Customer Reviews

Seasons They Change Story Of Acid Psych And Experimental Folk (Genuine Jawbone Books)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jeanette Leech's "Seasons they change" is an excellent and enjoyable book about acid (or psychedelic) folk, and you may be surprised to find how many artists can be tagged "acid folk". She handles the subject in a sympathetic and gentle way and if her style is somewhat terse, this is quite likely due to space limitations - considering the 350+ pages (though personally I wouldn't object to a considerabe expansion).

It's obviously well-researched and apparently she's spoken to quite a few of the artists she writes about. And there are a lot of them. I rummaged through my collection and practically all of them feature in this book (which made me realise how much of an acid folkie I am!). From the pivotal Incredible String Band to Pearls Before Swine, from COB to Circulus, from Vashti Bunyan to Holderlins Traum, from Mr Fox to Stone Breath, they're all here (except for, puzzlingly, Faun Fables).

Leech sticks to the facts and embellishes these with quotes from those involved, and thus avoids unnecessary and unwanted notions. When she does ventilate opinions (for a large part in her assessment of who's important and who's less so) I generally agree with her. She bravely undertakes to bring a narrative thread to the multitude of facts, persons and times she brings up, and this is perhaps the area where she's least successful - but no blame there as far as I'm concerned. Additional editing should eliminate a few typos like "Quicksilver Message Service".

The physical aspect of the book is fine as well, excepting its binding - it takes some effort to keep it open.

A warning is due: this book is dangerous. It makes you want to look into artists you weren't aware of, which will certainly drain more money from your pocket. Otherwise, it's highly recommended, nay, quite obligatory for all who take interest in folk that's not solely "trad.arr".

I wrote this blog post Friday, January 12, 2007:


Electric Folk Before the Birth of the Freak Folks

There has been a popular folk music movement brewing for several years known as "Freak Folk", consisting of people such as Devendra Banhart, Vetiver, Faun Fables, Joanna Newsom, Espers, Josephine Foster, Six Organs of Admittance, Animal Collective, Akron/Family, and others. Freak Folk will more than likely be the subject of a future blog. Why then bring it up now?


Because FF simply could not exist without the creative fusion of styles that occurred in the UK in the 1960's and 1970's, described in mouth-watering detail by ethnomusicologist Britta Sweers in her Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music. I would strongly recommend this wonderful book to anyone interested in folk, folk rock, or the music of the British Isles, and for those curious about the lesser-known, more traditional musical/cultural revolution of the 60's that was (among other things) a reaction against the pop music of the day. Sweers wrestles with the problematic definitions and history, paints a vivid sociocultural portrait of the scene, discusses the main players therein, elaborates on the many ongoing musical revivals, and speculates about future fusions of traditional and "new".


Who were/are the electric folkies? The most popular groups include Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Steeleye Span, The Oysterband, and Incredible String Band. Many solo careers originated with these groups, or exist(ed) alongside them, i.e., Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Ashley Hutchings, Shirley and Dolly Collins, Davy Graham, Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, and Roy Harper.


If you are a newbie to this music, I have provided a selective discography for your listening pleasure. If you like what you hear, perhaps you'll want to read all about it...

A Boxful of Treasures by Sandy Denny

...she was enchanting

Meet on the Ledge: The Classic Years, 1967-1975 by Fairport Convention

...tasty

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by Incredible String Band

...trippy

Hark! The Village Wait by Steeleye Span

...one of the best of the era

RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson

...the first guitar god

The Acoustic Folk Box by various artists

...a lovely assortment of nearly everyone mentioned above (don't be fooled by the name--it's not all acoustic!)

I've been waiting for this book for a while.

It seems like I'd heard about this book a while back, and it seems like there must have been a release date delay. Having finished Rob Young's excellent (if overlong) ELECTRIC EDEN, I was eager to read this book. I've been a "peripheral" fan of some acid folk/psych rock etc., but not really knowledgeable about it. I hoped this book would at least give me a lot of ideas of stuff to seek out to really try and get into the genre. The book did much more than that.

The book isn't short, but it is excellently written and incredibly easy to read. It balances the more "dry" information and facts about the artists and groups with some interesting information gleaned from interviews. It makes you really want to listen to the music; more than once I actually had to stop reading immediately to quickly hop online and find the music being described. I got through this book incredibly quickly; I expected it'd be something I'd read on for a while in between reading some fiction or while on holiday trips or whatnot. The author - who also writes for Shindig! magazine and is clearly knowledgeable and incredibly passionate about this music, which shows in the writing and adds that extra dimension to the proceedings - tied together the godfathers of the genre(s) like The Incredible String Band with the newer stuff that is considered to be in the same lineage, like Joanna Newsom and Animal Collective (which I might not have necessarily tied together in my head, but the author certainly does so very effectively).

I hesitate to give a book 5 stars; however, for what this book set out to achieve, it did so amazingly well. Just the finding of new music was worth the price of admission for me. The book does much more than that; it tells a story, it ties together a compelling history of this genre of music, and it even if you're already an expert in this style of music, it's a great read. For someone like me who has always had a passing interest in this style but didn't know much about it, it has been a key that has unlocked some really great music.

Very well written, but what became of the Sandy Roberton-managed groups? I'm thinking of Keith Christmas, Shelagh McDonald, Andy Roberts and Gary Farr. The musicians from Mighty Baby (who get a full page treatment) did session work for those artists and were an influence on Richard Thompson's introduction to sufi. I would have thought the story of Shelagh McDonald's disappearence/reappearence was sensational enough for any history of acid folk.