The Albion Band in Lark Rise - Almeida Theatre London England 1985.09.03 new transfer from cassette master AUD FLAC
Sony ECM903 mic/Sony Pro Walkman/JVC TD-W718 to Sony RH1 Hi-MD PCM/Sonic Stage to wav via USB/adobe audition >Tracks>fades>Flac 6
This fell off the tracker 18 months ago, time for a new transfer.
The trilogy of books Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson are regarded as a classic sampler of English village life at the end of the 19th century. The book begins:
"The hamlet stood on a gentle rise in the flat, wheat-growing north-east corner of Oxfordshire. We will call it Lark Rise because of the great number of skylarks which made the surrounding fields their springboard and nested on the bare earth between the rows of green corn. For a few days or a week or a fortnight, the fields stood 'ripe unto harvest'. It was the one perfect period in the hamlet year. The 1880s brought a succession of hot summers, and day after day, as harvest time approached, the children of the end house would wake to the dewy pearly pink of a fine summer dawn, and the swizzh, swizzh of the early morning breeze rustling through the ripe corn beyond their doorstep. . . ."
The plays Lark Rise and Candleford were written by Keith Dewhurst to be performed as promenade productions. That is to say, there was no distinction between stage and auditorium, the seats were taken out, the audience was free to walk around and the actors performed the play in the middle of them. They were first performed at the National Theatre in London in March 1978 with the Albion Band - the John Tams line up, providing the music. A recording exists at the National Sound Archive in London.
In 1985, The Albion Band once again provided the music for a revival of Lark Rise, a seated production, first at the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester and then at the Almeida Theatre in London during the period August to October.
I had to rebuild the opening tune in Adobe Audition as I lost about 10 seconds of the recording. The timer control on my cassette deck had been knocked into record mode, so that when I switched on, the tape immediately jumped into record and started to erase the tape. Luckily I realised this before too much of the first tune has been lost. It was interesting doing the rebuilding though, I think even dclub will be impressed!!!
The piece of dialogue in track 25 has been greatly amplified in order to hear it - these are the words:
"After the Jubilee, nothing ever seemed quite the same. The old rector died and the farmer retired and machines put people out of work. Early in the nineties some measure of relief came, for then the weekly wage was raised to fifteen shillings; but rising prices and new requirements soon absorbed this rise, and it took a world war to obtain anything like a living wage" - so there you go!!!
I stand possessed of Albion Band recordings for which there is no known cure!!
01 Tune
02 Lemady/Arise and pick a posy
03 All of a row
04 Broom dance
05 Sally drive the geese home
06 Tune
07 Tune
08 John Barleycorn
09 Haste to the wedding
10 John Dorey/Tommytoes/John Dorey/Upton upon Severn stick dance
11 Tune
12 Honey bee
13 Tune
14 Down the middle
15 Tune
16 Witch Elder sequence
17 Pub songs
18 Dialogue/Bonnie Breastknot
19 Til the time we meet again
20 Tune
21 Dance to concertina
22 Abroad for pleasure
23 Speed the plough
24 Hymn - The day thou gavest
25 Laura's dialogue/
To 1918
26 Roll call after the Great War/Battle of the Somme/Circle dance
The Albion Band
Ashley Hutchings bass
Phil Beer guitar/fiddle
Cathy Lesurf vocals
Trevor Foster drums
Tim Laycock concertina
Anthony Ingle keyboards
Although Doug Morter was a member of the Albion Band at that time it was thought that 2 guitars were not appropriate for this production. Tim Laycock and Anthony Ingle were drafted in for this production only.