3 posts tagged “mountain ash band”
THE HERMIT
Mountain Ash Band
Research and original concept, music for songs – Colin Cripps
Lyrics – Ray King Narration - Sean Mansley
Featuring Lynda Hardcastle / Alan Rose / Martin Carter / Geoff Bowen / Graham Jones / Kevin slingsby
Job
Senior was a hermit. There are many ways of being a hermit. It was only for a
short time towards his later years that Job lived on Ilkley Moor away from
other people. For most of his life Job was a hermit in a crowd. The facts of
his life, as far as they are known, are narrated on this album. The songs are
not an attempt at story telling; more a series of glimpses of his world as we
imagine it would have been seen by Job at the crisis points of his life. Yorkshire Tales - The Hermit
For the introduction by Colin Cripps click HERE
Recorded on
13th / by Look Records, September Sound
Studios, Golcar, ,
The tracks need to be listened to in order as there is a narration followed by a song.. For more background on the group click HERE
BIRTH (Narration)
Narrator – Sean Mansley
Guitar – Colin Cripps
BIRTH (Song)
Vocals – Lynda Hardcastle, Alan Rose, Martin Carter. / Guitar – Colin Cripps
Fiddle – Geoff Bowen / Bass Guitar – Graham Jones / Drums – Kevin Slingsby
On crimson wings the sun comes up
Across the eastern sky
Who sees the early dawning hour
When some may live and some may die.
Bent on the earth beneath the sky
A new born cry is heard.
The silent sky is split in two
The first eruption of a word.
Your life is started
Your life’s begun.
Be quick, the years wait for no one.
A million things are left undone.
Before the winking of an eye,
Before the setting of the sun
A chance is barely waiting,
A chance is barely anything.
Please know your hour will come, ( too soon, too soon, too soon)
Your time will come.
Mother’s in the kitchen and father’s on the land.
They’ll tell life is only what you’re holding in your hand.
They know the price of hardship, yes they know the coins of sweat.
They know the price that pain affords. They know, they know they know it all and yet
Your baby hands are open
And clutching for a star
But still they stop and warn you
You will never reach that far.
Be quick time’s waiting,
Be quick it slips away.
A lifetime will not leisure
In the
measure of today.
JOURNEYS (Narration)
Tune – Goddesses
Narrator – Sean Mansley
Descant Recorder – Lynda Hardcastle
Fiddle – Geoff Bowen
JOURNEYS (Song)
Vocals - Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle, Martin Carter, Graham Jones.
Guitars – Colin Cripps, Martin Carter. / Fiddle – Geoff Bowen
Bass Guitar – Graham Jones / Drums - Kevin Slingsby
The long and rolling road
That carries all the way to
Is calling me…Is calling me…
Where the road kisses the skyline
On that rolling green horizon
Is where I’ll be.. Is where I’ll be.
I don’t care if they say I’m ugly
‘Cause I’ll shed my tears alone.
My thoughts they do not haunt me,
I willfind another home.
For I have youth to face tomorrow. The Hermit Inn and Restaurant
I am stronger than today.
I am stronger than the strangers
Who are sending me this way.
I am bigger that he whispers
That they send to torment me.
I will reach the furthest star. Hermit Inn (site 2)
I will reach, I will be free.
The long and rolling road
That carries all the way to
It carries me ..It carries me.
The man is young, the sun is old,
It paves the streets of with gold.
Oh let it be that way…
…………..
Tunes; Rosebud – Pigeon on the gate – Dust in the Lane.
The grey and ugly streets
That slowly stretch away from
Are made of dust…made of dust.
I am hungry, I am thirsty.
Have my soul but give a crust.
My clothes are dirty.
My shoes are full of water
And my mind is full of hate.
I knocked the door of providence
They said I’d come too late.
I thought to stay forever
With the corpses at the gate.
Now the streets of are empty
As the faces stop and stare, and stop and stare.
I’ve no money for the alehouse
So I’ll find no comfort there, no comfort there.
Give me anything for pain.
I am truly so alone, Yes I’m alone.
