Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby RayL » Wed Feb 03, 2021 1:38 pm

I know it shouldn't matter, but did working with a guy with all that facial hair put people off?
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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby drakula63 » Wed Feb 03, 2021 2:24 pm

RayL wrote:I know it shouldn't matter, but did working with a guy with all that facial hair put people off?


John Farrar was clean-shaven for the Marvin, Welch and Farrar period. And it was the 1970s anyway!
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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby MartcasterJunior » Wed Feb 03, 2021 3:29 pm

drakula63 wrote:The songs and the presentation were all perfect... and the idea behind it all was good... they just needed to promote it differently.


Out of interest, does anyone remember how it was promoted? Given that they had a different band name, a different 'look' and a different style of material I'm just amazed that audiences went to see them and sat there in silence, dumbfounded at the lack of guitar instrumentals. Any canny promoter would have made sure to have "The Shadows" name in a prominent position on posters etc. but the audience reaction that's been documented would have been far more understandable if they'd gone out under their original name than if they'd gone with the new presentation (and I say that still of the opinion that they should have stuck with the original name).
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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby MikeAB » Wed Feb 03, 2021 3:51 pm

I saw them twice and have no recollection of them being advertised as 'The Shadows featuring--' at all. Nor do I recall anyone shouting for Apache or anything else by the Shads. I remember being quite excited when it was John who played the guitar solo in Black Eyes as it seemed to suggest some excellent dual lead recordings were in the offing later on.

A shame they did not make it, but peer group pressure amongst any new group of young listeners would not have allowed it anyway. Shads fans should have been interested and appreciative - I was, and I suspect all proper 'die-hards' were as well.

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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby drakula63 » Wed Feb 03, 2021 3:51 pm

I gather that when they went out on the road with Cliff - which would have given them access to a large audience and presumably a welcoming one - they were billed as "The Shadows, featuring Marvin, Welch and Farrar." I am going to assume that the audience, therefore, went to the gigs expecting one thing and then got something else. I think they should have decided right from the word go whether they were 'The Shadows' or 'Marvin, Welch and Farrar' and been firm and stuck with it. I can't help feeling that the ambiguity of the billing can't have been to their advantage. I think your comment (that they or their management or promoters wanted the best of both worlds) was probably more or less the case. Anyway, don't worry... when I get my time machine working I'm going to pop back to 1971 and have a word with them.
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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby drakula63 » Wed Feb 03, 2021 3:58 pm

I should perhaps point out that it is now exactly 40 years since I discovered Marvin, Welch and Farrar. It was 1981, I had just left school, and decided to splash out on some new records. Dole money seemed to go further in those days! So I bought loads of stuff from John Friesen. The first Marvin, Welch and Farrar LP (the recent Dutch re-issue) was among the things I bought. I can honestly and truthfully and happily say that I was blown away when I heard it. I still have that record here somewhere, although it has been augmented since by copies of the original Regal Zonophone gatefold pressing (with lyric sheet!) and various copies on CD. And that's not to mention the four copies of 'Second Opinion' that I have bought over the years on vinyl (or is it five?), two in Quadraphonic.
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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby Keith Bateman » Wed Feb 03, 2021 4:13 pm

GoldenStreet wrote:There was the subsequent brief flirtation with quadrophonic sound in the production of the follow-up album, Second Opinion. It was a period of bold musical experimentation which, unfortunately, proved largely unsuccessful in commercial terms.

http://www.spaceritual.net/alexgitlin/npp2/mwf.htm

Bill


Dutton Vocalion have been reissuing many true Quadraphonic albums as Multichannel SACDs which sound terrific if you've got the right equipment. Check out their catalogue here https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/. Some Sony, Denon and Pioneer blu-ray players will play them if routed through a surround system which will decode the output via HDMI. I use an old top-of-the-range Arcam DV139 dvd player with an Onkyo A/V receiver. Be careful of most modern SACD players, many of which will only give stereo not multichannel SACD mode.

I've been trying to get D.V. to issue Second Opinion but without success!

Not Shadows style music but if anyone is interested in the recordings of Tomita, the Japanese electronic music maestro, there are some of his Quad SACDs in the D. V. catalogue at around £12 and they are really fun to listen to in that format. The ones from Japan cost a fortune!

Keith
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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby Moderne » Wed Feb 03, 2021 9:47 pm

drakula63 wrote: 'If There's Nothing Left to Say' would have made a great single. Just imagine hearing that blasting out of the radio on a Tuesday afternoon!


I'm sorry...what is If There's Nothing Left To Say? Do you mean Let's Say Goodbye?

I think the success they craved was within the Cliff stable. I don't think the un-coolness of the 'Cliff' organisation compared to the 'early '70s hippy' vibe which some of their songs suggest is something that would have occurred to them - hence the appearances on Cliff's TV show, tours with Cliff etc. They were happy in that scene - and the media exposure via It's Cliff Richard must have seemed a not-to-be-missed opportunity. By the time they realised that most of the old Cliff/Shads audience did not really want to hear the new type of music they were creating...it was too late. I've heard some recordings which they did with Cliff (from his TV shows) of songs like Down On the Corner, Love the One You're With and When I'm Dead and Gone... It's a shame they never did an LP together!

BTW...Lady of the Morning must rank alongside Love Deluxe as great singles which inexplicably weren't huge hits.
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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby drakula63 » Thu Feb 04, 2021 12:01 am

Moderne wrote:
drakula63 wrote: 'If There's Nothing Left to Say' would have made a great single. Just imagine hearing that blasting out of the radio on a Tuesday afternoon!


I'm sorry...what is If There's Nothing Left To Say? Do you mean Let's Say Goodbye?



Yeah, I was struggling to think of the title of that song and even though something told me that wasn't it, I was simply too bone idle to do and check. Blimey, I probably could have checked from this laptop. I'm just a lazy urchin. But, yeah, it's a great song... no matter what it's called and it could have been a huge hit.
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Re: Marvin, Welch & Farrar: 50 years

Postby DustyShoes » Thu Feb 04, 2021 12:27 am

My memory of when The Shadows reinvented themselves and became a vocal group made little difference to my fan boy appreciation of the band.
My fondness for all kinds of guitar music meant thar my appreciation of The Shadows became increasingly more tempered the further away from their roots in British I.R discounting the bands earlier attempts at pop music success by recording
rather prosaic and so easily forgettable vocal recordings.
Despite the advise given to the band while at Abbey Road by Beatle George Harrison that recording songs and releasing these
would surely be a more successful path to follow than a concentration of instrumental music that at the time had driven their success.
Yet for what ever reasons there was that lay behind the break up, The Shadows were to disband in 1968 and that was apparently was that - but not quite, some of their best recorded music was still to come. But not as vocal recordings. Here I'm
remembering Shades of Rock and its eventual stable mate: Rocking With Curley Leads often including contributions from some of the most highly respected studio players of the time. Although not winning universal fan acceptance these were more beefy more genuine and authentic perhaps even a homage to the genre, than what the Shadows chose to follow on with when an even greater change of direction was taken with LP records stacked to the roof entirely with vocal recording - singing songs of in house origin.
These two albums with their stark monochrome covers were right from the city, not where the bright lights shine, but where ts where it is often dark and gloomy with foreboding alleys and streets: industrial cities of Englands North.
Now we come to these three recordings that are the subject of this discussion.

MW&F - Second Opinion from the same singer song writers and a third sans the original W.
An entire trinity of singing.
Optimistic and with loyal intent I bought the debut album, MW&F, shot home on a bus to play the record.
I remember liking what I heard and played the record some more- quite a few more times over the next few weeks actually and then parked it up. Then along came Second Opinion, but this failed to give me what I had enjoyed with MW&F and so I didn't
preserver with the record. Being in possession of almost eternal hope, I bought M&F, more out of Shadows loyalty than much else. But, I didn't ever listen to the last of three and still haven't done so to this day.
Last evening and having some Shadows CD's laying around including Specks Appeal I feed that into the player as something pleasent to fall asleep to.
The first few tracks included vocal, No No Nina being one that I remember before slumber delivered me to Morphious.
What truck me listening to these songs was how clearly showed the influence of CS&N, even to the soaring falsetto voices, but the MW&F arrangements lacked any originality even if the lyrics did.

It's just that MW&F vocals were just not special enough to stand out on their own and so garnered very little success out side of the long established and loyal Shadows fan base and it just never got any better for The Shadows repurposed in 1970's threads.
But in the end it is what it is and I have no idea what seasoned players with all of their collective abilities and those of Aussie sidemen, Tarney & Spencer on-board with this project, the hope of success was to ultimately elude them all.

If you've read this far then you've done well.
Cheers
Simon.
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