Black Cat Bone

I was in my local Goodwill store a couple of weeks ago and found someone’s very cool CD collection. I picked up 8 Can CDs, 4 or 5 Gong CDs, some Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Husker Du, Iggy, Television, Eno, Mission of Burma, Red Krayola, 13th Floor Elevators, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, John Cale, Skip Spence, Twink and a slew of other great and/or interesting discs. Some I’ll sell, some I’ll keep and many I need to listen to first.

I also found Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter, Five Leaves Left and Pink Moon. I know a little about him - English folk music (perhaps not unlike Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson and the like?), apparently a very good guitarist using alternate tunings, tragic early death. Not entirely my sort of thing but I do like much of the Fairports and R. Thompson that I’ve heard. The three CDs might have been among the last that I listened to but my wife wanted to hear Pink Moon because she liked the song and hadn’t heard it in some time.

While working around the house I put it on (maybe reluctantly, perhaps in an ever so slightly grouchy way) and liked the opening title track and so left it playing. I had to admit that it was pretty swell. Very interesting guitar work and arrangements.

Over the next couple of days I played the other two albums and really enjoyed them both. I’m no expert and didn’t give any of them my full listening attention but will be relistening to them all and keeping them all.

I really didn’t think it would be my thing but am happy to be wrong. I’m sure they won’t be something I’ll play all of the time but I dug them. Who knew?

I bought the LPs in the 80s when I saw them cheap just because they were part of the canon. They didn't do much for me... until about 20 years later when out of nowhere I realized they were great and that I loved them.

In the mid-'80s I had read about him a little bit and he sounded like he might be my kinda thing but his records weren't easy to find. In early '87 I briefly shared an apartment with this guy Chris, and he bought an LP compilation called Heaven In A Wild Flower and he was raving to me about it - "You gotta hear this guy", "I want to!" and so on. I listened to it one night and... it did nothing for me. (Just now, I looked it up on Discogs to see what was on it - it was a good tracklist.)

Late that same year, with encouragement from another friend, I shelled out for the Fruit Tree box (the three LPs plus a fourth of outtakes/alts/demos/etc.) and fell hard. And wondered why I didn't fall the first time.

A compilation called An introduction to nick drake came out in the 90s. At first I thought it was some kind of "return of bruno" film tie-in/ hoax.

i enjoyed the comp, but not enough to buy the full records.

I hate to say it but I was introduced to him through that Volkswagen ad and bought all his albums after that.

Snarfyguy wrote:I bought the LPs in the 80s when I saw them cheap just because they were part of the canon.

Really? In the 80s he was barely mentioned in the UK.I started to hear a lot about him in the early 90s when he started to get re-discovered.

I like him, but one album every now and then is enough.

The Modernist wrote:

Snarfyguy wrote:I bought the LPs in the 80s when I saw them cheap just because they were part of the canon.

Really? In the 80s he was barely mentioned in the UK.I started to hear a lot about him in the early 90s when he started to get re-discovered.

The Anglophile U.S. magazine Trouser Press ran a feature on him in its January, 1978 issue (thanks, Google!), which I would have seen and noted for future reference. I'd almost always take a chance on artists TP touted.

Northern Sky was on a double LP comp of early seventies stuff in the late eighties. I bought the Fruit Tree box as a result in 1988. Never looked back.

I'm still trying but I'm not sure it will work. I bought Pink Moon at a thrift store fairly recently and pop it into into the CD player in the car every once in a while. I just can't get into it.

Maybe the car's the wrong place.

My mate Pete swears blind that I saw Nick Drake live supporting Fairport Convention.

I can't for the life of me remember.....





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I was certainly a fan of his sister, Gabrielle Drake, in my adolescence.

sloopjohnc wrote:I hate to say it but I was introduced to him through that Volkswagen ad and bought all his albums after that.

I got into him based on AllMusic guide reading - I couldn't believe it when that commercial came out. It was like, wait, somebody else has heard this?!

Count Machuki wrote:

sloopjohnc wrote:I hate to say it but I was introduced to him through that Volkswagen ad and bought all his albums after that.

I got into him based on AllMusic guide reading - I couldn't believe it when that commercial came out. It was like, wait, somebody else has heard this?!

I bet around the same time you read that, that I read a Mojo guide to albums they sent me as a subscriber, and Nick Drake was mentioned. It was around the same time as the VW commercial, and the combo led me to investigate.

Some marcom dude at VW must have been reading the same stuff we were.

Heard this recently on bbc6 music and thought it was very Drakeonian

I'm playing the early USA compilation right now. Man, he was good. I can't decide if I love his voice, his guitar, or his songwriting more. I haven't listened closely to the man in ages...this is fantastic.

I saw and bought Way to Blue after reading about if in a music mag. in the early '90s...



...and been a fan ever since.

sloopjohnc wrote:I hate to say it but I was introduced to him through that Volkswagen ad and bought all his albums after that.

No shame in that. If that's how you came to it, good enough. He never wanted to be some obscure performer, he just never knew how to go about getting famous. The VW ad has come and gone, but his music is still around. If this is what it took, he probably would be happy to finally be heard.

TG - which Gong albums did you get? Were You and Camembert Electrique among them?

Count Machuki wrote:Some marcom dude at VW must have been reading the same stuff we were.

Alan Pafenbach

YouTube. Published on 23 Feb 2013

This is the Volkswagen commercial I'm most proud of. We shot in the Bodega Bay area of Northern California and our directors were the amazing Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. (years before their "Little Miss Sunshine" fame.) The soundtrack was by Nick Drake. It was recently named one of the 10 best car commercials in the past 25 years by the OneClub.

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