A happy Christmas from Salut! Live and that inspired reworking of Streets of London
The Swarb tribute tour featuring the Jason Wilson Band, Martin Carthy, John Kirkpatrick and another Swarbrick

Signposts for admirers of Bert Jansch, Martin Simpson, John Renbourn and the Unthanks

Author: Colin Randall

Bert Jansch - 1
Click here to check Bert Jansch's music at Amazon


Just as I indulged in a spot of self-deprecation, mocking Salut! Live's improving but still modest readership figures, the unexpected happened.

Andrew Curry's guest contribution to the Cover Story series, an informed comparison of three versions of Jackson C Frank's 1960s contemporary folk classic Blues Run the Game, has attracted more readers that any item I can detect since a four-part interview with Rachel Unthank all of nine years ago.


As anyone who knows about web sites will be aware, there are various ways to drive up traffic.

Twitter and Facebook help and so will newsnow.co.uk if that aggregator platform - wholly indispensable for the rude health of my football site Salut! Sunderland (yes, it's about that bottom-of-the-league side) - eventually agrees to list Salut! Live.

On this occasion, there was a big helping hand from Andrew's own social media network and popular Facebook and Twitter accounts for fans of the late Bert Jansch, whose interpretation of the Frank song was among those discussed.

I thank them all. A hit rate of more than 400 (plus nearly 300 today already) may seem insignificant in the grander scheme of things cyber but is four times higher than the best recent periods of daily averages.

In case Jansch fans continue to come across the links and visit this site, here is some food for thought:

* Cover Story (10) looked in July last year at Jansch's song of fatal drug ddiction, Needle of Death, and compared the original with Neil Young's later version: http://www.salutlive.com/2017/07/cover-story-10-bert-jansch-vs-neil-young-needle-of-death.html

** Mini-obit after Bert Jansch's death in 2011: http://www.salutlive.com/2011/10/bert-jansch.html

*** Belated tribute to Jansch's long-time collaborator John Renbourn (2015): http://www.salutlive.com/2015/04/john-renbourn-rip-a-belated-tribute-to-a-great-musician.html

**** The Martin Simpson interview ("folk music is dangerous") from 2007: http://www.salutlive.com/2007/07/martin-simpson-.html

And there is also the column of links you see to the right. You may come across some dead ends and the site as a whole could do with some tidying up, but there is plenty of accessible material - writing and music - for those wishing to delve deeper.

I hope new readers and old will find something in the archive to interest them. Happy new year!

And finally, via a new reader, Steve Peck, comes this wonderful a YouTube find, a 1968 radio show hosted by Frank ... ...


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