Way way back in 1970, in the wake of 'Nice enough to eat'1, I bought a copy of its elder brother, the first Island sampler, 'You can all join in'. I have the feeling that I bought this second hand, not that it matters. I preferred NETE as YCAJI was more jazzy and more bluesy, although there were some excellent tracks on this album as well. I remember being at the house of my hockey playing friend, Chris King, and saying "I wish I could write songs like that" when hearing Fairport's 'Meet on the ledge'.
The cover features artists who appear on the record. The easiest to identify is Sandy Denny, but at the time I could also recognise three members of Free (at the front), Ashley Hutchings and Ian Matthews of Fairport, Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), Steve Winwood (Traffic) and Mike Harrison (Spooky Tooth).
But there was always one face that eluded me: who is the guy with glasses and mustache near the front? At one stage I thought that it was Hugh Hopper, but he played with the Soft Machine and wasn't signed to Island. I admit that I haven't given this any thought for the past 54 years....
Online music magazine Siiye devotes issue 86 to sampler albums, including YCAJI, NETE, 'Bumpers' and many more. A map of the people is shown on page 15, so finally I could find out who that musician was. Whilst writing this blog, I accessed the sampler's page at Wikipedia, where the same map and key is shown. So who is number 16?
To my immense (and double) surprise, apparently this is
Ian A. Anderson
- not Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, who is also pictured, but Ian A. Why the
double surprise? Firstly, Anderson was not signed to Island records and was
not in any of the groups featured on the record (see footnote 9 on the wiki
page). Secondly, I was to meet IAA several times2, maybe not in 1970, but
certainly in 1971-3. Obviously YCAJI was not on my mind in those days.
Internal links
[1] 91
[2] 211
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 102 | Welcome back | Holiday, Santorini, Greece | |
| 200 | The Girl with the dragon tattoo (two) | Literature, Ian Rankin, Steig Larsson | |
| 632 | Enforced holiday | Personal, Introversion | |
| 758 | The dead lie down (Sophie Hannah 2) | TV series, Literature, Olivia Williams | |
| 1528 | I held an interview! | DBA |
No comments:
Post a Comment