Free Folk/New Weird America/Brattleboro festival types

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Very tough for me, but for many personal reasons went with Jack Rose/Pelt. Am still into a lot of these folks.

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fair enough, but zero votes for JOMF is crazy

lol whoops forgot to vote that woulda been mine

lol I forgot to vote in this, but the results seem about right. I’m sympathetic to the impulse behind fgti’s objections & I think the differences between groups/pieces are always worth bearing in mind and sometimes more salient than the similarities, but I don’t really agree on any of the specifics. to say that ‘primitivism’ is a coherent style discrete from ‘free folk’ is a nonsense which ignores acts like SOOA&Pelt as well as the massive upswing in finger-picked guitar round this time, and I don’t see much use for the term primitive, which includes lots of guitarists who sound nothing alike while excluding many others, mostly on a demographic/audience basis (which ofc has social/political implications). You can try to broaden it out and talk about alternative tunings and looser, repetitive structures but then you include a lot of other acts on this list.

I still think there was a core impulse/vibe, which manifested in different forms but drew a lot of different strands together and created a lot of overlap, its messy, woolly nature being part of the point. If there were bands that sounded like this stuff in 1990 or whenever I’d love to hear them. I think the reissues and acts that had their reputations boosted during this period is a crucial part too, moka mentioned vashti bunyan and linda perhacs, and there’s also robbie basho, henry flynt, & pleasing weird little one-offs records

anyway here’s a top 10 of records that don’t fit together & yet do:

Sunburned Hand of the Man – Jaybird
Six Organs of Admittance – For Octavio Paz
NNCK – Sticks and stones maybe break my bones but names can never hurt me
Christina Carter – Living contact
Chris Corsano – The Young Cricketer
Jackie O’Motherfucker – Change
Glenn Jones – This is the wind that blows it out
Pelt – Ayahuasca
Double Leopards – Halve Maen
Jack Rose – Red horse, white mule (or really the ‘two originals of…’ CD with opium musick)

Good list Ogmor. Definitely some favorites of mine in there (that I still listen to regularly). Spot on with the 90s reissues I think as well. Stuff like Henry Flynt becoming somewhat available, or at least more acknowledged, certainly worked its magic into informing a lot of this stuff.

I was listening to Graduation earlier this week and the guitar on that is unlike anything else I've heard & so sweet. love to hear more people borrow from flynt

Oh yeah man, I could listen to endless variations of that. I would if I could hah hah.