OLD SCHOOL SONGS (WITH BRIAN WILLOUGHBY)

Desperation is the mother of invention.

In a effort to separate the wheat from the chaff of Dave Cousins' solo offerings, I look back on 1980's "Old Scholl Songs" recorded with old friend and crack guitarist Brian Willoughby.

Basically, after the Strawbs lost their record deal in 1978 and disbanded, Cousins was up against it and needed an inexpensive way to generate some income. He enlisted Willoughby and the duo hit the fiolk club and festival circuit playing Strawbs' numbers acoustically.

The album is split nearly in two by studio recording and live recordings of the 1979 Exmouth Folk Festival in the U.K. The live festival cuts were actually taken from a cassette type. But as the entire album is considerably Lo Fi, there is no loss of continuity between the early studio cuts and the live taped tracks.

Hence, Mr. Cousins might have produced the first unplugged album about a decade before it came into vogue on MTV.

The performance's are good as Cousins is still in top notch voice at this juncture and does justice to songs like the "Hangman and the Papist" as well as an excellent solo vocal on the Strawbs' bombastic U.K. hit Laydown.

Unfortunately, Willoughby is very much in a strumming support role, or merely interjects a few catchy notes here and there, and doesn't get a chance to really shine. At least on most of the songs presented here.

Old School Songs is a quaint look back at a desperate time for Dave Cousins and is a precursor to the Acoustic Strawbs groups that he would form 20+ years later. However, due to it's Lo Fi nature and lack of songs that outshine the original versions (except for a beautiful stripped down version of "Grace Darling"), I can only recommended this antique and curio to die hard fans and collectors. Cousins would strike gold with the 2003 album "Baroque and Roll" by the Acoustic Strawbs featuring both Dave Lambert and Willoughby in strikingly good form and is much preferred for those seeking out acoustic versions of Strawbs' best songs. So, 2 stars seems right for "Old School Songs."

The proliferation of reworkings and reimaginings amongst those decades past their creative peak continues unabated, a phenomenon to which STRAWBS have succumbed repeatedly over the last decade. As artistically pointless as some might be, they do help us recall the days when this type of disc actually meant something, Backtracking to 1979, DAVE COUSINS and his old pal BRIAN WILLOUGHBY finally teamed up live and on record for an unplugged set, perhaps the first of its type, preceding not only the MTV series but MTV itself.

Whatever its motivations, "Old School Songs" presents Strawbs classics and a few hitherto unheard tracks in a crisp lo-fi manner, COUSINS' wearily magnanimous voice accompanied by his own simple strumming and Willoughby's often stunning acoustic leads offer a side to these largely folk numbers that was occasionally lost in the arrangements of full band productions. This is true even for "The Battle", one of the earlier tracks, and certainly true for "The Hangman and the Papist" and "Beside the Rio Grande".

Even in its live studio mustiness and the cassette captured festival recordings, this album excels in at least 2 unexpected aspects. First the aforementioned work of Willoughby, known afterwards as the master of the twiddly bits, hones his craft both technically and melodically quite beyond the capabilities of any prior or subsequent Strawbs guitarist. His fills and solos shimmer in rough cut grandeur as befits the overall epic quality of most of the selections. I find myself looking forward to even the shortest of these as an offset to the Dylanesque repetitiveness of some of the song structures. The other triumph is in the introduction of a couple of marvelous pieces that had actually been part of the repertoire of the early days of SANDY DENNY and even before. In particular, "I've been my own worst friend" is Cousins at his folkie best, forgiving himself even as he acknowledges his failures. Coincidentally or not, it acts as a fair assessment of his musical career up to that point. These tunes hold off on the Willoughby flair perhaps out of respect for their original intent. The version of "Grace Darling" that opens the album would become a blueprint for later live and studio versions.

Due to its purely acoustic format, this disk would be most suitable for fans of the group and of Dave Cousins, fans of folk music in general, and those who might be curious about how some of those classic Strawbs story songs might sound if they were firmly but lovingly given the old school treatment.