Peninsular West, April 1974

 It has been some time since I last updated this blog. Not a lot has happened in the interim, but recently I stumbled upon an article about the label that I thought was worth sharing here. Rupert White, whose excellent "Folk In Cornwall" book I have enthused about in entries passim, recently uploaded some photos to facebook which included this piece about Sentinel, taken from a magazine called Peninsular West, which appears to be dated April 8th 1974. It briefly covers the history of the label, but most interestingly (for me, at least) is that there are a couple of photos of the original Newlyn studio, including one of Job in the control room, and another of Brenda Wootton & Robert Bartlett recording the 'No Song To Sing' LP in the live room. There's also a panel advert for the studio.

The closing paragraph of the article is particularly apt:
"As a memoir of the summer holidays they have something to offer visitors of today, but as historical documents they will mean that much more to those listening a hundred years from now." Well, here we are nearly 50 years later. I hope you're still listening.

Sadly the journalist isn't credited in the original article, but many thanks to Rupert White for allowing me to reproduce it here.

More Sentinel airplay

I was fairly staggered to hear a couple of titles from Children Singing along with "The Story of My Country" from Starry Gazey Pie played on 6Music over the weekend. This was all thanks to Gwenno Saunders, for whom Brenda Wootton & Richard Gendall were influences from a very young age, and whose new long-player Le Kov is sung in Cornish throughout. Hopefully I'll be writing in greater detail about the album at a later date, but meanwhile, here's a link to the Freak Zone playlist which Saunders compiled.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09wwstj
Great to hear Laurie Anderson & Delia Derbyshire in there too.

Gwenno also appeared on Cerys Matthews' 6Music show on St Piran's day, and played Brenda's "An Tour Dantelezet".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tt815

Shazam

A few weeks back, the great Mike Innes posted a link on my facebook page to a youtube clip featuring a couple of recordings by a Penzance-based band from the early 1980s called Shazam. The songs were entitled “Let’s Get Together” & “Memories”, and featured icy cold-wave futurist synths -a Roland Promars, an Octave Kitten & a Roland TR 606, if you’re counting- and mannered post-punk/pre-goth vocals. The two songs were issued on a 45 in 1983 on the band’s own ADSR label (great name!), and - while clearly DIY recordings – were accomplished enough to make me wonder why I’d not heard them at the time; I was a huge fan of Kraftwerk, OMD & The Human League back then, and presumably lived within three miles of the band. Accomplished enough also to get me digging, and soon enough I found a copy of the single. More importantly, I found band vocalist Frankie Abbott, who filled me in a little on Shazam.

The band consisted of Abbott on vocals, Steve Millard & John Mellor (both on synths), and were active from 1981-83, playing shows on the local circuit, mostly at Demezla’s & Kenegie Manor. It seems that they were pretty much working in isolation; there were a few post-punk bands still working in the area, but no other groups had made the leap to electronic music. The 45 was recorded in 1981 at John Knight’s studio near St Keverne; sadly the band couldn’t raise sufficient funds to press & distribute it until 1983, by which time their moment might have passed. 500 copies were pressed, of which 200 copies were sent to radio stations & record labels with the aim of attracting a major deal. Sadly it seems there was little response from either radio or potential labels, and, disappointed by the lack of reaction, the band split towards the end of 1983. What goes around comes around, and much to Frankie’s surprise, in 2016 he was approached by a German record label called Mannequin, who specialise in re-releases of minimal synth obscurities, and who subsequently reissued the single on 12”.

After the band split, Frankie continued working within the music biz, and is still an active singer-songwriter in west Cornwall. Many thanks to him, and to Mike Innes for making me aware of the single.

Frankie can be found at www.frankieabbott.com.
Here’s the Shazam 45 www.youtube.com/watch?v=awcRkzVFpMQ

Discography & collection

I've just returned from a trip to Cornwall, where, amongst other things, I picked up a few more Sentinel releases. I've updated the discography accordingly.
Also, here is my collection so far. I'm still missing a few releases (detailed below), and there are still some catalogue numbers lacking any details at all. If anyone out there has any items for sale or further info on the holes in the numbering system, don't hesitate to contact me.
Thanks!

SENS 1015:??
SENS 1018: Marian Cresswell - Marian (Easy Listening Piano)
SENS 1019: Climax Choir – Born In Song 2
SENS 1039: Holman Climax Choir – Collected Hymns and Sacred Songs
SENS 1050: Camborne Town Band – Camborne in Concert
SENS 1057: St Austell Youth Band

Plus most 45s/EPs.
Also any obscure Cornwall-related pop/folk/rock releases.

