Vashti Bunyan — Just Another Diamond Day
Around the time of its release, huff-and-puff chest-thumping big boys supposedly dismissed Vashti Bunyan’s 1970 acoustic-guitar-and-little-else folk album as childish in its wide-eyed pastorality. See while most seventies folk music from the UK did deal with themes of nature, Just Another Diamond Day did so without grand metaphor or metaphysical sulking, setting it apart from what was perhaps considered more serious music. Of course, since the album is near peerless in its beauty, its influence has since grown and grown.
If there’s any convincing you need about the good the internet can do, here’s the story. Disappointed by the non-response to her album, Bunyan ditched the guitar entirely and settled into a life of family and farming in Scotland. The seventies passed, then the eighties, then the nineties, until the early 2000s, when, having just gotten the internet, she found that the album had gotten a new set of legs online, having influenced a whole bunch of very talented folk musicians around the world (but mostly in the States). Seeing this, she felt encouraged to pick up her guitar again. A reissue of her 1970 album followed, followed by a second album of completely new material.
P.S. Another piece of interesting trivia. The album was produced by Joe Boyd, the producer of another magnificent 1970s folk classic, Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter.