I will face all the slander.
I am going home again, I’m going home again, I’m going home.
…………….
STONE ON STONE (Narration)
Tune – Leapfrog
Narrator – Sean Mansley
Tenor Recorder – Lynda Hardcastle
Fiddle - Geoff Bowen
STONE ON STONE ( Song)
Vocals _ Martin Carter / Guitar _ Colin Cripps /Fiddle – Geoff Bowen
Bass Guitar – Graham Jones
I’ve ostled and I’ve bustled,
I’ve trod the straight and narrow.
I’ve seen the road in yesterday
That stretches through tomorrow.
I’ve reaped and sowed,
I’ve bent and bowed.
I’ve scraped me way alone
But nothing pleases me as much as placing stone on stone.
Begone the song that others sing
In many voices loud.
I’ll sing me song and build along
Where no one else has ploughed.
Their voices strangle
In their throats
As years outstrip the bone
But my song is spelled in solid words, spelled out in
Stone on stone, stone on stone.
Stone on stone the walls go up
Beneath the massive hand
But sickles sweep the years away
While still the old stone stands
So here beneath the harvest moon
I build the big stones strong
And I think the things I’m building will outlive the sickle’s song.
Stone on Stone, stone on stone.
……………………….
A LONG WINTER (Narration)
Tune – Cliffs of Duneen
Narrator – Sean Mansley
Whistle – Alan Rose
A LONG WINTER (Song)
Vocals – Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle, Martin Carter /Guitar – Colin Cripps
Fiddle – Geoff Bowen / Bass Guitar – Graham Jones /Drums – Kevin Slingsby
Mary old dear draw closer
The night wind is blowing and shaking our stack.
I know that you’re older; I know your age
But none that I know can turn the hands back.
We had our share of hardship Mary.
Soon you’ll leave me too.
Though you’re old your heart is warmer by the fire.
We’ll see this long, long winter through.
Together mary, inside our house
We two are living close as one.
The years have robbed us, stripped our eyes
And to the night have taken and gone.
Count years away my Mary
For the wind is growing colder.
We may see a better time
Before we get much older.
Mary, Mary you can’t answer.
Are you gone away forever?
Are you gone?....
Are you gone?....
Are you gone?....
…………………..
WHO KNOWS (Narration)
Tune – Greenland Man’s Tune
Narrator - Sean Mansley
Fiddle – Geoff Bowen
WHO KNOWS (Song)
Vocals – Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle, Martin Carter, Graham Jones.
Guitar – Colin Cripps / Fiddle - Geoff Bowen / Bass Guitar - Graham Jones
Drums – Kevin Slingsby
Who knows, who knows
What time has done to me?
Who shows, who shows
The things that I can’t see>
I wander home,
My house is broken down,
My money is lost
My life is scattered to the ground.
Who comes today
To rob me of my time?
I’d go insane
But still I hope the sun will shine.
Again. Who knows…
There’s little left to trust.
The tables never turned.
Who knows, who knows
Why all I touch just turns to dust?
I tried, I tried
But life’s an enemy.
I’ve trod the road.
They all lead back to me.
………………
I’LL SING FOR ME SUPPER (Narration)
Tune - Drive the Cold Winter Away
Narrator – Sean Mansley
Whistle – Alan Rose
Descant Recorder – Geoff Bowen
Treble recorder - Graham Jones
Tenor recorder – Lynda Hardcastle.
I’LL SING FOR ME SUPPER (Song)
Vocals _ Lynda Hardcastle, Alan Rose, Martin Carter, Graham Jones /
Guitar - Colin Cripps / Fiddle – Geoff Bowen / Bass Guitar – Graham Jones
Drums – Kevin Slingsby
I’ll sing for me supper
I’ll sing for me beer.
I’ll sing for you who heartily cheer.
You never will admit me
Not one into your door
But I’ll carry on singing
And then I’ll sing some more.
Now take my advice all you young men and true
Though you frown and you scwl for the want of a sou
Don’t wed and old widow with money galore
Nor love a young and a pretty maid who’ll always keep you poor.
