BILL FAY-missing link between Nick Drake/Davies/Dylan

[jamestkirk]

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.





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.








Time Of The Last Persecutuon 1971...listen first then read on ...struck me like lightening on first listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-slmQGwZec




BILL FAY...dropped by Deram 40 years ago...Fay waited 40 years to release his next 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. Side One.

Listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RffL1sxoWP4



Called one of the great lost artists of the 60's by MOJO...a must find and must listen. In 1998 MOJO was at a loss as to what ever became of Fay...only to say he looked world weary on his final album cover for DERAM. Was he another victim of drugs, they asked? Where was he? But his music from that 1971 masterpiece was far from weary--it was brilliant!

And Bill Fay returned in 2005 to record two highly praised albums. Thanks, Bill!




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.

His first single, "Some Good Advice" / "Screams in the Ears", was issued on the Deram label in 1967, and was followed by two albums, Bill Fay in 1970 and Time of the Last Persecution in 1971. The recordings did not sell well, and Fay was dropped from Deram soon after the release of his second album.[citation needed] Fay's original Deram albums are available on CD after being reissued in 2005.

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.


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

[jamestkirk]

Interview with Bill Fay-Radio 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXkEwlYRcXA

[jamestkirk]

Stunning return to form

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.

His debut on the underground Decca Nova label, Bill Fay (1970), included spacious big band jazz arrangements by Mike Gibbs, but it was the follow-up, Time Of The Last Persecution (1971), that cemented his reputation – a harrowing, philosophical and painfully honest diagnosis of an unhealthy society and a messed-up planet, that featured the cream of London's fieriest jazz session players such as guitarist Ray Russell. Unable to make ends meet as a musician, Fay wandered through a succession of jobs for years, writing songs privately.

Both solo albums were re-issued in 1998, and when the likes of Jeff Tweedy began singing his praises in the early 2000s, Bill began to come back into view and Wilco even convinced the shy singer to join them onstage in London in 2007.
A few CDs of Bill's early demos and home recordings have since emerged, but Life Is People is his first properly crafted studio album since 1971. He was motivated by American producer Joshua Henry, who grew up listening to his dad's Bill Fay albums on vinyl. Spooling through Bill's home demos, Joshua discovered an incredible trove of material. Matt Deighton (Oasis, Paul Weller, Mother Earth) assembled a cast of backup musicians to bring out the songs' full potential. These include Deighton on guitar, Tim Weller (who's played drums for everyone from Will Young to Noel Gallagher and Goldfrapp), and keyboardist Mikey Rowe (High Flying Birds, Stevie Nicks, etc). In addition, Bill is reunited on several tracks with Ray Russell and drummer Alan Rushton, who played on Time Of The Last Persecution.

And it's a stunning return to form. Ranging from intimate to cosmic, epic but never grandiose, Bill's deeply committed music reminds you of important, eternal truths, and the lessons to be drawn from the natural world, when the materiality and greed threaten to engulf everything.
It's time to recognise one of the great English voices. After nearly 50 years, Bill Fay has finally delivered his masterpiece: as rapturous and soul-stirring as any music you'll hear this year.

(DOC061 released: 08/21/12)

[jamestkirk]

Time of the Last Persecution...listen to the title track..so compelling...amazing screaming guitar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-slmQGwZec

Time of the Last Persecution is Bill Fay's second and last album for Decca. Released in 1971, it has attained nearly mythic status due to its unavailability for the better part of 30 years. Internet legends have touted that Fay went off the ledge of paranoia because of substance and psychic breakdown -- all of it's nonsense. This new edition 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. He wrote much of Time of the Last Persecution as a visceral and spiritual response to the slaying of four students at the hands of National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970. Other inspirations include his conversations with producer/guitarist Ray Russell and another friend on the books of Daniel and Revelations in the Bible, and his own reading of a book of sermons from the 19th century. For Fay, the record was a reflection on the end of the 1960s and an emerging darker era. It was a clarion call about transition, yet it was also intended to impart some hope. Sonically, Time of the Last Persecution stands in stark contrast to its self-titled predecessor. Gone are Mike Gibbs' Baroque arrangements and the 27-piece orchestra, but similarly, it was recorded in a single day. The band featured Fay on piano and a small group Russell worked with, including drummer Alan Rushton and bassist Darryl Runswick. Trombonist Nick Evans was part of the three-piece horn section. The intensity of mood on the album remains some 34 years later. Electric guitars and piano usher in the opener, "Omega Day." Ghostly characters from the past and present emerge; they slip in and out of the mix prophesying, philosophizing, and reflecting. On "Inside the Keeper's Pantry," Russell's razored guitar forces the otherwise droning, lilting ballad over the edge into something brooding and foreboding. The horns that frame "Release Is in the Eye" ground Fay's piano and vocal with distorted fills by Russell: "...Moon is over the water/Business in the boom/The clouds are in the thousand mountains/A silence tree grows/The vacancy chair/'Cause I've had my share...." Russell goes outside in the instrumental break, building tension without ever releasing it as the song ends. But there are gorgeous melancholy ballads here as well, including "Laughing Man," "Don't Let My Marigolds Die," and "Tell It Like It Is." The easy singer/songwriter rock of "Plan D" and "I Hear You Calling" is offset by Fay's words. The title track, with its sorrowful cello, foreshadows the tautness of the broken emotions in the narrative. It feels like a warning offered by a half-mad street urchin in a Dickens novel. The closer, "Let All the Other Teddies Know," is sweetened by Tony Roberts' flute and Rushton's canny tom-tom work. It's a bittersweet ode to the world becoming unhinged: "Be ready Teddy/Don't let the shadows get me/And be ready, Teddy/For when the cupboard explodes/And don't cry Teddy/For there's someone to turn to/And Teddy, let all the other Teddies know...." Russell's guitar opens the cage door and wails his way manically through to the end. It's a chilling sendoff, one that allows new listeners some cautious empathy with those who saddled Time of the Last Persecution with the weight of a myth. True, it's a dark tome, but it's not without its glimmers. Most importantly, the music here has stood the test of time; it bears repeated listening and proves instructive and inspiring; it also offers a view of Fay as an overlooked yet gifted visionary and songwriter.
~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

