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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9873 Posts |
 Posted - 22/02/2012 : 19:56:26
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Reviews and more from...
http://www.itsaboutmusic.com/iainmatthews.html
Iain has one of the best and most distinctive voices in popular music, and also one of the most recognizable musical styles. He has written some fabulous songs, and turned himself into a bloody good guitar player. Of all the soccer players turned musicians, he knocks spots off Julio Inglesias!
-Richard Thompson
I played with Iain in Fairport Convention in the late 1960s, when he and Sandy Denny formed an incomparable and stunning vocal pairing.Since then I've only worked with him occasionally. More's the pity. But what I can say with complete confidence is that his commitment to music has always been total, his attention to detail is legendary and his standards are always of the highest calibre. And his voice, like his youthful good looks, never seems to age. Curse him!
-Ashley Hutchings
Iain Matthew's is a brilliant musician and an arranger for the ages . Iain's version of my song "Seven Bridges Road" is by far the best!
-Steve Young
IAIN MATTHEWS (the artist previously known as Ian!)
"Some Days You Eat The Bear, Some Days The Bear Eats You" (1974)
My favorite vinyl--I have a white label promo Elektra and it is awesome.
"Ol' '55" (Tom Waits)
"I Don't Wanna Talk About It" (Danny Whitten)
"A Wailing Goodbye" (Ian Matthews)
"Keep On Sailing" (Ian Matthews)
"Tried So Hard" (Gene Clark)
"Dirty Work" (Donald Fagen, Walter Becker)
"Do I Still Figure in Your Life" (Pete Dello)
"Home" (Ian Matthews)
"Biloxi" (Jesse Winchester)
"The Fault" (Ian Matthews)
Ian (Iain) Mathews--always a favorite of mine, from Fairport Convention to Matthews' Southern Comfort to Plainsong to his many solo efforts, right up to the present. Iain is relatively obscure to most of the public, but he is a cult hero to many of us here. IAIN RULES!!
Time Will Show The Wiser...Iain on lead with the lovely Judy..Fairport live on French TV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm1eLWejZTU
Meet On The Ledge--Iain & Sandy lead vocals...from one of the best albums of all time & one of the best ever groups--Fairport Convention!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avX5VlU7MXM
For A Second Time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIEicazzQkI&feature=related
Iain Matthews (born 16 June 1946) is an English musician and songwriter. He was born Iain Matthew McDonald, in Sc*nthorpe (ha!! the forum provider censored this UK town name! "u" is missing.), Lincolnshire, England. He was known in the 1960s first as Ian McDonald, then as the 1960s progressed, as Ian Matthews. In 1989 he reverted to the original spelling of his first name.
Influenced by both rock and roll and folk music, he has performed mainly as a solo act, although he was a member of Fairport Convention during the early period when they were heavily influenced by American West Coast folk rock. He later had a solo career and fronted the bands Plainsong, Hi-Fi, No Grey Faith, More Than A Song and Matthews' own Southern Comfort.
Matthews grew up in Sc#nthorpe (wow, the profanity filter here is soooo thorough  ), Lincolnshire, England. He sang with several minor bands during the British pop music explosion of the mid-1960s and moved to London in 1966, taking a job in a Carnaby Street shoe shop. That year he formed a trio, The Pyramid, an English short-lived surf music band, which recorded one single, "Summer Of Last Year" in January 1967, on Deram Records. A remaining song, "Me About You," surfaced on Matthews' Orphans & Outcasts Volume 3 in 1999.
Fairport Convention
In the Spring of 1967, Matthews was recruited by Ashley Hutchings as a male vocalist for Fairport Convention, where he duetted first with Judy Dyble, and then with Sandy Denny. In 1969, as Fairport drew increasingly from a British traditional folk repertoire, Matthews found out he had not been invited to a recording session and, after a short discussion with Ashley Hutchings, departed toward a musical direction of his own.[1]
With Thompson, Simon Nicol, and Hutchings from Fairport Convention, guitarist Mark Griffiths, drummer Gerry Conway (of Fotheringay; later to join first the Cat Stevens, backing band, Jethro Tull and then Fairport Convention from the 1990s on) and pedal steel player Gordon Huntley, and drummer Ray Duffy, Matthews recorded his debut solo album, Matthews' Southern Comfort, whose sound was rooted in American country music and rockabilly. This was his first significant experience as a songwriter, although the band also covered the likes of Neil Young and Ian and Sylvia. He followed it up by forming a working band using the name of his first album and Second Spring (UK #52)[2] and Later That Same Year followed. The band went through several different lineups and toured extensively for the next two years, to general critical acclaim.
