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Author: zwirnm
Date: 09-02-12 19:38
Dizzying and mystifying in its breadth, this book rambles from the late Victorian era to the 21st century. I checked it out of the library intending to learn more about the English folk-rock of the 1960s and 70s - Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, etc. - and I most certainly did. But along the way the author undertakes a mesmerizing if periodically tedious journey of a host of musical explorers literally unearthing Britain's lost civilizations - pre-Christian heathen and pagan beliefs - through old folk idioms. Yes, there is a lot of Fairport and Drake and Sandy Denny and the like, and Young is immensely fond of the Incredible String Band and Pentangle too. But he makes room for long digressions about Vaughan Williams and the British equivalents of Alan Lomax (one of whom, incidentally, was Alan Lomax), and zooms around to include a long treatise on The Wicker Man, before a dizzying close reconnecting with the Great God Pan. Ewan MacColl and socialist work songs get their due. Oh, there are also mentions of Bowie, Boards of Canada, Kate Bush and others who in some way are continuing the tradition of exploration.
What I always disliked most about folk music was the hippie-dippy, knowledge-less nature worship of underinformed dreamers. Young makes an articulate case that while there was a lot of pot smoking and silliness, the best practitioners undertook great amounts of sincere, thoughtful research and impassioned musicianship. I could spend a lot of time and money following the artistic threads that Young describes. Perhaps I will.
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Author: Michael Toland
Date: 09-03-12 10:29
I've had this book on my to-be-read shelf for a while and keep not getting around to it. It sounds like I should move it up in the queue.
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 09-03-12 14:06
It sounds like he really knows his stuff. . . I love the fact that Boards of Canada enter the conversation (as they should, if tangentially). I absolutely love Boards.
I love that early Fairport album that has Gene Clark's "Tried So Hard" on it (also masterfully covered by Yo La Tengo on Fakebook). In the late 1990s, I went through a huge John Martyn, Nick Drake, Fairport kick (yet, oddly enough, can't stand Bert Jansch).
This sounds like a good read; thanks for the rundown of it. . .
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Author: zwirnm
Date: 09-04-12 08:41
Yes, it's very worthy if sometimes exhausting. I've always felt books like these need to be multimedia so you can hear the music as you read it. Young hasn't done that, but some enterprising soul is trying to put together a Spotify playlist for the book : http://spoti.fi/Qiq19g #Spotify
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Author: dj45rpm
Date: 09-16-12 17:17
I definitely recommend it (made me want to check out some bands that I was kinda 'meh' about before, so that's always a sign of quality).
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