Reviews
Artist: Sandy Denny
Album: Sandy Denny (Box Set)
Label: UMC
CDs: 19
Website:http://www.island50.com/
Everything about Sandy Denny (Box Set) is huge, it racks up over three hundred tracks over 19 cds and will be retailing for well over a ton. My first thought on going over the figures was, whose actually going to buy that? Most of Sandy's follower's will have pretty much everything on the set will they stump up the wodge to get the few tracks they haven't already got ?
It's also not like anyone that's new to Sandy, is going to think, "I've got to give Sandy Denny a try, I know I'll kick off with that 19 CD box set I saw advertised." Ok there's quite a few people like me that were just too young to be there at the start and have been drawn to her incredible voice and performances in latter years, but we're not talking cheap here.
Then it occurred to me that this isn't so much a box set as a festival of Sandy Denny and suddenly it all makes sense. Most of the big festivals cost well over a hundred quid, but ignore the cost and look at the value. How many bands do you see at a festival and how much would it cost to see them individually?
This box set may be 19 cds long, but it's also better value than buying 19 individual records, plus you get a whole host of goodies thrown in, a 72 page booklet, the sleeves are all gatefold specials, previously unseen photos, reproductions of items that were important in the Sandy Denny story. There's also a limited edition on top of the regular box, that for 100 people will come with a framed and individually signed print of the artwork by Phil Smee. Suddenly the value's there.
I found it also helped to view the music as a festival, mentally splitting the box into stages. The band stage featuring, Fairport Convention, The Strawbs and Fotheringay, just think about that as a line up and then remember it's Sandy's voice of a generation that is carrying the lyric.
Then there's the solo stage where the name Sandy Denny is right to the forefront, she takes responsibility for the whole kit and caboodle. Just hearing so much of her music back to back takes you off to a really special place, where once again music has meaning and is no longer just a sound track to your life.
The thing about box sets is that you do listen to them differently, you have invested in them and you set time aside to listen to them properly just like you did when you bought vinyl. Sandy Denny returns that dedication with a devotion that really only a handful of artists can.
In addition there's also a third stage, which I'm going to call the experimental stage. This is where you'll find most of the previously unreleased material, the demos of albums, home recordings, it's a real chance to hear how songs developed, what changed because it might not have worked and what Sandy got up to sat at home with a guitar and a tape recorder.
In all honesty I don't know how much of the 'unreleased' tracks are genuinely unreleased, I'm sure many have found their way onto bootlegs over the years, but to hear so many of them in one place really does give you a connection to the artist, even if there is an occasional quality gap because they were never meant to be heard. In many ways it the unreleased side that really lets you get under her skin.
As well as being a consummate singer, Sandy Denny was a great performer, both in the formal studio sense and live as well. Her live persona had another sparkling facet over her studio work, you get the sense of her living the songs on stage as she performed them.
As you listen to the tracks across this festival of Sandy Denny you really begin to understand what she squeezed into her tragically short life, how that impacted her songs and the way she made her music.
This is partly brought out on some of the interview material contained at the back end of the box, which also gives it a real context, you've been through many of the phases of her life in music and have that understanding of where she was when she recorded the interviews and where she went after them.
It's been thirty three years since Sandy's untimely death and during that time, I can't think of an English female vocalist that has and continues to have such an influence as to how a genre of music is approached, heck even influenced and inspired many others that chose to take a different musical path. In some respects Sandy Denny liberated music and blazed an attitude that made it easier for some of the names that followed.
I'm not going to review the music over the 19 cds, there is very little that I can add that hasn't already been written, what I will say is that this box set brings together so many magical moments, I lost count of the times it stopped me in my tracks.
The amazing thing is is not just the tracks you haven't heard before, that do that to you. Sandy Denny can do that with tracks you know to the bottom of your soul. There's a spirit to her music that can't help but move you. Maybe this is the place to start if you've never heard her before. My ten year old had his first exposure to Fotheringay whilst I was listening to this box set and he just sat there transfixed.
The Sandy Denny Box Set does cover all aspects of one of the greatest singers of a generation, from her first recordings to her last studio recording and last home recording. That track was called "Makes Me Think Of You". I'll drink to that Sandy.
Neil King