesnes man before consideration of presenting a quality compilation of Nicks tender ouvre.

All you need in my opinion is the Hannibal Fruit Tree Box set on Vinyl, and the Made to Love Magic vinyl.

If you really want to get all, then there is one more option for you. Time Has Told Me Vol. I II & III bootleg.
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Something in me is resisting the bootlegs, and I haven’t yet figured out why. I do have the original UK 1979 vinyl Fruit Tree and the Made to Love Magic CD. This gets me some of the best recorded and mastered analog and digital works. But, I’m still missing some recordings I might really enjoy.

Narcissus · Apr 8, 2021

Icewater_7 said: ↑

Something in me is resisting the bootlegs, and I haven’t yet figured out why. I do have the original UK 1979 vinyl Fruit Tree and the Made to Love Magic CD. This gets me some of the best recorded and mastered analog and digital works. But, I’m still missing some recordings I might really enjoy.
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Understood and your resistance may well be morally correct.
However, I want to hear Nick Drake at his best, so I will find it with or without approval from a company.
Hope this helps.

alexpop · Apr 8, 2021

Isn’t the new Nick Drake biography OUT this year... 2021?

lemonade kid · Apr 9, 2021

Icewater_7 said: ↑

Huh, then I really do have a rarity in my collection. Way too far back there to remember exactly where, but either at a used record store or a record convention I picked up a cheap used UK version of FLL because I wanted one that was closer to the original source. It was only last year I saw a first pressing go up in eBay for several thousand dollars. The listing described the mistakes on the label and jacket that Nick was so upset about when the record was first released. Well, I had to dig mine out and surprise mine had the right Island label design and all the mistakes in it. Sort of blew me away. The jacket is worn but the vinyl plays really strong. I’d like to keep it in the family and hope my heirs will too. Have to curate it in a write up for whenever our estate gets transferred. I want whoever gets it to know how important it was to me and its value in both music and collector’s interest.
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wow! I was wondering if anyone here had the first pressing FLL with all the cover errors! Can you post a pic..I've never seen it!

lemonade kid · Apr 9, 2021

Narcissus said: ↑

Very important post from you here which ties a few of our concerns together in a well worded case.

My opinion, it is either a rights issue, so the owner of the reel which contains Place to Be finger picked, will not sell to Cally for any amount of money. Same with others.

The Family tree idiocy is either a way to stop people from buying well made bootlegs, or Cally being a buisnesnes man before consideration of presenting a quality compilation of Nicks tender ouvre.

All you need in my opinion is the Hannibal Fruit Tree Box set on Vinyl, and the Made to Love Magic vinyl.

If you really want to get all, then there is one more option for you. Time Has Told Me Vol. I II & III bootleg.
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And the Fruit Tree box with A Skin Too Few. I don't have the vinyl Hannibal box (I have the CD set --paid $30 for it a couple years ago NM++) and the CD/DVD Fruit Tree with A Skin Too Few...
I have very nice Island heavy vinyl reissues of the three. The Peel Session is vital also.

I do have a variant of A Day Gone By, 2 CD, with 57 tracks, which has most but not all...and it sounds great.
Sorry "estate" but I'll get these any way I can if you won't do it!

Invisible Hits: The Unreleased Nick Drake / Pitchfork

lemonade kid · Apr 9, 2021

CaptainFeedback1 said: ↑

Apart from that final session when Nick was in such a state that he could no longer play and sing at the same time. At least that's what I remember reading...
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Correct.

Icewater_7 · Apr 9, 2021

lemonade kid said: ↑

wow! I was wondering if anyone here had the first pressing FLL with all the cover errors! Can you post a pic..I've never seen it!

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Sure I’ll do that now that you taught me how to post photos. Need to try that anyway as I have some forthcoming in a different thread.

EmceeEscher · Apr 9, 2021

I just want the Peel Session mastered well and re-issued on vinyl. That seems to be an omission at this time.

lothianlad · Apr 9, 2021

I picked up a decent condition version of the original 'fruit tree' box from Hannibal/ryko a wee while back and I absolutely love it, I actually listen to it more than the reissues.

It also has the original compilation of 'time of no reply'.

alexpop · Apr 9, 2021

Elton John is getting an lost album recorded in 1968, released.

Maybe ... Nick Drake will get a fourth album put out after all.

alexpop · Apr 9, 2021

Weekend muse...
What did Nick Drake think of his contemporaries? He wasn’t keen that John Martyn went electric( sold out) He heard Lennon‘s plastic Ono band ( don’t think he liked that).
What about Bowie? Cat Stevens ( too commercial ) ? Zappa ... Hendrix ... Velvet Underground... The Byrds ?

I never read anything about what films he liked..if he even went to the cinema ?

