Artist	Song
Fairport Convention	Time Will Show The wiser (Emmet Rhodes)
Fairport Convention	I Don't Know Where I Stand (Joni Mitchell)
Fairport Convention	Jack O'Diamonds (Bob Dylan)
Fairport Convention	Chelsea Morning (Joni Mitchell)
Fairport Convention	One Sure Thing (Harvey Brooks)
Fairport Convention	Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
Fairport Convention	Morning Glory (Tim Buckley)
Fairport Convention	Reno Nevada -Live (Richard Farina)
Fairport Convention	I'll Keep It With Mine (Bob Dylan)
Fairport Convention	Eastern Rain (Joni Mitchell)
Fairport Convention	You're Gonna Need My Help (Muddy Waters)
Fairport Convention	Percy's Song (Bob Dylan)
Fairport Convention	Million Dollar Bash (Bob Dylan)
Fairport Convention	Dear Landlord (Bob Dylan)
Fairport Convention	The Ballad Of Easy Rider (Roger McGuinn)
Fairport Convention	Si Tu Dois Partir (Bob Dylan)
Fairport Convention	Close The Door Lightly When You Go (Eric Anderson)
Fairport Convention	I Still Miss Someone (Johnny Cash)
Fairport Convention	Bird On A wire (Leonard Cohen)
Fairport Convention	Gone Gone Gone (Everley Bros)
Fairport Convention	Tried So Hard (Gene Clark)
Fairport Convention	You Never Wanted Me (Jackson C Frank)

Comment:

Try a pop word association exercise: I bet "Fairport Convention" will get back the response "folk-rock" as surely as Starr follows Ringo. And the associator would be correct.... up to a point. There were in fact two Fairports, separated by the 1969 road accident which took the life of drummer Martin Lamble. It's the second one that now dominates public perceptions of the band; the one which, with new members Daves Swarbrick & Mattacks on board, recorded "Liege & Lief" and in the process, kick started the whole traditional songs on electric instruments movement.

Fairport version 1 is less remembered these days but at the time, they were a mainstay on the London underground scene. Instrumentally, they were perhaps the only really credible home-grown equivalent to the San Francisco bands especially the Airplane whose rhythm section / twin guitars / male-female vocalist line-up and fondness for extended spiralling improvised passages they mirrored. The songs they chose to cover (and they were a great covers band), however, tended to be drawn from the early days of rock'n'roll & writer / singers who'd paid their dues on the East Coast coffee house scene. An extra bonus was their relationship with expatriate American Joe Boyd whose stateside contacts allowed the bad access to the unreleased material being laid down in Woodstock by Mr Zimmerman & The Band which resulted in the group becoming, along with Manfred Mann, the definitive Anglo Dylan interpreters.

This is a compilation of Fairport's non-original material taken from the re-mastered CDs of the first three albums (Fairport Convention, What We Did On Our Holidays & Unhalfbricking) and the Heyday radio sessions assemblage. (Personal note: their take on "I'll Keep It With Mine" is probably my favourite Dylan cover ever).

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