Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Five Point Program

We're wrapping up the month of May with the very first attempt at a 50th anniversary shindig ever here.
This was taped for broadcast on Norwegian television exactly 50 years ago tonight. It's lost fully none of its luster. The old saw about "they just don't make them like this anymore" never held more true.
In fact, you could say that this near-hour of footage is the single best and most illustrative document of the group it depicts ever captured.
It was rebroadcast a while back as part of this ridonkulous NRK-TV thing they do on their website, where the shows are available for a week or so in these HD MKV format files.
This dates from the maelstrom days of strikes and sit-ins, and was recorded just five days prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
It documents a band whom, at the time, had just burst onto the music scene with an entirely different, almost ancient sound unlike anything that had been heard before.
It consisted of what were, even then, five well-traveled artists and was in essence one of the first supergroups ever formed.
Is it folk music? Jazz? Baroque trad-pop? Blues-based Early music? I feel like John Cleese's doctor holding the baby at the start of The Meaning of Life, and saying that it's too soon to be imposing roles on it, isn't it?
Piffle categories cease to matter, because The Pentangle did it all but sell T-shirts at the merch booth.
The Pentangle
Visefestival i Kroa
Dolphin Club
Masonic Building
Oslo, Norway
5.30.1968

01 introduction/tuning
02 The Time Has Come
03 Mirage
04 A Woman Like You
05 Turn Your Money Green
06 Hear My Call
07 Haitian Fight Song
08 Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
09 Bells
10 Bruton Town (cuts at end)
11 Travelling Song
12 Pentangling

Total time: 53:19

Bert Jansch - guitar & vocals
Danny Thompson - bass
Jacqui McShee - vocals
Terry Cox - drums & percussion
John Renbourn - guitar & vocals

MKV file from an HD rebroadcast on the NRK-TV website
This will do it from me for this month, but I shall be back in a bit with a whole bunch of tune for your June, so feel no fret. For now it's time for you to get up close and personal with this seminal Pentangular broadcast, thought lost to the mists of time but resurrected -- on its 50th birthday, no less -- for your pleasure.--J.