https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIIp1hQ37AI
Cited by UNCUT magazine as"The Missing Link Between Nick Drake, Ray Davies and Bob Dylan", Bill Fay's work now has the patronage of a younger generation of musicians to bring Fay the critical accolades he deserved. Fay's supremely creative muse has deservedly come full circle.
8)
Bill Fay is one of English music's best kept secrets. At the dawn of the 1970s, he was a one-man song factory, with a piano that spilled liquid gold and a voice every bit the equal of Ray Davies, John Lennon, early Bowie, or Procol Harum's Gary Brooker. He made two solo albums but his contract wasn't renewed, which left his LPs and his reputation to become cult items. But he never stopped writing, the music kept on coming. Now, in his late sixties, he has produced Life Is People, a brand new studio album that shows his profoundly humanist vision is as strong as it ever was.
Title track...listen first then read on ...struck me like lightening on first listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-slmQGwZec
8)
BILL FAY...dropped by Deram 40 years ago...Fay waited 40 years to release his next album...a new hit album.
Myths & legends have touted that Fay went off the ledge of paranoia because of substance and psychic breakdown -- all of it's nonsense (even MOJO printed such tales in 1998). This new edition of his 1971 classic on the U.K.'s Eclectic label has been wonderfully remastered and contains copious notes by Fay, who dispels falsities and offers a clear view of the LP's origins and processes....(for more read below).
I could listen all day.
Bill Fay - Time Of The Last Persecution - UK DERAM LP MEGA RARE original SML 1079
Bill Fay's much rarer 2nd album from 1971, getting impossible to find nowadays.
Listen. Side One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RffL1sxoWP4
TIME OF THE LAST PERSECUTON 1971
AllMusic Review by Jo-Ann Greene
"Enigmatic" was the tag oft-times tossed 'round Bill Fay, whose loyal cult following grew significantly over the years. Signed to Decca, the singer/songwriter and pianist released two albums in the late '60s and early '70s; their haunting, darkly shadowed songs were never meant to appeal to the masses, even at the height of the psychedelia-streaked introspection sparked by the soul-searching of the day. While the Beatles flew off to meet the Maharishi, Fay fell under the spell of a 19th century compendium of commentaries on the Biblical books of Daniel and Revelations, which would inspire his second album, Time of the Last Persecution. But before the born-agains jump on to the Fay bandwagon, they should be warned that the artist was equally influenced by the ravaging events of the day. The title track, "Time of the Last Persecution," was written in an immediate and visceral response to the killings of four students at Kent State. Even in 1971, the intensity of Fay's lyrics -- reflecting his commentaries in their poetical language, their highly introspective nature, the brooding quality of the music, all exquisitely enhanced by Ray Russell's evocative blues guitar work -- left most reviewers cold and confused. In truth, the album would have slotted much more neatly into the coming firestorm that descended on Britain later in the decade, and would have provided a surprisingly supple bridge between the apocalyptic visions of roots reggae and the political polemics of punk. The set certainly contains all the fire and fury of the latter movement, as well as the deeply dread atmospheres of the former. By 2005, with the rise of evangelicalism and Christian rock, Persecution no longer sounds so obscure or out of place; it is, however, a personal journey of spirituality, not a platform from which to proselytize. For all its dark vision, it's the possibility of peace and hope that shines through the gloom, and as for all the seeming quietude of the music, it thunders, too, with a power and emotion that speak in volumes as loudly as Fay's striking lyrics.
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BIO
Bill Fay is an English singer, pianist and songwriter whose early releases were made on the Deram label in 1967. Following the release of his second album in 1971, Fay was dropped by the label and no further releases were made until 2005. Fay's 2012 album, Life Is People, was his first album of all-new material since 1971.
Fay was born in north London, where he still lives.
Despite returning to the recording studio in the late 1970s, the follow-up to Time of the Last Persecution did not emerge until January 2005. Entitled Tomorrow, Tomorrow & Tomorrow, it was credited to the Bill Fay Group and was released on the Durtro Jnana label.[4] In 2004, the British label Wooden Hill released a collection of demos recorded between 1966 and 1970 entitled From the Bottom of an Old Grandfather Clock.
The American band Wilco has played Fay's song "Be Not So Fearful" in live performances and the band's singer, Jeff Tweedy, can be heard singing it in the documentary, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco. Fay has joined the band and Tweedy onstage for the rendition of the song at shows at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in 2007, and at the Union Chapel, Islington in 2010 respectively, both in London.
The English singer-songwriter and pianist John Howard recorded a cover version of the song "Be Not So Fearful" for his E.P. Songs for the Lost and Found (2008). The song "Be Not So Fearful" was also covered by Ed Harcourt on the benefit compilation album Songs to Save a Life - In Aid of Samaritans (2011).
A cover version of Fay's "Pictures of Adolf Again", by producer and musician Jim O'Rourke and Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, can be heard in the film from K#333;ji Wakamatsu, United Red Army.[citation needed] The title track of "Time of the Last Persecution" became a live standard of the British Apocalyptic folk group, Current 93.
The compilation album Still Some Light appeared on the Coptic Cat label in 2010, a double CD containing a mix of older material and newer, home-recorded songs. Life is People, released August 21, 2012 on Dead Oceans, is his first new studio LP in over 40 years.
-WIKI
Albums
Bill Fay (Deram, 1970)
Time of the Last Persecution (Deram, 1971)
Tomorrow, Tomorrow & Tomorrow (Durtro, 2005)
Life Is People (Dead Oceans, 2012)
Compilation albums
From the Bottom of an Old Grandfather Clock (Wooden Hill, 2004)
Still Some Light (Coptic Cat, 2010)
Bill Fay Time Of The Last Persecution
Side Two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mkuobKwRCE
