Note: For an index of all articles in all three Favorite Songs series, click here, then scroll down.

Who They Are: A legendary and deeply influential British folk-rock band, originally formed in 1967 and active to this day, with but one significant hiatus period in the early 1980s. The group originally and briefly focused on an (American) West Coast psychedelic sound with strong male and female lead vocalists, not unlike the original incarnation of Jefferson Airplane, before more aggressively working to meld traditional English, Irish and Scottish melodies and songs with electric rock arrangements, supplemented by exceptional original songs by a stellar cohort of composers serving within the group. According to Wikipedia, there have been 25 official members of Fairport Convention over their career arc, and 21 of them appeared with the group during its tumultuous first dozen years, pre-hiatus. But those who came, and those who left, often continued to work together in a vast and interwoven musical network that touched scores, if not hundreds, of other influential artists and acts. Among their better-known alumni were Richard Thompson (solo artist, and duo with his ex-wife Linda), Sandy Denny (solo artist, Fotheringay), Ashley Hutchings (Steeleye Span, Albion Band), Dave Pegg (Jethro Tull), and Iain Matthews (Matthews Southern Comfort). Since their reformation in 1985, the group has experienced far more personnel stability, with Simon Nicol (guitar, and the sole founder still remaining), Dave Pegg (bass), and Ric Sanders (fiddle) having served continually since that time, supplemented by multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock and drummer Dave Mattacks (another ’60s/’70s veteran of the group) in their earlier incarnations, then Gerry Conway (drums) and Chris Leslie (various stringed instruments) from the mid-’90s on. Conway had to step away a few years back due to health issues, and he passed away recently; Mattacks returned once again to take his place. Fairport’s Cropredy Festival is one of Britian’s longest running musical events, having been staged most years since the late ’70s, often bringing various friends and family members of the group together for unique live performances.

When I First Heard Them: Ironically, right after they broke up in 1979. I was a huge Jethro Tull fan at the time (and still am, of course), and was surprised upon arriving at a Tull show at Nassau Coliseum in support of their Stormwatch album to discover that beloved bassist John Glascock was missing (he died of a heart condition soon thereafter), replaced by some guy named Dave Pegg. The concert program referenced Pegg’s prior group, Fairport Convention, so I dutifully trundled over the Nassau Community College record lending library to see what I could discover about the group, as I usually did in those pre-Internet, and pre-having-money-to-buy-albums days. The first Fairport album I picked up was a compilation, that had a wonderful Pete Frame-style rock family tree on its cover, and I always loved parsing those:

I was pleased to learn that Fairport had relational connections with Steeleye Span, who I’d already discovered and quite liked, both because vocalist Maddie Pryor had appeared on earlier Jethro Tull albums, and because their records were always binned alphabetically right next to my much-beloved Steely Dan in the record stores, so my curiosity had already led me to investigate who they were, and what they sounded like. I nabbed a few early Fairport albums in the years that followed, though they weren’t often readily available in the States in those days; following their reformation, and with the advent of the CD-era, their records became much more accessible. I’ve only seen them live once, in 1989, fittingly opening for Jethro Tull when Maartin Allcock and Dave Pegg were both serving in both groups simultaneously.