Sentinel airplay!

Tuning in to Pete Paphides’ Soho Radio show earlier this week, I was surprised & overjoyed to hear him play Christine Quayle’s “The Seagulls Scream” from “Sounds Like West Cornwall”. He also quotes the blog entry regarding the album from this site. Makes it all worthwhile, really.
Here’s a link to the show. Christine appears around 39 minutes in, though the whole show is a great listen.

https://www.mixcloud.com/sohoradio/pete-paphides-15032016/

Richard Prest informs me that the recording was also included on Cherry Red's recent anthology of British Underground Folk, "Dust on the Nettles", amongst some very illustrious company

http://shop.cherryred.co.uk/grapefruit-exd.asp?id=5079

From Paddington To Penzance

Julian Henry has been releasing records as The Hit Parade since the early 80s, starting his pop career with possibly the greatest run of 45s in all of independent music (collected here). His latest LP on JSH Records, "Cornish Pop Songs", is a tribute to Penwith; its history, its people and its attitude. It's a terrific album, and one which has recently received positive coverage from -among others- The Cornishman & The Western Morning News. But what's the appeal? Why Cornwall?

Here's why: 

What drew you to Cornwall & its culture? 

I like exploring Britain. I first visited Penwith after reading about it in books. I like the fact that it’s a remote spot with its own identity, and all the flashes I’d seen of Cornwall from afar – Virginia Woolf, Betjeman, Du Maurier – gave me a sense that there was something hidden behind the holiday homes and sandy beaches. When I was young I remember my parents talking about Cornwall as if it was distant land where people ate ice cream all day without a care in the world. It was paradise at the far end of the railway line, and Cornwall still represents hope and sunshine to me today.

 Are you a regular visitor?  

I would say infrequent. I’m an outsider looking in. I know West Penwith well enough to feel comfortable every time I’m there.

Some of the songs have very specific reference points which only locals will "get" (the Garage in Drift, Swordfish pub, the Stevensons etc). Is there a significance of these people/places personal to you, or are they just "vehicles for the idea"?

 

My songs are shaped by what I see in front of me. When I stood outside the old garage in the village of Drift I was thinking about migration, how people had moved from this remote spot over many centuries towards Bristol, Exeter and London to search of fulfilment and gain. The cars that pass the garage today back and forth from Land End still indicate the desire for self-improvement. Everyone wants to move somewhere where the prospects will be better. They want a view. But why not return to the Garage where the dead cars lie rusting in the rain? There’s plenty to do, the people are friendly and the pubs are great. I’m fascinated by the A30 and the stories that this road tells. 

 

Can you make a pasty?

 

No, I’m useless in the kitchen. 

 

Aw, shame. Cornwall has quite a vibrant cultural scene, so did you consider recording the album in Cornwall? using local musicians?

 

It’s a jolly idea. There certainly a lot going on in Cornwall. But I wrote this in my gloomy flat in Paddington and recorded it in south London with Ian Catt. I can’t pretend to be local. I’m an outsider looking in. A friendly face at the window.
 

Has there been much interest from the locals? Any dates planned in the area?

 

Given that most of our records have been greeted by a deafening silence and the occasional cry of ‘you’re bloody rubbish!’, I would say that the early signs are promising. No one has yet called it rubbish.

 

Do you prefer Jelbert's Ice Cream to Roskilly, or vice versa?

 

I’m not much of a foodie. But I do like that Jelbert’s place in Newlyn.

 

Me too. One song on the album, "Ghost of the Fishing Fleet", seems to be quite pessimistic about Cornwall's future. What's the solution?

 

Cornwall should be a National Park with outsiders charged a toll when they cross the Tamar. The fishing industry, those heroic men in boats, the coppermen, the women of Newlyn, as well as the artists, writers and creative community, should all be celebrated. Tourists like me should be frisked at the border and tested on their knowledge of the history of Cornwall. This is about identity. Cornishmen and women must be full of hope for the future.

 

Where is your favourite place in Cornwall & why?

 

There’s an obscure spot up on the cliffs near Lamorna Cove we call the B Rock. It’s a hidden rocky outcrop near the coastal path that was obviously used by the military or something years ago. It’s buried in the gorse but a letter B has been carved into the granite so I go up there with my children for picnics on sunny days ...you can appreciate Cornwall’s history from up there, looking out to the sea. The old granite quarries where they dug out stone to ship up to London, the rocks down below where Laura Knight painted. Tater Du lighthouse is just along the way and it’s great to watch the fishing boats chugging round to Newlyn. It’s a wonderful view.