[jamestkirk]

BILL FAY - STILL SOME LIGHT

Time To Wake Up Now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo3bW9sEkwg&feature=kp




Fay does away with studio gloss


The latest release from the inimitably gifted and discreetly legendary British singersongwriter Bill Fay is an impeccably well-intentioned project. All artist proceeds from sales of this CD go to Médecins Sans Frontières, and the whole package resonates with an air of familial love and mutual respect which gladdens the heart.
Still Some Light combines archival piano/guitar/bass/drums performances from 1970-’71 with a CD of material Fay recorded at home last year. As befits tapes discovered in a loft and “down the back of a sideboard”, the audio quality on the first CD rarely defeats the dust bunnies; but those songs more than make up for it. Fay’s splendidly idiosyncratic perspective informs The Sun Is Bored, Inside The Keeper’s Pantry and the Dylanesque Plan D, while a rough but impassioned reading of the epic Time Of The Last Persecution is hair-raisingly intense.
Disc Two is admittedly a tougher listen: uniformly sombre (if redemption-seeking) in tone, dressing Fay’s dry, double-tracked vocals with quicksand-textured synth pads.
Encouragingly, however, his characteristic ability to pluck an inspired lyric from the farthest corner of left-field is wholly intact (Jericho Road, Anthems) and the simple fact of his continued songwriting presence is worth breaking out the bunting for.

Screams In Your Ears--1970 self titled LP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIIp1hQ37AI

WOW


My Eyes Open....brilliant and perfect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9AvwyEgMgk

..........................................


More from Stili Some Light

An amazing two CD collection of demos from 1970 and home recordings from 2005!

Brilliant!

Jericho Road
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl7sBwS-o9U


There's A Price Upon My Head
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etgzxNeZlCY

Just To Be A Part
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT1S1DxkdM4

The Sun Is Bored
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Alb69AETDM



Goodbye Stan...from Bill Fay Band album-Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow 2005...he just gets better and better!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRd-A5IZiDc

[jamestkirk]

Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People) 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ1J9d27aA0

Big Painter...pure genius
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nhxh0tJ7Mw


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


Still Some Light..behind the music

Bill Fay says David Tibet is probably the only person who would have released this 2CD set


My Eyes Open
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv2yj0Y74xk

.The first disc covers demos and live material from 1970-1971 with Fay’s singing, piano, guitar, bass, and drums combining at times to astonishing effect. The second, lighter disc, recorded at home in 2008, begins with Fay's vocals added to a Michael Cashmore instrumental from The Snow Abides and ends with a song written by his brother, John Fay.

Several of Fay’s songs on the Piano, Guitar, Bass & Drums 1970-71 disc were either on his lushly orchestrated debut Bill Fay, or the more stripped down follow up Time of The Last Persecution. The album is made up of tapes found in various locations and approved for release by musicians who obviously had a tight bond. That trust in each other enabled them to keep the music simple. So the sweet, ticking drums, the scattered piano notes, and unfussy bass all make for a perfect unhurried atmosphere in which Fay’s unusual voice flourishes. Additionally, Ray Russell’s wildly brilliant guitar playing adds a barnstorming edge to some of these lovely and deeply personal songs.