Why I Love Them: I’d be hard-pressed to come up with another group who have so strongly displayed a balance between incredible internal songwriting skills and a  sublime sense for covers, both traditional and contemporary, than Fairport Convention have demonstrated over their long career. Of course, grand songs don’t fly unless they’re recorded and performed by skilled players and singers, and Fairport have also been extraordinarily blessed with to-die-for instrumental and vocal talent. Examples: the late Sandy Denny was truly a generational talent as a writer, singer, and player; Richard Thompson continues to shine as one of the century’s greatest guitarists; early singers Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews were brilliant and under-appreciated, sometimes lost in the glow of their better-known band-mates; the late Dave Swarbrick was a charismatic player who revolutionized the way that the fiddle can be deployed in a rock setting; and modern-era primary vocalist Simon Nicol has one of those fine baritone voices that make any-and-everything he sings moving, comforting, delightful. I can’t underestimate the importance of the group’s expanded family tree in my own personal musical pantheon either; I’ve got an English Folk playlist that I spin and adapt regularly, and while it’s not filled with Fairport, per se, the vast majority of the artists I feature on it either worked with Fairport members, were influenced by their music, or emerged from the same early mergers of traditional folk and psychedelic rock that Fairport pioneered. The group’s regular personnel turnovers throughout much of their history mean that there are eras and albums that I like more than others, but the continuity and persistence of vision demonstrated for nigh unto 60 years means than their classic albums are all worth listening to, and their emergent music is always worth considering. As I worked to select my 10 favorite Fairport songs for the list below, the density of greatness of their early works really shone through; all ten of my selected cuts were originally issued on but four albums, rapidly released between 1968 and 1970.

#10. “Walk Awhile,” from Full House (1970)

#9. “Autopsy,” from Unhalfbricking (1969)

#8. “Nottamun Town,” from What We Did on Our Holidays (1969)

#9. “Percy’s Song,” from Unhalfbricking (1969)

#6. “Genesis Hall,” from Unhalfbricking (1969)

#5. “She Moves Through the Fair,” from What We Did on Our Holidays (1969)

#4. “Matty Groves,” from Liege & Leaf (1969)

#3. “Time Will Show the Wiser,” from Fairport Convention (1968)

#2. “Meet on the Ledge,” from What We Did on Our Holidays (1969)

#1. “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?,” from Unhalfbricking (1969)

Note: For an index of all articles in all three Favorite Songs series, click here, then scroll down.

Who They Are: Modern English are an English post-punk/pop group formed in 1979 by Robbie Grey (vocals), Stephen Walker (keys), Gary McDowell (guitar), Michael Conroy (bass), and Richard Brown (drums). After self-releasing a single in 1979, Modern English were signed to the influential (and then-just-emerging) 4AD label, along with the likes of The Birthday Party, Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, and many others. Their debut album, 1981’s Mesh & Lace, was an arty, airy, edgy platter, well in keeping with 4AD’s general aesthetic. But their second album, 1982’s After the Snow, was a completely different sort of beast, spawning the ubiquitous and much-beloved single “I Melt With You.” Following the release of 1984’s excellent Ricochet Days, which was very much of a piece with After the Snow, Modern English left 4AD and the core quintet began to fracture. Between 1995 and 2010, the group was an intermittent going concern, often with only Robbie Grey remaining from the original line-up; these incarnations of Modern English released four albums. In 2010, 80% of the original line-up reunited (missing only drummer Richard Brown), and have toured and recorded fairly consistently since then, releasing two excellent albums, Take Me to the Trees (2016) and the brand new 1 2 3 4.

When I First Heard Them: The obvious answer would be when “I Melt With You” was omnipresent on the radio, dance floors, television, and music journals, but I’m pretty sure that I actually had Mesh & Lace and After the Snow before that song became such a huge hit, drawn to them by actively following the 4AD roster sheet of the time. Regardless of how that initial time sequence went down, After the Snow and Ricochet Days were big favorites for me during the latter half of my Naval Academy days. Stop Start, the first non-4AD release, came out just before I graduated from Annapolis; I wasn’t much chuffed with it, and only loosely paid attention to the group’s ongoing activities until the mostly-original line-up reformed.