 

 

Thanks Julian. Here's the wonderful "Zennor Mermaid" from the LP, which you can purchase here.

 

 

 

 

Twin Redux

Awhile back I wrote about the Twintones album issued by Sentinel. This attracted the attention of fellow Cornish music aficionado David Waller, who is putting together a potentially fascinating live show about the Cornish music scene, and who has recently managed to track down the Twintones. There's dedication. Here's his report, in full.


From Shirley Temple to the Jackson 5, and the millions of youngsters currently belting out hits in their bedrooms on YouTube, the idea of children recording music is hardly unusual. But it was for Cornish kids in the 70s, especially when it meant having their own LP. The Twintones' 11 Plus 2 album, released in 1975, was recorded by a pair of young twins, Nanpean's Gary Tucker on drums and his sister Kay on organ. Laid down over two years at Job Morris' Sentinel Records studio in Newlyn, the LP featured such hits as Remember You're a Womble and These Boots are Made for Walking, as well as a message from TV's Dick Emery on its sleeve. We tracked them down and caught up over a coffee near St Austell.

How did the record come about?

Kay: We were quite well known locally as a musical family. Our uncle Ken may have written to Job Morris at Sentinel to ask if we could come down and record a demo disc. He was trying to promote us as Cornish talent.

Gary: Job Morris knew Basil Soper, ents manager at Talk of the West [club in Perran View Holiday Park]. Dick Emery was performing there and wanted some back-up, and Job said this little Cornish duo would make a great spot. So we did this gig with Dick Emery, and that spurred the record.

What are your memories of recording the album?

K: It was a big thing for us – we were only 11 years old. We had a brilliant time down there. Now there's reality TV with children all on stage and singing, but back then for us to go in with no musical backing was quite innovative. We just thought it was great. We just went down there and did what we did at home in the front room. I thought: “God, I'm here recording like the Bay City Rollers”. I was in love with them.

On These Boots are Made for Walking, this engineer Alan brought in a plank of wood and wore cowboy boots, and walked in the same rhythm as the piece, to embellish what we were doing. On Remember You're a Womble, Gary played the bass part on his euphonium and I played another part on the trombone and they double tracked that in.

We started recording the album when we were 11, but thanks to a strike somewhere in the chain it took two years for the record to come out. When we asked what we should call the record, Job Morris said: “Well, 11 plus 2”. It was a reference to the exam, and the fact we were now 13.

G: The sleeve looked very dull to me, for two youngsters. They just used a flash camera, and it was all brown around the outside. They didn't do any location shooting – it was in the studio, they took the camera. We could have gone out on the cliffs and done a lot more to make it a bit brighter – not two children stuck in this dark hole.

What was the response?

K: We got played on Radio Cornwall. We'd have people saying “ooh, I heard your record”. At that time it was a big thing, whereas now you'd just download it. They'd sell it in Hocking's, the record shop in St Austell. But there was no great scale. Of course we always had a box to take with us when we were singing, to sell to holiday makers at the end of the evening, and we used to sign them. So lots of the records will have gone back up country.

What are your memories of Sentinel?

K: The front of the shop sold records, then you went down some steps to the soundproofed recording studio, where you could open a hatch and see the river running through Newlyn. It was very small, but huge for us.

G: Job and Irene were a lovely couple. We were young and looked up to them, and they gave us great guidance. Brenda Wootton was being promoted at the time we were doing ours. The Johnny Austin Showband was very close behind us being produced. Job didn't use to hang around with these things. We went back later to produce an organ cassette, 'Kay Plays Technics', which we'd recorded ourselves at home, and Job had a go at me saying he could have done another two in the time it had taken us to record it.

What was this cassette?

K: After the record, which was made up of more or less standalone pieces, people at dances would came up to us and asked why we didn't do a dance album. So we did, playing music for waltzes, the quickstep, samba or whatever on the new Technics Pro 90 concert organ I'd bought. Gary recorded it at home on an Akai reel-to-reel, and Sentinel produced it. People bought the tape to dance to. We'd sell these cassettes at gigs.

Did you perform a lot of shows?

G We started as a family group playing local chapels and fates, and then we progressed into doing dance music and cabaret, entertaining guests at hotels and social clubs. By the time we were 15 or 16 we were out five nights a week round the hotels as a duo. Kay was offered a full-tome position on the Blackpool Tower Wurlitzer. It was a big step for a Cornish girl to go all the way to Blackpool. We declined it.