Max Florian · Apr 12, 2021

Italian musician Roberto Angelini did a Pink Moon tribute album some years ago. Last year I saw a very good Nick documentary produced for Sky Arte TV (payview and Italian only) which starred him and violinist Rodrigo D'Erasmo covering Nick's stuff, making a pilgrimage to Tanworth, even working with John Wood in a local studio. Here they are on Italian national radio and TV covering two of Nick's songs from the album:

Radio2 Social Club - S2020/21 - Rodrigo D'Erasmo e Roberto Angelini: "Know" - Video - RaiPlay

Radio2 Social Club - S2020/21 - Rodrigo D'Erasmo e Roberto Angelini: "Pink Moon" - Video - RaiPlay

Here is the trailer for the Nick documentary for Sky Arte TV:

Max Florian · Apr 12, 2021

Marco Parente ranks among the best Italian singer-songwriters since the late '90s (he had first been a wonderfully original drummer/percussionist throughout that decade). In 2006 he (along with the previously mentioned Angelini) participated in a Nick tribute concert set up in Italy that had Robert Kirby as special guest, curating the string arrangements and conducting. Some years later Parente seized that opportunity and sent Kirby a song of his own that was about Nick, to which the latter then wrote the string arrangement, which is likely to have been his last ever commission. The song is full of recognisable Nick signposts, both in the music and the words. The title means "Always" and the lyrics go, "he waits for the day to begin and be done / his voice trembles not when he sings of the sun / rising to a major chord, as if to say / when the night has ended, the day has its way / always".

lemonade kid · Apr 14, 2021

For fingerstyle lovers...Joe Pug

Hymn #101

lemonade kid · Apr 14, 2021

Max Florian said: ↑

Marco Parente ranks among the best Italian singer-songwriters since the late '90s (he had first been a wonderfully original drummer/percussionist throughout that decade). In 2006 he (along with the previously mentioned Angelini) participated in a Nick tribute concert set up in Italy that had Robert Kirby as special guest, curating the string arrangements and conducting. Some years later Parente seized that opportunity and sent Kirby a song of his own that was about Nick, to which the latter then wrote the string arrangement, which is likely to have been his last ever commission. The song is full of recognisable Nick signposts, both in the music and the words. The title means "Always" and the lyrics go, "he waits for the day to begin and be done / his voice trembles not when he sings of the sun / rising to a major chord, as if to say / when the night has ended, the day has its way / always".
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Thanks....very nice!

I enjoy and treasure all the Nick Drake lovers here that also wish to share the artists
you all love that are loosely or closely related, somehow, to our love for Nick.

Artists we Nick Drake fans get excited about that we share here
...always welcome..thanks to all!

I hear it here and in all Oren does:

Oren Lavie (The Opposite Side Of The Sea)

Locked In A Room

Icewater_7 · Apr 14, 2021

lemonade kid said: ↑

wow! I was wondering if anyone here had the first pressing FLL with all the cover errors! Can you post a pic..I've never seen it!

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Here is the cover of my “first pressing” FLL LP that I bought cheaply at either a used record store or a used record convention I attended (just can’t remember which). Came to find within the last year that it is an original 1969 first edition. Recent sales of an FFL 1st pressings like mine have reached about $3500 and I just saw one offered on Discogs for $5491 by a seller in Germany. The total of FFLs sold in Nick’s lifetime could be as low as 500 copies or at most several thousand. What validates a copy as a 1969 original are several misprinting mistakes which I will document now in the thread. Bear with me as this will be my first time pasting in multiple photos going back and forth while in Safari on my iPad.

The first “mistake” is on the top right side of the gatefold. The “Three Hours” track here is misnamed as “Sundown.” But there is more, look at the last verse. It is not the one Nick used in the final recording take. It should be a repeat of the first verse. If anyone knows story on where that 4th verse on the jacket came from and why it went away I’d be very curious to know.

For the next mistake we go to the song list on the rear outside face of the jacket. The titles for Side 1 tracks 4 & 5 are not the order one hears on the vinyl. What actually plays last is “Day Is Done.”

Original editions of the 1969 releases are also verified by having what collectors call the “pink black block” label design as shown below with the deep inset groove. On my pressing the label for Side 1 does have the correct play order for tracks 4 & 5 while the jacket does not.

A parallel production lot of first pressings actually had that same song order mistake an both the jacket and the label. That lot was sent to the London Phonogram Ltd pressing plant and it had “smooth” label surfaces. My production lot had the textured or called “rough” labels and was pressed by the Orlake Records plant in Essex.

The last known mistake is in the credits. Look again at the credits for Side 2 song 5, “Saturday Sun” The percussionist Tristan Fry’s first name is misspelled as “Tristam.” I did a search on “Tristam” in the Discogs database and found other albums crediting Tristan with that same misspelling. Either they made the same mistake or possibly he answered to either spelling. However, “Tristan” is his true birth name (October 25, 1946) and the FFL spelling is considered by most curators to be a misprint.

