The Complete Vanguard Recordings

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.com
Richard Farina was better known as a novelist (he wrote Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me), while his wife Mimi was best known as the younger sister of Joan Baez. On the two albums they cut together (plus the outtakes released after Richard's death in a 1966 motorcycle accident), their musical progression captured the tenor of the times--a progression from folk traditionalism to topical social comment to playful surrealism. This three-disc set presents the entirety of the duo's studio output, plus a nine-song performance from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (issued here in its entirety for the first time). Richard's mountain dulcimer spurred a revival of interest in the instrument, and his "Pack Up Your Sorrows" established itself as a folk standard of the era, but guitarist Mimi (who died of cancer in 2001) was plainly a better singer and more proficient musician than the husband to whom she deferred. --Don McLeese

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2007-03-03 rating:
In Memory of Mimi and Richard
For anyone with an interest in the music of the mid-60's, Mimi and Richard Farina are a must buy. Poised at the end of folk music's massive popularity, it is a beautiful conbination of both acoustic and electric influences. Richard died tragically shortly after their second album. The first two disc of this collection contain those two masterful efforts, "Celebrations For A Grey Day" and "Reflections In A Crystal Wind".

For those of you unfamiliar with the duo, Mimi is the younger sister of Joan Beaz. Richard was a true rennasunce man: poet, author, songwriter, musician. He died at the brink of what I believe would have been superstardom. His poetry weaves his songs into spellbinding stories of love, adventure and loss. The music is truly haunting. It will rattle around your brain long after you listen to it.

The music is also full of sadness. For anyone who knows the story of Richard Farina you are stick with the question, what would this world have been like if he had lived?

I also stongely recommend the book "Positively 4th Street" by David Hajdu that tells the fascinating story of Richard and Mimi along with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Also available is Richard's first and only book, "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me". It had just been published at the time of his death.

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review by: date: 2007-02-08 rating:
American adagio
From the duo that proclaimed their music was often made up from country eggs, Kraft cheese, macrobiotic encounters, Maine lobsters and the Ying-Yang seesaw (Yes, all of that!), here's a great collection for the nostalgia Dick'n'Mimi lover! Personally, I love this set, got it from the local library and listen to it often.

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review by: Lurking Bibliophile date: 2007-02-06 rating:
WONDERFUL WORK
This is a very special collection (although the 3rd CD is
pretty rough & about half of it is not as good). I played
these guys on my 33 1/3rd turntable & it sounds better
now! A great loss when Farina did the fly up into palm
trees exit. The enclosed book is a grand read, lots of
info (much of it sad) about them, their music, their
work. Anyone who has missed their art deserves to gift
themselves w/fine, moving lyrics & excellent instrumentation.
I value this collection.

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review by: andmooreagain date: 2006-11-23 rating:
I'm Lucky! i'm OLD OLD OLD I knew their most excellent and unsurpassed music first!
And then, a few years down the road, i read his book which is ok but prefer Kerouac's work even K's worst book is better than Farina's only book. i know i spelled Kerouac wrong OK? unfortunately i did not pay much attention to bread and roses, should have and of course always obvious that mimi is the best of the 3 ....Mimi her sister and her wildman hubby... took me awhile to even relate Mimi to Joan, I had to have someone tell me! And what a really sad day she died, like the day Lennon was murdered felt about the same to me.
Rumor has it that positively fourth street was written with R Farina in mind, well i wouldn't be surprized, maybe joan knows ...... enough rambling ........this is music that cannot be surpassed, even in heaven if there is a heaven, it will have this music there......


review by: date: 2006-07-10 rating:
Dated, yet Essential Folk Music
If you want to explore the full context of folk music in the 1960s, you'll have to deal with Richard and Mimi Farina sooner or later. They, and not Dylan, arguably invented "folk-rock," and their brief musical career showed some promise, at least two classics, and a lot of wasted potential. You see, Richard Farina thought himself a Renaissance Man--poet, novelist, musician, essayist, critic: you get the picture. According to David Hajdu's *Positively 4th Street*, he was a man who loved a party, and who, in the early years, jostled with Bob Dylan for the spotlight, becoming somewhat bitter that Dylan became a big music star *and* looked set to publish a novel before Farina had finished his. Obviously, a figure such as Farina can be seen as a tragic figure--a promise of great things in his few songs and one novel, and an untimely early death. He could be the James Dean of the folk world. However, the proof of the CD is in the listening. And listening to the Complete Vanguard Recordings, one suspects that Farina might have gone on to great things, but more likely he would be remembered as an interesting figure of his time, but not likely to translate well 40 years on.

And that's basically what you get here. Some of these songs are wonderful--"Pack Up Your Sorrows," for instance, is bouncy and refreshingly optimistic without being sappy. It's the kind of song Dylan could never have written, and that's meant as a compliment to Farina's own idiom. You can also enjoy the despair of "Reno, Nevada," or the cutting wit of "Morgan the Pirate" (said to be Farina's own swipe at Dylan, in response to "Positively 4th Street"). The instrumentals on the first two discs are also a treat, if only because Farina's dulcimer has a fine, other-worldly sound to it. Folkies will also love the recordings from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, especially the unedited audio of the dulcimer workshop with dulcimer master Jean Ritchie (and Richard and Mimi's charm and warmth come through in the spoken portions of the recording). But much of the music here remains very much of its time: the protest songs seem too mired in the vernacular of the 60s to be of much interest today, and Richard seems carried away with his own cleverness in the song titles and liner notes. Mimi's playing and singing--far greater in terms of talent and technique than her husband's--gets pushed to the background, although there is no doubt that she can handle a solo performance like "Quiet Joys of Brotherhood" in a way Richard never could.

Don't stay away from this set. Do buy it if you're serious about learning more about 60s music. This music is well worth having: but it's not timeless, even if it captures something of a long-lost era.

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