Fairport Convention - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USA 31st August 1970 | Albums That Should Exist

 Fairport Convention - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 8-31-1970

Paul says: First off, I have to warn that this concert is not up to the usual song quality of this music blog. It sounds pretty good to me, but not excellent. It's from an audience boot, not a soundboard, and it shows. I'm posting this for two reasons. One, a commenter named Chris repeatedly asked me to improve and post this specific concert. Two, early Fairport Convention is great, and recordings like this need to be preserved, so I decided Chris's idea had merit. 

In the end, I was able to make a lot of sonic improvements. (If you think this sounds rough, you should have heard it before.) There was a lot of muck in this recording. I used a few different audio editing tricks to reduce that, but I couldn't get rid of that entirely. I made a particularly big impact on the banter between songs. Before, that was barely intelligible. Now, most of what they're saying can be understood.

Frankly, there are some other live recordings from 1970 with similar set lists that sound better. But if you're a big fan of the band, especially in their early years, you'll want this one too. Richard Thompson was still in the band. He and violinist Dave Swarbrick had some good instrumental "duels" on some of the songs.

The music here is unreleased. As mentioned above, the sound quality is decent, but not the best. 

This album is an hour and 21 minutes long. 

01 talk
02 Walk Awhile 
03 talk
04 Dirty Linen [Instrumental] 
05 talk
06 Staines Morris 
07 talk 
08 The Lark in the Morning [Instrumental]
09 talk 
10 Now Be Thankful 
11 talk 
12 Matty Groves 
13 talk
14 The Banks of the Sweet Primroses 
15 talk 
16 Drums [Instrumental] 
17 Flatback Caper 
18 talk 
19 Sloth
20 talk 
21 Instrumental 
22 talk 
23 Tam Lin
24 talk
25 Sir Patrick Spens

Now as regulars will know I don’t post audience recordings (any longer) so spoilt am I but if Paul has done an engineering job on this recording for a fan/visitor it has to be worth checking out . . . . I couldn’t download it here so will leave it to you guys until I can get the VPN up and running