Heron - River of fortune

Below is a review which I wrote of the above disc ten years ago; it appeared on the online review magazine, The Greenman Review, but is no longer available there.

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If your taste runs to obscure British groups, then you're in luck as you can't get more obscure than Heron. Originating in a Maidenhead folk club in 1968, this group (Tony Pook - vocals; Roy Apps - guitar, vocals; Steve Jones - accordion, piano; Gerald Moore - guitar, mandolin, vocals) achieved a certain amount of notoriety by eschewing the recording studios and making their first eponymous record in a field. In an attempt to publicise their record, they took part in what was known as the 'Penny tour' - the price of admission to the concerts being one (old) British penny. Unfortunately, Heron the record didn't sell vast amounts in the record shops, and although a second album ("Twice as nice at half the price" - also recorded in a field) was released, this too was a commercial failure, and so the group split up - 25 years ago [1972].

Further on down the road in 1997, the "boys" decided to get together again (without Gerald Moore, who had found some success with GT Moore and his reggae guitars, but with Gerry Power), and "River of Fortune" is the result. Of the sixteen songs on this disk (70 minutes long), eight are rerecordings of songs which originally appeared on their first album, three are rerecordings of songs from their second album, and five are new recordings of songs which date from that era but didn't appear on any of their records.

And now to the music: Heron, in my humble opinion, could have been the British answer to Crosby, Stills and Nash: acoustic guitars, a bit of organ or accordion, and sometimes three piece harmonies.

The songs are simpler, less "arty" and more "down to home" than CSN, being generally less pretentious (although Gerald Moore's lyrics tend to the abstract). In keeping with the Heron tradition, ROF was recorded in a field, but the production is much more modern, with reverb added to the vocals and instrumental overdubs added at will. While this intially detracts from the special feel of their earlier albums, it allows one to listen to ROF without an anachronistic feeling.

The songs are pleasant and melodic, well-played without being over-arranged, and there is plenty of variation. Whereas first time around, the songs were short (only one song on their first album was over three minutes long), on this one they are much longer. As Steve Jones wrote to me, "With regard [to] lengthening songs, has it occurred to you that the earlier versions may have been shortened? One of the reasons for including some of the songs was so that we could do them the way they were originally intended (more to the point, we shortened a couple of the original recordings because of cock-ups: it's the problem with spontaneous recording)."

An example of this is Moore's "Harlequin 2", one of my favourites from the original album; here the verses are arranged much as they were, but there are long instrumental interludes, which weren't present on the original. The title song starts off with a burst of Spanish guitar and some moody synthesizer, but then moves into a jolly singalong for the chorus; this track is also extended and features a live-sounding vocal coda.

The general sound of the disk is much fuller, this being due to the influence of Steve Jones the keyboardist, who also served as producer. Obviously he was quite limited 30 years ago as to which instruments he could take into a field, but also the range, variety, quality and usage of keyboard instruments has changed greatly during that time.

The complete track list is as follows: "Car crash", "Lord and Master", "River of fortune", "Wanderer", "Yellow roses", "Stars", "Friend", "I wouldn't mind", "Harlequin 5", "Adagio", "Carnival and penitence", "Summer in the city", "Harlequin 2", "Upon reflection", "Smiling ladies", "Gypsy trails".