British Folk (and Revival)

My partner gave me Electric Eden for Christmas. Perhaps I'll start reading it next.

I saw that one, Ned, but I don't know how much I want to read some pseudoacademic text on Joanna Newsom's relationship to Jacqui McShee or whatever

Actually it's not like that at all! What I've read so far has been a lot of good straightforward history and anecdotes, Leech knows her stuff but also how to write about it well.

Electric Eden was available from the Book Depositary for about 1/2 price from the time it was released last August. Free delivery worldwide if you don't want to wait until May.
Largely a rewarding read, I didn't really like The wind in The willows take off bit though.

& I found Seasons They Change a little too listy. Kept changing to a new subject just as i was getting into reading about things. I think its an interesting read though.

Not sure what else to reccommend, certainly that stays on folk as opposed to including non-folk psych & prog. Seems most countries' take on prog tend to include large amounts of influence from local folk traditions. Maybe that's not so much UK/US noot sure though, certainly seems noticeable in continental European stuff.

Essential Acid Folk -not all British
I've just gone back to the original Bruton Town list after getting Shide & Acorn's Princess Of The Island, looking for more information on the band since i wasn't finding much elsewhere.
This has led me to reading through a thread there talking about records people thought wwere essential in the genre. People were making lists of essential artists, this being back in 2004. Thought I'd stick a few of them up here and see what you thought

1)Comus: First Utterance
Extradition: Hush
Fairport Convention: Liege & Lief
Gallery: The Wind that Shakes the Barley
Gryphon: s/t: & Midnight Mushrumps
John Renbourn: The Lady & the Unicorn, & The Hermit
John Renbourne: A Maid in Bedlam
John Renbourne: Sir John A lot of
Linda Perhacs: Parallelograms
Mellow Candle: Swaddling Songs
Midwinter: The Waters of Sweet Sorrow
Mr Fox: Mr Fox, & The Gipsy
Oberon: A Midsummer's Night Dream
Paul Giovanni: The Wicker Man
Pentangle: Cruel Sister
Pentangle: Solomon's Seal
Perry Leopold: Christian Lucifer
Richard & Linda Thompson: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
Shide & Acorn: The Princess of the Island
Shirley & Dolly Collins: Anthems in Eden
Shirley & Dolly Collins: Love, Death & the Lady
Shirley Collins: The Power of the True Love Knot
Shirley Collins & the Albion Band: No Roses
Silly Sisters: s/t
Spirogyra: Bells: Boots and Shambles
Steeleye Span: Below the Salt
Steeleye Span: Parcel of Rogues
Steve Ashley: Stroll On Revisited
Stone Angel: s/t
Sweeney's Men: Sweeney's Men, & The Tracks of Sweeny
The Albion Band: Rise Up Like the Sun
The Albion Country Band: Battle of the Field
The Albion Dance Band: The Prospect Before Us
The Watersons: Frost and Fire
The Woods Band: s/t
These Trails: s/t
Tim Hart & Maddy Prior: Summer Solstice
Trees: The Garden of Jane Delawney
Trees : On the Shore
Tudor Lodge: Tudor Lodge
Vashti Bunyan: Just Another Diamond Day

2)Anne Briggs 'Time Has Come'
Forest - both
Bert Jansch - Jack Orion & Rosemary Lane
Third Ear Band - Fleance (just that song)
Incredible String Band - take your pick
Clive's Own Band (COB) - both albums
Lal & Mike Waterson - Bright Phobus
Tir Na Nog - first
Dulcimer - first
Mark Fry
Pearls Before Swine - Balaklava & The Use Of Ashes
Bread Love & Dreams - all three
Donovon - Gift From A Flower To A Garden (essential!!!!)
Broselmachine
Perry Leopold - both
Eclection
Fortheringay
Tony, Caro & John

3)Sun Also Rises
Northwind
Westwind
Wooden Horse
Young Tradition
A-Austr
Agincourt
Blue epitaph
water into wine band
Heron
Decameron
Spyrogyra

4)Carol Of Harvest,
Witthuser & Westrupp,
Emtidi,
Langsyne,
some Ougenweide,
Emma Myldenberger
Hölderlin's Traum

5)Sallyangie – Children of the Sun
Jan Jukes De Grey – Sorcerer
Fuchsia – ST
The Strawbs – From the Witchwood
These Trails – ST
Water into Wine Band – Harvest Time
Mandy Morton – Magic Lady
Tickawinda - Rosemary Lane
Trader Horne - Morning Way
Jade - Fly On Strangewings

So that was mainly individual's personal choices & 4) was specifically German groups the writer would have chosen over Broselmaschine. I'm not sure if much else has emerged over the last 7 years. I don't think anybody mentioned Pat Kilroy or The New age (&the latter of these wasn't available until a couple years later anyway. Had remained unreleased until RD did it)

Stevo

Sharron Kraus, yeah? didn't look below the fold but she seems to fit in here. She had a 2010 album "The Woody Nightshade" that I just listened to the other day.

Hey guys, I normally try not to spam ILM but you guys might want to know that Michael Chapman, UK folkie-rocker and guitar wizard, will be playing on my radio show tomorrow evening. 10-midnight (eastern u.s. time) on east village radio--www.eastvillageradio.com

wheeee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8W7cRo12Y

don't think i know this guy! he sounds great.

Tyler, his album "Fully Qualified Survivor" was just reissued on LP (and CD??) by Light In The Attic; he's really fantastic.

Yeah, FQS is pretty essential. Pretty cool, Ian! I got to engineer a radio thing for a him a while back and he's still great.

Looking forward to this!