K: We had lots of offers over the years, but were happy doing what we were doing, with our family. We sent recordings to the Audience Entertains on Radio 2. We went up to Devon and Somerset. We had the opportunity to do cruise ships. Back then there were groups everywhere, it was all live music. We couldn't play a whole evening in a club, because we were too young and there were licensing issues. As well as playing for dancing I used to sing a lot of Carpenters music. We played whatever was in the charts – Boney M, Cliff Richard – as well as traditional waltzes and quicksteps to cater for families on holiday.

While the Twintones' career petered out in the 80s with the onset of marriage and children, the perfomances haven't stopped entirely. Gary has continued peforming in local opera and theatre. In late 2013 the pair reformed for a charity show in support of cancer support charity Tanya's Courage Trust – along with Kay's sons, James and George.




This is what Dave does when he's not interviewing The Twintones. It's great.

Bored Teenagers

This blog’s entry last December about the west Cornwall punk rock scene put me back in touch with a couple of old compatriots from the punk wars. So with grateful thanks to Jonathon Plunkett, here’s a track from the demo tape recorded at Sentinel studio by The Rusty Bottles in (educated guess) early 1978. The band later metamorphosed into An Alarm, more of whom elsewhere. The sound & songs are pretty lo-fi, but thinking back to 1978 I remember being pretty excited that I knew someone who knew someone who was actually in a punk rock group that had actually recorded a demo tape. It was almost like knowing Johnny Rotten. That the songs were so primitive was irrelevant. It’s still irrelevant. The point was: if you understand, go and join a band.
So, here is the opening tune from that demo, “I Know It”. Quality is a few generations down and –apparently - mono. But it’s all we could find.





In a further comment on the west Cornwall punk scene, Jonathon reminds me that April saw the release of “Bored Teenagers Volume 7”, which includes four numbers from fellow Penzance punkers The Vendettas, recorded in 1977 (again, an educated guess) at Sentinel. A brief history of the combo, together with an audio sample, can be found over on the excellent Kernowbeat website, while the album can be ordered direct from Detour Records. Their demo is a little more polished than the Rusty Bottles recording linked above....but it's all relative.

http://kernowbeat.co.uk/vendettas.html
http://www.detour-records.co.uk/RUBBISHCD013_INFO_PAGE_BT7.htm

Sentinel in Music Business Weekly, May 1970

The ever-vigilant Richard Morton Jack has forwarded me another magazine article about the early days of Sentinel, this time from a copy of Music Business Weekly, dated May 9th, 1970. It includes the first details of distribution and record sales that I've read in connection with the label, though the figure mentioned is predicted, rather than actual. 20,000 seems like quite a high figure, but the album referred to in the article, "Sounds Like West Cornwall", was all over the place throughout the 70s, so maybe 20,000 isn’t beyond the realms of possibility. Many thanks to Richard for sending this piece.

 

Job Morris’ co-conspirator, John Hassell, seems like an intriguing character himself, and to describe him as merely a studio owner does him a disservice. He ran an independent recording/pressing facility in Barnes SW13 though the 60s & 70s (just around the corner from Olympic studios), recording & releasing much the same kind of records that Sentinel would put out. However, his reputation as a disc cutter seems to have spread far and wide, and according to the link below, he had a unique skill in cutting reggae records (the huge bass frequencies being notoriously difficult to control though the mastering process), resulting in the ex-World War 2 veteran helping to shape the sound of British reggae in the late 1970s. Marvellous.   

http://soundofthehound.com/2011/06/25/the-strange-origin-of-the-uk-reggae-big-bass-sound-john-hassell-recordings-barnes/

An Alarm

Punk rock was quite a big deal in west Cornwall. I mean, it was quite a big deal all over the UK, but it seemed to hit deeply in the far flung wilds of the south west. I guess it was easier to feel a social outcast there due to  the relative isolation of the area. Given that Penzance is around 300 miles from London (and 80 miles from the nearest sizeable conurbation, Plymouth), it’s amazing that so many bands went the distance to play shows in this town-on-the-way-to-nowhere. But they came: The Stranglers, Ramones, The Damned, The Adverts, Generation X, The Vibrators, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello and many others all played at the Winter Gardens (known as The Garden by 1977) through the punk era. Most notoriously, the Sex Pistols played one of their last ever UK shows there in September 1977 on their infamous Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly (SPOTS) tour. Julien Temple was accompanying them on the dates, and – thank Heavens - filmed some of the Penzance show for posterity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWb2T4gQyZw

Sadly, I was 11 years old at the time, so missed these incendiary moments.  

