Fast Folk: A Community of Singers and Songwriters

Disc 1
1	American Jerusalem / Rod MacDonald 5:58
2	What's Wrong With the Man Upstairs / David Massengill 4:38
3	Old Factory Town / Gerry Devine and the Hi-Beams 5:12
4	Just Need a Home (Spotlight) / Lucy Kaplansky 3:38
5	Another Time and Place / Dave Van Ronk 4:31
6	I Don't Know Why / Shawn Colvin 3:45
7	Geza's Wailing Ways / John Gorka 3:53
8	Ragman! / David Indian 4:03
9	High Times / Tom Intondi 4:36
10	Don't Ever Call Your Sweetheart by His Name / Christine Lavin 2:21
11	Where Were You Last Night? / Frank Christian 4:19
12	Introduction to Corpo Gracile / Germana Pucci 0:28
13	Corpo Gracile / Germana Pucci 5:13
14	Kilkelly, Ireland / Laura Burns 5:58
15	Introduction to the Viking Rag / Erik Frandsen 1:32
16	The Viking Rag / Erik Frandsen 2:37
17	Forget-Me-Not / Jack Hardy 4:20
18	Vacation 2:41
Disc 2
1	Gypsy / Suzanne Vega 4:16
2	Thirty Thousand Men / Steve Forbert 4:31
3	Margaret / Frank Tedesso 4:04
4	Share the Failure / Elaine Silver 2:55
5	Bourbon as a Second Language / Patrick John Brayer 3:47
6	King of Hearts / Paul Kaplan 4:10
7	Heart on Ice / Judith Zweiman 5:04
8	The Courier / Richard Shindell 5:00
9	By Your Eyes / Wendy Beckerman 3:22
10	Danton / Lillie Palmer 4:27
11	Long Black Wall / Michael Jerling 4:27
12	Railroad Bill / Andy Breckman 3:32
13	Gravedigger / Richard Julian 3:18
14	January Cold / Richard Meyer 5:11
15	Disenchanted / Eric Wood 4:37
16	Raphael / Hugh Blumefield 3:35
17	Your Face / Louise Taylor 3:18
18	Crazy Horse / Joffen, Josh & Late for Dinner 3:18

Barnes & Noble

“There is always an audience for a good song,” decided The Coop/The Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a musicians’ cooperative founded by singer-songwriter Jack Hardy and guided by the late, great Dave Van Ronk, which in 1982 began publishing a monthly critical journal with a full-length LP of new work by predominantly unknown songwriters. And good -- in fact, great -- songs abound on this excellent two-CD 20th-anniversary anthology culled by editors Hardy and Richard Meyer from more than 1,000 songs from the 105 released Fast Folk issues. An in-the-field oral history in the true-to-life Smithsonian Folkways tradition, this collection vibrantly captures the burgeoning new-wave Greenwich Village songwriter scene in intimate, mostly guitar-and-voice, one-take recordings from the coop’s performance space at the local SpeakEasy club, musician/engineer Mark Dann’s home studio, and the live annual Revue performances at the Bottom Line. Here, you can hear history in the making in seminal standout tracks from the now famous, the almost famous, emerging newcomers, and unsung mainstays -- Shawn Colvin, Suzanne Vega, Steve Forbert, John Gorka, Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky, Eric Wood, Richard Julian, Frank Tedesso, Frank Christian, Erik Frandsen, Rod McDonald, David Massengill, Lillie Palmer, and many, many more -- as they melodically spin poetry and politics with poignance, wit, and even jazz. And always, the song’s the thing... --Matt Hughes

All Music Guide

From the early '80s to the late '90s, Fast Folk magazine was an important document of and voice for the folk-rooted New York singer/songwriter scene. The magazines came with compilation albums -- no less than 105 of them -- allowing subscribers and purchasers to sample the work of many young and unknown, and some veteran and relatively well-known, singer/songwriters. The magazine stopped publishing in 1997, its holdings donated to the Smithsonian a couple of years later. This first retrospective of the massive body of Fast Folk is a 34-track, two-CD set including 142 minutes of music spanning 1982-1997. Some of the performers are famous, like Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin (represented by a 1985 version of her "I Don't Know Why"), Dave Van Ronk, and Steve Forbert; others are fairly well known, like Christine Lavin, John Gorka, Lucy Kaplansky, and Christine Lavin. But most of these names will be unfamiliar, even to many folk fans. And while the music is often acoustic folk, sometimes solo, it's sometimes mild folk-rock with fuller arrangements, too. Fast Folk was undoubtedly a valuable organization and medium for exposure, but good intentions don't always make for great music. Most of this is earnest confessional and/or narrative material, on the undistinguished side melodically, lacking the idiosyncratic and arresting vocal personalities of the best singer/songwriters -- and not just Bob Dylan, an obvious reference point for much of this style (though these performers are on the whole far more polite than Dylan), but even Dave Van Ronk, though his "Another Time and Place" wouldn't be considered one of his best performances. What are the best performances on this disc, though? Elaine Silver's "Share the Failure" has the pristine seriousness of the sort heard on early Judy Collins and Joan Baez outings; Patrick John Brayer's "Bourbon as a Second Language" has a refreshing country-influenced lightheartedness; Germana Pucci's "Corpo Gracile," sung in Italian, has a gypsy feel; Christine Lavin's "Don't Ever Call Your Sweetheart By His Name" has her usual comic touch that, while hard to take in concentrated doses, stands out on this comp as a welcome blast of levity. Comic relief's not always a good thing, though, as demonstrated by the bombastic crude wit of Andy Breckman's "Railroad Bill." Richie Unterberger

Billboard

Top-notch songwriting and vocals...It's hard to imagine a music scene better chronicled.