hypersongs

Mark Fry

An English painter and psychedelic folk singer who, at nineteen, made Dreaming with Alice in Rome in 1971, a record issued in Italy in 1972 and rediscovered by collectors decades later.

Dartington, Florence and Rome

Mark Lewis Fry was born on November 4, 1952 in Epping, Essex, the son of the painter Anthony Fry and a descendant of the Quaker family behind J. S. Fry and Sons, the Bristol chocolate makers. He went to Dartington Hall School in Devon and in 1970 enrolled at the Accademia di belle arti in Florence, where he studied painting under Primo Conti. Encouraged by Laura Papi to write an album's worth of songs, he was offered a ten-year contract in early 1970 by IT Dischi, a subsidiary of RCA Italiana run by Vincenzo Micocci.

Dreaming with Alice was recorded in Rome in the summer of 1971. The first sessions, at an RCA studio in the suburbs, went badly, and Fry, then nineteen, commuted from Florence on a Ducati with his guitar strapped on; the album was finished in a basement home studio belonging to Scottish musicians working in Rome, on two four-track Revox recorders, in three days by one account and one or two weeks by his own. The reissue notes say members of Middle of the Road were involved, which Fry is not sure of. He toured Italy supporting Lucio Dalla and left Italy in the autumn of 1971. The album came out in Italy in 1972 (Wikipedia's discography row says 1971), and he was given a box of copies and had no more dealings with the label; it was never released in the UK.

A cult record, then a return

Fry played with various musicians in the mid-1970s, among them the drummer Pete Thomas, later of the Attractions, made no records, and in the early 1980s travelled in the US and West Africa before returning to London to paint; his solo shows include the Christopher Hull Gallery (1993, 1995 and 1998) and Archeus Fine Art (2001, 2003 and 2005). Around 2000 a bootleg CD appeared and he found by chance that the album had become a cult record. Sunbeam reissued it on CD in 2006, with an LP in 2007 and 2010; Now-Again reissued it on vinyl in 2020, with master tapes long assumed lost found in Italy, and a Bernie Grundman lacquer-cut edition followed.

He made Shooting the Moon (2008, his first studio work since 1980), I Lived in Trees (2011, with the A. Lords), Live in Japan (recorded at three Tokyo concerts in April 2013), South Wind, Clear Sky (2014, produced by Guy Fixsen) and Not on the Radar (2025). In 2009 he remade the title song with Nick Franglen of Lemon Jelly as a Fruits de Mer single, in 2012 John Lloyd chose "Regrets" on BBC Desert Island Discs, and a one-off London recreation of the whole album had Franglen, Grasshopper of Mercury Rev, Guto Pryce of Super Furry Animals and Martin Smith of Tunng (Time Out dates it October 11, 2012; Wikipedia says 2011). The album appears in Richard Morton Jack's Galactic Ramble (2009) and Jeanette Leech's Seasons They Change (2010), and an original copy sold at auction for $4,061 in May 2013.

Albums

  • Dreaming with Alice 1972 · IT Dischi

    His one album of the period: songs recorded in Rome at nineteen, with a title song that recurs between them as short verses.

Songs

  • Dreaming with Alice Dreaming with Alice · 1972

    The title song, which recurs on the album as short verses; Fry remade it in 2009.

  • Mandolin Man Dreaming with Alice · 1972

    The long track near the end of Dreaming with Alice, which turns from a jazzy folk riff into a stoned rock groove.

Sources

  1. Mark Fry, Wikipedia
  2. Mark Fry: Dreaming with Alice, Head Heritage
  3. Mark Fry interview: Dreaming with Alice, Psychedelic Baby (2016-10)
  4. Mark Fry, setlist.fm