Because punk rock was all about participation, it wasn’t long before bands started springing up in the area. I remember seeing early local punkers The Cramp at a friend’s party in 1978; other names to emerge from the scene around that time included The Brainiac Five (who lived down the road, & recorded a couple of 45s at Roche studio) , The Vendettas (whose vocalist Simon Parker worked at key Penzance record shop Chy An Stylus), Septic and the Sceptics, and The Rusty Bottles. Formed by brothers Noel & John Lane (Noel was the band’s main singer & songwriter), The Rusty Bottles recorded a demo at Sentinel circa 1978 (which I’ve been unable to track down, more’s the pity), before mutating into An Alarm.  

An Alarm were definitive post punk, though with a unique outlook that could only be found in a place like west Cornwall. Their first demo tape - also recorded at Sentinel - was called “Welcome To Penzance”, and the opening title – “Bandwagon (Welcome To Penzance)” – had a lyric which seemed to focus on the dichotomy between the need to escape the local scene, and the need to stay, in order to keep the scene alive. The guitar solo included a snippet from “The Floral Dance”. How we laughed. Other titles, such as “Someone’s Life” were a personal take on the politics of the era (“The bomb was cleverly concealed underneath the back seat of his car. He didn’t know what hit him, and he’s quiet now. His wife fainted when she saw the blood on the double yellow line.”), while others were character sketches of friends (or, more likely, enemies): “Cally’s Cax” is the tale of a local sleep-around, “One More” cocks a snook at an associate who’s about to leave for University. Many of their songs were concerned with the unviability of being a working musician in such an insular environment as west Cornwall, and the frustration of trying to get your point across to an unreceptive audience: “We know we face blind ignorance. We receive it with gradual acceptance. We listen to – but don’t accept – advice, and try to put over an air of confidence. But we don’t give up. You can’t go back. The clocks won’t stop.” (“Gradual Acceptance”). It’s witty stuff; purposeful, and lyrically brilliant.  

An Alarm never broke out of that local scene, but they went on to record a couple more demos of increasing musical worth (“For The Sheep” and “Throttle”, both home-recorded), which maybe I’ll upload at a later date, though they rather fall outside the remit of the blog. Noel Lane left the area around 1982 to spend time in Huddersfield, where he recorded as Anne Gwirder, before moving to Bristol. Here he formed Chorchazade, who released an intriguing LP (”Made To Be Devoured”) and EP (“Ah, You Are As Light As A Feather”) for Revolver in  the late 1980s; Steve Albini was an admirer, apparently. Before the big myspace meltdown, Noel could be found there under his nom-de-plume (he was also a published writer) Bunny Dees, after which the trail goes cold. However, he was interviewed for the Perfect Sound Forever website in 2012, where he discussed – amongst other things - the making of the Chorchazade records.  

http://www.furious.com/perfect/chorchazade.html  

Something of a lost talent, I think. Here’s “Bandwagon” and “Someone’s Life” from that An Alarm demo tape, recorded at Sentinel early in 1979.

Folk In Cornwall

There was far more to the Cornish folk scene of the 60s & 70s than the few records that seeped through onto the Sentinel label. It was a remarkably fertile training ground for many artists; this movement has been newly documented in a book by Rupert White, entitled “Folk In Cornwall”. The book tells the story from the early years of the beatnik scene in St Ives & Newquay in the early 60s, right up to the final days of the Pipers Folk Club & the Folk Cottage, and encompasses world-renowned artists including Donovan, Ralph McTell, Clive Palmer, Michael Chapman and Wizz Jones (the cover star), all of whom either served musical apprenticeships in the county, or were attracted by the ambience of the area & chose to stay. And, of course, all the key natives (Brenda Wootton, Richard Gendall et al) are heavily featured too.  The narrative is told almost entirely through the voices of the interviewees (all the above -and many more- are heavily quoted throughout), and there’s little expansion from the author on their quotes. White has simply carried out the research & joined the dots. I say “simply”; the research is meticulous to say the least, and is impressive enough to carry the book on its own.

Even so, this makes “Folk In Cornwall” quite a dry read, and one which could definitely have used a(nother) proof-read. But it’s a fascinating story, and one which casts a wider net than you might imagine. This is the only place you can hear the story told. My favourite quote is this striking piece of scene-setting from Michael Chapman, in which he explains the genesis of “Fishbeard Sunset” from his second LP “Fully Qualified Survivor”....

