1. Eliza Carthy - Mr Magnifico (Monitor Mix Version) [from album Dreams Of Breathing Underwater] 2. Karine Polwart - Sorry [from album This Earthly Spell] 3. Kris Drever, John McCusker, Roddy Woomble - Steal What We Can (Exclusive Version) 4. Cara Dillon - False, False [from DVD The Redcastle Sessions] 5. Martin Simpson - Never Any Good [from DVD Live At The Union Chapel] 6. Athena - Let Me In [from album Breathe With Me] 7. Luka Bloom - Innocence [from DVD/CD The Man Is Alive] 8. Mary Gauthier - Our Lady Of The Shooting Stars [from album Genesis] 9. The Waifs - Sundirtwater [from album Sundirtwater] 10. Kathryn Williams & Neill MacColl - Grey Goes [from album Two] 11. Lau - Stewarts [from album Live (at The Bongo Club)] 12. Bellowhead - Jiggery Pokerwork, Haul Away, The Seven Stars [from DVD Live At Shepherds Bush Empire] 13. Sharon Shannon with Mundy - The Galway Girl (Exclusive Studio Version)

#buy this (2008-11-05) Who cares whether it s proper folk, it s proper good and at an indecently low price

#a lot of fun on this cd (2008-10-12) I don t really know what proper folk is but this cd is a lot of fun-sent me looking for other stuff the various artists have done. certainly the best thing i ve done with £2 for a very long time. Buy it!

#Fun (2008-09-13) A selection of short stories, rich in meaning, but with no pretensions. Great fun to listen to again and again, especially on long car journeys, because as each Country of origin or Story-teller changes we become alert and ready. Am so impressed that I really want to buy another compilation album like this.

#Great value for money - a super introductory album (2008-08-24) Eliza Carthy, Karine Polwart, Luka Bloom (Christy Moore s brother Barry) - what s not to like? Anyone who has been in touch with the contemporary folk scene in recent years will find much to enjoy here. My own joy was finding a track by the wonderful Mary Gauthier - her I Drink was a festival highlight for me a few years ago. This CD is cheap enough for dedicated fans to give to friends who are convinced that folk is Fair Isle jumpers, beards and hands over ears. This has to be the best value CD in my collection - not a...

#Unbeatable value! (2008-08-18) Whether or not the contents is strictly folk is rather academic as you get so much excellent music for a mere £2. It takes me back to the days of Sampler LPs, other record labels could learn a lot from this CD. . Some great stuff here - I m sure I too am going to buy at least one album from the artists featured. . . Quite frankly it s so cheap you have nothing to lose. . .

1. You Can Tell The World 2. Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream 3. Bleecker Street 4. Sparrow 5. Benedictus 6. Sound Of Silence 7. He Was My Brother 8. Peggy O 9. Go Tell It On The Mountain 10. Sun Is Burning 11. Times They Are A Changin 12. Wednesday Morning 3AM 13. Bleecker Street 14. He Was My Brother 15. Sun Is Burning In The Sky

#GREAT GREAT VALUE (2008-11-13) A GREAT collection on 5 discs HOW CAN YOU GO WRONGJust buy it

#Great music + cheap (2008-03-11) What a great catalogue these guys had. It s great to see how they developed as they went along through their five studio albums, the last two of which are probably the best, though all are good. The DVD is their reunion concert from New York 1980, and it s also excellent. Quibbles? What about some liner notes?, and there are some S&G non-album tracks like A Church is Burning that would have made good bonus tracks, especially with the albums being so short, and my box-set came in a crappy cardboard sleeve, instead of the box shown. But that won t sto...

#Fab content but... (2008-02-28) Be aware that you may not get the product shown. I bought a copy in MK the other week, it s like the one shown here, a proper box with the disks in repro LP sleeves. The one I got from Amazon has the same disks and sleeves but is in a flimsy slide pack which got bent in transit. They re going to replace it but I ll be interested to see if the next product matches the picture.

#Sounds Great (2007-12-22) This is just what my sister in law wanted for x mas , so I ordered it. Now I m the proud owner of Pretty Women- thanks guys!Now I ve got to scour the shops to find it

#Sublime (2007-12-04) This is a sublime effort and I have one criticism that I will save for later. Amazing stuff and it looks so beautiful. Perhaps we could have had some sleeve notes? However: packaging, songs, all of the albums. Bliss. I can t yet decide which album I like the best. . My fav song is So Long Frank Lloyd Wright or Blues run the Game or The Boxer or. . . or. . . or. . . and my criticism is (three months later) is that there isn t any sleeve notes.

