Sandy Denny:Under Review

As good a career retropective as you're want to find with but one or two quibbles have I,those being an unfortunate dearth of filmic record of the queen of British folk-rock, the other the scant amount of time given to the music being discussed. I do believe the makers of this would have liked to have presented much more film of Sandy and perhaps it's a case of there really isn't that much available so I will cut them some slack on that part. This dvd opens with a beautiful color film of Sandy performing solo avec guitar but is abruptly aborted as one of the journalists enlisted for this program is given camera time to lay out his assessment of what Sandy brought to the world. Which is fine, and interesting, but, what of this extraordinary film we were just being treated to for roughly 17 seconds? Later on in the program a similar conundrum appears when we see Sandy performing with her Fotheringay but for what must be all of 10 or 15 seconds. Extremely frustrating to say the least. My music quibble regards the standard playing time given to whatever song is being talked about. Such classics as Matty Groves and A Sailors Life are spun if it seems ONLY to give you the briefest sample before hurtling right back to the speaker eloguently paying tribute to said song. Again I shall give the programers the benefit of some doubt-perhaps they are only alloted no more than 20 or 30 seconds tops to present a song before some contractural breach is crossed. I don't know. But it DOES make me go pull out my Unhalfbricking and Liege & Lief for the proper attention. These quibbles aside, and as I stated up front, from the generous amount of photographs and interviews with insightful journo's and especially ex-band mates of Sandys'-Daves Swarbrick and Mattacks as well as John Renbourn and Martin Carthy we are lead along the complete career path of Sandy Denny and I can't imagine a better or more thorough documentation examined.     12/9/09