Vinyl log #32

Day	Month	Year	Artist	Title
16	November	1970	Heron	(eponymous)

I've written here and there about Heron, the one penny tour and their first record. Today we can celebrate 50 years since I purchased it.

At the time, there was a company that was selling records by mail order; on every purchase one would receive a certain amount that one could utilise in order to buy more records. Being very young and callow, I thought that I could use this amount at the same time as buying records, but the company said otherwise. I remember that I ordered several records - the three record set of 'Woodstock', 'Watt' by Ten Years After, 'Full house' by Fairport Convention and 'Heron', having just seen them. I don't remember now which record became the free one, but I do have a memory of trudging through snow, meeting the postman and asking whether he had a record for me - quite trusting of him. This was 'Watt'; after listening to it, I was severely disillusioned and never listened to TYA again.

But Heron! My original favourites were 'Harlequin 2' and 'Lord and Master', but the second became unlistenable when my record player had 'an accident' and the record became scratched. These were the days of the stackable record player where one could prepare a few records to play and the autochanger would drop each one down in turn. After I ruined two records in this way (Sandy Denny's 'North star grassman' was another casualty), I stopped using the autochanger.

I found this record captivating, but I don't think that I truly appreciated it until I bought the cd and listened to it via headphones. One of the selling points about the record was that it was recorded in a field and so everything (or nearly everything) is recorded live. I can hear a few overdubs in 'Harlequin 2' but they don't really disturb me. It's so live that when Gerald Moore plays some acoustic lead guitar, he stops singing. That said, I've never figured out which guitarist is playing what on 'Upon reflection'.

For me now, the highlights begin with what was the last song on side one, 'Upon reflection', carrying on through 'Lord and Master' (no scratches now!) and culminating in the sublime 'Little angel', although I have to admit that the lyrics of this latter song leave me scratching my head as they don't seem to make too much sense ("so I won't ever know what it is you've been missing"). I love the way that the three singers trade lines between themselves (now that I think of it, this was a feature of The Band), and once, when writing to Steve Jones their keyboard player, I said that Heron could have been the British equivalent of Crosby, Stills and Nash!

My memories of listening to this record are combined with the winter camp of 1970 about which I will write no more, save to say that they are very happy.

Unfortunately, Heron's second album was a disappointment but I have always treasured this jewel of an album and frequently listen to it even now.