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Ram Jam City - Danny Kirwan


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Ram Jam City (2000) - Danny Kirwan


    Featuring »

Danny Kirwan

    Tracklisting »

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Mary JaneLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:57
CascadesLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 3:11
Falling In Love With YouLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:56
  Comments: (Earlier version, with false starts)
Odds And EndsLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:37
Odds And EndsLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:37
  Comments: (Alternate take)
Skip A Dee DooLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:45
Hot Summer DayLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:38
Second ChapterLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 3:22
Silver StreamsLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 3:18
  Comments: (Earlier version)
Best Girl In The WorldLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:29
Falling In Love With YouLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:16
Lovely DaysLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 3:40
  Comments: (With false starts)
Ram Jam CityLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:38
  Comments: (Earlier instrumental version)
Silver StreamsLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 3:27
Ram Jam CityLyrics available
  Date Performance: 1975, Running Time: 2:43
    Guest Appearances »

Geoff Britton, Paul Raymond, Jim Russell, Andy Sylvester/Silvester

    Released »

2000-05-16

    Format »

Import Vinyl/CD Album

    Other Appearances »
Danny Kirwan (Songwriter), Dave Garland (Engineered By), Peter Moody (Compiled By), Dave Garland (Mastered By), (Jet) Martin Celmins (Sleevenotes)

    Record Label »
Mooncrest Records

    Catalogue Number »

CRESTCD044

    Running Time »

45:15

    Liner Notes »

DANNY KIRWAN - SHOOTING STAR

INTRO

As happenstance would have it, a couple of years after Danny Kirwan left Fleetwood Mac, Mick Taylor quit the Rolling Stones. By this time Kirwan happily was away from the limelight and busily putting together material for his debut solo album, Second Chapter. One day his wife at the time, Clare, answered the phone at their Essex home. It was the Rolling Stones office. Could they speak to Danny.

As fate would have it, he was up in London for the day. Clare gave them another contact number but the guitarist wasn't there either.

They didn't ring again, and perhaps it's as well that they didn't - especially if you take Keith Richards' infamously camp sneer seriously: namely, that there's only one way anybody leaves the Stones..... and that's in a coffin.

Of course, we'll never know if that phone-call would have led to anything. Possibly not. What it does tell us, though, is that Danny Kirwan was up there in the company of names such as Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher, Ry Cooder, Mick Ronson and Peter Frampton, when management was looking for a new guitarist for the world's greatest rock'n'roll band.

THE METEORIC RISE

Danny Kirwan did well at school where his favourite subject was technical drawing: the logic, patience and attention to detail this discipline demands would serve him well in a musical career spanning just under ten years.

He began learning guitar in 1965, aged fifteen, and progressed at an almost spooky rate. When he was barely seventeen and fronting a semi-pro trio, Boilerhouse, the Melody Maker already was hailing him as a 'blues wunderkind'; and one year later he was recruited by Britain's premier blues band, Fleetwood Mac, having been spotted by legendary producer, Mike Vernon.

Just six months after he joined, the band topped the charts with 'Albatross' - the B-side, 'Jigsaw Puzzle Blues' was written by Kirwan. His mother, Phyllis, was a gifted singer and Kirwan grew up to the sounds of jazz greats such as Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti and Django Reinhardt, as well as old-fashioned pop music by groups such as the Ink Spots.

The Reinhardt-inspired short instrumental B-side of 'Albatross' was a sneak preview of things to come from Kirwan the songwriter - namely, music that was original as well as being studied.

And so, over the next ten years Danny would draw from the melodies and styles of many different eras of popular music to create his varied and decidedly quaint material. Big bands of the 1930s; country and western (Peter Green nicknamed Danny 'Ragtime Cowboy Joe'!); Chicago's rhythm and blues; early-1960s British beat groups; mid·1960s British blues-rock and reggae.

So, were you to ask Kirwan which musician comes closest to being his hero, he'd be very hard pushed to choose between Hendrix, Armstrong, Miller, McCartney (hear echoes of 'Eleanor Rigby' on Kirwan's classy strings arrangement on 'Lovely Days'), Reinhardt, Clapton, Marley, or.... Peter Green.

Green and Kirwan, during the two years they spent together in the blues line-up of Fleetwood Mac, forged a twin-guitars style which alternated between duels ('Like it this Way') and close harmonies ('Albatross').