They had one commercial success: a 1970 cover version of "Woodstock" (written by Joni Mitchell) was a number one hit single in the UK Singles Chart.[2] It experienced heavy airplay in Canada reaching #5, as well as peaking at #23 on the Billboard singles charts in the United States in 1971. Afterwards, Matthews split with Southern Comfort, who went on to release three albums of their own on Harvest Records.
Plainsong
After recording two acclaimed solo albums on Vertigo Records, under the sponsorship of former Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith and surrounded by a who's who of likeminded British semi-folkies (notably another ex-Fairporter, Richard Thompson), he formed Plainsong, who signed to Elektra Records and in 1972 produced In Search of Amelia Earhart, which solidified Matthews' songwriting reputation with the critics, if not with the general public. The album included a cover of Dave McEnery's "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight", plus a song of Matthews' own, "True Story of Amelia Earhart's Last Night" based on the research that suggests that Earhart on her round-the-world flight may have been spying on Japanese bases in the Pacific islands. It also included "Even the Guiding Light", a spiritually positive answer to Thompson’s powerful but bleak "Meet on the Ledge".
"Bouncing around"
After Plainsong collapsed due to a bandmate's alcohol problem, and with his career now based in Los Angeles, Matthews released several more albums with ad hoc bands, including one produced by Michael Nesmith, formerly of the Monkees; Valley Hi...
...but none met with commercial success. He bounced from Elektra to Columbia Records, to the small Rockburgh label, where he finally scored a hit single in 1978 with a cover of Terence Boylan's "Shake It", which reached #13 in the U.S.A charts, and a moderately successful follow-up covering Robert Palmer's "Gimme an Inch".
However, the North American rights for his album were held by the small Canadian label Mushroom. Label-owner Shelly Siegel, died suddenly in 1979, leaving the label rudderless. The song "Shake It" is heard at the beginning of the 1980 movie Little Darlings. It can also be heard on the radio in the game The Warriors from Rockstar games.
Matthews' official web site states that at this point he "had been struggling for nearly 15 years now and was still living hand to mouth, with nothing to show for his efforts but a string of out-of-print albums, and the loyalty of those musicians and fans who shared his vision."
He moved from Los Angeles to then-inexpensive Seattle, where he teamed up with David Surkamp, formerly of the St. Louis band Pavlov's Dog, to form the power pop band Hi-Fi, whose repertoire included Matthews originals, but also covers of Neil Young's "Mr. Soul" and Prince's "When You Were Mine". Neither this nor a return to solo recording in England turned his luck. He worked for a while in an A&R capacity at Island Records and then New Age Windham Hill Records.
This rarity is brilliant--though it is an album tribute to Jules Shear with no self penned songs, Iain as always, covers another's songs with his usual genius.
Long OOP, here is a d/l for those interested....from the cool site specializing in rare & OOP albums...
http://www.raremp3.co.uk/2009/05/ian-matthews-walk-changing-line-1988.html
Later career
Cropredy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7SCCLl9t10
Since 1974, Fairport Convention had been staging the annual Cropredy Festival; since 1979, this annual reunion had primarily the height of their activity at that period in time as a band, but in the mid-1980s several members became interested in reviving the band, stimulating creativity as a group and in recording new material. Matthews was invited to perform with them as a part of the band, and in their other side-projects, at the 1986 Cropredy Festival. This led to Walking a Changing Line (1988) on Windham Hill Records, an unlikely album-length tribute to Jules Shear of Jules and the Polar Bears. Matthews found himself moving to Austin, Texas, and recording several albums for a series of German independent labels. It also led to his first truly solo performances: his previous "solo" outings had always been as a frontman for a one-shot band. He appeared with Andy Roberts at the 1992 Cambridge Folk Festival, which led to the first of what became several changed versions of Plainsong.
Since that time, Matthews has had a moderately successful career, releasing records on a number of small labels in Germany, the UK, and the US, before moving to Amsterdam in 2000, where he continues to be involved in various indy projects and collaborations, including the Sandy Denny tribute band "No Grey Faith" and another revival of Plainsong. Moving to Horst in the south of Holland, in 2008 he produced a new album, Joy Mining, in collaboration with the Dutch jazz combo Searing Quartet. In this album he could work with his lifelong love for jazz. September sees the first Matthews Southern Comfort album in 40 years, and Matthews return to a major label. Matthews is a season ticket holder at S****horpe United.
In December 2011 he performed as Matthews Southern Comfort with his Dutch band at the 2nd Great British Folk Fesival at Butlins Skegness and performed an excellent set of both old and new songs.
Discography
The following is a partial discography; a comprehensive discography is available on Matthews' personal website.