Hmm, very cool indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an6EoevSSIs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT9SCKnp91A

some incredibly pretty Anne Briggs-style vocals and intertwining acoustic guitar parts on Folkal Point's self-titled album from 1971. it may not be authentically English (at least half of the songs were written but Americans), but I'm not bothered. it's odd that Joan Baez's original recording of "Sweet Sir Galahad" (written about her sister Mimi Fariña after the death of her husband Richard) for the most part leaves me cold, whereas Folkal Point's cover version makes me cry. her delivery of the line, "will I fail at every single thing I try?" just devastates.

("written by Americans," I mean)

finally picked up Electric Eden today! looking forward to digging in (and listening to a bunch of brit-folk along the way)!

I got that recently too but haven't really started it yet. Not sure why, because the few pages I read were very good.

this book is so good! i will admit that i have lost steam as i exited the early 70s, but the first 300 pages are SO SO SO WONDERFUL.
you will enjoy it. spotify will be your friend along the way.

My favourite Brit-Folk song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuJSC0o_egI

I couldn't get on with that album at all when I tried it. It felt like a 'Look Around You'-style spoof of a folk record.

i think that's maybe that's why i like it (although when you put it that way, i can see why it irks you). never heard the full album - just the song on a comp.

Recommend add "Handful of Earth" by Dick Gaughan to your searchlist - an album I have never once managed to listen to without crying (tho it helps if you're Scottish or Irish)

Finally got round to following up this recommendation, a mere 6.5 years on. Blimes it's a bit good innit? Haven't started crying yet, poss due to non Scottish / Irish status. Still, thanks.

New database of collected archival material, project launched by Shirley Collins!

Welcome to the Take Six website, a searchable database of the manuscript archives of several of the UK's most prominent folksong collectors.
it's cool if you like to look at moldy old things like this
http://library.efdss.org/archives/images/blunt/BLU-01-668.jpg

I recommend looking at the tree view because it's more like browsing than searching blindly for the names of songs

oops here is the website
http://library.efdss.org/archives/index.html

Haven't heard the first Fotheringay album, don't know how Fotheringay 2 compares, but I really like it as well as the Denny-Thompson etc Fairport, in its own. kinda folk-country way. Farm and lane and tavern music, without trying to pretend they're recording with coal oil. it's not just one where I have to doze til Denny cuts loose again, it's the whole band. So glad the surviving members came back and finished it, 40 years later or whatever. (oh and speaking of Denny-Thompson FC, the live odds and sods album Heyday is good too, despite sound quality)

thanks for the link la lechera.

and dow, i think you should do yourself a favor and check out the first fotheringay record; it's great! many great songs and great playing.

Every time someone on the radio talks about how Oscar Pistorius shot his girlfriend because he thought she was an intruder, all I can think about is Polly Vaughn, Jimmy, and the swan. Just wanted to put this somewhere, and it doesn't really belong anywhere I have to explain who Polly Vaughn and Jimmy are.

Or Molly and Johnny, depending on your preferred version I guess.

:)

La Lechera's springtime thread has got me singing Hal-an-tow under my breath again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhfNnurOxUY

you should belt it loud and proud!
jolly rumble-oh!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kahaJGFYHDc/Tsbb58QEAVI/AAAAAAAABXA/mux_tPLNTqQ/s1600/advert_rumbelows.jpg

it had never occurred to me that it could be rum below. that would have made more sense, but in my mind it was a jolly rumble-oh. is rumbelows like rent-a-center?

rumblelows is?was? a domestic electrical goods shop. always thought it was rumble-oh, i don't really not what a rumble is though in this context

btw terry-thomas looks like the fat old fox I passed on my way home the other night

WOULD NOT TRUST HIM TO LOOK AFTER MY CHICKENS

it had never occurred to me that it could be rum below

I don't know if it is it just reminded me of Rumbelows, which I assume has gone the way of most high street chainstores. Hey it's folk music, so it's full of hey-nonny-nonsense words that happen to rhyme.

does anyone know much about toni arthur's folk stuff? i know virtually nothing but looked her up at random on youtube and got this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH5YzId9xB4

some otherworldy shit that imo

Never heard it but it's supposed to be good stuff

wasn't quite what I expected really given that i only know her from playaway - that one song there is fucking terrifying

That's so weird I was singing Jolly Rumble-Oh to myself this morning on the way to work! Even though I was listening to a different record!

i looked up the dave and toni arthur stuff after reading electric eden. never been reissued? kinda surprising in this day and age.

Their Discogs page looks quite incomplete, but as far as I can make out, they had at least three albums:

Morning Stands on Tiptoe (Transatlantic, 1967)
The Lark in the Morning (Topic, 1969)
Hearken To The Witches Rune (Trailer, 1970)

Looks like the first two got reissued on one CD in the 90s, and the second one is available digitally from Topic (also it's on Spotify). Think it's the third one that's the hardest to find though (that title is just collectors' catnip right?) and that doesn't look like it's been reissued at all.

Hearken To The Witches Rune is supposedly the most out-there musically, has Nic Jones playing in it and is on a label I've never flipping heard of: fat chance of ever finding that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw9GVgAvCXU

^ good grief wtf is this

^ Mystic Challenge with Paul Ross - Guest Toni Arthur

Toni Arthur was about the first woman I ever fancied due to seeing her on things like Playschool and Playaway. I still haven't heard the 60s lps through though.

The albums with her husband all sound pretty out-there but they are really just doing pretty traditional English folk-singing in that particular unaccompanied style. They do a number of supposed comedy numbers and even they sound pretty terrifying. One is about a football match and documents the rapidly escalating violence. Supposed to be amusing but it's actually quite unsettling.

I used to have a copy of Harken To The Witches Rune, but I sold it at some point. Had a lot of tap dancing/clogging type stuff on it? I assume there's a proper name for that.