A beautiful piano-led instrumental, mainly gentle in mood, and an affecting vehicle for the distinctive harmononies and layered textures that characterise Steve's work.

As we all know, it has that typical late 60s "rock group with string section added on" sound. I recommend it here mainly because I *love* the change in mood and minor tonality that comes with line "Ground control to Major Tom, your circuit's dead - There's something wrong" which comes after "Tell my wife I love her very much - she knows". The diminished 7th chord under the words "Major Tom" is, well, sublime.

The song was produced by Gus Dudgeon who went on to produce most of Elton John's classic material, and features Rick Wakeman amongst several subsequently famous session musicians. The Wikipedia articles on the track and the album it came from are interesting, well-written, and seem well-researched (unless anyone wants to disagree).

I first heard this cover of a traditional folk song via the 20 jazzfunkgreats blogspot. But I'd heard of Fairport convention previously, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson and all that, but like so many English people i couldn't bring myself to listen to an English folk group - well MY LOSS.
The song is in two parts, with an eye opening second half drone jam. Spellbinding stuff, with the violin scraping long notes, and (presumably) Richard Thompson scattering trebly white noise almost chords around on top it. It's hard to gauge how much cross fertilisation back and forth between America and the UK their would have been but it's hard to imagine that this wasn't informed by the Velvet Underground.

Just a great song. Musically it builds beautifully to the finale. A little depressing, but still, real life.