You Can All Join In. Famous Island Sampler. (which I still have).

Submitted by mojoworking on 6 December 2012 - 4:37am

This piece originally appeared in a 1996 issue of Record Collector magazine as part of a much larger feature on Island Records. I was prompted to write it after seeing a short article in the debut issue of Mojo magazine which attempted to name everyone pictured on the Hipgnosis-designed cover of the famous 1969 Island sampler LPYou Can All Join In.

It was a brave effort by the fledgling mag which nevertheless fell at the first hurdle, with almost a third of the people wrongly named, or left unidentified. Stranger yet was that for their piece Mojo mag had consulted Patrick Campbell-Lyons of the Island band Nirvana who not only appeared on You Can All Join In but was pictured on the sleeve himself!

After that I became determined (if not obsessed) to come up with a definitive list of everyone on the sleeve. This was made all the more difficult because several people are only partially visible over on the left of the picture. Then I had a stroke of luck. During the project I’d amassed several copies of You Can All Join In and one of them, a Dutch pressing, showed about an extra half-inch or so of the picture on the left and this was all I needed to fill in the gaps. Suddenly here was Richard Thompson (then with Fairport Convention), Clive Bunker (Jethro Tull) and Chris Mercer (then with Wynder K. Frog) and the puzzle was magically complete.

A complete, accurate list had never been published before that 1996 issue of Record Collector and along with my hand-drawn line diagram of the characters as they appeared on the sleeve (see below), it was subsequently lifted wholesale by Wikipedia and now pops up all over the interweb.

I initially posted a short version of the list at the bottom of tiggerlion’s excellent Hendrix thread, but it’s kind of an orphan there, especially as the thread has gone into the twilight zone of a second page, where few ever venture. So here's the full-fat version for all you Island Records obsessives out there. Some of the references are a little twee and dated now ("Beazer Homes League", anyone?) so I hope you'll bear with me in that regard.

YOU CAN ALL JOIN IN

If you are of a certain age and took even a fleeting interest in what was quaintly termed ‘underground’ rock music as a teenager the chances are that you've owned at least one copy of You Can All Join In at some point during the past 40 years.

Along with Nice Enough To Eat and Liberty's splendid pair of Gutbucket compilations this was among the first of the many sampler albums which began to appear at the tail-end of the 60s. Offering stunning value for money at a mere 14s/6d (72½p) for twelve tracks (this at a time when a full-price LP retailed for around 32s/11d [£1.65]), not only did YCAJI and its ilk provide a low-cost opportunity to hear tried and tested music from Island's Premier League of bands (Tull, Traffic, Free etc), but they also enabled interested parties to check out some of the kick-and-run merchants down at the Beazer Homes League end of the scale (Tramline, Wynder K. Frog et al) at considerably less financial risk.

The Americans, in typical advertising agency speak, called samplers LPs of this kind 'loss leaders' and invariably flogged them mail-order for one dollar apiece via adverts on the inner sleeves of early 70s Warner Bros albums and the like. Britain, meanwhile, quietly sold them over the counter for considerably more than a dollar. The principle, however, was exactly the same: after being initially attracted to the sampler by one or more of the big names on offer, you'd be so impressed by some of the lesser-known bands that you'd immediately rush out and buy one of their albums, full-price. That was the theory, anyway.

Almost as important as the music in this case, of course, was that distinctive and much-discussed YCAJI sleeve. Many have tried but until now (this was written in 1996) no one has ever succeeded in correctly naming everyone pictured on the cover. One spectacular failure worthy of note was Patrick Campbell-Lyons' effort in the debut issue of Mojo magazine. Considering the Nirvana mainman was actually present at the time (he's the P.J. Proby lookalike at No.9), his attempt was woefully incorrect (9 wrong out of 27! A case of one Camberwell carrot too many on the day, perchance Pat?).

So, who exactly was present on that fateful winter's morning in 1969 when the cream of Island's roster gathered in Hyde Park? By referring to the accompanying diagram and key, everyone on the cover can be identified quickly, simply and - more importantly - accurately.

A word, however, regarding those musicians partially visible on the extreme left of the sleeve. Above Chris Mercer's head (No.23) can be seen a brown coat collar, together with a similarly-coloured clump of hair. These belong to a then considerably more hirsute Richard Thompson (No.13) - and not Paul Kossoff as is sometimes claimed. Now, go up still further and immediately above Thompson's head, directly to the left of Neil Hubbard (No.2), can be seen a small amount of darker hair of almost Brillo Pad-like texture. Sadly, this is all that is visible of original Jethro Tull tub thumper Clive Bunker (No.1).

