Anne Briggs – "The Complete Topic Recordings(1963 - 71)" (Bo'Weavil Recordings – weavil 10) 2006

A fine East Midlands lass,with flowing dark hair and an intense stare.....just like your scribe;-).Anne Briggs was only sixteen when she started performing her puritanical solo and unaccompanied Folk singing career at the Nottingham Goose Fair back in 1960. No interest in Johnny Kidd or Cliff and The Shadows for young Anne.When she sings its as if Rock'n'Roll had never happened.....Jazz either for that matter. Instruments???.. that's for sell-outs...the 'please like me' brigade.Or the rogue folkies who formed pop groups, 'The please please like me' brigade, like The Beatles and The Hollies,who were for all intents and purposes electrified Folk groups with a backbeat. Her first EP was out on legendary folk label 'Topic' during the height of Beatlemania in '64,as if from the times before electricity.She sang about the less happy aspects of love and life, unlike our luvable mop-tops.This was about how crap progress was,and the pitfalls of love.Kinda like a sixties version of Straight Edge Punk.

She shunned the spotlight,even refusing to record anything for a while,music was in the moment and shouldn't be repeated.She had no interest in the feminist movement because she WAS feminism.No need for bra burning,she did whatever she wanted without permission from men or women alike.Patronisingly labelled a 'Wild Child' for her attitude to life,especially because she was female,and ladies didn't do things like get drunk and sleep around did they?Er...yes they did.....still do apparently,but now they can play Football or Rugby.....that's progress????

Eventually,of course, the odd bazouki or guitar cropped up,and she even started writing her own songs;but by 1973 she gave up music to live in the scottish wilderness with her Forester hubby, and had a family.Hardly ever to been seen or heard again.One of the very few musicians never to really sell-out to the man,or men.

She was also the source for several of the traditional songs which were popified by The Pentangle and Fairport among others, including "Blackwaterside." Of which former dalliance Bert Jansch's instrumental accompaniment to this song was later copied ,read as 'Ripped Off' by Led Zeppelin's Jimmy 'I ran off with a fourteen year old and nobodies done anything about it' Page; who recorded it as "Black Mountain Side”(notice any similarities there?) and credited himself as the writer....Not the first time Jim was known to do that.....for example probably 'that song', currently in litigation, also? Never forgiven those hairy fuckers for not paying Sandy Denny for her work on Led Zep IV.Twats!

Sandy,influenced by all aspects 'Anne' since she was a 16 year old witnessing a woman on stage in the folk clubs of London,was a good friend,as well as a Fan of Briggs,but could no way match her purist approach to the Folk Lifestyle.As much as she would love to give up the quest for fame or her luxuries,she couldn't.So she wrote a song for Fotheringay about her barrier busting chum, "The Pond and The Stream.

Anne's pure unadorned voice is a beacon for honest simplicity,and intensity,the very opposite to the vocal acrobatics that the modern wave of pop singers torture our ears and minds with today.It was a back to basics approach that would inform the punk music of the future.After all, Punk music ,IS, Folk music innit?

Tracklist:

The EP & Compilations:

A1 The Recruited Collier 2:42
A2 The Doffing Mistress 1:27
A3 Lowlands 3:15
A4 My Bonnie Boy 2:53
A5 Polly Vaughan 4:25
B1 Rosemary Lane 2:44
B2 Gathering Rushes In The Month Of May 4:51
B3 The Whirly Whorl 1:17
B4 The Stonecutter Boy 1:57
B5 Martinmas Time 4:56

The LP:

C1 Blackwater Side 3:54
C2 The Snow It Melts The Soonest 2:23
C3 Willie O Winsbury 5:33
C4 Go Your Way 4:14
C5 Thorneymoor Woods 3:36
D1 The Cuckoo 3:11
D2 Reynardine 3:00
D3 Young Tambling 10:44
D4 Living By The Water 3:55
D5 Maa Bonny Lad 1:18

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