the Pentangle - Live at Royal Festival Hall 1968

Last night as I drove home from work, I was feeling a bit ill and very tired, sort of like serious jet lag. I put in my CD player a recording of the Pentangle live in concert from the Royal Festival Hall, June 29, 1968...and I was already starting to feel a bit better.

I've been a big fan of the Pentangle and all of the individual members too for over 30 years, but I don't recall the last time I gave them a good listen in the past year. So last night as I was negotiating the tricky turns of the newly built but badly mis-planned bridge near the big Ramat Gan Mall complex, it was a great delight to once again hear the delicate tones of Jacqui McShee singing "Hear My Call" and "Way Behind the Sun". As her voice gives way to the rest of the band in improvisation mode, I recalled the greatness of this ensemble - who took Elizabethan style Folk songs and zapped them with pure Jazz and Blues feeling.

The bowed Bass riff that Danny Thompson plays at the start of "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme" invokes a real Blues feeling, as does the rhythm that is later established by the rest of the band - this song is probably 300 years old or more, but they have made it totally 20th century.

As I turn into the underpass that leads me home - only about 2 km left to go, I hear Bert Jansch's unmistakable voice begin singing "A Woman Like You" with his lovely acoustic guitar sounds in the background. Jansch is one of the first virtuoso guitarists that I ever became enamored with, and his playing can still make the hairs rise on the back of my neck to this day.

It's such a pleasure to be able to listen to the Pentangle again in this digital age where so much of the recent musical offerings seem to be a rehashing of yesterday's commercial trash over and over again. So go out today and get yourself a Pentangle album!!!