There has, over the years, been much speculation as to who was positioned out of camera range further to the left. Various names have been mooted including: John Martyn (possible), Blodwyn Pig (unlikely), and King Crimson (extremely unlikely indeed, since they weren't even signed to Island at that point!). No, it's far more likely that these stragglers were the remaining members of Spooky Tooth, along with, possibly, various representatives from Tramline. Paul Kossoff meanwhile, as the only member of Free not accounted for, was probably safely tucked up in his Golborne Mews bed at that unsociable hour of the morning.

Then there's the sorry tale of nearly-man Ian A. Anderson (he's the bearded, bespectacled, fur-coated figure at No.16 who was dropped from the label, without a release to his name, shortly thereafter). If his Mojo account of how he lost his Island contract is to be believed, the erstwhile folk blues practitioner (now editor of fRoots magazine) was unceremoniously given the bum's rush due to an unfortunate clash of names with a certain similarly-monikered Jethro Tull frontman. Stranger things have happened, admittedly, but Ian A.'s version of events seems a little paranoid all the same.

YOU CAN ALL JOIN IN - KEY TO DIAGRAM

1. CLIVE BUNKER (Jethro Tull)
2. NEIL HUBBARD (Wynder K. Frog)
3. GARY WRIGHT (Spooky Tooth)
4. GLENN CORNICK (Jethro Tull)
5. BRUCE ROWLAND (Wynder K. Frog)
6. MARTIN BARRE (Jethro Tull)
7. MICK WEAVER (Wynder K. Frog)
8. IAN ANDERSON (Jethro Tull)
9. PATRICK CAMPBELL-LYONS (Nirvana)
10. ASHLEY HUTCHINGS (Fairport Convention)
11. ALEX SPYROPOULOS (Nirvana)
12. CHRIS WOOD (Traffic)
13. RICHARD THOMPSON (Fairport Convention)
14. IAN MATTHEWS (Fairport Convention)
15. STEVE WINWOOD (Traffic)
16. IAN A. ANDERSON
17. JIM CAPALDI (Traffic)
18. MIKE HARRISON (Spooky Tooth)
19. MARTIN LAMBLE (Fairport Convention)
20. SIMON NICOL (Fairport Convention)
21. HARRY HUGHES (Clouds)
22. REBOP ANTHONY KWAKU BAAH (Wynder K. Frog)
23. CHRIS MERCER (Wynder K. Frog)
24. SIMON KIRKE (Free)
25. PAUL RODGERS (Free)
26. BILLY RITCHIE (Clouds)
27. ANDY FRASER (Free)
28. IAN ELLIS (Clouds)
29. SANDY DENNY (Fairport Convention)

Track Listing:

Side One
1. A Song For Jeffrey – Jethro Tull – (Alternative mix, original version from This Was) (ILPS 9085)
2. Sunshine Help Me – Spooky Tooth – (from It’s All About Spooky Tooth) (ILPS 9080)
3. I’m a Mover – Free – (from Tons of Sobs) (ILPS 9089)
4. What’s That Sound – Art – (from Supernatural Fairy Tales) (ILP 967)
5. Pearly Queen – Tramline – (from Moves of Vegetable Centuries) (ILPS 9095)
6. You Can All Join In – Traffic – (from Traffic) (ILPS 9081T)

Side Two
1. Meet on the Ledge – Fairport Convention – (from What We Did on Our Holidays) (ILPS 9092)
2. Rainbow Chaser – Nirvana – (from All of Us) (ILPS 9087)
3. Dusty - John Martyn – (from The Tumbler) (ILPS 9091)
4. I’ll Go Girl – Clouds – (from Scrapbook) (ILPS 9100)
5. Somebody Help Me – Spencer Davis Group – (from The Best of the Spencer Davis Group) (ILPS 9070)
6. Gasoline Alley – Wynder K. Frog – (from Out of the Frying Pan) (ILPS 9082)

Thank you to www.The Afterworld

Crowland.

Out of the quickening twilight the caw, caw of crows
like some ancient battle cry cuts the orange and lemon tinted air.
They emerge at first like distant, murky shadows in a deep pool
hinting at malevolence, provoking the night to show itself;
the ghosts of murdered men seeking vengeance.
Then like fragments of shattered jet they cut the sky
with mortal wounds, spilling towards the silhouetted trees,
dancing and whirling in some ancient rite, singing the dark
oath songs of Valhalla, the Otherworld and Bran the Blessed.

