The Best 'Lost' Album Ever??

Way back in 1978 (or was it 1798?) I was in a touring band from Scotland called 'New Celeste'. We had the pleasure of recording an album in Berlin with producer Ulli Weigel, subsequently released on the Hansa label in 1979.

This album has now been remastered and available for download, and has more than stood the test of time! Check out the link below for downloads, and the review by Tom Morton.

Copy/paste this link into browser for the album!

https://meiselmusic.ipool.info/index.php?cmd=display&page=Release&id=MlpJR3cwemtUMW89&source=public

'A vinyl copy of On the Line on the German label Hansa international was an early present from Graeme and Pam Duffin and I remember being quite taken aback by its power and quality. This wasn’t the drummerless folky ensemble I’d envisaged. Neither was it the sub-Steeleye fiddles-and-crunchy-guitars affair it might have been. Produced brilliantly by Ulli Weigel in his new studio in Berlin and mixed at the legendary Hansa on the Wall, soon to become famous for the work there of Iggy Pop and David Bowie, it combined Fergus’s terrific voice - a kind of slurred drawl, part John Martyn, part Dick Gaughan - with fine original songs and tunes. There were some radical  rearrangements of traditional material such as Johnny (comes marching home) and fine playing from all concerned -  including the twin-fiddle front line of Rod Dorothy and Ronnie Gerrard - ranging from the ferocious  and frenetic to the tasteful and haunting. Graeme’s jazz-rock and funk chops are more to the fore on the album than anything else he’s done (those George Benson quotes!) and the bass playing from Stewart Smith, sometimes taking the lead (as on P Stands for Paddy) is just exquisite. Twisty arrangements include keyboards by the then-unknown Henry Hirsch, since then a superstar collaborator in the USA with the likes of Madonna and Lenny Kravitz, and drumming that always expands and never intrudes from Christian Evans (later to play with the likes of Jill Scott and Beverley Knight). It’s all complex but accessible , fresh and dynamic. I loved the record. I still have that original German pressing.

The re-release provides the opportunity to listen again with fresh, if aged and slightly damaged ears, and re-assess. In the years since, I’ve listened to all the great pioneers of folk rock, been given a crash course in fiddle-related Scottish music via Shetland and all who sail in her folk festival;  travelled with and written about Runrig and Capercaillie, interviewed everyone from Richard Thompson to Bert Jansch, Rab Noakes to Barbara Dickson, Roger Daltrey to Loudon Wainwright and Dolly Parton. I have heard some of the greatest folk and folk rock ever made in Shetland and beyond. Been bought whisky by Simon Nicol at 6.00am on the island of Unst. But on listening to On the Line, I really wonder how it and the band failed to be recognised more at the time as, simply, brilliant. The record just explodes with youthful freshness. It combines jazz, rock and prog with Irish, Canadian and English folk, all filtered through a very Scottish sensibility in a way that I don’t think exists anywhere else. It has great depth and instrumental pyrotechnics that never overburden the songs. A number of circumstances brought the band to Berlin and Ulli Weigel at just the right time. Never would they access the resources and musicianship available in that city at that time again. And another thing: at just 37 minutes long, On The Line never outstays its welcome.'

TOM MORTON, March 2024.