Joe Beard And Friends
Album: The Edge
Label: Epona
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.eponarecords.com

Chris Joe Beard was half of the songwriting partnership with Geoff Bowyer that provided the driving force for 60s band The Purple Gang; their chief claim to fame, of course, being the iconic Granny Takes A Trip single. After the demise of the band, Joe returned to his home town of Poynton, Cheshire, and was able to more overtly indulge his fascination with the myths and legends of the rocky outcrop of Alderley Edge.

Back in 1965, he'd already written one song based on an episode in a local Arthurian legend, The Wizard, which had been recorded on The Purple Gang's 1968 LP Strikes, but this was incorporated into an album-length collection of songs, entitled The Edge, retelling the principal legend and adding other tales from the locality. Joe realised, however, that visuals and strong narration were needed to support the songs, so wrote a script and hired costumes for friends to pose on location for projected slides to accompany the lyrics and storylines.

Beginning with an acclaimed debut concert at 1981's Poynton Easter Folk Festival, a series of performances of The Edge was staged; these featured a small band supported by a screen, slide images and a narrator. The live show was then made into a radio show by Manchester's Piccadilly Radio, which added other performers (including the folk legend Harry Boardman in the role of The Wizard) and some extra musicians; this was broadcast on Hallowe'en 1982, and formed the basis for a subsequent (1983) studio recording, which here appears on CD for the first time. Taken from cassette copy, since the master tapes have long since been lost, there's inevitably some degree of flutter, but there's plenty of presence and compensation techniques have made the best of the transfers.

The whole artefact actually has something of the sound of an airwave broadcast, and is not without a certain 70s-Zeitgeist charm, while the music itself won't let you down if you know the kind of thing to expect - i.e. competent, inspired writing with a feel for the subject-matter, rather more 70s than 80s in mode and delivery with a genial acoustic-based folk-rock styling that's mostly more akin to Magna Carta than Steeleye, say.

Instrumentation is for much of the time fairly spartan, with Gerry Robinson's mandolin a primary tone colour counterpointing Joe's own guitar and voice, but such is the nature of the songs and lyrics that you don't really miss a fuller sound-picture. The lineup on the recording also variously includes Jamie Knowles (electric violin), Pat Knowles (keyboards, synth) and Tony Moss (bass guitar); vocals on specific songs are taken by either Di Robinson or Pat Knowles, with Harry Ogden providing the narration. The Edge is a minor-league period piece, sure, but still attractive and worth a hearing on its own terms.

David Kidman