1. Mississippi 2. Most Of The Time 3. Dignity 4. Someday Baby 5. Red River Shore 6. Tell Ol Bill 7. Born In Time 8. Can t Wait 9. Everything Is Broken 10. Dreamin Of You 11. Huck s Tune 12. Marchin To The City 13. High Water (For Charley Patton)

Subtitled Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006, Tell Tale Signs, the eighth of Dylan s long running Bootleg series of officially approved outtakes, comes in two formats. The two-disc version consists of 27 tracks, including alternate versions of songs from his last three studio sets: Oh Mercy, Time out of Mind and Modern Times. Even non-obsessives will be seduced by the highlights here. A lovely sparse solo version of Most of the Time, just Dylan strumming guitar and blowing a wheezy harmonica, outdoes the Daniel Lanois-produced original. The bleak, stately Can t Escape from You, the sad and beautiful Civil War epic Cross the Green Mountain, The Lonesome River a bluegrass standard with vocals from Ralph Stanley and a great, lo-fi live version of Reverend Gary Davis s influential Cocaine Blues are all standouts. Two versions of Dignity--a piano demo that reduces it to an oddly naked state and an unexpected rockabilly take--neatly capture the idea behind these volumes--to expose dedicated fans ...

#1 star reviews of a 5 star album! (2008-12-04) All the 29 (so far) 1 star reviews are not reviews of the music but of the marketing of the 3CD version. Amongst them are some very angry long standing Dylan fans who refuse to even buy any of the versions, not merely the over priced deluxe version. Well, thats their loss. I started listening to Dylan as a teenager in the early 60 s and have always felt that the first three albums from the electric period were the peak of an amazing career. This new collection is another wonderful peak that has enabled me to revisit the period they cove...

#worth the money (2008-12-02) whatever he made and still makes is worth every cent. . . what s good about dylan is that he never cheats his fan. . .

#Keep those bootlegs coming, Columbia (2008-11-22) I ll start off with a brief point. A lot of people have marked this item a poor buy because of a very different and overpriced 3cd version of it. But this is the rather cheap 2cd version, the one which is advertised here and the one which I plan to review. By the way, for the completist, there are people selling a copy of the third disc on ebay, so fret ye not!As far as Bob Dylan is concerned, no two performances of a song should ever be the same. On this release, he proves his point and yet he also proves like Neil Young that he do...

#Clearly a five star album (2008-11-19) How this is averaging so low is beyond me - it s the best album I ve heard all year by a country mile. The alternative take of Can t Wait - magestic, unsettling, and superior to the original release in every way - would alone make this unmissable. Add to that the alternative takes of Mississippi - his greatest song of the last decade - and the wonderful unheard track, Girl from the Red River Shore, and this is absolutely essantial. Don t listen to the naysayers - this is a great record.

#You can always come back, but you can t come back all the way (2008-11-16) This is effectively a follow up to Bootleg series vol 1 - 3 (1961 - 91)How anyone thought they could find 2 let alone 3 discs worth of recent material to compare with those glory years is beyond me. Dylan has had several peaks over the decades, but each has hit a lesser height. Dylan s released work of the last ten years, while good, does not match the mid seventies era (Planet Waves / Blood on the Tracks / Desire), let alone the mid sixties classics. These outtakes reflect that drop in quality. There is no...

1. Hurlers 2. Feather In A Storm 3. Crimson Dawn 4. Blood Red Sky 5. Solomon Browne 6. Cherry Red Girl 7. I ll Haunt You 8. Race To Be King 9. Poor Man s Heaven 10. Greed And Gold 11. Sound Of A Drum

Seth Lakeman s fourth solo album, Poor Man s Heaven, moves him ever closer to the mainstream, his frantic fiddle playing backed with a small, tight band fully aware of the power they generate. But the Dartmoor-based folk singer still digs into local folklore for material. The pounding opener The Hurlers refers to an ancient stone formation in Cornwall, while Solomon Browne commemorates the more recent loss with all hands of the Penlee lifeboat - Lakeman knew some of the bereaved as a schoolboy. Clearly a larger recording budget--his breakthrough record, 2004 s Mercury nominated Kitty Jay, was recorded in his kitchen for three hundred quid--hasn t mollified his Saturnine tendencies. Having emerged from the purist folk scene, rather than the more chilled folktronica side, Lakeman must now be wondering how far he can go. The jaunty Race To Be King features maybe the loudest Jew s harp ever recorded, while Kathryn Roberts haunting backing vocals on Cherry Red Girl add depth (though he mig...

#Disappointing (2008-11-17) Well, album number 4 from Seth Lakeman finds him backed by a major label. Not good news for someone who s used to recording albums in kitchens. So, it was with some scepticism that I listened to Poor Man s Heaven and it was to say the least, a huge letdown. For a start, I don t personally LIKE the songs. They are bland to the extreme, and as several reviewers have already noted, mostly at the same tempo. Did his metronome break or something? Not good. On the plus side, I do like Crimson Dawn and Solomon Browne. The latter is a slightly obscure subje...

