Hi Colin H it's a long shot I know, but I was doing a few gigs here and there in the 60's/70's, still am for that matter.The names's Dave Burland, fingers crossed

You should drop Harvey a line via his website. He's playing the Friday Folk Club at The Village Pump in Trowbridge next week, but I think I won't be able to make it, sadly, otherwise I'd have a natter with him there and then about this; he's a very approachable fellow.

Cyril's no longer with us, but Rosemary Tawney keeps the flame alive on the interwebbydoodaa, and a quick Google will reveal her address and telephone number.

Does he do 'The Oggie Man' on any of the ones you have? Love that song, it gives me goosebumps. This is from my own vinyl:

Here's a scan of the album, a Word cover candidate if ever I saw one:

and the owner has one magnificent collection of Hawaiian shirts... all vintage. I was somewhat disappointed that he didn't have an enormous collection of Aran sweaters.

...I contacted Barry about 2-3 years back and he's up for allowing the release of the (terrific) BD solo show I have, from May 1973 (circa his fabulous self-titled Polydor/Folk Mill LP).

It will, all being well, appear on Hux Records at some point - the only reason a deal hasn't been firmed up already is that a Robin Dransfield project on the same label (a 2CD 'A Lighter Touch' combining Robin's 1980 Topic LP 'Tidewave' with a 1972 RD solo show from the archive) sort of came to the boil first.

There are also two Robin & Barry Dransfield duo concerts in the vault: the end of 1971 (just before they split up) in mono, and 1975 (just after they reconvened) in stereo.

For a third-party small label with physical distribution like Hux these kind of projects are only borderline commercial - if around 1000 can sell they're viable. (And Hux don't skimp on the package - trust me, the Robin Dransfield 2CD set is terrific, with great mastering, lots of pics and a long note from Robin. If you've a spare tenner buy yourself one for Christmas!) Hence it would be wrong to expect any third-party label to do more than 2 or 3 of these sort of vintage folk gig releases a year.

But for an individual artist/estate to do an own label, own website marketed thing with a vintage gig is MUCH more viable at lesser unit numbers. So it makes sense if any individual artists with that kind of set-up (and 200-300 loyal punters who would delight in a decent recording of a full gig from the 70s) would get in touch with me.

Yes, I can put out a few feelers - like to Julia Jones via her cottage industry Nic J site - but it'd be so much easier if the word got out and people came to me...

Fantastic, I do look forward to the Nic JOnes ones appearing in due course. Their little home lable is great, and the last one I bought Nic signed for me! Shucks.

Result.

You may well be better served allowing people to reach you via the contact tab on your account page rather than putting your e-mail address itself online - this will attract spambots and you'll eventually be solicited by all sorts, most of them flogging viagra and cheap mortgage deals. Let me know, and I'll edit your post to remove the address if you wish.

Comments duly noted. I've posted it at http://froots.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4920 with the preamble "This post from Colin Harper appears on the Word magazine blog and concerns the recordings made by the late Geoff Harden: Colin is contactable via the blog. Please read down the thread there before contacting him, and only do so if you think he may have recordings of yourself or a close relative/ancestor - please don't bother him with fan requests or suggestions of illegal tape swapping, for which you will rot in analogue hell."

for scaitica, but I found some simple yoga style exercises on the Interweb that really help and clears it up completely - until it returns once more, but they soon sort it again. It really helps my being able to sit in the half-lotus postion when I meditate. ( stop sniggering at the back...) Anyway Colin, your communications are always very positive and uplifting. Have a good day.

EDIT: Cycling is very good, and I find brisk walking and especially swimming excellent. I can give you some info re. the simple yoga/qi gong exercises if it may help, but this may not be applicable to your own specific back problems.

I think this is a fine idea.

Firstly no need for whip rounds: it's a very, very kind thought - really - but I think even a lowly Library Assistant/Perpetually Acting Librarian's salary can cover a few discs and a bit of postage!

