Despite moderate commercial success of their records, the respect fellow musicians and fans alike had for MAGNA CARTA has always been immense, so it was with great sadness that everyone met the news of the English collective’s final concerts announced in December 2019, five decades after Chris Simpson started the entire enterprise. Only those shows didn’t really happen then – first twice postponed because of the pandemic and then cancelled – and are scheduled now to take place in two week’s time, beginning on September 30th and stretching into October. So to coincide with the “Wind In The Wires” tour, a neat box set is to released on October 28th.
Titled “When All Is Said And Done” and comprising three CDs and a DVD, the collection offers the overview of the veterans’ career via a variety of tracks from the ’70s to the second decade of this millennium – housed on two discs and 2015’s “The Fields Of Eden” album on the third, while the video part is dedicated to the group’s 50th anniversary concert recorded in Ripley on January 25th, 2020, prior to lockdown restrictions. It’s the DVD, then, that makes this set an alluring proposition to aficionados who last heard the band’s on-stage numbers on "Live & Let Live" in 2010 – and to those who want a nice souvenir of the fantastic ensemble in their collection, 50 years down the line from “In Concert” – the collective’s first live album.
When All Is Said And Done
CD 1:
1. Greenfields
2. World In The Palm Of My Hand
3. Strangers In The Land Of Ulysses
4. Banjoman
5. Midnight Again
6. You
7. Evergreen
8. Wild Geese
9. For The Gypsy
10. Only Road Home
11. Sun Ain’t Going To Rise
12. Pictures In My Pillow
13. Two Old Friends
14. Mixed Up Sensations
CD 2:
1. You Are Only What You Are
2. Song For John
3. Time For The Leaving
4. 9lb Hammer
5. Wish It Was
6. Uncertain Times
7. When All Is Said And Done
8. Sting Of The Gin
9. Winterlude / Ulysses
10. Don’t Stop Me
11. Danny
12. Some Kind Of Man
13. In Tomorrow
14. Autumn Dreamin’ Blues
15. Lady, Take Me Down
16. Hey, Mr. Simpson
CD 3 – The Fields Of Eden:
1. Anemos / Child Of The Light
2. Long Time Running
3. Walk Away From Heaven
4. Overture
a. The Tumbling River
b. Middlesmoor
c. Stonebeck
d. The Fields Of Eden
e. Epilogue – Middlesmoor
5. The Same Rain
6. Greenhow Hill
7. This Time Around
8. European Union Blues
9. Nidderdale / Backroads
10. The Wild Geese (The Spirit Of The Wide Northland)
11. Life In The Old Dog (live)
DVD – Live in Ripley:
1. World In The Palm Of My Hands
2. Wish It Was
3. Long Time Running
4. Walk Away From Heaven
5. Greenhow Hill
6. Highway To Spain
7. I’ll Walk Mine
8. Old Friends
9. Rings Around The Moon
10. The Jazz Café
11. Hungerford Bridge
12. The Same Rain
