RENAISSANCE: All along, down along, out along lea

I really enjoyed watching the DVD of the first two line-ups of Renaissance the other night, although my alleigance to the Annie Haslam lineup remains unbroken.  Possibly the most peculiar track on there was their rendition of an old Devonshire folk song performed in such a way as to make it almost unrecognisable.

Steve Winwood et al have a lot to be responsible for. When the second incarnation of Traffic released the epic John Barleycorn album, they opened up a whole can of worms. The title track was a magnificent rendition of an old English folk song, and it seems obvious to me that the Renaissance dudes and dudette had a listen to it and thought to themselves that “we want a bit of this!”. However, despite their best intentions, their rendition of Widdecombe Fair, which inexplicably mis-spelled the titular village of the title, which is actually spelt Widecombe-in-the-Moor, and substituted the well-known jaunty air for a dirge-like tune which would have not been out of place on Neil Young’s Americana album, is really nothing short of peculiar.  Whereas John Barleycorn is a philosophical song about the changing of the seasons, and the human condition, Widdecombe Fair, whether sung by my father back in 1969 or Renaissance mark II a year later is basically a story of animal abuse, perpetrated by eight layabouts wanting to get pissed at a rural shindig, and has very little moral or philosophical depth to it. Here, by the way,  I should probably note that my old friend Father Lionel Fanthorpe, with whom I made a record on a Voiceprint some twelve years ago, once proposed a scholarly thesis interpreting the song as the account of how Uncle Tom Cobley et al were actually going to abduct the daughter of a wealthy landowner, or something like that. Whether you interpret the song according to him or simply believe that it is the tale of eight layabouts travelling to a country fair, getting drunk, and losing the horse which dies and comes back as a ghost, it is hardly the stuff of great philosophical thought.

However, it is a fascinating piece of rock and roll minutiae, and I am grateful to those jolly nice people at Gonzo for having brought it to my attention.