ET me confess, at the outset, to a prejudice against players of antique instruments.
It is not that I have anything basically against the squeak of the crum-horn or the robust fart of the racquet, you understand. But I must admit to exasperation with some pop players of old instruments who seem unable to tell the difference between such historical terms as "medieval", "renaissance", "Elizabethan" and so on - lumping them all together indiscriminately.
But then I wonder how easy 21st Century man will find it to tell apart the music of 1750, 1850, and 1950. It was all pre-electric, for the most part, wasn't it?
And just as I don't think there is any particular virtue in sticking rigidly to folk repertoire to the exclusion of all else, neither do I think it especially clever to play music that dates back to the earliest written scores.
Having said all this, at present a band called Gryphon look to me like being one of the most exciting new sounds of 1973.
Though some old instruments appear on stage with them, and they perform such ancient classics as "Kemp's Jig", they resent being described as a medieval band. Which is interesting, because of all the bands using old instruments outside the strictly classical aggregations they have most right to the title.
As a matter of fact while they have been getting the band together, two members, Brian Gulland and Richard Harvey, have been keeping themselves by session work with Musica Reservata and similar groups.
Both of them are ex-students of the Royal Academy of Music, and like another famous RAM student, Yes-man Rick Wakeman, they left after only two years.
"I suppose Rick has always been something of an inspiration to us," said Brian. "The thing that turned me off the strictly classical scene was the extremely narrow lives that so many classical musicians live, both socially and musically."
It was during his first year at the Academy he began to think of getting into a rock band, though, typically, it would have had a somewhat unorthodox sound. "I wanted to play electric bassoon," he recalls.
It was towards the end of his first year at RAM that Brian met Richard, who advised him to get himself a crumhorn because there was a vacancy in Musica Reservata.
Richard had played clarinet on and off since he was six until he took up the clarinet in the school orchestra and got himself an RAM scholarship.
"After two years I got absolutely sick of the clarinet and I went back to the recorder. It was through playing the recorder and crumhorn with Musica Reservata that I was led into folk music, though I've only been interested in anything other than classical music for about three years."
Guitarist Graeme Taylor was at school with Richard Harvey.
"We used to play John Renbourn things behind the tuck-shop at break. I studied classical guitar quite seriously until I got equally fed up with the atmosphere of classical music.
"I formed a folk group called Cherry Wood in 1969. We were very much influenced by the Incredible String Band who had been idols since 1966, but when the group broke up I became absolutely stagnant, music-wise, until Gryphon started."
Fourth member of the band, percussionist Dave Oberle, is the furthest removed from the classical background of the other three.
"I got my first snare drum for Christmas when I was 11. Then when 1 was at school I had a drumkit I'd assembled out of cardboard boxes. We had a band which played Kinks material, things like that.
"Then when I was 14 I was playing in a band called Barbarian, doing Hendrix-type stuff. I joined a commercial pop group called Powerloom, playing small gigs in church halls. Later the name was changed to Juggernaut and we had very strong connections with a band called Egg. Our music was very alike. We changed our name to Erstch and we got a record contract with CBS, but the band broke up three days afterwards."
I had been quite impressed at the gig they played at the Shaw Theatre in support of Carole Pegg, though they themselves told me they had rarely been so untogether.
Way beyond the accident of the unfamiliar instrumentation, and the way they took the themes of traditional ballads like "Bonnie George Campbell" which became almost unrecognisable as "Sir Gavin Grimbold", with unexpected changes of tempi and several layers of meaning in which Quixotic comedy competed for attention with stark tragedy, I realised that here was something rather rare, a truly original sound.
So I trundled up to High Barnet's Livingstone Studios to hear them lay down tracks for their first album.
Most of the time was spent laying down overdubs of Brian's voice and bassoon on "Gavin Grimbold" but they played me sufficient already-recorded tracks from the forthcoming album to confirm my expectation that this is going to be an exciting beginning to the year.
I was particularly impressed by "The Astrologer" in which Richard plays a soaring, sweeping accompaniment of triple-tracked recorders. As he explained the way the tone colours of three entirely different types of instrument had combined, I realised that there was much more to old instru-ments than some limited but strongly-hyped groups would seem to realise.
Basically, I feel that Gryphon are in something of a transitional stage. They are still carrying relics of their classical past around with them and they haven't completely got around to exploiting the full potential of the instruments' tonal qualities. And they are stronger instrumentally than they are vocally.
"We don't have to lust play soft and sweet" said Dave the drummer. " We can turn into something as loud as a rock a band."
Karl Dallas
(Melody Maker, January 6, 1973)
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