A LIMITED-EDITION box of treasures celebrating “the Bard of Dundee” contains the first vinyl release of Michael Marra’s songs for nearly 35 years.
Profits from the boxed set will be going to a charity based in Lochee where Marra grew up.
A hero to many, Marra worked in theatre, radio and TV and his songs, many of which were rooted in Scottish life, have been covered by a wide range of artists, including Leo Sayer, Alan Cumming and Hue And Cry.
Born in 1952, he died in 2012 and the boxed set, which is strikingly illustrated with his Frida Kahlo collage, contains an intimate collection of photographs, writing, drawings, diaries, flyers, CDs, press cuttings and gig posters as well as the first vinyl release of a Michael Marra album since Gaels Blue in 1985.
The newly produced vinyl LP contains 14 unreleased demos and home recordings compiled by Michael’s son Matthew. The collection spans 35 years of songwriting and features early versions of classic album tracks, alongside rarely heard and previously unheard songs.
The box also contains a 200-page, full-colour hardback book with personal anecdotes from writers whose lives were touched by Marra. They include Val McDermid, Brian Cox, Frank Gilfeather, Lesley Riddoch, Loudon Wainwright III, Phill Jupitus, Roddy Woomble, Gerry Hassan and Liz Lochhead.
Gilfeather said Marra was “a giant of music and culture”.
“He had an innate ability that would have had other songwriters and lyricists emerald green with envy,” Gilfeather said. “Recently, in conversation with his wife, Peggy, I described Michael as a genius. It is not the kind of word to be used loosely.”
Gilfeather said he remembers seeing Marra on Grampian TV singing about General Ulysses S Grant’s 1876 visit to Dundee.
“I knew I was listening to an exceptional musician, a poet,” he said. “As the years went on and I heard more from him, I concluded that he was, indeed, a genius.”
McDermid recalls how she travelled on an open-top bus through a chaotic traffic jam in Mexico City to Frida Kahlo’s house, where she stood and sang Marra’s Frida Kahlo’s Visit To The Taybridge Bar to vent her frustration of arriving too late to get in.
Comedian Jupitus remembers arriving in Dundee as a student at Duncan of Jordanstone College, walking up the Perth Road and stumbling across The Taybridge Bar and trying to recall why it was so familiar to him, before realising it was through Marra and his song, Frida Kahlo’s Visit To The Taybridge Bar.
There are also newspaper cuttings spanning more than three decades of Marra’s career which were held by his wife, Peggy, a hand-printed T-shirt featuring Marra’s own Fair Isle design, six postcards of his artworks, a full-colour poster of his legendary Frida collage, a signed colour poster of Calum Colvin’s artwork for the Candy Philosophy album cover and a signed screen print from the original artwork by Pat Santos for the Gaels Blue album cover.
The edition of 250 boxes is a collaboration between artist Eddie Summerton, DOJ City Audio Print Publishing and Assai Records.
Summerton, who initiated the project by contacting Peggy Marra, said: “Peggy offered the most beautiful gesture of allowing me to walk out of her house with what looked like her entire archive of Michael’s life and for me to keep returning to rake about the back of the cupboard and on the tops of shelves to look for items like the Frida collage.”
Summerton also praised Matthew Marra’s “dedication and vision” for what would eventually be the new album.
“He decided to source the recordings from home recordings rather than live gigs, aware that these would offer a more intimate insight into Michael’s creative process and something special for this boxed set,” he said.
“But, as you can imagine, he had the additional task of sourcing the good recordings from boxes and boxes of unlabelled cassette tapes. The ones which were labelled, and possibly typical of Michael, had cryptic titles or were allegedly recorded by some of his aliases.
“Matthew eventually came across a recording of Niel Gow’s Apprentice which he found particularly interesting as Michael sings it so softly. Probably recorded at home very late at night when the family were all asleep!”
The boxed set is available for pre-order from www.assai.co.uk and available on Friday, September 27. Profits will go to Love Lochee.