* Fairport Convention, Fairport Convention (1968) UK Polydor/ US Cotillion
* Fairport Convention, What We Did On Our Holidays (1968) UK Island/ US A&M
* Fairport Convention, Heyday(1986) BBC - a release of recordings from 1968/1969 UK Island/ US Hannibal
* Ian Matthews, Matthews' Southern Comfort (1969) UK Uni/ US Decca (actually his first solo album)
* Matthews Southern Comfort, Second Spring (1969) UK Uni/ US Decca
* Matthews Southern Comfort, Later That Same Year (1970) UK Uni / US Decca
* Matthews' Southern Comfort, The Essential Collection (1997) Half Moon (a retrospective of 1970s recordings)
* Ian Matthews, If You Saw Thro' My Eyes (1971) UK and US Vertigo (2nd solo album)
* Ian Matthews, Tigers Will Survive (1971) UK and US Vertigo (3rd solo album)
* Plainsong, In Search of Amelia Earhart (1972) UK and US Elektra
* Ian Matthews, Journeys from Gospel Oak (1972) UK [[Mooncrest
* Ian Matthews, Valley Hi (1973) UK and US Elektra Records]]
* Ian Matthews, Some Days You Eat the Bear...Some Days the Bear Eats You (1974) UK and US Elektra
* Ian Matthews, Go For Broke (1975) UK CBS/ US Columbia
* Ian Matthews, Hit and Run (1976) UK CBS/ US Columbia
* Ian Matthews, Stealin' Home (1978) UK Rockburgh/ US Mushroom
* Ian Matthews, Siamese Friends (1979) Rockburgh
* Ian Matthews, Discreet Repeat (1979) Rockburgh
* Ian Matthews, Spot Of Interference (1980) Rockburgh
* Hi-Fi, Demonstration Record (1982) First American Records; live mini-album
* Hi-Fi, Moods for Mallards (1982) First American Records
* Ian Matthews, Shook (1984) Polydor
* Ian Matthews, Walking a Changing Line (1988) Windham Hill Records
* Iain Matthews, Pure and Crooked (1990) Gold Castle Records
* Iain Matthews, Skeleton Keys (1992) Line
* Iain Matthews, The Dark Ride (1994) Watermelon
* Iain Matthews, God Looked Down (1996) Watermelon
* Iain Matthews, The Seattle Years 1978-1984 (1996) Varese Sarabande
* Iain Matthews, Excerpts from Swine Lake (1998) Blue Rose
* Iain Matthews, Orphans & Outcasts Volume 3
* Iain Matthews, A Tiniest Wham
* No Grey Faith, Secrets All Told — The Songs of Sandy Denny (2000) Perfect Pitch / Unique Gravity
* Iain Matthews & Elliott Murphy, The Official Blue Rose Bootleg (2001) Blue Rose
* Iain Matthews & Elliott Murphy, La Terre Commune (2001) Blue Rose / Perfect Pitch / Eminent
* Plainsong, Pangolins (2003) Blue Rose
* Iain Matthews, Zumbach's coat (2005) Blue Rose / Perfect Pitch / Eminent
* Iain Matthews, Contact in live (2008)
* Iain Matthews & Searing Quartet, Joy Mining (2008) Perfect Pitch (an easy listening/jazz oriented album)
* Iain Matthews & Nick Vernier Band, Woodstock (2009) Brinker Media
* Iain Matthews & Egbert Derix, Afterwords (2010) Matrix
* Iain Matthews & Nick Vernier Band with Emitt Rhodes, Time Will Show The Wiser (2010) Brinker Media
* Iain Matthews & Ad van der Veen, Ride the times (2010) Turtle Records
* Matthews Southern Comfort, Kind of New (album) Brilliant/Genepool BMCD1010 (2010)
1996 Songs From The Red Couch - Live ( Iain Matthews & Julian Dawson)
Billboard Hot 100 Singles
* "Woodstock" (#23, 1971)
* "Mare, Take Me Home" (#96, 1971)
* "Tell Me Why" (#98, 1971)
* "Da Doo Ron Ron" (#96, 1972)
* "Shake It" (#13, 1979)
* "Give Me an Inch" (#67, 1979)
Even The Guiding Light
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OVAJIn-dEo&feature=related
Keep On Sailing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8q-ryeZVBs
Never Again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l51mJK9sqo4&feature=related
Hearts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCb9Bg9JhOk&feature=related
Dirty Work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7-b6kYe96Q
Ian was a Gene clark fan...from some of Gene's most obscure albums-
Polly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLHs_OuCOgA
Tried So Hard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF05gwpp-wg&feature=related
Ok..so I could go on all day!
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We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers & discoverers-
-thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses.
Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.
