Sanity Sunday- Four by Vashti Bunyan

  by Nomad

There's probably never been a career quite like that of Vashti Bunyan. In 1970, when her first album, Just Another Diamond Day, was released it was blasted by critics. Commercially, it was a flop, with only a few hundred copies pressed with little to no advertisement.

The experience was enough to make the English folk singer-songwriter, disillusioned and discouraged, turn her back on the music industry and retreat into obscurity. That might well have been the end of the story.

However, in the thirty years that followed, something peculiar happened. The album (along with her singles that never made it on any albums) began attracting the interest among record collectors and bootleggers. Eventually, that reevaluation of her short music career led to official re-issues that album.
This led to inspiring a whole new generation of folk artists and her music has reached a wider audience than ever.

In an interview, she explained that before she made her ill-fated debut of folk song, she was a pop singer. Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind – Singles and Demos 1964 to 1967 is a compilation of lost works."Some people," she said,"might think it's new songs, but it's very old songs written when I was 18 and 19."

Furthermore, Bunyan subsequently released two albums: Lookaftering in 2005 and Heartleap in 2014.
As one music critic noted:

Remarkably, her gentle singing remained intact during the long creative hibernation. This vocal endurance revealed a core of iron behind the feather-light lilt of her voice. A diamond may be small and precisely set, but there’s also nothing stronger.

I guess the moral of the story is sometimes you have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up and discover you.

Here's "Come Wind, Come Rain" from her debut album.

The second song on our playlist is "Don't Believe What They Say"

The next selection is called "Train Song" and was originally released as a single in May 1966.

  

This next song, Lately, comes from her 2005 album. 

Never was
much given to prayer
But lately
I'm pleading with the air to
keep you safe from harm,
my dears.

The only things
that you should
keep in rows
Are your perfect teeth
and the rest you know
its own sweet way
will always go.

Add your footsteps
to the wear
For a tiny dent
in every stair
Will let them know
that you've been there.

Have a great Sunday and a Happy Fathers' Day!

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