Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music

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And moreover that his refusal to sub-ordinate the detail to a 'bigger picture' is a deliberate strat

The founders of Glastonbury festival wished to "stimulate the earth's nervous system with joy, appreciation and happiness so that our Mother planet would respond by breeding a happier, more balanced race of men". Beginning with the early song collectors and post-war revivalists, such as Ewan MacColl, the author traces how folk music has inspired some of the 20th century's most important artists from Fairport Convention and Nick Drake to Pink Floyd and Kate Bush. And he doesn't just stick to music; like Greil Marcus with a thirst for ancient paganism and postmodern urban theory, Young weaves a poetic, philosophical tapestry as rich and heady as the songs he champions. If many of the acts that "flourished" during folk's glory years sold zilch, while other acts enjoyed brisk business after the genre was supposedly in terminal decline, does this mean that Young's generalisations are based purely on aesthetics? We’ll be talking about the prevalence of ‘retro’ and nostalgia in the music, art and fashion in recent decades and pondering whether this has enhanced or diluted contemporary culture.

And this Saturday, I’ll be compering the Festival Hall’s commemoration of Lloyd’s Singing Englishmen event. Far from the stark and no doubt rather wholemealy songbook of 1951, these will be versions that draw on the more recent arrangements of the folk-rock era, by the likes of Pentangle, Shirley Collins, etc – illustrating how far folk music in the British Isles has moved since the war. The book ends with avant-garde luminaries Coil, whose work is undeniably suffused with the paganism that attracted the folkies, but whose actual sound – lysergic, eerie electronica – is galaxies removed from folk. So the same eldritch eyesockets, green man grimaces and thrawn buttocks connect Steeleye Span back to Arnold Bax, Ralph Vaughan Williams, ley lines, Alisteir Crowley, Grimes Dyke, Gustav Holst, Kate Bush ( what was that again? A couple of years ago, before the reissue of Just another Diamond Day and before the t-Mobile ad campaign, it’s possible that this book would not now have started off with a 30 page account of Vashti Bunyan’s rural gypsy hippy life, but this gives us a fair idea about what RY is getting at here and really, it’s not that profound.

Nick Drake and Sandy Denny are voices from a séance; vintage album covers are tarot cards to be decoded. A new edition as part of the Faber Greatest Hits – books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century. I’ve reviewed the book for the next issue of Word , but meanwhile I recommend steering your wooden ship back to solo albums like Crosby’s If Only I Could Remember My Name and Stills’s first solo LP. Equipped with an electric motor with performances close to that of the famous 602 cm3 engine in the Méhari, EDEN incorporates many parts from the original Mehari, including the chassis, braking, suspension, bodywork and interior fittings.John England, the gardener who set Sharp off on his journey of discovery, – and appropriation – has remained relatively unknown and unheralded, at least until now. As the utopian visions of the hippy era receded, electric folk music reflected the loss of idealism in various ways. But exactly how the mod group The Action morphed into Mighty Baby and became folk sessioners and two of them were “instrumental” in the conversion to Sufiism of Richard Thompson is the kind of thing some may find fascinating but others… really won’t. And the BFI have excelled themselves with the extras disc, too – behind the scenes footage, film of Peter Maxwell Davies conducting his harrowing score, some rarely seen Ken shorts, etc etc.