Friday 23 August 2013

A Path to Follow (1981)


Between Autumn 1980 and Spring 1982, weekly music nights were held upstairs at Bangor's Glanrafon Pub every Friday. Generally these would feature a couple of local or visiting acts playing regular sets in a friendly pub style environment. Sometimes however, these nights were augmented by more elaborate theme nights where special one-off performances were presented, never to be repeated. We have already uploaded one example in the "Psychedelic Night" from 27th October 1981, and now we are pleased to dig out another of those 'special' nights from our archives.

Dating from earlier in 1981 - the exact date is lost in the  mists of time, although was most likely around April, A Path to Follow drew on a pool of mostly Bangor based musicians who collaborated in various combinations during the evening. Although loosely thematically linked, the evening's six distinct sections covered a wide range of styles, taking in jazz, country, industrial electronica, psych rock, neo-classicism and even medieval mystery plays.

Programme (outside)
The Travelling On section of the evening was performed by an early incarnation of The Ghostriders who at the time were a duo of Dav Devalle and Rob Parry, augmented by tapes of 'found sound'. A particularly rare treat lies in classical guitarist (and ex-Some Noise bassist) Martin Parry's beautiful compositions for the Steps section, arranged for his own guitar and Rebecca Ward's violin. The programme, reproduced here, lists a second medieval mystery play as part of the running order, but there appears to be no recording of it... perhaps it was dropped due to time restrictions.

Programme (inside)

Nobody seems to quite remember the full list of personnel for the evening, but it certainly included Scott Saunders, Dav Devalle, John Cratchley, Mark Thomas, Rob Parry, Rebecca Ward, Martin Parry, Alan Holmes, Phil Layton and Sarah Andrews... and several others, possibly including Annie Williams, Paul Stroud, John Wilce, John Wyer and Rhona Wyer.

1  Eat  12:57
2  One Division  14:50
3  Steps  16:56
4  Jazz Interval  20:23
5  Travelling On  30:09
6  Waiting for Light  10:38


Get it here

1 comment:

  1. Song writing credit footnote add 4oz of silence and stir.
    From one room to another. I never got in Sarah's Room but my song did.

    I added a des(s)ert to Eat before this particular meal. Whether that course was included is no important as the original had already been devoured. Each time it was played although the recipe was followed it never came out the same. Who 'penned' the lines 'get fatter eat', or 'feel the heat'? I didn't as I never wrote anything down then.
    In many of its re-creation in the late 70's and I added 'additional lyrics' some of these went along the lines of mmmmmmmmm mmm. This was the last time Eat was played and the last time Scott and I shared a stage. Although I did play a version recently called Yummy, there were none of Scott's ingredients although it still had the Velvets chords cooked by Cale.

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