British Folk (and Revival)

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.

oh MAN! really!? i was already interested but dang, that puts it over the edge. i love percussive dancing!

there's a new official release of an ISB sounddesk from Fillmore East in '68 through Hux. Saw a review in one of the music rags this month. Not sure if it's the same set taht's been in circulaton before. there's one from a Fillmore that year that's definitely been on th etorrent sites.

Review said the sound was pretty good anyway.

wasting time today looking at this: http://archive.org/details/balladsweirdwond00choprich
Ballads weird and wonderful (1912)
http://ia700307.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/35/items/balladsweirdwond00choprich/balladsweirdwond00choprich_jp2.zip&file=balladsweirdwond00choprich_jp2/balladsweirdwond00choprich_0011.jp2&scale=4&rotate=0

Saw an announcement about this the other day:

http://www.vwml.org.uk/search/search-full-english

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51kk-qkKy6L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

^ I picked this up for a pound yesterday, lots of thee old favourites on it (The Captain's Apprentice, Geordie etc). All a bit more formal than later interpretations as you'd expect, but it's all quite enjoyable nonetheless.

Vaughan Williams' "English Folk Song Suite" is the bomb, he had a real flair for orchestrating tunes without getting all pompous about it

On the other end of that spectrum, Delius' 'Brigg Fair' is sheer bliss to me.

new book i wanna read --
https://www.facebook.com/FolkInCornwall

ok question -- has this band been covered itt? i turned on the radio to wash the dishes, heard a clip of them and was like whaaaaa how come no one has ever told me about this or if they did, why did i not listen?! anyway their sound is so cool, i love it.

The English trio S.O.S. — saxophonists John Surman, Mike Osborne and Alan Skidmore — was formed in 1973, and made only one LP for the Ogun label a couple years later. They didn't last long, but they were the first of many horn choirs born in the '70s and '80s, mostly saxophone quartets. S.O.S.'s trio voicings sometimes eerily anticipate the World Saxophone Quartet that came along a bit later.

The trio was tight and maneuverable, changing direction as one like birds in flight. That precision stemmed from extensive rehearsing, close listening on the bandstand and playing a little Bach. S.O.S. might sound like more than three players by moving the voices around, even when two reeds are riffing behind the other.

Tenor player Alan Skidmore is a Londoner, the son of a jazz saxophonist, while altoist Mike Osborne and multi-instrumentalist John Surman grew up closer to the countryside. There was always a strong whiff of agrarian roots and the English folk revival about S.O.S. They might literally break into an Irish jig. Their theme "Country Dance" was perfect for a romp around the maypole. A lot of '60s and '70s English jazz has that bagpipey energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhrP9OT7FU4

Heard of them but never associated them with folk music!

they are so good! i love what i've heard so far -- there's definitely a droney folk quality in there, like david munrow crumhorn/EMC/the voice of jantina noorman but then they totally flip out with improvisational stuff too. i love them!

http://www.npr.org/2013/08/20/198076754/looking-for-the-next-one-reveals-an-underappreciated-sax-trio

yup i learned this from npr

(xp)
Never heard of them before today when I noticed the thing on NPR about them before coming to this thread.

spooky

when i turned on the radio and heard them i thought there was something wrong with the radio, it was awesome

also can someone please elaborate on this within the context of british folk?
They didn't last long, but they were the first of many horn choirs born in the '70s and '80s, mostly saxophone quartets. S.O.S.'s trio voicings sometimes eerily anticipate the World Saxophone Quartet that came along a bit later.

Not a lot of chatter on this thread about the Albion Band, which is a shame as Rise Up Like The Sun is top 5 Brit electric folk for me. The interesting thing about that album is that there wasn't as much Ashley Hutchings on it as on other Albions records, it was more down to John Tams who I see hasn't been mentioned once here but is imo a totally unsung hero of Brit folk. After that album he went on to form Home Service which really took up where Rise Up left off, their Alright Jack album is stunning. They spent a lot of time doing stage work like The Mysteries at the National Theatre in the 80s and are thankfully now on the comeback trail.