GLASTONBURY FAYRE FESTIVAL - Various Artists (3 LP, Revelation, 1972)

This triple album, together with the film, is a milestone, unfortunately never reprinted either on vinyl LPs or on CD. There are of course many interesting recordings, but not everything is actually live.

The artists on this 3 LP box are:

Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Brinsley Schwarz, Edgar Broughton Band, Gong, Grateful Dead, Hawkwind, Mighty Baby, Pink Fairies,  Skin Alley, Peter Townshend

On the film you find:

Arthur Brown, Fairport Convention, Family, Melanie, Quintessence, Traffic

The 3 LPs box shows musicians whom you don't find on the film and viceversa, they're practically complementary. The album selection leaves me a bit disappointed for the exclusion of some great performances. Shame that bands like Fairport (great live version of "Dirty linen", at turbo speed with pirotechnical work of Swarb, and Pegg on bass!), Traffic (devilish version of "Gimme some lovin'", much better than the one on "Welcome to the canteen") and Quintessence are only present on the film (the whole Island group is not on vinyl!).  Where is the film of the Dead performance? It is rumoured that their "Dark star" was actually recorded at Wembley, not here!  And why the useless reprints of already published studio recordings?  Moreover, such a good LP came out in a moment that for some of these artists we could define crisis: some of them, in 1972, were about to end their career.

For what regards the film, it would be interesting, but apart from sporadic appearances of great bands and soloists (the glorious Family on top, in my opinion), it all gets lost in wasting kilometers of celluloid for freaks in rags, junkos, ratsos, Hamelin pipers and streets-of-mud guitarists who can't play a note, a huge army of colourful (???) village market jugglers, it's practically a documentary like "The making of", till the point that you suddenly discover that music is just a secondary accessory... what else, otherwise?  There's even the reportage of a mass.  So much the worse during certain performances where by right you would FINALLY  love to watch the artist on stage rather than a crowd of skizos howling and playing the fools in the mud and/or on the backstage (IE see Traffic at the end) for the 80% of the song.

The very first original cover of the treble album, with a plastic outer sleeve.

The same album cover without the outer plastic sleeve

After a number of requests from friends and visitors, I decided to defeat my proverbial lazyness and to scan it.  My copy is almost immaculate, you're assured to get a fabulous-quality scan.  So, the Glastonbury pyramid is on its way.

If you also wanna see the film, I can upload it, but if no one comes to request it, I won't bother.
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I took one week to scan and prepare all the albums, now they're finally ready! - 9 Mar '10

[(above) the complete six-square outer sleeve - the pyramid verb was about to be spread, see also Pink Floyd, Yoko Ono, Spooky Tooth, Utopia, etc. ]

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As I said, some artist's songs are NOT live in concert. For example: Bowie,  Bolan, Townshend, etc.  Also Pink Fairies` "Uncle Harry" makes me suspicious because after 2;50 mins the sound and the equalization change completely... 

However, as far as I know, all live recordings remained unissued on other publications, that's why they're important and/or interesting to be heard and owned.

I have - lazily - took some pictures today of some of the numberless gadgets and booklets and leaflets and posters and the outer drawn plastic envelope bag which the original edition  included...

The Grateful Dead, for their track named "Dark star....bury" didn't want to renounce to have their logo printed on the label ;-))

So did also Gong, Pink Fairies, etc.

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Further infos for collectors:

MARC BOLAN - Sunken rags - I couldn't find this acoustic version on any of the expanded editions of the re-issued T. Rex LPs. An "electric" version with T.Rex appeared the same year on the EP "Children of the revolution", with... "fluorescent" contributions by Flo & Eddie.

above: the EP "Children of the revolution" / "Jitter bug love" / "Sunken rags", EMI 1972

If you compare the EP with the worldwide success single "Telegram Sam", EMI 1972, you can see that the covers are exactly the same, probably in order to get advantage of the band's big popularity.

BRINSLEY SCHWARZ - Love song - same version as on the LP "Despite it all"

DAVID BOWIE - The supermen - not the version on the LP "The man who sold the world"

EDGAR BROUGHTON BAND - Out demons out - not the version on LP "A bunch of 45's"

HAWKWIND - Silver machine - it's the studio version appeared on single, but with a different vocal track overdubbed.

SKIN ALLEY - Sun music - same version as on the LP "Two quid deal"

PETER TOWNSHEND - Classified - appeared years later on a single "Let my love open the door"/"Classified" (Atco, 1980) and on some bootleg, prior to be officially reissued on "The genius of PT", in the '90s.

Your Countess