melanie safka is one of the great forgotten voices of contemporary folk music history – although she now appears to have settled into a comfortable middle age in her day (late sixties early seventies) she wrote played and sang some fine songs and her voice was up there with joan baez and joni mitchell – and people like joanna newsom owe her a great debt

unfortunately she is perhaps best known for her least interesting songs like look what they've done to my song ma made into a hit by the new seekers and she had an penchance for novelty songs (animal crackers) and the use of over-production on her studio records

she was at her best live solo with just a guitar when i saw her play at the concertgebouw in amsterdam in 1971 at the age of 13 she was having trouble with her amplification so after a couple of songs she turned off all her equipment and invited the audience to sit on the stage with her which we did as far as was possible and she played an incredible acoustic set

the rare-as-hens-teeth double vinyl live recording from carnegie hall in 1973 captures what she sounded like brilliantly – here is a great example : a heart wrenching song of lost love from her own pen entitled lay your hands

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