“When John The Fish was playing at The Count House, he always had one eye out of the window, as we had a tradition that the gig would stop and the entire audience would walk out onto the cliff to watch the sunset, then come back in again and we’d restart. So one night I was sitting to one side of the stage watching the sunset through Fish’s beard. And that’s where the title comes from....”

I was delighted to read in a recent issue of The Cornishman that this tradition still stands. Can we have more gigs where people leave the venue to watch the sunset, please?

Buy “Folk In Cornwall” here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/161057817420

Hear “Fishbeard Sunset” (but not Chapman’s version, sadly) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x2aspndm-w

Pasties & Cream in The Cornishman

On a recent trip down to Newlyn, I spent much of my time rifling through my parents’ book & magazine collection (which they are currently whittling down). I was pretty delighted to come across a copy of local newspaper The Cornishman from July 1971 in their shed, and was even more pleased to find an article about Brenda Wootton’s “Pasties And Cream” LP (SENS 1006). The Cornishman, of course, is depicted on the cover of the album, together with the Cornish delicacies after which the album is named.

One day I’ll get round to writing about this most renowned of Sentinel LPs myself, but for now I’ve reproduced the article here, together with some other relevant bits & pieces from the same edition, including an advert for a quite amazing week of shows at Penzance’s The Garden. See Queen (lest we forget, "Roger Taylor's group, formerly Smile") for 25p! Beggars belief, really...

 

Gill Watkiss

Here’s another Sentinel album where the significance of the cover outweighs that of the music within. It’s a Christmas album from the Holman Climax Male Voice Choir (and associates) and features the usual mix of traditional carols & festive cheer.  What makes this album more appealing is the cover painting, an early work by Penwith artist Gill Watkiss. A fairly realist depiction of a Christmas scene, it’s fairly atypical of her approach; her painting is usually far more stylised, and all the better for it. For me, her work is the precise visual equivalent of the spookier end of early 70s psych-folk, creating exactly the same quietly unsettled, sinister aura that –say- Linda Perhacs’ “Parallelograms” or the theme from "Picture Box" conjures up. It’s all in the movement of the air and the characters’ faces; I can still remember encountering her work for the first time in Newlyn Art Gallery in the late-70s and feeling oddly uneasy. But in a good way.  

This is what she does: 

 

Amazing stuff.

Most of Gill’s paintings depict St Just & its environs, and the cover of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” (SENS 1044, 1979) is no exception, the clock in the village square being instantly recognisable in both paintings here. Recently her work seems to have shot up in value, and rightly so. She is genuinely a one-off. Her website can be found at  www.gillwatkiss.com

Lanyon Quoit

As I may have mentioned in the past, there’s only so much enthusiasm I can muster for male voice choirs and silver bands. On “The Reason Why”, by the Climax Male Voice Choir with Camborne Town Band (SENS 1020, 1974) we have a double whammy. It’s fine for what it is, but it’s not much to my taste. The cover, on the other hand, is magnificent.

Lanyon Quoit was one of the first ancient sites I ever visited, one foggy day in autumn 1976. Somewhere, I still have the photographs. But they're not as good as this one. Here is the dolmen in all its splendour, with Ding Dong mine to the right, and Carn Galver to the left. This area of west Cornwall is riddled with fantastic ancient monuments: Men An Tol, The Nine Maidens of Boskednan, Tregeseal Stone Circle, and the quoits of Mulfra, Chun & Zennor. Lanyon Quoit always looked a bit pre-fabricated for my liking; just *too* perfect to be authentic. I later found it had collapsed early in the 19^th century & was subsequently reconstructed, so maybe that's why it looks so perfectly honed. In 1769, William Borlase wrote in his Antiquities Of Cornwall that the monument was so tall that it was possible to ride a horse under the capstone. Wow.

Even so, it’s still a beautiful monument despite the reconstructive work, and the photograph - taken by Ander Gunn - that graces the cover of “The Reason Why” is a brilliantly composed image, taking in both the natural geology of the area and also its industrial heritage, as well as its ancient history.

Digging this album out reminded me of another favourite cover of mine, that of Kariba by Irish post-punkers Kissed Air. This featured Paul Caponigro’s incredible photographs of Pentre Ifan chambered tomb on the rear, and Kilclooney dolmen (I think??) on the front. There should be more ancient monuments on record sleeves, I think. Any other nominations out there (Julian Cope notwithstanding)?