Instrumental tune: Shooting
…………………….
THE OUTCAST (Narration)
Tune – Scollay’s Reel
Narrator - Sean Mansley
Treble recorder – Lynda Hardcastle
THE OUTCAST (Song)
Vocals - Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle, Martin Carter, Graham Jones
Guitars – Coin Cripps, Martin Carter / Fiddle – Geoff Bowen / Drums - Kevin Slingsby
If time has done me bad, then in this moment I’m not bitter
Or full with songs of hatred to the brim
Please think nothing of my anger in the days when I was younger still
I’m lonely now and breath my last.
Love me now – Oh love the Outcast.
The world was mine in bigger ways: my stones stand on the skyline.
The wind avoids the shadow of my walls.
I did my share of working and had my fill of learning.
I know that I am dying but I hear a baby crying
Far away across the moorland
Of my dreaming and my slowly closing eyes…
REBIRTH
Vocals – Martin Carter, Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle / Guitar – Colin Cripps,
Fiddle _ Geoff Bowen / Drums – Kevin Slingsby
On silver wings the sun goes down
Beneath the western sky
And sees this softly closing hour
When some may live and some may die.
Bent on the earth beneath the sky
A new born cry is heard.
The silent star is split in two
The first eruption of a word.
Your life is started.
Your life’s begun.
END................................
English Birds is an instrumental tht never made it to the final album, kindly sent to us by Colin Cripps.
Colin also provided a couple of other tracks that were played live after the Hermit project as part of another project. The other two tracks here are a couple of nos from their next project 'wind over the borderland'.
The Patient's Song and Leading Lady Thanks to Colin Cripps for these and his Mountain Ash Band introduction which is on another post here
In another post we have the 1975 album by the Mountain Ash Band, a concept album based on Job
To LISTEN to THE HERMIT click HERE
For more background on the group click HERE
Colin Cripps is author of Popular Music in 20th C (which takes you from Blues to Two Tone with musical exercises and background for use with music departments in schools and colleges)
Introduction to The Hermit by Colin Cripps - May 2007
From 1971 to 1974 I had had a life 'on the edge' in . Politically, I was running a community newspaper - The Willenhall Estate News - and organising rent strikes because of the state of the city's housing stock. I felt passionately about the situation In Northern and was under Special Branch Surveillance as a result. I was part of the squatter's movement in the city and was living in Ivy Walk (now tarquin Way!) with every drug dealer, racist and prostitute as a neighbour. I was doing a lot of grass and a few trips and i had a relationship that was gradually and painfully coming apart. Above all I was a guitar player/songwriter without a band or a voice. I was burnt out and desperate to make a change that would get my life back into shape.
In 1974 the opportunity presented itself to make a new start up in Yorkshire
in a kind of small scale 'commune' in Addingham on the side of Ilkley Moor. The setting was idyllic but unfortunately not enough to save my marriage and I ended up living in a box-room in the house of Geoff Bowen, the fiddle player in the Mountain Ash band - which, at the time, was a caileidh band I was playing in as well as having a line-up that was a regular feature on the local folk-club scene with ex-wife Lynda as part of the set-up.
I was attracted to the local folk story of the Hermit I suppose because it had resonances for my own situation at the time: I certainly could not claim that a centrally-heated box-room was anything like living under a dry stone wall on the moors but I guess i felt, like Job Senior, that an important part of me had died, that I was alone and and that I needed a rebirth. When Ray King, a friend from Willenhall, visited I told him the folk tale and he tuned in immediately and came up with a great set of lyrics. They had no verse and chorus structure because Ray was a poet not a songwriter, but there was enough to work with.
The track 'A Long Winter' was one that came from the kind of magical happening that comes once a life time. I was staying with some friends in a place called White Wells, halfway up the side of Ilkley Moor. I had been struggling with what to do with the lyrics to 'Long Winter' for a couple of weeks. I remember having an unsettled night and waking up early one morning before anyone else was up. I went outside with my acoustic and, where normally there was Ilkley, now there was just a floor of mist filling the whole valley. It came just up to my feet and i felt like i could walk all the way to Blubberhouses Moor on it. It was transcendent! I sat down with the guitar and the song came out whole, first go, complete, perfect, without any conscious thought or control. You have to treasure times like those.
