Pentangle
2008-06-29
Royal Festival Hall, London, UK

Recorded by Pike1957
A couple of rows back from the stage, towards the left
GM Pro Mics/Battery Box ->
Microtrack 2496 (24 bit, 48khz) ->
Audacity (track splits, volume levelling, fade in/out, resampling) ->
FLAC (16bit, 44.1 khz, level 8, tagged)

101 - intro
102 - The Time Has Come
103 - Light Flight
104 - Mirage
105 - Bert Jansh intro
106 - Hunting Song
107 - Once I Had A Sweetheart
108 - Market Song
109 - In Time
110 - People On The Highway
111 - sitar time
112 - House Caprenter
113 - The Cruel Sister

Interval

201 - intro
202 - Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
203 - No Love Is Sorrow
204 - Bruton Town
205 - I Am In Maid That's Deep In Love
206 - I've Got A Feeling
207 - The Snows
208 - Goodbye Porkpie Hat
209 - No More My Lord
210 - Sally Free and Easy
211 - The Wedding Dress Song
212 - thanks
213 - Pentangling
214 - encore break
215 - back on stage
216 - Willy of Winsbury
217 - Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Jacqui McShee (vocals),
Bert Jansch (guitar, banjo, vocals),
John Renbourn (guitar, sitar),
Danny Thompson (bass)
Terry Cox (drums).

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/live_reviews/article4245838.ece

Pentangle at the Festival Hall
Jacqui McShee of Pentangle performing live onstage
Pete Paphides

There’s something fitting about Pentangle’s maiden show in 1967 having been at the
Royal Festival Hall. That the South Bank’s state-of-the-art auditorium – built in
the spirit of postwar optimism and synonymous with the promise of tomorrow – should
have launched Britain’s first and, indeed, only jazz-folk supergroup seemed fitting.

Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Danny Thompson, Terry Cox and Jacqui McShee may have
served apprenticeships in established musical idioms, but together, the sound they
made was uniquely hard to pin down. Two soft beats on the floor-tom from Cox signalled
the beginning of Light Flight and, indeed, Pentangle’s return to the Royal Festival
Hall after a 36-year absence.

For those of us who count this paean to swinging London among their earliest memories
it was as though all our Proustian chickens had come home to roost. Not for the last
time, McShee – dressed in the sort of loose-fitting floral trouser suit favoured by
women who were groovy in the 1960s – introduced a song with reference to the fate that
befell its female protagonist.

In this case, it was House Carpenter that Pentangle readied themselves to play. As John
Renbourn lowered himself on to the floor and locked into a hypnotic sitar melody, Jansch
used a banjo to rattle all the dormant ghosts from this Appalachian tragedy.

McShee, as ever, was all cut-glass English precision. When the time came to play A Maid
That’s Deep in Love, she pointed out that, “the woman doesn’t get it in this one, but
only because she dresses up as a man”.

If folk songs were played with a jazz zip, then jazz tunes were subtly transformed by
the twin talents of two guitarists who had long since broken down blues, folk and a love
of medieval music into one rich source of fuel.

A case in point was I’ve Got a Feeling – a Miles Davis tune with words added by Jansch.

As McShee serenely imparted the words, Danny Thompson quietly set about reminding
everyone why his number is the first on the list of any musician looking for someone
to play upright bass on their records. Here and on the group’s signature wig-out
Pentangling, Renbourn’s impromptu cheers spoke for everyone in the room as Thompson cut
loose with a hair-raisingly expressive solo.

While other returning groups from recent years – Kraftwerk and My Bloody Valentine spring
to mind – struggle to distinguish themselves from all the artists they went on to influence,
Pentangle have no such problems.

Forty years ago there wasn’t a band on the planet that sounded like them. In 2008 there
still isn’t a band on the planet that sounds like them. It’s an absolute joy to have them back.