Bridget St. John :: Paris, 1970

Via French television, check out this terrific 13 minutes of Bridget St. John performing three songs solo in Paris, the songwriter’s crystalline guitar and singular vocals captured perfectly. Do we talk about St. John enough? Sure, she’s had plenty of boosters over the years (John Peel was a huge fan), but in our mind she deserves to be mentioned alongside Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, John Martyn and others as one of the great English songwriters of the late 60s/early 70s. I’m also going to put her up there among the very best heads of hair of the 1970s — a competitive area, to be sure.

Bridget St John :: Curl Your Toes

How many songs can you think of where the songwriter has a philosophical interaction with a
burrowing mole? If the answer is none, then now it is one. This is one of the many charms to be relished in Bridget St John’s rousing “Curl Your Toes.” After studying in France for a time in the late ’60s, St John found herself floating around in the English folk atmosphere with many scene-makers of the time. She soon met musical champion and promotional extraordinaire John Peel and went on to release her fully acoustic debut album, Ask Me No Questions–on which this song is found–through his Dandelion label in 1969.