Recording the album was a problematic affair. Martin Carter and Graham Jones were professionals on the folk circuit at the time and were good enough to make space to rehearse the piece but I was looking for a Richard Thompson feel that I never quite achieved: in retrospect that was because i couldn't play the guitar like him, especially not on a Zenta Telecaster copy! We recorded the whole thing in a converted church studio in with a guy who did the sound for ITV variety programmes on the desk. We could afford so little studio time and worked solidly over endless hours for two days: one day to record everything and the next to do any overdubs and mix-down. By the time it came to record the vocals we were already exhausted and by mixing time I had no ears left for nuance and no time to re-record anything.
We performed the piece in its entirety at as a multi-media
event ( we had slides! ) and managed not only to sell the place out but also to lose money. Nonetheless the whole thing seems to have been universally loved, both album and event, and lives on despite itself. I am proud of the songs and proud that we managed to record it despite the personal dynamics. It's a piece of music i keep coming back to thinking that I wish i could re-record it to sound the way it did in my head but the Mountain Ash band is scattered to the four winds and could probably not even co-exist inside a room together nowadays. Sean Mansley, the narrator, is sadly long since deceased and I have no idea what has happened to Ray King, poet extraordinaire; he was a reprobate of the best kind and I am so glad he passed through my life!
I am eternally flattered that people still want to listen to The Hermit and forever sad that I cannot bear to put it on my CD player...
Colin
(The lyrics and audio are in another post on here.)
I met Colin Cripps
and Bo and I were producing the first edition of HOBO. Colin was from Cambridge but studying for a literature degree at Warwick University. He lived in Ivy Walk, Willenhall and I lived in nearby Willenhall Wood at the time. At the time Colin was involved in Tenants Association and Willenhall Estate News. At the time there was a 'minor gale blowing between the tenants associations' and the Willenhall Free Press developed out of that.
Colin was also an accomplished guitarist and writer and his (then) wife, Lynda Hardcastle played recorder and sang. They had around them, in Ivy Walk, a group of creative people, poets, musicians and artists. Living in Willenhall I often went down to see them; join in the jam sessions, share poems and songs, swap chords sequences, riffs, discuss poetry, politics, philosophy and the Coventry music scene. Colin and Lyn and the others got involved in, and were highly supportive of the Hobo Music Workshop at the Holyhead Youth Centre in 1974 (more of that in a later post) and a few of the Hobo layouts were done at their place. Although they were not used for publicity in the end,One night, after discussing the apathy that was around at the time, they collectively produced some flyer's for the Hobo Workshop after one of the weekly sessions had a lower turn out. The Hobo Workshop did pick up but it took a lot of work and a 'Shut Down City Centre Concert' protest campaign to do it! (again more about the Workshop to come). The nucleus of the Mountain Ash Band was formed during this time but towards the end on 1974 after Colin completed his degree, they moved up to Ilkley in Yorkshire where the band wrote and performed their masterpiece, The Hermit. Colin also went on to write a history of the main forms and styles of popular music in the 20th Century
However, that's jumping ahead -
Before they left Coventry, they made creative entries into my Communication Book - here is a stream of consciousness piece about Coventry by Colin from the book -
THE SLOW TRAIN (GOD, EVA, and all stations in between) Colin Cripps
Coventry-city of spires-after all that – the torture you went through – why have you not learnt? Where is your heart? –
Office block, red wine sun through your uncurtained windows, no typists, no product, not even ink on sheets of A.10, only heaven glows on your walls- empty flats decay the clean way-no heart in the precinct, no life, no blood of general ownership flows though your hardened arteries-stillborn, this Phoenix will perhaps never rekindle – through double-glazing, from his skull he has directed vision-white concrete rejects all light, creates no colour, but your grey is already halfway to nothingness – middle class lady, neatly attired in comfort fresh underwear, perfectly perfumed, motionless make up mask, I would never have discovered that you too shit if you hadn’t shat on me.