More about Lanyon Quoit here: http://themodernantiquarian.com/site/235/lanyon_quoit.html

You're either on the train or you're off the train.

In a typical 1970s independent record shop (I'm thinking of "White's of Alverton" here, Penzance residents), it wasn’t uncommon to find a section marked “sound effects”, generally in between the “humour/spoken word” & “miscellaneous” sections. This would generally be filled with hi-fi test records and those BBC sound effects LPs of which Paul Weller was so fond. But it would often include a subdivision of albums consisting of recordings of steam engines. This flummoxed me as a child, but as I grow older it makes more sense. These albums weren't intended to be used to help create your film soundtrack or to check your tracking alignment. They were an entertainment in themselves, a nostalgic look back at a bygone era.

Which brings me to “An Enthusiast Remembers” (Sentinel JW 1). It’s an album of recordings made at Shrewsbury, Talerddig, Lancashire & Yorkshire during the last years of steam traction on British Railways, collected & annotated by Jonathan Wood. Not being an expert on steam locos, there’s very little I can say about the recordings, so I’ll simply quote the nostalgic, evocative sleeve notes...

“It is still dark, and there is only a murmur of traffic from the distant main road as the 4.10am Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth Mail coasts in towards the signal box, slowing to pick up the single line token from the apparatus opposite. As the train passes, the driver opens up purposefully, and the train heads towards Westbury. The countryside is quiet again, and then just before dawn the signalman can be heard replacing the token for a goods train following at 5am. This time with a heavier train the engine is working harder, and the sounds bursts out from under the road bridge just before the box, and the driver picks up the token without slackening pace. After the train has passed the sound is carried back on the light air, gradually picking up speed into the distance.”

It's all there, isn't it? I don't even need to include a sound file. Indeed, there's not much more to add, except to say that it’s difficult to see how these recordings wound up being released by Sentinel. There’s no local content (the recordings weren’t made on any South-western lines), and the copyright date is 1988, long after Sentinel shut up shop (or so I believed), so I’ve no idea quite who or what made the connection. And Sentinel didn’t exactly have a history of marketing this type of album, though a fair few of them wound up in that “miscellaneous” section I referred to earlier. But there in the credits, it states “Thanks...for endless patience in remastering the tapes to Job Morris of Sentinel Records”.

Children. Singing.

Wow. Has it really been four months since I last updated this blog? And there’s been so much Sentinel-related news! Actually, there hasn’t, of course, but that’s no excuse to not write entries more frequently. Having said that, I’ve not really found much in the way of interesting Sentinel LPs of late, so here’s a bit about the first album I owned on the label. And one on which I actually appear...

I guess it must have been July 1976, which means I was 10 years old. Just before we broke up for the long summer holiday, our primary school teacher Mrs Ellery told us an exciting piece of news: Brenda Wootton was going to be recording an LP with various children’s choirs in west Cornwall, and our school choir had been chosen as one of the participants. Teach then played a tape of a couple of the songs Brenda had demoed, and may have handed out Banda-duplicated lyric sheets too, but I don’t really remember. It didn’t really matter: we were going to be on a record! How thrilling!

So when we all returned after the summer holiday, suitably scorched from too many long days on Perran beach, the record was quite a hot topic, and we spent many Friday afternoons with Mrs Ellery, honing our craft. Or did we? It doesn’t really sound like it, judging from the rather under-arranged performances I’m listening to now. But that’s beside the point: it’s not supposed to be Bohemian Rhapsody. The five songs on which we appear were recorded in Sentinel’s Newlyn studio one Sunday morning: we were all done by lunchtime. I think we recorded no more than three takes of anything. One of us sneezed during “Thunder & Lightning”, a song celebrating clotted cream & pasties, wouldn’t you know? The sneeze is there on the LP, unedited. Some of the other recordings on the LP were made in the music room of Ludgvan School, rather than the studio, lending an even more rustic air to the album’s ambience.

Anyway, it was an unforgettable experience. I remember peeking into the studio control room and thinking, “well, this would be a fine way to earn a living”.... though actually it was probably more “wow look at all the buttons & knobs”.  Both Brenda & Richard Gendall (who wrote most of the numbers too) were welcoming, helpful & funny, and the guitarist on the album – Al Fenn – was a member of west country folk-rockers Decameron, my mum’s favourite band at the time. She was dead impressed. I don’t remember seeing much of Job. I really should have been paying more attention.