Why I Love Them: At their best, Modern English are capable of perfectly blending arty and accessible elements, and they’ve got a keen sense for ear-worm melodies that make their strongest songs stick in your noggin like nobody’s business. But for me, “at their best” means when the Grey-Walker-McDowell-Conroy quartet is working together. I’m a big believer in the ineffable magic of chemistry when it comes to musical ensembles, and those four artists do indeed become and make things greater than the sum of their parts when they collaborate. All four of them have distinctive and recognizable sounds, in terms of the instruments they deploy, and the textures and tones they pull from them. This effect was most ably demonstrated by their last two album releases, which picked up and built upon the creative pinnacle they’d achieved over a quarter-century earlier when they last all worked together on After the Snow and Ricochet Days. My top ten Modern English cuts cited below are all culled from those four albums accordingly; the core four of the group were also together for the debut album, Mesh & Lace, which I liked in its time, but in retrospect, it feels tentative and exploratory when compared to what was to come. I’ll blow any suspense right up front about where “I Melt With You” will rank, as I do not include it in my Top Ten; it’s a fine song, and I’m glad it made them some money and gave them some fame, but I’ve been so over-exposed to it for so long that I don’t often feel any need to hear it again, as an active listening choice, though I don’t mind or complain when do hear it, as happens pretty regularly, even all these years on.

#10. “You’re Corrupt,” from Take Me to the Trees (2016)

#9. “Machines,” from Ricochet Days (1984)

#8. “Long in the Tooth,” from 1 2 3 4 (2024)

#7. “After the Snow,” from After the Snow (1982)

#6. “Exploding,” from 1 2 3 4 (2024)

#5. “Moonbeam,” from Take Me to the Trees (2016)

#4. “Tables Turning,” from After the Snow (1982)

#3. “Plastic,” from 1 2 3 4 (2024)

#2. “Rainbows End,” from Ricochet Days (1984)

#1. “Life in the Gladhouse,” from After the Snow (1982)

Note: For an index of all articles in all three Favorite Songs series, click here, then scroll down.

Who They Are: Earth, Wind & Fire are a joyously genre-crossing ensemble formed by former Ramsey Lewis Trio drummer Maurice White in 1969. The group issued a pair of funk-centric albums  in 1971, then provided the score to Melvin Van Peebles’ seminal blaxploitation film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, before Maurice White rebooted the band with an entirely new line-up; only his brother, bassist Verdine White, survived the transition. Vocalist-percussionist Philip Bailey joined for 1972’s Last Days and Time, and by 1973, the group’s “classic line-up” had largely cohered, debuting on their first platinum certified album, Head to the Sky. Over the ensuing decade, Earth, Wind & Fire scored platinum or gold certifications for eight additional albums, along scores of killer singles, most of them chart monsters in their own rights, before Maurice White put the group on hiatus in 1984 to pursue other creative and musical interests, including producing hit albums for Ramsey Lewis, Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand, among others. Philip Bailey also emerged as a significant solo artist in this period, including a hit duet with Phil Collins; Genesis and Phil (solo) also borrowed EWF’s horn section during this period. In 1987, Maurice and Verdine White, Bailey, Ralph Johnson (drums/percussion), and Andrew Woolfolk (reeds) from the classic line-up reunited with additional players to re-launch the Earth, Wind & Fire brand; the latter incarnations of the group have earned another three Gold Records, but never quite hit the same level of dense studio success as they had in the ’70s and early ’80s. The respect and affection for their work never dwindled, though, and they were inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, among many other honors over the years. Maurice White was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in the late 1990s, and slowly stepped away from active involvement with the group he had founded; he died of the complications from the condition in 2016. The group continue on on this day, with Verdine White, Bailey, and Johnson as the core members.

When I First Heard Them: Probably in 1973 or 1974, almost certainly on pop radio, where I would have followed the rise and fall of “Mighty Mighty,” “Devotion,” and “Shining Star” (their first #1 single on the Hot 100) on Kasey Kasem’s American Top 40 each week. When I lived at Mitchel Field on Long Island from 1976 to 1980, EWF were big favorites among my social circle of the time, so I acquired and listened to their older albums (except the first two), and then stayed abreast with all of their work through the 1984 hiatus. There was also sort of a “Beatles vs Stones” dynamic between EWF and the sprawling P-Funk empire during that time, for me; one group nominally wholesome and suitable for family play, one group kind of nasty, and reserved for listening when parents were not about. I never quite got back onboard as intensely with the group in its latter days, though I stayed interested in their work and progress. I saw them live for the first time around 1980 at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, at the peak of the classic group’s prowess. I saw them again in Albany, New York, shortly after September 11, 2001, the first concert I attended after that devastating attack. The show was powerful and moving on a variety of planes, highly memorable because of the circumstances associated with being together with a large, diverse community in public again after a period of hunkering down and being frightened by what had happened and what was yet to come. It was one of the finest examples in my personal experience of the power of music to uplift and transform.