These are Odin's birds, Huginn and Muninn -
his eyes and ears: the wise advisor and the ebony spirit of wisdom.
They pour out of the dying day as if through some portal in the clouds,
filling my senses with strange dreams and battle hymns,
anointing my soul with superstitious foreboding:

They are finders of sacred fire, divine messagers
penetrating deep into our world, into our subconscious,
omens of death, birth, soothsayer, trickster and hero:

They coil like sacrificial thick smoke, a swirling whirlpool
of escaped shadow coursing through the diminishing light
as if their only goal is to banish and extinguish the sun
from our lives.
The slow nasal, earthy call of the stately rooks blends
with the loud jarring  'kyaar' of the jackdaws into a writhing
cacophony of crow music as antique and mysterious as the landscape.
Slowly they follow the ritual of gathering. They muster together
in the stubble field in one great mass, an oil slick,
squeezing out the last of the struggling illumination.

Then suddenly there is a hush. My breathing is rapid.
Anticipation surges like a wave rushing in from the grey sea.
Then the crow horde rises as one entity,
one huge black monster heaving into the petrified
diffuse sky, at once a black flower opening to the night,
then a huge black egg full of stars.
But soon the spectacle is over and the tribal horde
descends into the stoic trees etched against the horizon
like black, boney fingers, and swiftly clutter their spidery branches
with their presence, merging into the gloom to enbrace the night.

Romany of the BBC.

Romany was our first natural history broadcaster, the forerunner of and inspiration for David Attenborough and David Bellamy He also wrote many books.  The best-known of these are the 'Out with Romany' series, much reprinted throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Bramwell Evens with Raq and Peter.

We loved the Romany books so much in our family we also had a beautiful spaniel and named him Raq. What a great character he was.

Great nature writer series: Romany of the BBC. (George Bramwell Evens)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reverend George Bramwell Evens
Born	1884 3 Argyll Street, Anlaby Road, Hull, England
Died	20 November 1943
Education	Epworth College, Rhyl Queens College, Taunton
Occupation	Methodist preacher Radio presenter Author
Known for	Out With Romany
Religion	Methodism
Children	Glyn K. Evens Romany June Evens

The Rev. George Bramwell Evens (1884^[1]–20 November 1943^[1]) was, under the pseudonym Romany (and sometimes The Tramp), a British radio broadcaster and writer on countryside and natural history matters - quite possibly the first to broadcast on such issues. He was also a Minister of the Methodist Church.

His mother was Romani, born in a caravan^{[citation needed]} (or vardo in Romani). His father was Salvation Army Lieutenant George Evens, a native of Plymouth.^[1]

Evens was born at 3 Argyll Street, Anlaby Road, Hull, England^[1] and educated at Epworth College, Rhyl, as boarder,^[1] then at Queens College, Taunton.^[1]

He married Eunice, the daughter of The Reverend Owen Thomas on 1 August 1911.^[1]

He is most famous for his Out With Romany programmes, which commenced in 1933^[1] on the BBC's Children's Hour, describing travels in his own vardo (purchased in 1921, at Brough Hill Fair, for £75^[1]), with Comma the horse, his English Cocker Spaniel, Raq, and his young friends Muriel and Doris. Although the programmes were all pre-scripted and performed entirely in the studio, the impression given was of Romany and his friends going for a walk in the countryside and spontaneously discussing the plants and animals they came across.

Plaque in Carlisle

As a Methodist minister, his ministries included Goole; the Methodist Central Hall, Carlisle (1914–26); Huddersfield(1926–29); and the King Cross Methodist Chapel, Halifax (1929–39), after which ill health forced him to give up the ministry. He retired to Wilmslow, where he died, leaving his wife, son Glyn and daughter, Romany June.

His ashes were scattered, at his request, at Old Parks Farm, Glassonby, Cumbria, which he had enjoyed visiting over a 22-year period.^[2] There is a memorial to him at Old Parks Farm, erected in 2001 by The Romany Society.^[2]

The vardo in Wilmslow in 2006

The vardo was donated, unconditionally, by his widow, to the forerunners of Cheshire East Borough Council (CEBC).^[3]For many years it was displayed by CEBC, outdoors, in Wilmslow.^[3] In late 2012, having deteriorated badly, it was restored and moved to Bradford Industrial Museum, to be displayed indoors.^[3]

A 1950s Romany Society badge, depicting Raq

The Romany Society, originally formed in 1943,^[4] disbanded in 1965,^[4] and re-founded in 1996,^[4] celebrates his life and work, with regular newsletters and an annual magazine.^[3] Its patron is Terry Waite.

The BBC radio programmes were all broadcast live, and only one recording survives - dated October 1943, just a month before his death. In November 2006 this was released on CD by Valley Stream Production