At some point Bill Fay must have acquired some conviction that life on Earth would eventually be interrupted by the intervention of a higher spiritual power; an intervention prophesied to fix the folly and misguided actions of humans that had wrought widespread war, false idols and misery. His images interpret the book of Revelation yet he conveys a gentle vulnerability and humanity which make apocalypse and salvation all sound rather comforting. That he also sings of not kneeling in "dead cathedrals" and complains of a spire "that blocks out the sky" is rather appealing. The versions of “Plan D” and “Pictures of Adolph Again” are love songs to the joy of existence albeit with a backdrop of horror and delusion. I hate to compare Fay to anyone else, but the warmth generated by his voice and Russell’s guitar on “I Hear You Calling” put me in mind of the late Ronnie Lane at his most soulful. Fay’s genuinely touching love of nature, his appreciation of his landscape of origin, and his love for his family both balances and compliments his other concerns. His honesty is unmistakable since he obviously sings about his own back yard. I also can’t think of another songwriter who mentions trees quite as often and treats the minutiae of everyday life—door keys, dustbins, your team losing, old school friends who have passed away—with such a matter-of-fact reverence.

I have never heard anyone sing or tell stories quite like Bill Fay. His phrasing and dialect are, if not unique, then certainly unusual, and his lyrics are disarmingly direct. It’s as if a character from Adam Thorpe’s odd rural epic Ulverton has come to life and is regaling us with history, observations of nature, and heavy portent. There is a consistently humble quality to Fay’s voice and yet it manages to be mesmerizing. I say humble, but when he speaks the words to “I Will Find My Own Way Home” he seems to be acknowledging failings (perhaps a crisis of faith) but sounds as determined and cocksure as if he were auditioning for the role of Brian Clough in The Damned United.

The second disc, Still Some Light, is lighter and several of the tracks seem a bit over-sentimental at first. Maybe they are, but what emerges is Fay’s loyalty to his natural mode of expression. For example, “Hello Old Tree” is enveloped in the feeling of returning again and again for reverie to a favorite spot in his landscape. That song makes me think of John Cooper Powys’ notion that all of creation, including trees and stones, has a soul. Equally, the song “Diamond Studied Days” revels unashamedly in a strong feeling of grateful nostalgia that mirrors its topic: the love Fay’s parents gave him as a child. He merges several of his main themes, nature, peace and spiritual redemption, on the hymn-like track "There Is A Valley". His singing (of his own words) on “My Eyes Open” defies the truth that they were written quite separately for Michael Cashmore's originally unrelated music, so good is the match. Like most of the second disc, the piece is quiet and lush. By contrast, “I Wonder,” the final track written by John Fay, has a pleasantly rough production and a ragged acoustic edge that some might associate with Syd Barrett.

Fay's brother did the cover and booklet paintings and there are some completely natural looking photographs of Bill Fay and his close family in which he seems happy and contented and his hair looks like it hasn't been combed maybe since his mother tried to do it when he was a schoolboy! In the booklet he writes one of the longest thank you letters I've ever read. With almost forty years betwen these recordings the over-riding feeling is that there's no pretense and, depite some of the grand concerns, no preaching. I find some of the songs less successful than others but mainly enjoy the lovely imperfections of these marvelous demos and home recordings. This is the sound of someone recognizing danger and fears, but hoping and trusting for the best. Bill Fay’s proceeds from this album will go to “the major charities active in the poorest places of the world.” Including, I believe, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières.

Samples

Disc 1

I Will Find My Own Way Back
http://brainwashed.com/common/sounds/mp ... y_back.mp3

Pictures of Adolf Again
http://brainwashed.com/common/sounds/mp ... _again.mp3

Tell It Like It Is
http://brainwashed.com/common/sounds/mp ... _it_is.mp3

Disc 2

Diamond Studded Days
http://brainwashed.com/common/sounds/mp ... d_days.mp3

I Wonder
http://brainwashed.com/common/sounds/mp ... wonder.mp3

source:
http://brainwashed.com/index.php?option ... 9&Itemid=1

[jamestkirk]

Bill Fay - Life Is People- UNCUT Magazine
Rating 9/10




Beautifully measured return to the studio from this humble master of English song...

It’s been around forty years, since English singer-songwriter Bill Fay last saw a studio album from conception to completion. This has little to do with Fay’s vision and almost everything to do with the vagaries of an industry that tends to work at cross purposes to the artists that populate it. Fay’s legend rests on two albums released just as the benign visions of the sixties turned inward and self-destructive in the early seventies, a narrative arc that’s reflected in the shift from the Edenic and redemptive song poems of Fay’s debut, self-titled album from 1970, garlanded as they were with orchestra and captured in autumnal colours, to the explosive force of 1971’s Time Of The Last Persecution, where Fay, alongside guitarist Ray Russell and their group, drilled free improvisation into songs sung from what sounded like the end of the world.

Read more at UNCUT and the interview...

http://www.uncut.co.uk/bill-fay-life-is-people-review

[jamestkirk]

Don't Let My Marigolds Die

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITVRUVCBTmY&feature=kp

Dust Filled Room
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QsS5JyExNw&feature=kp

I hear You Calling...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgqWylGeCiY