
Nick's Quest is a temporary project to bring live performances of Nick Drake's music.
Nick Drake was a singer/songwriter who made only 3 records, namely:
- Five Leaves Left (1969)
- Bryter Layter (1970)
- Pink Moon (1972)
which were of timeless quality.
Unfortunately it was no commercial success during his lifetime,
but his records are still available. It's remarkable that in the nineties
his songs enjoyed a growing popularity.
At this point the songs which are performed by Nick's Quest
are mainly from the albums 'Five Leaves Left', 'Pink Moon' and Time of no Reply (the "fourth" album,
which contains leftovers from studio-sessions and homerecordings).
It began with a recording session on September 8th 1999, before a live audience,
of which some fragments are here below.
Because I do not agree artistically with these recordings, plans are made to make new recordings
in the studio. This will happen before the end of 2002.
Songs that will certainly appear on this CD are listed below. The soundfragments are taken from
the live-performance. Though of poor quality, it might be interesting for the real aficionado's.
But still it's a good example to hear that I try to get as close as possible to the original.
In this case, I don't believe in making 'my own interpretation'.
- Road
- Clothes of Sand
- Which Will MP3
- Rider on the Wheel
- Harvest Breed
- Parasite MP3
- Ride
- Three Hours
- Things behind the Sun
- Gold (Peter Blegvad)
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As you see, some songs are by other singer/songwriters. As Nick said: If songs were lines
in a conversation, the situation would be fine, these songs are added to say something
more about the person Nick. I found it more convenient to tell something about Nick in this
way, more than telling about it (if you like to read the story, buy the biography by Patrick Humphries).
I like the idea of letting more people enjoy Nick's music. Besides, it's a challenge for
a guitar-player to perform these songs. His righthand-technique is as advanced as is demanded
from a classical player. The rytmh feels very natural, but when you try to count it, you
sometimes get confused. In my opinion, Nick raised the standard of popular music.
Surf to one of these for more about Nick Drake:
The Nick Drake Files
With very much information and tabulature
Nick Drake Admiration Page
A fanpage
Magazine: PYNK MOON
A quarterly Nick Drake fanzine from Jason Creed
The OLGA archive
TABS and .CRD-files of thousands of artists
CDNOW
On this site you can find all of Nick's records
TABULATURE
Nick played in a lot of alternate tunings, which you can find on the web (see above).
However: it's terrible if you want to play the songs live.
I solved this problem for a few songs, so you can play them without risking your strings
all the time and, that's important, without losing the Drake-sound.
PARASITE is a song that I could not 'translate', but I saw some other tabs (Chris Healey, Harlan Thompson)
that didn't describe the fingerpicking the way I think it should be, so I included that one too.
These are xxx.doc files. To view and print them you should set the page-preferences at A4 landscape before you
open the files. Maybe you have to correct the left/right margins also. Then it should all be in the right place.
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