Why I Love Them: It’s tough to straddle diverse genres and make popular magic in so doing, but Earth Wind & Fire were utter masters at that approach during their heyday, blending jazz, soul, funk, pop, rock and African melodies/rhythms into a perfect, seamless whole, technically challenging, but utterly captivating to audiences of all stripes. Their music is dense, crafted with multiple vocalists, batteries of percussion, horns, strings, keys, reeds and more, but the song craft and accessibility of their output never suffered for that, whereas other groups attempting similar approaches often succumbed to unwieldy bloat. The heart of the group, for me, has always been Verdine White, an utterly killer bass player who provided the anchor around which the rest of the group sailed, his lines crisp, clear, and mighty, mighty indeed. The vocal blend of Maurice White (baritone) and Philip Bailey (tenor) was also magical, both of them effortlessly stepping into and out of lead lines as dictated by the necessity of the songs and ranges they were tackling. Underneath all of those technical and sonic aspects was a general vibe of joy, improvement, celebration, and uplift in both their arrangements and the words they put atop them. This is music to make you think, yeah, and to make you move, sure, but at bottom line, it’s music to make you happy. And it works, without the sickly-sweet glurge that so many other ostensibly inspirational bands so often spew. To lightly amend one of their most famous lyrics: “When you feel down and out, play an EWF song, it’ll make your day.” Yes, that. Precious, rare, and oh so valuable.

#10. “Mighty Mighty,” from Open Your Eyes (1974)

#9. “Sun Goddess,” from Sun Goddess (Ramsey Lewis)(1974)

#8. “September,” from The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1 (1978)

#7. “That’s the Way of the World,” from That’s the Way of the World (1975)

#6. “Gratitude,” from Gratitude (1975)

#5. “Shining Star,” from That’s the Way of the World (1975)

#4. “Fantasy,” from All ‘n All (1977)

#3. “Getaway,” from Spirit (1976)

#2. “Sing a Song,” from Gratitude (1975)

#1. “Serpentine Fire,” from All ‘n All (1977)

Note: For an index of all articles in all three Favorite Songs series, click here, then scroll down.

Who They Were: A smart and energetic rock n’ roll quartet from Marietta, Georgia, whose life cycle essentially book-marked the ’80s: they formed in 1981, they released four solid albums, and they broke up in 1989 (except for a few short-term later reunions). The group’s line-up never changed throughout their history: Murray Attaway was the guitar-strumming front-man singer, Jeff Walls the roots-rockin’, twang-slingin’ lead guit-box man, Rhett Crowe the high-NRG bass player, and John Poe the secret-weapon drummer, who also offered crucial vocal and songwriting support over the group’s run. Guadalcanal Diary (who took their name from a 1943 war memoir) had the arguable misfortune of being a guitar-based band from Georgia just as R.E.M. emerged from the college-rock ghetto into unexpected mass marketability, leading the record industry to seek out “similar” groups who could generate comparable buzz, along with jingling  the coffers handsomely for the suits. Guad Di were one of the ones so lumped by the music magazines and marketing cabals of the era, even though their sound, lyrical interests, live approach, and overall musical aesthetic were significantly different from R.E.M. and any of the other Athens, Georgia bands then emerging. As each of their albums were issued, there was a general critical trend to compare/contrast it to whatever R.E.M. had most recently issued, and as R.E.M. got bigger and bigger over the ’80s, the music press tended to become increasingly dismissive of Guad Di. Unjustly and unfairly so, objectively speaking in hindsight. I suspect fatigue with that consistent “not quite R.E.M.” narrative got to them eventually, though the marriage of Walls and Crowe in 1988 and the birth of their daughter a year later also likely changed their perspective and priorities vis-à-vis touring and music-making. The group’s members intermittently engaged in a variety of musical pursuits (primarily regional) in the decades that followed; Walls died of pancreatic cancer in 2019, shutting the door on any future reunions. They left behind a fine catalog and a reputation for in-concert excellence, though, and there’s nothing wrong with spending a solid decade doing that.