#Masterfully evocative and balanced (2008-11-09) I have been trying not to give many five-star reviews anymore, instead trying to save them for something special, this record deserves all five. ALong with Elbow, Poor Man s Heaven is the best release of the year, and his finest so far. I love the production, too many albums these days are produced with a blend of instruments creating a wall of sound, with some vocals laid on top. Although there are times in this record where several instruments are playing, the listener can always decifer each individual note. A good example is on ...

#A Disappointment (2008-09-21) I ve tried, I really have but I do not like this. All the tracks are very similar. There is no light and shade. It s completely overproduced. Where is the fiery fiddling which brought him to so many people s attention. He is definitely moving full speed to pop stardom. Im beginning to think that Seth Lakeman s best album will always be Kitty Jay.

#Excellent modern folk/rock blend (2008-09-08) I bought this having heard only one track - I ll Haunt You. I wasn t disappointed. Other favourites of mine are The Hurlers - a foot-stomping track and the poignant Solomon Browne, which tells of the Penlee lifeboat tragedy. Well worth buying, a great listen.

#Formulaic (2008-09-08) I had high hopes for this, but as it turns out it is a big let down. It sounds like Seth has got into a rut as there is none of the imaginativeness that made Kitty Jay and Freedom Fields so distinctive. I can only agree with the other reviewer who said that all the tracks sound the same. It sounds like it was written to a formula: fiddle:check, guitar:check, drum:check: now Seth just sing the last track over again and we ll call it something diferent cause no one will notice. Can I have my money back?

1. John The Gun 2. Eppie Moray 3. Wild Mountain Thyme 4. Knights Of The Road 5. Late November 6. Restless 7. Gypsy Davey 8. I Don t Believe You 9. Silver Threads And Golden Needles 10. Bold Jack Donahue 11. Two Weeks Last Summer

#Better late than never (2008-10-22) Spotted in a bookshop in Bakewell, Derbyshire. There wasn t a 2 was there? So I bought it. And it s hardly been off in the car since. I agree with other reviewers that not every song here is a gem, but the Lucas numbers do have something that stirs the sentiments. (You who said he wasn t a great songwriter, I present exhibit A - Bring em Down on Fairport 9). It s true though that it s the Denny tracks that really stir the soul. Her remarkable ability to interpret a song never disappoints on this disc. With all the emotion in the vocals, and al...

#flawed but still a must-buy (2008-10-16) The unexpected release of this CD is undoubtedly the folk event of 2008. It s a throwback to an idyllic time when folk music was inventive and exciting unlike the sterile unimaginative stuff of the last 30 years - Eliza Carthy and the sadly defunct 18th Day of May being honourable exceptions. Buy it? Of course buy it. There are negatives. Some of the tracks will be already familiar to us all - John the Gun and Late November feature on Sandy s magical Northstar Grassman album. The Strawbs Two Weeks also can be found as a bonus track on Fotheri...

#Tyme to move the mountains back where they belong (2008-10-15) Sandy Denny s demo of Wild Mountain Tyme that I heard on Youtube recently is one of the most beautiful renditions of a traditional folk ballad I have ever heard. I could not wait to hear it in pristine condition on Fotheringay 2 . Jerry Donahue and the guys have done a fine job of adding some beautiful instrumentation to the track but. . shock horror. . . it is ruined when a deep male voice harmonises under Sandy s voice. I could not believe it, as a track that had a sound conjuring beautiful Gaelic imagery is sudde...

#Denny is always welcomed but... (2008-10-14) Fotheringay Vol. 2First, this is not an unfinished album, but the collection of leftovers from BBC sessions, not originally recorded at Sound Techniques as quoted, at least most of the tracks weren t. John The Gun was from November 1970 BBC, but with recently overdubbed sax(?!) in the vain of similarly tempered Gold Dust concert where, apart from Sandy s voice, just the bits were from the original concert. Eppy Moray and wonderful Wild Mountain Thyme were the versions from BBC April 1970, and Fairport concert standard Knights On The Road ...

#Raking over the ashes (2008-10-14) I don t think this was worth doing, although Sandy Denny had a wonderful voice there isn t much here than will bear repeated listening. Silver Threads and Golden Needles gains nothing from a dirge-like tempo, it is a country song, Trevor Lucas s voice really sets my teeth on edge and the vaunted sax solo has too many technical deficiencies. I suppose what I am trying to say is enjoy Sandy in her prime with Fairport, not this second rate pastiche. And surely she knew that Fotheringhay isn t in Scotland!