Lady Diahorrea unloads her troubles in her back streets, her public lavatories, her estates; Willenhall young maid that you once were – sitting beneath a tree in everyone’s forest – she put you in servants attire – on the bus from Chase Hostels to town, stubbly chin, old coat, old man on the way to work, drink and bed once a gain – never ending round of one bred to service – don’t believe the lady on the horse my brother, she takes the services of your sweat and eats your meal with delicate refinement, alas no use, coercion, creation, transformation in your sense, she shits her daily round, indiscriminately
selecting her areas, her thousand bowed heads, her understains.
Labour party, union house, how far have you come! Quite grown! Gone up in the world of deodorised dreams – the backsliding, back handed, back to front, black legging respectable face of piracy, privateering, profiteering, political men.
So many fooled faces, visages, masks at mosques, business rituals at the Vere – where is the heaven you invoke? Your daylight séances produce no rebirth – your black mass meetings of monetary monks see no angels.
Somewhere a cell jumped off your car carpets, skipped the lights, crashed into the microcosm of Coombe, lived it all out, met up with you all, your felt ideas, your fantastic words, your devotion, will to go ahead, your energy, your art, your convincing universal politics, your human laughter as you’ve sped up, spaced out, peaked, gone through, come down, crashed out and peered those curious eyes, red and sore, out at the outrageous, humiliating Babel beyond your window. Raspberry of Radio One to raspberry at Radio One. Grow my flock. You are all in my dream; can I be in yours?
From your flyovers to your flies, papers to pamphlets, advertisements to
mirrors, comfortableness to the twitch of worry, sore bones to broken minds,
split people together ones with sad eyes, I pay you the greatest accolade – I
have learnt from you.
Poet / Lyricist Ray King of Ivy Walk, Willenhall was one of them and wrote a sad farewell to them, recorded in the Communication book but ended up moving to Ilkley too and writing the lyrics for the Mountain Ash Band. Here are a few sections from his very long farewell poem Till Then - it is worth sharing!
......I am burning deep
with pages
that I long for all to see,
But Hark!
Did I hear a whisper in the dark?
a year has passed
Many moons have waxed
and waned
into forgotten episode.
but something holds intact
something frosted like Christmas card landscapes,
Ideal.
Memory is fickle
Many tongued
treacherous as furtive night time.............
We were sometimes vein
but strangely honest
as we sowed those seeds
Time will take intensity from memory;
that strange intensity that only now
can hold..........
We will carry all those yesterdays
to tire in smoky anedote
till wearied......
Though the thought was born
in lowly Ivy Walk
It strides the lord of thought
through night time
pausing on the brink of time
awhile
to gaze a knowing eye
across the universe
of silver studded
velvet sky;
........are we nothing more than whispers
as sound slips from a broken hour glass,
this I refuse,
as much goodbye........
our suns will burn again
our suns will burn again,
till then, till then,
Till Then.
Excerpts for Ray King's Poem Till Then (Ivy Walk 1974)
Soon Ray moved to Ilkley too and the the Mountain Ash Band were formed. Ray wrote all the the lyrics for the Hermit, an album that it is now very rare (see this website) Mountain Ash Band The band consisted of Colin Cripps Guitar / research and original concept and music; Ray King - Lyrics; Sean Mansley - Narration; Geoff Bowen - Fiddle / Recorder; Martin Carter - Vocals / guitar; Alan Rose - Vocals/ Whistle; Graham Jones - bass / vocals / recorder; Lynda Hardcastle - Vocals / Recorders; Kevin Slingsby - Drums. 1975 Pic of album cover The Hermit here -
It's the story of a local Hermit (local to Ilkley Moors) called Job Senior - written not so much as a story but as a series of 'Glimpses of his world' as they imagined them seen by Job at the crisis points of his life. Lynn told me the album was remixed for CD in the 90's and a second version of the Mountain Ash Band was formed with Alan Rose and Lynda Hardcastle.
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