-Peter S. Beagle 1973
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Edited by - lemonade kid on 31/03/2014 17:27:02 |
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rocker
Old Love
USA
3606 Posts |
Posted - 23/02/2012 : 13:59:42
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| thanks for that lk..he's a very musically prolific guy, eh???? Surley one of the stalwarts! |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9873 Posts |
Posted - 07/09/2012 : 14:22:17
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IAIN live--today...from his adopted home in Holland...talking 'bout changes and things.
Say A Prayer For My Country, For My Good Queen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eJ6JaR7f9o
such a fine talent!
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Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.
~ Cree Prophecy |
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rocker
Old Love
USA
3606 Posts |
Posted - 07/09/2012 : 14:27:36
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| just great lk...I always found his music so eclectic and engaging..he's got such staying power in the business..talent sure wins out!.. |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9873 Posts |
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rocker
Old Love
USA
3606 Posts |
Posted - 23/09/2013 : 20:56:06
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| A fine musician....Hope he gets a good turnout there! |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9873 Posts |
Posted - 25/03/2014 : 14:56:10
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Some Days You Eat the Bear, Some Days The Bear Eats You
Is there a better album title?...I love it. It has become a saying I use quite often to describe how my day is going.
"Ol' '55" (Tom Waits)
"I Don't Wanna Talk About It" (Danny Whitten)
"A Wailing Goodbye" (Ian Matthews)
"Keep On Sailing" (Ian Matthews)
"Tried So Hard" (Gene Clark)
"Dirty Work" (Donald Fagen, Walter Becker)
"Do I Still Figure in Your Life" (Pete Dello)
"Home" (Ian Matthews)
"Biloxi" (Jesse Winchester)
"The Fault" (Ian Matthews)
Musicians
Ian Matthews - acoustic guitar, vocals
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter - electric guitar, pedal steel guitar
David Lindley - lap steel guitar
B. J. Cole - pedal steel guitar
David Barry - organ, piano, keyboards
Billy Graham - bass, fiddle
Andy Roberts - acoustic guitar
Timi Donald - drums
Robert Warford - electric guitar
Joel Tepp - acoustic guitar, harmonica
Michael Fonfara - piano, keyboards
Lyn Dobson - saxophone
Al Garth - alto saxophone
Jay Lacy - electric guitar
Danny Lane - drums
Willie Leacox - drums
Danny Weis - acoustic guitar
Steve Gillette - acoustic guitar
David Dickey - bass
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"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music".
-Aldous Huxley
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9873 Posts |
Posted - 31/03/2014 : 17:09:56
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NIGHTS IN MANHATTAN (AND POINTS WEST)
http://www.amazon.com/Nights-Manhattan-Iain-Matthews/dp/B0000001B1
a brilliant live collection and a must have!
Review by Brett Hartenbach - ALLMUSIC GUIDE
DCC COMPACT CLASSICS--one of the finest audiophile labels of its day.
Originally released in the late '80s as a mail-order-only cassette entitled Ian Matthews Live (he changed the spelling of his first name shortly thereafter), Nights in Manhattan (recorded in New York City in May of 1988) was reissued in 1997 with four added tracks that were recorded live two and a half years later in California (hence the "And Points West"). Matthews, along with Mark Hallman (acoustic guitar, vocals), Craig Negoescu (keyboards, vocals), and David Hayes (acoustic bass), though concentrating on material from Walking a Changing Line, touches on various points in his extensive career -- including his days with Fairport Convention ("Meet on the Ledge"), Matthews' Southern Comfort ("Woodstock"), and Plainsong ("Even the Guiding Light"), as well as a smattering of tunes from his solo years. The performances here are engaging, and Matthews' excellent voice is strong and clear throughout, though the sporadic use of electronic keyboards and sequenced drums is, on occasion, superfluous, and dates a couple of the tracks. A few of the highlights include a stirring, a cappella version of "Woodstock," the Youngbloods' classic "Darkness, Darkness," and a beautiful reading of Jules Shear's "This Fabrication."
Songs on this album are:
1. On Squirrel Hill
2. Keep on Sailing
3. Man in a Station
4. Alive Alone
5. Seven Bridges Road
6. Except for a Tear
7. Reno, Nevada
8. Woodstock
9. Shadows Break
10. Following Every Finger
11. Meet on the Ledge
12. Standing Still
13. Sights in Manhatten
14. Even the Guiding Light
15. Darkness Darkness
16. This Fabrication
-Produced & compiled by Rick Williams for DCC
Ian forever...
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"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music".
-Aldous Huxley
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Edited by - lemonade kid on 31/03/2014 17:25:48 |
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IAIN MATTHEWS-Nights In Manhattan & Points West
