1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die - #56. Bert Jansch - Bert Jansch (1965)

Bert Jansch - Bert Jansch (1965)

Label – Transatlantic
Producer – Bill Leader
Art Direction – Brian Shuel
Nationality - UK
Running Time – 39:25

Track Listing (standout tracks listed in bold)

1. Strolling Down The Highway
2. Smokey River
3. Oh How Your Love Is Strong
4. I Have No Time
5. Finches
6. Veronica
7. Needle Of Death
8. Do You Hear Me Now
9. Rambling's Gonna Be The Death Of Me
10. Alice's Wonderland
11. Running From Home
12. Courting Blues
13. Casbah
14. Dreams Of Love
15. Angi

Pleasant enough, but gets quite boring. This record was taped with a portable tape recorder on a borrowed guitar in the kitchen of Bert Jansch’s London apartment. And it sounds like it. Again, the playing is pleasant enough and it’s not that it’s bad or anything, it just doesn’t have any impact on the listener and I was quite bored with it by the time the record was over.
Perhap’s Jansch's debut has been somewhat diminished by the passage of time, because in reading about it, turns out it was a vastly influential work. His acoustic picking to be sure is excellent, and specifically, Jimmy Page and Neil Young have gone on record as noting their influence to Jansch's early material.
He also was a songwriter. All but one of the 15 tracks on his debut was an original composition (the set closes with his excellent version of the instrumental "Angi," popularized by Paul Simon). Oddly, that instrumental is my favorite track on the record.
Another person heavily influenced by Bert Jansch was Donovan. He has covered a couple of early Jansch tunes, and even wrote a couple of songs directly inspired by the artist ("Bert's Blues" and "House of Jansch").
The other standout track to me is a rambling compositions the somber "Needle of Death" (about the heroin-induced death of one of his friends). Perhaps Neil Young’s “Needle and the Damage Done” was influenced by this track?
Again, the most impressive thing here is the guitar playing, perfect stuff, beautiful and pure. It just gets old after a while and the songs are not strong enough to make this less than boring and tough to get thorough.
I CAUTIOUSLY recommend this record. Mainly for its influences that it would have on other artists more so than for the music included.