As for the record itself (Children Singing; SENS 1036), it plays the charm card quite heavily as you’d expect, but is all wonderfully evocative (that word again!), at least for me. And – I’d imagine – it would probably conjure up a few memories from some of my fellow “choristers” too. So: is anyone out there? Luke Shirley? Zora Trapp? Would love to hear from you.      

Here's "Opie, Davy, Foote, Trevithick & Bone", the opening number on the album, and a paean to five Cornish heroes.

Twin Reverb

Now, here’s a curiosity. The Twintones were a duo from Nanpean consisting of organist Kay Tucker & her twin brother, drummer Gary. They were each only eleven years old when they recorded this album, Eleven Plus Two (SENS 1025), which consists of –how I hate to use this word- cheesy instrumental versions of many top hits of the day (Solitaire, Remember You’re A Womble, Y Viva Espana, Popcorn), 60s revivals (These Boots Are Made For Walking, Peyton Place) and more trad fare (Ode To Joy, Amazing Grace, Theme from the Dambusters). There’s also a single self-composed number on the album, a quaint ditty entitled Melody Waltz. They even take to trombone & euphonium on Remember You’re A Womble, and vocalise on their interpretation of Banana Rock (what, two Wombles covers on the same LP?!).
It’s all pretty competent –remarkably so for a couple of eleven year olds- so rather lacks the charm you might expect from a record played by pre-teenagers. What it does have in its favour is a sleeve note from Dick Emery, for whom they opened during a season at Talk Of The West, St Agnes in 1974. “It was a very great pleasure for me to meet Kay & Gary in Cornwall”, he claims, “and I wish them every success with their new record.” They must have been thrilled.
We also get a colour cover photo of what I believe is the interior of the Riverbank Studio in Newlyn, but you don’t really see much beyond a few mics and a 13 amp socket. Lovely photo of the combo though.

More Singing at the Count House

And here's their LP, recorded circa 1965 live at the venue. Here's an (edited) review of the club from The Guardian, 14th October 1964, as reprinted in the sleeve notes...
"The Count House folk music club...north coast of Cornwall...derelict engine houses...strangest landscape in the country...end of a lonely track...cliff edge...constant roar of the sea...tin mine building...converted...whitewashed walls and fishing nets...somewhere for people to sing their kind of music...could think of more unlikely places to find a folk music club, but it is not easy to call them to mind..."

The download is a zip file, around 70MB.

http://www.divshare.com/download/17515746-be7

And here's a preview, from Mel & Miles, about whom I know nothing, apart from the fact that they "make frequent visits to the club and have spent the last two summers there as additional Residents" (again from the sleeve notes). Anyone...?

Count House Match Book

Again, this is a bit tangential to the purpose of this blog, but here's a matchbook from the Count House Folk Club in Botallack, '60s home to Brenda Wootton, John the Fish et al. The "Bought our LP record yet?" refers to the "More Singing at the Count House" LP, a privately issued LP, which I really should get round to uploading here.

The Modern Antiquarians

I have to admit to a slight bending of the rules for this one, as the subject of this entry appears on the VRC label (cat no VRC 1: Video Recording Company, apparently), though to all intents & purposes it’s a Penwith-based private pressing. But enough of the pedantry. The Pipers Folk album appeared in 1968, emanating from the Pipers Folk Club of St Buryan. The club, named after the Pipers standing stones in nearby Boleigh, was inaugurated in May 1967 in the village hall, following the sudden closure of John Wood’s & Ian Todd’s seminal Count House Folk Club in Botallack (more of which some other time, perhaps). Among the resident singers at The Count House were Brenda Wootton & John the Fish, and upon moving to St Buryan, they soon built up a large enough following to have this album pressed up & distributed at the club.  

There’s some jazz & blues amongst the more trad folk on this LP though it’s all bare-bones acoustic stuff, and all the better for it. As befits a folk LP, there aren’t many originals herein, but I’ve selected a wonderfully haunting and atmospheric tune entitled Stars. Just the sound of Brenda's breathing before her vocal entrance is enough to transport you to some place...elsewhere... 
It was written by a 22-year-old Mike Sagar-Fenton, one of the club regulars, and later co-manager of legendary Penzance record shop Chy An Stylus. (Later still, of course, he became a famed local historian, and still writes a column for the local paper...but that’s another story...)

Though some of the titles on this LP were apparently recorded at the label’s own studio facility in Stourbridge (of all places), many of the recordings were laid to tape in the Newlyn Meadery, barely a stone’s throw from (what was to be) the Sentinel studio on The Strand. So that counts for something, surely?

More about the Pipers standing stones here: http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/237/pipers.html