American blues was their starting point - something which Kirwan apparently came to regret many years later.

This was because looking back he realised how, for him, the blues became an unhealthy obsession - a musical "hug" which infiltrated him, mostly causing frustration.

And so the guitarist who aged just seventeen - and playing a cheapo Watkins Rapier electric guitar - had already nailed down the piercing vibrato of veteran blues man Lowell Fulson, soon went on to ditch the blues. Why? Well, rightly or wrongly, his musical integrity eventually persuaded him that it was pointless to strive for the feel of black American music when he couldn't possibly know how it felt to be a black American in the racist 1950s and 1960s.

Kirwan moved on, and has since mocked himself and other white-boy bluesers for having been nothing more than keen copyists who literally stole the blues - Eric Clapton, in Kirwan's eyes, being the one and only exception.

His four years in Fleetwood Mac took him from straight Chicago blues on the album 'English Rose'....to the blues-rock and ballads of 'Then Play On'...to the soft country-rock of post-Green Mac. And from there to the eclectic selection of pop, rock ballads and even celtic rock which formed the basis of his post-Fleetwood Mac output.

OUTRO

In a similar way to Peter Green, Kirwan will always be associated with - and compared to - his innovative guitar playing whilst with Fleetwood Mac during their first huge run of success between 1968-70.

But this is only a part of the complete picture, because the musician they tagged a guitar hero.. by nature was really much more of a songwriter, and especially so once Green had left the group. Kirwan compositions such as 'Dragonfly' - the best number one hit never to make the charts - and 'Station Man' which he wrote whilst still with Mac, stick in your mind because of their strong melodies and neat arrangements rather than awesome guitar pyrotechnics. Even so, the intricate trills to be heard on the previously unreleased early demo instrumental of 'Ram Jam City' (interestingly, in the key of D sharp whereas the finished song is in F) plus the razor-sharp guitar phrasing at the start of 'Second Chapter' remind us of Kirwan's unique - and sorely missed - playing style. Certainly, until health problems set in, he took his solo career every bit as seriously as he did his time in the early years of Mac: his ex-wife Clare remembers Danny burning a lot of midnight oil making demos in his home studio. According to Andy Silvester those demos often were every bit as good, if not better, than the finished studio tracks.

Kirwan released three albums during that solo career 'Second Chapter' (1975), 'Midnight in San Juan' (1977) and 'Hello There Big Boy' (1979). He also appeared on releases by Bob Brunning's Tramp and by Chris Youlden of Savoy Brown. Live performances during these years virtually were non-existent: there was the very short-lived group, Dillinger, which Danny joined alongside Savoy Brown exiles, Dave Walker and Andy Silvester. They split after just three gigs. Then in 1974 Danny took the stage with Tramp for a one-off concert to promote the band's second album, Put a Record On.

Sleevenotes: 'Jet' Martin Celmins.
With thanks to Clare Morris.

(P) (C) 2000 Mooncrest Records
Regent House
1 Pratt Mews
London
NW1 0AD
Fax: 020 7267 6746
Send SAE for catalogue

Marketed by Trojan Sales Ltd.

web site: www.trojan-records.com

All rights of the producer and of the owner of the recorded work reserved.

Unauthorised public performance, broadcasting and copying of this record prohibited.

Made in England

7 66126 8 2 6

    Reviews »
Add your review here.

4/5.04/5.04/5.04/5.04/5.0
Second Chapter songs sound better without production
Review written by John Fitzgerald, August 24th, 2004

The main point of interest on this collection are the four tracks that are "earlier" versions of songs from "Second chapter". "Silver streams" works the best closely followed by an interesting instrumental "Ram jam city" which is even faster than the proper version with some irresistible guitar fills at the end. "Falling in love with you" is amusing too in that Lindsey Buckingham has often been compared to Danny and as Danny appears to write the music first and the words later just as Lindsey seems to do, one can certainly see the similar behavior here. "Odds and ends" is a good sing a long and Danny seems pleased with the results. The rest is everything from the "Second chapter" album but interestingly, they used tapes that don't have the strings and horns and it helps to understand some of the songs for themselves which is very important. I would have liked to have heard "Love can always bring you happiness" this way but it was omitted which is a real shame. It's still remarkable to hear these great songs in their beautiful clarity now.

    Last Modified »
2011-03-09
    Tracklisting »
Discography entry submitted by Christy Valkman, Steve Denison & Steve Elliott.