In amongst the vast pile of CDs I bought in the now 40% off sale at Tower Records last night was a Best Of compilation by The Strawbs. I remember Dave Cousins’ outfit for a bunch of eclectic singles in the 70s, plus the very silly song that defined pre-Thatcher Britain, “Part of the Union”. However, reading the sleeve notes I discovered that the Strawbs had a long history before they were famous. Believe it or not, they had both Sandy Denny and Sonja Christina as lead singers at points in their history, and their keyboards player was once a fellow called Rick Wakeman. Wow.