Lady J / Jeanette Leech

lady j cd front
seasons they change

Spoke Records first heard Sylvan – We Dont Belong on a Vinyl Vulture Swap CD in 2006. The CD in question was compiled by Lady J who was a regular contributor to the old Vinyl Vulture forum and still makes occasional contributions to the VG+ music forum which replaced it.

In the real world Lady J is Jeanette Leech. Over a period of four years Jeanette produced a sequence of excellent compilations for the VV / VG+ CD Swaps crammed with girl pop and girl groups from around the globe. Her CD’s are an eclectic mixture covering Ye Ye,  Glam and trashy Disco.

On her 2006 CD Sylvan’s We Dont Belong was sandwiched between Ketty Lester – Are You Ready For A Woman? and Jeanette – Manchester Y Liverpool. The same CD included tracks from Lulu, Sheila B Devotion, Shelby Flint, Tiny Yong and Brigitte Fontaine.

Seasons They Change

Jeanette lives and works in Sheffield and in November 2010 Jawbone Press published her first music book called Seasons They Change – The Story Of Acid and Psychedelic Folk.

I was approached by Jawbone about writing a book after they read my material in Shindig! Magazine and I had two ideas, one being a book about British girl groups and the other being this. 

My original idea was to write something on acid and psychedelic folk music and the more experimental side of folk music generally and I didn’t think there’d been anything really satisfying written about it.  There had been loads of individual articles but no real attempt to link stuff together.  I also really wanted to bring the story up to the present day. I wanted to look at the links between the past and the present.  I was also interested in why the folk sound that was really unfashionable all through the 80’s and 90’s suddenly started to be re-discovered. 

Jeanette Leech / October 2010

Seasons They Change is not only an excellent and absorbing read, it was an impressively assured debut which garnered approving reviews for it’s personal style. Record Collector magazine described it as ‘a singular, exhaustive and,  you feel, personal mission to tell the story of acid folk…’  

Spoke Records interviewed Lady J back in October 2010 and will be catching up with her again this summer to pepare an exclusive article for Forumusic.

 

 

 

 

‘Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk’ by Jeanette Leech is published by Jawbone Press

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