When I First Heard Them: Would have been sometime in late 1984, likely on WHFS-FM, my go-to radio station of the day, soon after the release of their major-label debut album, Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man. (A 1983 EP on Atlanta’s influential indie/regional DB Records would have been the item that got Elektra to sign them in the post-R.E.M. contracting frenzy). I’m fairly certain the first song I heard would have been “Watusi Rodeo.” I’m also fairly certain that I would have read a lot of gushing prose in music magazines about them being the next R.E.M. I didn’t hear that, and I didn’t really care about having another R.E.M. anyway, but I loved the weirdness of that first single, and the album from which it sprang was superb, diverse, interesting, fun, and yet surprisingly dark on some planes, with the group’s attack seeming to involve laughing and raging across various emotional and spiritual abysses. I nabbed each of their subsequent albums happily and eagerly on release, along with Murray Attaway’s sole solo disc, 1993’s In Thrall. They’ve never, ever rolled off of my routine listening lists for very long over the years, enduring in my personal pantheon in ways that loads of other “next big thing” bands from the ’80s could never achieve.

Why I Love Them: The collection of songs that Guadalcanal Diary left behind is a fine one, covering a lot of territory, both in terms of sonic attack, and in terms of lyrical concerns. There are elements of the Paisley Underground, there’s roots-rock, there’s smart pop, there’s cowboy music, some heart-breaking ballads, some childhood chants turned into energetic rock songs, some hair-raising instrumentals, and some classic college rock radio-era hits. Their lyrics ranged from the silly (e.g. “Cattle Prod” and “I See Moe”) to the sad and sublime (e.g. “Michael Rockefeller” and “3AM”), and were often far richer or more impressionistic than most of what the radio was spewing in their time. But my affection for the group really moved up a next level after I caught them live for the first time, which was such an amazing experience that I went on to see them numerous times in the ensuring years in Athens and Atlanta, Georgia, and in Washington, DC. For the latter part of the ’80s, I’d have eagerly cited them (along with Butthole Surfers) as my unquestionable favorite live acts, to be seen and cheered anytime the opportunity presented itself. Onstage, Guad Di’s component personalities really popped, with Attaway as the stereotypical adenoidal/bespectacled geeky ’80s front-man, Walls a sort of stoic flannel-clad cowboy anchor who flicked out killer leads effortlessly, Crowe a perpetual motion machine linked in perfect lock-step with Poe’s crisply-slamming concussions, a rhythm section to die (or kill) for. I lived in Athens, GA in ’86-87, so I got to see a lot of artists in concert there who either in their time or retrospectively were judged as having made the best and most influential music of their era. But I’ll say this with certainty: Guadalcanal Diary mopped them all of the stage, and some of my finest ever concert memories are of working up a true frothy lather in the the thrall of their musical ministrations.

#10. “Always Saturday,” from Flip-Flop (1989)

#9. “Heathen Rage,” from Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man (1984)

#8. “Little Birds,” from 2X4 (1987)

#7. “Trail of Tears,” from Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man (1984) 

#6. “Please Stop Me,” from Jamboree (1986)

#5. “Fire from Heaven,” from Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man (1984)

#4. “Litany (Life Goes On),” from 2X4 (1987)

#3. “Gilbert Takes the Wheel,” from Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man (1984)

#2. “Michael Rockefeller,” from Jamboree (1986)

#1. “Lips of Steel,” from 2X4 (1987)