Secondly, Ian - you're right about Mississippi John - I knew that, but wasn't thinking when I just quoted some names from the back of a random reel. I've listened to maybe half of Geoff's off-air reels, all of which (thus far) contain almost entirely BBC session tracks, with the odd LP track kept in if Geoff happened to like it I guess. But he clearly had an archivist's ear, for nearly everything can be identified, courtesy of Ken Garner's books as well as surviving fragments of presenter intros, as being exclusives from John Peel's Night Ride or Top Gear, Bob Harris' Sounds Of The 70s, Country Meets Folk, My Kind Of Folk, etc. Sometimes, as in the Fotheringay session I mentioned, the artist (Sandy Denny in this case) will even verbally introduce their studio session tracks.

Alas, despite meticulously databasing in later life his folk club recordings, Geoff never did that for his off air reels - indeed, most have no annotation on the reel boxes at all, while others list several artists (in alphabetical order, not order they appear on the reel) but possibly not absolutely all the artists on that particular reel. The box that enigmatically lists Mississippi John Hurt (it may be only an LP track) also lists Marc Brierly, Mike Chapman, John Fahey, Jackson Frank, Stefan Grossman, Bridget St John, Leon Rosselson and Al Stewart plus a number of poets (Adrian Henri, Roger McGoigh etc). Numbers beside each name (generally 3 or 4 - but no number beside Mississippi John) tend to suggest a complete session. Geoff clearly recorded several whole programmes over the course of a few weeks then edited down the stuff he wanted to keep - generally, as I've said, the exclusive performances - onto one reel, and so forth. [Actually, that particular reel is very folky in flavour - lots of others list Jimi Hendrix, Keef Hartley, Cream, Fleetwood Mac etc - though many of those people's BBC history will already be well documented on CD.]

Curiously, although Geoff knew, a few years back, that I was working on assembling 'The Lost Broadcasts', a 2CD set of Pentangle BBC material - roughly half BBC transcription disc/master tape stuff and half off-air - he neglected to tell me, or maybe to remember, that he had a VAST amount of Pentangle/Jansch /Renbourn session tracks on tape. In fact, about another 2 CDs worth, lots from the prolific 1968 period (when they were, collectively or in duos, seemingly in Broadcasting House every other day) but also several fantastic FM quality tracks from an undocumented session circa 1971. But given what those guys choose to think of me, and I them, I can't see any of this material appearing in their lifetimes.

Thirdly, as for Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger, Mavis... yes, there is a TON of it: 86 songs from at least four shows at St Andrews spanning 1964-67 and one show (22 songs) at Medway Folk Club 6.6.72, also one show by Peggy Seeger & John Faulkner at Meday 4.5.71 (21 songs - they must have been feeling a bit tired that night!) - all mono.

It's funny, to put this rush of crazed enthusiasm in a bit of context, I've had a lot of work-related angst in the past 18 months. And that angst was basically crippling my ability to do very much that was creative or fulfilling outside of work. Everything seemed pointless for a while. And then, just recently, it somehow 'defrosted' - the glass started looking half full, not half empty. I could - and did - determine to 'park' my work related issues, to tell my boss and the HR dept two weeks back that I was no longer interested in wasting further time even talking about the seemingly unattainable notion of job evaluations, honorariums, time off in lieu (none of which were forthcoming at a frankly blistering meeting back in August) but was newly resolved to keep doing the load of unpaid (and yet crucial to the institution) work I've been shouldering for the past three years, for pragmatic reasons of my own. It was an end to a stand off. (There's lots more to it than that, but you get the idea...)

The point to all this is that since then my luck seems to have changed: they're talking about promoting me as a librarian, there's a new possibility I'll be at least modestly remunerated by extra points as exam organiser and it looks like I'll be getting an assistant at least part time to ease the mania of running exams and a library single handed at three periods in the year. And all this after I'd stopped worrying about it - the worrying having consumed me for nearly 18 months.

So, in that context, trust me, making a new effort to try and do something proactive with Geoff's legacy that will make at least a few people - maybe even a lot of people - happy is a tiny thing to do. If my name was Earl, I'd call it karma. :-)