I can empathize with Nick when he discovered these mistakes were on copies already out there for sale. It was his his debut album, he worked hard for it, and I’m sure he wanted Witchseason and Island to meet his standards of perfection. Perhaps his distress was a combination of anger, embarrassment, and disappointment?

(boy constructing this reply was really painful doing on my iPad. I had exit the thread, go to the freeimage page to upload the photo and get a link copy. Then had to logout and log back in here so my screen touch could access the reply text and continue construction. Finally I could I paste in the photo link. That was repeated over and over. Maybe it would be easier on my Mac?)

lemonade kid · Apr 14, 2021

Gregory Alan Isakov

Icewater_7 said: ↑

Here is the cover of my “first pressing” FLL LP that I bought cheaply at either a used record store or a used record convention I attended (just can’t remember which). Came to find within the last year that it is an original 1969 first edition. Recent sales of an FFL 1st pressings like mine have reached about $3500 and I just saw one offered on Discogs for $5491 by a seller in Germany. The total of FFLs sold in Nick’s lifetime could be as low as 500 copies or at most several thousand. What validates a copy as a 1969 original are several misprinting mistakes which I will document now in the thread. Bear with me as this will be my first time pasting in multiple photos going back and forth while in Safari on my iPad.

The first “mistake” is on the top right side of the gatefold. The “Three Hours” track here is misnamed as “Sundown.” But there is more, look at the last verse. It is not the one Nick used in the final recording take. It should be a repeat of the first verse. If anyone knows story on where that 4th verse on the jacket came from and why it went away I’d be very curious to know.

For the next mistake we go to the song list on the rear outside face of the jacket. The titles for Side 1 tracks 4 & 5 are not the order one hears on the vinyl. What actually plays last is “Day Is Done.”

Original editions of the 1969 releases are also verified by having what collectors call the “pink black block” label design as shown below with the deep inset groove. On my pressing the label for Side 1 does have the correct play order for tracks 4 & 5 while the jacket does not.

A parallel production lot of first pressings actually had that same song order mistake an both the jacket and the label. That lot was sent to the London Phonogram Ltd pressing plant and it had “smooth” label surfaces. My production lot had the textured or called “rough” labels and was pressed by the Orlake Records plant in Essex.

The last known mistake is in the credits. Look again at the credits for Side 2 song 5, “Saturday Sun” The percussionist Tristan Fry’s first name is misspelled as “Tristam.” I did a search on “Tristam” in the Discogs database and found other albums crediting Tristan with that same misspelling. Either they made the same mistake or possibly he answered to either spelling. However, “Tristan” is his true birth name (October 25, 1946) and the FFL spelling is considered by most curators to be a misprint.

I can empathize with Nick when he discovered these mistakes were on copies already out there for sale. It was his his debut album, he worked hard for it, and I’m sure he wanted Witchseason and Island to meet his standards of perfection. Perhaps his distress was a combination of anger, embarrassment, and disappointment?

(boy constructing this reply was really painful doing on my iPad. I had exit the thread, go to the freeimage page to upload the photo and get a link copy. Then had to logout and log back in here so my screen touch could access the reply text and continue construction. Finally I could I paste in the photo link. That was repeated over and over. Maybe it would be easier on my Mac?)
Click to expand...

Thank you!!

Icewater_7 · Apr 14, 2021

lemonade kid said: ↑

Gregory Alan Isakov

Thank you!!

Click to expand...

Your’e welcome, glad to see all my graphics came thru. Now we have it documented in the thread of all things Nick.

alexpop · Apr 14, 2021

Seen the DSd SACD Nick Drake comp today bargain price £2.00(charity shop). Didn’t get as I’ve had my copy for years, never play it. Comp wise think it’s the track continuity that doesn’t work for me.

Finchingfield · Apr 14, 2021

FYI, Richard Thompson's new autobio "Beeswing 1967-75" is out, 304 pages. Nick is mentioned on 7 of them, going by the index. Don't know what is said, haven't bought it yet. (Also Sandy Denny is mentioned on 65 pages.)

lothianlad · Apr 14, 2021

Finchingfield said: ↑

FYI, Richard Thompson's new autobio "Beeswing 1967-75" is out, 304 pages. Nick is mentioned on 7 of them, going by the index. Don't know what is said, haven't bought it yet. (Also Sandy Denny is mentioned on 65 pages.)
Click to expand...

Nothing that revelatory. They both really liked Delius it seems.

Thompson is very respectful about Nick and appreciative of his legacy, I think there might have been some jealousy going on but both men were both such quiet personalities they didn't really get to know each other.

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