Outside 1974’s Live Convention, concert recordings of Fairport with Sandy Denny are pretty thin on the ground. Last year’s mammoth 19-disc box set added that year’s full set from the LA Troubadour, but that’s pretty much it. This is a welcome find, then – assembled from bootlegs of two shows recorded a few months later in May – but it adds little to the legend of either Denny or Fairport.
Extended takes on the mighty Sloth and the aptly-named It’ll Take A Long Time emphasise the power of this line-up better than Live Convention, but a 10-minute Matty Groves isn’t the most exciting version, while The Medley outstays its welcome – especially as an encore. Though it’s good to hear the band jamming for an appreciative audience, it’s the shorter tracks that feel freshest, including a soulful sign-off with Dylan’s Down In The Flood. The sound isn’t at all bad for a bootleg, and the remastering has been overseen by Fairport’s own Jerry Donahue. It’s obviously a labour of love, so it seems a shame to say it’s for completists only. But, then again, when it comes to Fairport, there are plenty enough of those.
