Search - Mr Fox :: Mr Fox: Gypsy

A local band for local people

redmax | UK | 04/09/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Just a quick point- there was no NEED to remove Mendle, as the CD would still have been less than 79 mins with its inclusion. Pretty cheeky of them not to mention the ommission in the liner notesMr Fox were easily the equals of Steeleye Span, the Albion Band and the eternally overrated Fairport Convention (who only released 2 or 3 decent LPs)"

Some news

Viv Stafford | 02/23/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"According to AMG, THE GIPSY has been rereleased, with its lovely gatefold cover intact, on 180 gram vinyl LP in the UK. And, it contains the brilliant Carol Anne Pegg arranged song 'Mendle' (not Grendle-as was prev. noted), astoundingly left off the 2-for 1 CD."

Mr Fox : Lost heroes of Folk/Rock

Viv Stafford | 02/08/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Back in the early '79s me and my mates were big fans of Strawbs. So when the Coventry music festival had Strawbs and Ralph McTell on the same bill, we got the tickets and went to the gig. Making up the numbers was some unknown quantity called 'Mr Fox'. We hadn't got a clue. Could be a band, could be some guy in an animal suit totally freaked - just about anything was possible back then.
It was a band. It was a band like nothing we'd heard. Their music was raw and told stories of the north of England: what was curious was that the stories were about the relatively recent past and the present, yet managed to be folk songs too. Beginning with a trditional coming-on style 'Join Us In Our Game'. Mr fox lead us through their warly repertoir that night. Well, Strawbs had Rick Wakeman in their lineup at that point, and McTell was McTell (in those days 'Streets of London' was still pretty neat) - Mr Fox matched them all.
'Mendle' - the missing track - was relatively overproduced for Mr Fox anc can't stand up against Carolanne Peggd later 'the Lady' Certainly the sound had changed somewhat between the two albuns, with the second having lost a little of the edginess of the first.
Bob and Carol Pegg broke up and the band ended with them. Carol released one solo album: Bob recorded two with Nick Strutt. In their way, al three albums contimued the storytelling of the original band, leaving us to wonder what might have been had the Peggs' marriage been just a little more harmoniuos. Would the sparse, raw music that was at the roots of the band have been lost to overproduction?
The only certainty is that at time when other folk-rock bands were tending to find traditional themes to modernise, Mr Fox were original and unique in the era and locality they chose to depict and in the stories they found to tell."