Poor little hairy kids out on their own

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

23/05/71 : The Good Book - Melanie

Two women in a row - is that even allowed in '71?!? This is our first visit with Melanie and, whilst I am vaguely aware of her, I don't know the slightest thing about her so I'm intrigued to see what we've got here.

Hmmm - it's kinda campfire folk and I'm really not sure whether I like it or not. On first listen it sounds a bit too rough and ready for my liking (although I did like "Chords Of Fame") but I can see I might well get into it if I gave it a chance. Her voice reminded me of Joan Baez, but it's got more of an edge to it than Joan does - Marianne Faithful is another singer I was reminded of. It was certainly an interesting listen though and different from anything else from a woman this year. I'd say Leonard Cohen is probably the closest touchpoint we've seen, although this isn't as musically accomplished - which may or may not be your thing.

We're at #9 in the chart this week with a new entry on the start of an eight week run with this being as high as it got. The top five this week were The Rolling Stones, Motown Chartbusters Vol 5, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor (a new entry) and a live Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album with the next highest new entry being The Supremes & The Four Tops (#37).

Wikipedia tells us this is her fourth album (she released thirty between '68 and '22, before her death in '24), "Nickel Song" was a Top 40 hit in the US and she'd sung "Birthday In The Sun" at Woodstock - and that's your lot. Looking at her entry to pad things out, her full name was Melanie Anne Safka-Schekeryk (after she'd got married, anyway) and she (unsurprisingly) came out of the Greenwich Village scene and was a big thing on the festival scene, being one of only three solo women to play Woodstock (ten points if you can name the other two) and she also played Glastonbury in '71. Back to the album, it was well received critically and did well commercially in Europe with #6 in Austria being its best placing, although it only got to #80 in the US.  

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for three quid and the most you can splash out on it is £27.73, which feels like a particularly random amount. This was a musical education for me - I didn't love it on first listen but it felt more "real" than a lot of the stuff we've heard from this year, so I was certainly interested in it.

And, to my surprise, I knew that the other two solo women at Woodstock were Joan Baez and Janis Joplin - so for a change I can claim the ten points on offer!

30/05/71 - Another Welsh offering!

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