Sunday morning music

 

It's been a bad summer for losing musicians and composers.  We learned last month that Dave Cousins, founder, lead singer and primary composer for the British folk and progressive rock group Strawbs, has shuffled off this mortal coil.  He was 85.  You can read an obituary here.

Cousins was inspired by many sources, not least of which was his ambiguous perspective on God, spirituality, and the mess humans had made (in his opinion) of the whole thing.  It's hard to argue with him sometimes!  Here's one of his earliest songs, from 1969, describing a battle during the English Civil War period.  It's called simply "The Battle".

As the group moved gradually away from folk-style music and into a harder rock orientation, their tone changed.  Here's 1972's "Benedictus", one of their major hits in England.

Probably their biggest single hit - still played repeatedly in or concerning trades union circles - was "Part Of The Union".  Cousins disliked it, and blamed it for future troubles in the group, but it was released at a time of great industrial unrest in England, and so took off like a rocket.

The group's sound now moved into harder, heavier progressive rock.  Their 1974 album "Hero and Heroine" was their first big success in the USA, although less popular in England, where people had grown used to them in other genres and weren't sure whether they liked the change.  The album was ranked number 44 out of 50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine.  Here's the opening track, one of my favorite Strawbs pieces, "Autumn".

And to typify their now much harder-rocking approach, the title track from the album.

Strawbs went on making music and producing albums for the next 40 or more years, but their popularity peaked with "Hero and Heroine" and never recovered from there, because their musical style changed again, becoming more progressive, losing hard rocker support and gaining new fans.  I've chosen a few of my personal favorites from their later albums.  Here's "Golden Salamander".

Here's the title track from their album "Deep Cuts".

And last but not least, a quirky tune from their album "Deja Fou".  This one's called simply "Russian Front".  Remember, it was written during the years of the Cold War, and reflects that in its perspective.

There you have it:  an introduction to Dave Cousins and Strawbs, and a musical eulogy to his memory.  I hope he figured out his attitude to God and the Divine before he really needed both!

Peter