A couple of weeks ago we walked at Edale in the glorious October sunshine, too hot with our coats on and sat on the grass on this hillock to have a drink and admire the view. Since Wednesday night in South Manchester it has been pouring down, cold and the pavements are covered in the brown sludge of fallen leaves. It seems that autumn has finally arrived- not the golden crispy day autumn that we all like to think of autumn as but the real autumn.
In 1969 Nick Drake recorded this song for his debut album Five Leaves Left...
Time Of No Reply didn't make it onto that album and wasn't released until 1987 when an album of outtakes came out, named after that song. I bought it unheard after reading a review in Melody Maker. It's funny to think it's nearly forty years now since I first heard them. I'm not sure all of the album hit home with me immediately, it took a while for some of those songs to embed themselves in me, partly as I just wasn't really listening to English late 60s folk at the time- I'm not sure why the review made me buy it given it was outside my usual frame of reference for 1987/8 but I'm glad I did.
Rider On The Wheel. Black Eyed Dog. Time Of No Reply. Imagine having songs that good and not including them on your albums.
Time Of No Reply starts like this...
'Summer was gone and the heat died down/ And autumn reached for her golden crown/ I looked behind as a heard a sigh/ But this was the time of no reply'
.. and it's been running round my head all week.
No comments:
Post a Comment