Vashti Bunyan's seminal 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day contains some of the most pastoral songs you ever could hear. Written while traveling through England in a horse drawn caravan and produced by Joe Boyd back in London, the record perfectly captures a bucolic snapshot of that journey. Vashti had had a brief flirtation with recording previous to Diamond Day, when she cut singles for The Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham in the mid 60s. Soon after Diamond Day was quietly released, she quit music and lived on an isolated farm for many years. Fast forward to 2000, when Diamond Day was re-released after languishing in obscurity for decades. It quickly won a new audience, and Vashti was inspired to write once again, eventually releasing her second album, Lookaftering, in 2005 and touring for the first time. In 2007, Some Things Just Stick Around in Your Mind, a compilation of early unreleased and rare recordings by Vashti, was released. Here, Vashti tells us about her early inspirations, her life on the farm, working with Joe Boyd and picking up the guitar once again after so many years away from it.


ME: What kind of music did your parents listen to around the house when you were growing up?
 
Vashti: My father had a great collection of 78 rpm classical records and a huge old radiogram. I have never been able to put names to the music or the composers, just very clear – sometimes note for note -- memories.
 
ME: Was there a particular person in your life early on who particularly nurtured your love of music?
 
Vashti: My father – although I’m sure it wasn’t something he tried to do. Watching him conduct his imaginary orchestra with a look of such pure happiness on his face maybe had an effect. My brother also – who was ten years older than me and went to college for a year in USA, returning with LP records and a suitcase full of all the bits needed to make up a deck for playing them on. Fascinating to a 5 year old.
 
What was the first bit of music you remember hearing that inspired you to write yourself?
 
I haven’t thought about it till now but I remember this piece of music I loved from when I was about five sung by Kathleen Ferrier that began ‘flocks in pastures green abiding.’ Hmm.
 
When did you start playing guitar and writing songs? How did you learn to play?
 
My first year at art school, I was 17; my friend Jenny had a guitar and a Bert Weedon guitar book– with the chords for songs like "When the Saints Go Marching In" and others. I fell upon it. I’d had violin lessons before and so I learned very quickly. It wasn’t long before we both started writing mournful love songs.
 
It sounds like you were a shy person starting out in music-- yet it must have taken an incredible amount of courage to seek a label and record tracks. How did you manage to put yourself out there?
 
Yes, I often wonder how I did it. I was shy around people but I did believe in my own songs. I’ve always been amazed at my youngest son, who was a very shy kid until he got on to a basketball court where he suddenly became tall, confident and sure-footed. I felt like that in a recording studio.
 
Can you recall the feeling of "Swinging London?" Any particular memories from this time that stand out?
 
I remember with rebellious pleasure – tinged with guilt -- the way that the older generation were so upset by us all. They had tried desperately to protect us from the hardships they had been through and so unwittingly they gave us minds of our own – and then we flew the nest in ways they could never have dreamed of.
 
When you were first starting out, what artists in particular struck you?

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If you are a gigantic music fan, you've probably already listened to and absorbed Jimi Hendrix' music to the point where you might think you never ever need to hear it again.  I know the feeling-- when I was in high school Jimi was one of the primary artists I listened to, over and over and over again to the point of oblivion.

So to you, the jaded, I say, hold up!  Just when you think you've seen and heard everything (and maybe you have, but this was new to me...), here comes the fairly recent reissue of the 1973 documentary Jimi Hendrix, which was directed by Joe Boyd, John Head III and Gary Weis.  I read about it in Joe Boyd's White Bicycles, and finally got my hands on a copy of the movie. 

Producer extraordinaire Boyd was heartbroken by the bumps that came along with putting together this film.  One thing he was dead on about, and what really makes this film compelling above all others about Hendrix, is that the interviews were conducted only 3 years after Hendrix' death, and both his contradictory and brilliant presence and the awe he inspired in his fellow musicians is extremely palpable.  Heck, you can see it written all over Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend's still-freaked-out faces! 


Roadies and managers are also interviewed, folks I had never seen in other documentaries.  Their memories are fresh:  a roadie recalls having to stand behind the amps and hold them up while Jimi humped and flailed away on the front of the Marshall stack; a manager remembers landing in London in 1970 to a pack of paparazzi and moving aside, only to have his arm firmly grabbed by still-shy Jimi, who didn't want to be left alone with the press.

Joe Boyd's recently written autobiography, White Bicycles, is amazing.  I've previously professed my jealousy of Cameron Crowe's life, but I actually think Joe Boyd has overtaken Crowe in that race.  By far.


Although he never won an Oscar (like Crowe), Boyd has had an extraordinary run in the music biz. He was always in the right place at the right time.  It's hard to even hit on all the amazing things he has taken part in here-- there's just so many of them. He was one of the first to arrange and manage European Jazz and Blues tours.  He worked for Elektra and eventually formed his own production company called Witchseason.  He booked an extremely successful club night in London in the 60s that hosted Pink Floyd and The Move, among many others.  He went on to produce artists like Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention.

In one of my favorite passages in the book, Boyd describes the night at The Newport Folk Festival when he was a stage manager and Dylan went electric.  Reading that portion of the book made my heart race!  If for nothing else, it's worth buying White Bicycles just to read about this momentous occasion in rock history from a fresh viewpoint.  Boyd was truly a part of that evening and remembers it all!  He really must have kept a journal.  It answers some questions about who exactly was in a physical fight that night, who started what and if Pete Seeger did indeed cut the electricity with an axe.  There really was an axe there that night, and that's all I'm gonna say!

Reason 2,472 that I love Amoeba: I wake up, I read the paper  (online, of course) and always find some neato thing!

Today, this is the patch of online journalism that jolts me - somewhere between a good cup of coffee and shock-paddles de resuscitare, I find this description of a man shopping at Amoeba Music, the one on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California:

from the calendar section of the LA Times:

'... These [albums] were not of mere musical interest to Boyd. He produced them. And throughout the store there's plenty more of his handiwork: influential albums by innovative English folk-rock group Fairport Convention and its most famous alums, Richard Thompson and the late Sandy Denny; the idiosyncratic work of Scottish psychedelic-folk avatars the Incredible String Band; and the singular sounds from the too-brief life of singer-songwriter Nick Drake.

Although that music stands on its own merits, the value is even more evident in the presence here of many younger acts claiming influence from Boyd's catalog, from R.E.M. (which recruited him to produce the 1985 "Fables of the Reconstruction" album) to the currently acclaimed crop of "freak-folk" figures such as Devendra Banhart and (seen to your left) Joanna Newsom, who talk of music associated with Boyd in hushed, reverent tones."


... so, ,maybe Miss Ess, purveyor of music lit world-wide, can blog to us all one day and tell us what she thought of this man's new book: