Tag Archives: On track

‘Steeleye Span 1970-1989 On Track: Every Album, Every Song’ – Book reviews round-up

Book reviews, Folk music, Music culture & history, Rock music, , , , , , , ,

Following my ‘glam rock trilogy’ on Slade, Sweet and Suzi Quatro, my fourth book for Sonicbond Publishing came out in August 2025: Steeleye Span 1970-1989 On Track: Every Album, Every Song. I’ve been really heartened by the enthusiastic responses from readers so far (reaching Number 2 on Amazon’s Music Encyclopaedias Chart) and the many kind words from reviewers.

Darren Johnson

“Both satisfying and engrossing, what should’ve been a simple task to read and comment on, became a series of rabbit holes, as songs and entire albums had to be revisited or indeed investigated. Both for the purposes of research and pure enjoyment, as well as a degree of nostalgia.” Folk North West (read full review here)

“Darren Johnson has done a remarkable job in squeezing the details of fourteen albums into this slim volume” “Johnson’s research is thorough” RnR magazine

“I hadn’t heard some of these records for a very long time, but this deep dive into the band, their music and indeed the history behind some of the traditional songs they performed, caused me to listen again with fresh ears. Check it out if ‘The Span’ or indeed folk rock in general are your thing.” The Afterword (read full review here)

“The book though is very fair in recognizing it’s sources. It brings together a lot of info into a well written book – definitely recommended!” A Celebration of Steeleye Span  (read full review here)

Steeleye Span 1970-1989 On Track can be purchased via Amazon here as well as most other major book-sellers. And via the publisher’s own online shop at Burning Shed here

Related posts:

Reviews: ‘Slade in the 1970s’ reviews round-up

Reviews: ‘Suzi Quatro in the 1970s’ – reviews round-up

Reviews: ‘The Sweet in the 1970s’ reviews round-up

New book out this summer: ‘Steeleye Span 1970 to 1989 On Track: Every Album, Every Song’ by Darren Johnson

Book reviews, Folk music, Music culture & history, Music news, Rock music, , , , , ,

Following my ‘glam rock trilogy’ covering Slade, Sweet and Suzi Quatro, I now turn my attention to folk rock. I’m delighted to announce that my fourth book for Sonicbond Publishing will be coming out this summer. Steeleye Span 1970 to 1989 On Track: Every Album, Every Song will be out on 29 August 2025.

This latest book is part of Sonicbond’s ‘On Track’ series.

You can read the publisher’s blurb here:

When Ashley Hutchings broke away from Fairport Convention in 1969, he recruited two musical duos who didn’t seem to agree about very much at all. This fractious group imploded before their debut album was even released. Undeterred, two new musicians were enlisted and Steeleye Span carried on. Then Hutchings himself resigned. Rather than this being a disaster, however, it set in train what would become the band’s most commercially successful period. It was an extraordinary time for folk rock but it was not to last. The second half of the 1970s saw another change in line-up, disappointing album sales and a two-year hiatus. All was not lost, though, and the classic line-up reconvened at the start of the 1980s.

Covering a two-decade period, this book looks at every album from Hark! The Village Wait in 1970 to Tempted and Tried in 1989. The fascinating history behind the traditional songs on these albums is examined in detail, together with insights into how the band went about truly making them their own. Steeleye Span On Track is a meticulously researched celebration of the music of one the UK’s most important bands in the folk rock genre at the most crucial period in its history.

About the author:

A former politician, Darren Johonson spent many years writing about current affairs, but after stepping away from politics, he was able to devote time to his first love: music. His previous books for Sonicbond were The Sweet In The 1970s, Suzi Quatro In The 1970s and Slade In The 1970s. Following this glam rock trilogy, he now turns his attention to folk rock. A keen follower of both rock and folk, he maintains a popular music blog Darren’s Music Blog and has reviewed many albums and gigs over the past decade. He lives in Hastings, East Sussex.

You can pre-order the book on Amazon here

It will also be available from the publisher’s online bookstore and other retailers in due course.

https://www.sonicbondpublishing.co.uk/

Related posts:

‘Slade in the 1970s’ by Darren Johnson – reviews round-up

‘The Sweet in the 1970s’ by Darren Johnson – reviews round-up

‘Suzi Quatro in the 1970s’ by Darren Johnson – reviews round-up

Book review: ‘On Track: Hawkwind – every album, every song’ by Duncan Harris

Book reviews, Music culture & history, Rock music, , , , ,

This review was originally published by Get Ready To Rock here

‘Hawkwind – every album, every song’ is another volume in Sonicbond’s ‘On Track’ series, this time taking on the Herculean task of documenting the prolific adventures of Dave Brock’s gang of space rockers in the recording studio over the past five decades.

Author, Duncan Harris, takes us on an album-by-album, track-by-track tour of every Hawkwind studio album, from the folk, busky and “startlingly melodic but totally unrepresentative ‘Hurry On Sundown’ (the opening track on the band’s eponymous 1970 debut) through to ‘The Fantasy of Faldum’ (the “sprawling, acoustic rock-based finale” of their most recent 2019 album ‘All Aboard The Skylark’).

Harris is never short of an opinion on any of Hawkwind’s vast output and his pithy one-paragraph assessments take us through the highs (‘Master Of The Universe’ from 1971′s ‘In Search Of Space’ is “the jewel” “the definitive Hawkwind song”) and the lows (‘Turner Point’ from 1982′s ‘Choose Your Masques’ is “by universal common consent… the worst piece of so-called music ever officially released under the name Hawkwind”).

The publication, of course, includes Harris’s take on the actual hit single ‘Silver Machine’ (“once the swirling fluttering synthesisers are removed, turns out to be somewhat bland rock and roll more suited to the 1950s than the 1970s”) as well as ‘Quark, Strangeness and Charm’ “the hit single that never was but should have been” (“a bouncy new wave tune that suggests Squeeze were avid listeners”).

Besides all the officially-released studio albums, Harris also includes a handful of essential live albums and a couple of albums from Hawkwind spin-off projects, giving us a grand total of thirty-two albums being pored over.

The book is also a hive of information about the band’s ever-fluctuating personnel and shifting musical direction.

Rather than simply giving us a standard intro piece to each album, as other authors in the series have done, Harris also groups the albums into eras representing different phases in the band’s evolutionary history. This allows for some additional context-setting over a defined period rather than each album simply being looked at as a momentary snapshot in time.

Accordingly, we get the Dawn of The Hawks era covering the early days, The Day of The Hawks era covering the Lemmy period as well as later phases such as the band went through new wave of heavy metal influenced and techno-dance influenced stages, for example.

A fascinating well-researched book written by someone who, although you definitely won’t agree with him on everything, clearly has an unquenchable passion for the band and a detailed knowledge of its history. While Harris’s book has not filled me with a desire to seek out every Hawkwind album ever recorded I certainly came away with renewed respect and genuine affection for this most remarkable of bands.

Published: Sonicbond Publishing 26th March 2020

Hawkwind every

Related reviews:

Book review: ‘On Track: Fairport Convention – every album, every song’ by Kevan Furbank

Hawkwind at The Old Market, Hove 2014

Book review: ‘On Track: Fairport Convention – every album, every song’ by Kevan Furbank

Book reviews, Folk music, Music culture & history, Rock music, , , , ,

This review was originally published by Get Ready To Rock here

The ‘On Track’ series by publishers Sonic Bond provides an album by album, track by track overview of a number of artists. The latest in the series to get this treatment are British folk-rock legends Fairport Convention. Author, Kevan Furbank, takes us on a fascinating journey through each of the band’s thirty studio album’s, from 1968’s self-titled debut to this year’s Shuffle and Go.

Each entry begins with a factual summary of personnel, recording information and release dates, followed by a brief potted history the album’s genesis and the band’s fortunes at the time it was recorded. That is then followed by Furbank’s review of each track. Having read a fair few books on folk-rock, Fairport and some of their leading personnel, most of the history was familiar to me. However, Furbank really comes into his own with his pithy and usually very insightful track by track reviews. And what he’s superb at doing is capturing the familiar styles of different Fairport personnel as well as some of the band’s most used external songwriters. ‘Tale In Hard Time’ one of Richard Thompson’s early songs on 1969’s What We Did On Our Holiday, for example, is thus introduced as “another of Richard’s gloomy/jaunty songs, an upbeat rhythmic number with slit-your-wrists lyrics” beautifully summing up a whole canon of classic Thompson output.

Furbank is also meticulous at pointing out where the band have returned to a song, as they have done on frequent occasions, and making comparisons with the earlier versions – or highlighting where the band have returned to a similar lyrical theme or musical arrangement in a different song. So if, like me, you were thinking I’m sure they’ve recycled that Eddie Cochran riff for one of those fifties rock n roll – meets trad folk song mash-ups just once too often, this book will tell you exactly which song and which album they tried it on first and where (perhaps unwisely) they thought it was a good idea to try it again.

I read the book over a single weekend, often playing the relevant albums as I turned the pages. I thoroughly enjoyed the author’s critical insights even if I did not always agree them. For those familiar with Fairport Convention’s history this will be a fascinating sit-down read, as well as a really useful reference for the future. However, if you are a Fairport fan looking to learn more this shouldn’t be the first book you read on the band. Start with Clinton Heylin’s ‘What We Did Instead Of Holidays’ or Mark Eden’s ‘Electric Eden’ or the band’s own authorised biography first and you will enjoy what this book has to offer all the more.

Published 26 March 2020 by Sonic Bond

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Related reviews:

Fairport Convention at Bexhill 2020

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2017

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘Come All Ye: The First Ten Years’

Fairport Convention – 50th anniversary gig at Union Chapel 2017

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2014

Fairport Convention at Union Chapel 2014

Iain Matthews in Etchingham 2016

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘What We Did On Our Saturday’

Album review – Ashley Hutchings ‘From Psychedelia to Sonnets’

Album review – Ashley Hutchings ‘Twangin’ ‘n’ a-Traddin’ Revisited’

Album review – Sandy Denny ‘I’ve Always Kept a Unicorn: The Acoustic Sandy Denny’

Fotheringay at Under the Bridge, London 2015

Fotheringay at Great British Folk Festival 2015

Richard Thompson at Royal Festival Hall 2015

Richard Thompson at Folk By The Oak 2014

Album review – Richard Thompson ‘Acoustic Classics’

Judy Dyble at WM Jazz at The o2

Albion Christmas Band at Kings Place 16/12/14