Steeleye Span

Steeleye Span are amongst the biggest and most commercially successful folk rock bands. Their career, spanning over 50 years, has seen them achieve 4 Top 40 albums and 2 Top 20 singles as well as countless sold out live shows. Through an everchanging line up, their popularity has continued to this day. This collection brings together their recordings over an 11 year tenure with Chrysalis Records covering the years 1972-1983. Housed in a clamshell box with a 56 page perfect bound book, there are 145 tracks, (46 unreleased) over 12 CDs include a number of unreleased studio tracks including an expanded version of New York Girls (featuring Peter Sellers), a studio take of The Devil's Dream, 3 previously unavailable additional live tracks from the Live At Last" album, an Australian only live album, as well as 2 completely new live concerts from The Rainbow Theatre in London from 1974 and the Boston Berklee Performance Centre from 1976. The Rainbow show in particular has been the subject of much speculation with a small selection of tracks appearing on various low quality bootlegs over the years. The band are undertaking a (delayed) 50 year celebratory UK tour with 17 dates in May and a further 7 dates in October.

2009 import-only three CD set from the British Folk Rock institution. Subtitled: A Parcel of Steeleye Span. Their First Five Chrysalis Albums - 1972-1975, this triple disc set contains the entirety of their first five albums for the Chrysalis Records label (from 1972's Below The Salt to 1975's All Around My Hat) with a few bonus tracks thrown in for good measure. Steeleye Span are so well entrenched in the annals of folk history that it is sometimes easy to forget that, for two or three years in the middle of the 1970s, they were likewise poised on the very brink of mainstream rock superstardom.

When Steeleye Span released their 1996 album 'Time', it was a landmark for a number of reasons. Inspired by their epic 25th anniversary show in London, it not only saw the band return to recording after a seven year break but was the first release to feature vocalists Maddy Prior and Gay Woods since their ground breaking 1969 debut Hark! The Village Wait. It was also their first album with the Oxford based Park Records, an association that has been maintained for nearly twenty years.

(2-CD set) Drawn from their 20 years on the Park Records label, The Essential Steeleye Span: Catch Up looks back at the recent history of one of the most prolific bands of their age. From 1996's Time up to their Wintersmith collaboration with the late Sir Terry Pratchett, the album features some of the most memorable moments in Steeleye's long and distinguished career; whether it be from their string of acclaimed Park releases or a number of new recordings of their most famous songs. Including rare and unreleased material, this is the perfect release for those new to the group or returning fans - a snapshot of a band still at the peak of their creative powers.

Steeleye Span's debut is in many ways the heir apparent to Fairport Convention's "Liege and Lief" released a year before. After that landmark recording, Ashley Hutchings left to form his own group that was to focus more on traditional music, contrasting with Fairport's more eclectic mindset. He formed Steeleye Span along with Maddy Prior, Tim Hart, and Gay and Terry Woods.

In an age when it is not uncommon for an artist to take five years to follow up a successful album, the creativity that Steeleye Span displayed in their early years is still astonishing. In the decade between their debut and 1980's Sails Of Silver, they released twelve records alongside touring the world and enjoying a string of hits. Now with their 50th anniversary fast approaching, the band have come close to matching that work rate - readying themselves for the release of Dodgy Bastards, their eighth album in twelve years.

Please To See The King is the second album by Steeleye Span, released in 1971. A major personnel change following their previous effort, Hark! The Village Wait, brought about a substantial change in their overall sound, including a lack of drums and the replacement of one female vocalist with a male vocalist. The band even reprised a song from their debut, "The Blacksmith", with a strikingly different arrangement making extensive use of syncopation. Re-recording songs would be a minor theme in Steeleye's output over the years, with the band eventually releasing an entire album of reprises, Present – The Very Best of Steeleye Span.