Forest Fire Citation - Chickadee (1988)



 

Obviously Forest Fire Citation are best known for their epic 1970s albums P. Bryan Twyne and the Pype of Wine and, of course, The Squirrels of Blame. One would have to be a completely idiotic retarded mindfuck not to know this really basic fact.

However, like many of their folk-rock ilk, the band continued to record, release and perform new music long after their star had faded, and indeed are still active today, albeit with none of the original members on board, though drummer Reg Pegson continues to act as a sort of 'percussion consultant' to the group, even at the brisk old age of 104!

Amongst their later catologue, 1988's Chickadee is perhaps the highlight. Their ninth album overall, it saw FFC reinventing themselves through the abandonment of traditional folk instrumentation, each member adopting instead a selection of home-made instruments, fashioned from household objects, kitchenware, car parts, cheesewire and so on.

While this undoubtedly gives the record an 'experimental' character, it arguably allows for a truer interpretation of 'folk music' than is possible with mandolins, dulcimers and other 'traditional' kit. Gareth Fayke made a primative bodhran from old Dulux tins and the pelt of a tuberculotic otter, and it is this that can be heard beating out the peripatetic rhythms on the opening track 'Return to Chelmsford'. 

The title track may be the weakest on the album but it is also the shortest; at just nine seconds long it perhaps signals a deliberate departure from the eight-minute sonic voyages that dominated their earlier releases. And it features a one-stringed cittern that started life a family-sized pack of All Bran, played expertly by erstwhile guitarist Romulus Knock, shortly before his involuntary departure from the FFC line-up.

While perhaps not a recording to excite their fanbase at the time - what with the late 1980s being the latter years of the 1980s and all that - it has retroactively come to be regarded as a minor classic of the genre. Though which genre exactly is still up for debate.


 

Discographicalz

  • Only you can stop (1972)
  • Excalibaterer (1973)
  • No finer things (1974)
  • P. Bryan Twyne and the Pype of Wine (1976)
  • The Squirrels of Blame (1978)
  • Imperious (1980)
  • Scandalous Ox (1983)
  • Trinity Collage (1986)
  • Chickadee (1988)
  • Reinventing Fabric (1989)
  • Colonel Colin's adventures in Gloy (1991)
  • pampasgrass (1997)
  • Spectre of a Shadow (1999)
  • Rotten to the core, the very core I say (2005)
  • Pillars of Glamour (2009)
  • Reckless Lemons (2015)
     

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