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The Electric Muse: The Story of Folk into Rock
THE ELECTRIC MUSE: The Story of Folk into Rock
Published 1975
Of all the influences on rock since its raw beginnings in the 50s, the folk tradition - in all its forms - has been the most pervasive. Stars on both sides of the Atlantic - from Seeger and Guthrie, Dylan, Baez, Paul Simon and the Byrds in America to MacColl and Lloyd, Steeleye Span, Sandy Denny, Donovan, Roy Harper and Tim Hart in Britain - have roots in the world of rags and reels, blues and ballads. The folk process lives! Here four Eminent music critics show how and why it has survived and talk about the transatlantic heroes who've carried it on from its roots to its revival to folk-rock.
Dave Laing is an editor of Let It Rock magazine and the author of three books, Buddy Holly, The Sound of Our Time and Hail, Hail Rock 'n' Roll.
Karl Dallas is a regular contributor to a number of publications, including the Melody Maker where he has been folk-music reviewer since 1956. He has written three books, including Singers of an Empty Day, and compiled two folk-song collections.
Robin Denselow, a BBC film director and former folk singer, is folk and rock music critic for the Guardian.
Robert Shelton was folk, country and rock critic for the New York Times from 1958 to 1968 and since 1972 has been a regular music reviewer for The Times of London. He has written five books, including The Country Music Story and the biography of Josh White, and edited Woody Guthrie's Born To Win.
This book is published simultaneously with a four-album record set released jointly by Island and Transatlantic Records and entitled The Electric Muse: The Story of Folk Into Rock.
Published 1975
Of all the influences on rock since its raw beginnings in the 50s, the folk tradition - in all its forms - has been the most pervasive. Stars on both sides of the Atlantic - from Seeger and Guthrie, Dylan, Baez, Paul Simon and the Byrds in America to MacColl and Lloyd, Steeleye Span, Sandy Denny, Donovan, Roy Harper and Tim Hart in Britain - have roots in the world of rags and reels, blues and ballads. The folk process lives! Here four Eminent music critics show how and why it has survived and talk about the transatlantic heroes who've carried it on from its roots to its revival to folk-rock.
Dave Laing is an editor of Let It Rock magazine and the author of three books, Buddy Holly, The Sound of Our Time and Hail, Hail Rock 'n' Roll.
Karl Dallas is a regular contributor to a number of publications, including the Melody Maker where he has been folk-music reviewer since 1956. He has written three books, including Singers of an Empty Day, and compiled two folk-song collections.
Robin Denselow, a BBC film director and former folk singer, is folk and rock music critic for the Guardian.
Robert Shelton was folk, country and rock critic for the New York Times from 1958 to 1968 and since 1972 has been a regular music reviewer for The Times of London. He has written five books, including The Country Music Story and the biography of Josh White, and edited Woody Guthrie's Born To Win.
This book is published simultaneously with a four-album record set released jointly by Island and Transatlantic Records and entitled The Electric Muse: The Story of Folk Into Rock.
182 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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December 21, 2014
I wanted to like this book since it was recommended by an esteemed GR friend, and also because it promised to cover one of my favorite bands, Fairport Convention. But the further I got into it the more reason found to dislike and distrust it, and its manner of speaking.
It seems folk music in England has suffered with common culture in its modes and means of distribution. That there is, in the author's minds. a distinction between "folk and pop" or for that matter between rock and pop is one thing. Apparently in the UK the "folk tradition" can only entail singers standing up and singing songs unaccompanied... to do so while exhibiting any talent at being able to do something simultaneously (such as, say, play an instrument) would have been sacreligious. The authors trend to think in terms of a poor, misguided, Marxian collectivism- "each singer has one song"- and the singers go round "in a circle, each in turn singing their one song"-no matter that more accomplished players know not just more than "one song", but hundreds-and can also direct their attention on -zoot alors!- performing on an instrument! Heavens! No wonder critics are always writing about things they are incapable of themselves!
But that is hardly the point of my dislike, only one of several.
England is a small place and so its much easier to become known as a personality or force than it is in America- with its populations of millions more, more diverse regional tropes and genres, and where every schoolkid grew up playing guitar in a garage band. The sheer small scale of the British music scene thus insures itself of being as insular, incestuous, and inbred as a family of Appalachian rednecks, and it's always much easier to create a big splash in a small pond.
The authors, as I say, rely on an outmoded and discredited Marxist "dialectic" at times, of "class analysis" and indeed they take an academe's condescension towards the young in general. Their claim "CSNY lasted little more than a year" reads as sincerely historically laughable, at this point.
I was disappointed in that where discussing Fairport they focused much more on the history of the shifting personalities in the band rather than actually on the material which the band interpreted- arguably its most salient feature! That material in many cases itself was drawn from the "proletarian" roots of English folksong and then electrified. If it were a sacrilege to accompany oneself with an instrument than how much more sacraligious it was to do so on electric instruments! And how can Tyger Hutchings be "arguably so right when he claims Steeleye Span were the first people to come oout of the folk club scene since Ewan MacColl to actually do something with English folk music"- If Steeleye did not exist, even, before Hutchings had left Fairport and Fairport had released Leige and Leif, THE work that made English folk rock a force of nature?
But nothing perhaps shows up as well the ignorance of the authors so fully than when they misquote lyrics. as if they had never really been listening to the music they write about in the first place. Examples: Lovin Spoonful's Summer in the City- "Hot days [sic} summer in the city" rather than "Hot TOWN, Summer in the city" or Jefferson Airplane's "Tear down the walls" as "TURN down the walls!" (They must have been some motherfuckin' loud walls, man! Yeh, hey, turn it UP! Dad's annoyed!) Nothing is worse than old men trying to show how "hip and expert" they are at something than when they can't even get the words to the song straight.
It seems folk music in England has suffered with common culture in its modes and means of distribution. That there is, in the author's minds. a distinction between "folk and pop" or for that matter between rock and pop is one thing. Apparently in the UK the "folk tradition" can only entail singers standing up and singing songs unaccompanied... to do so while exhibiting any talent at being able to do something simultaneously (such as, say, play an instrument) would have been sacreligious. The authors trend to think in terms of a poor, misguided, Marxian collectivism- "each singer has one song"- and the singers go round "in a circle, each in turn singing their one song"-no matter that more accomplished players know not just more than "one song", but hundreds-and can also direct their attention on -zoot alors!- performing on an instrument! Heavens! No wonder critics are always writing about things they are incapable of themselves!
But that is hardly the point of my dislike, only one of several.
England is a small place and so its much easier to become known as a personality or force than it is in America- with its populations of millions more, more diverse regional tropes and genres, and where every schoolkid grew up playing guitar in a garage band. The sheer small scale of the British music scene thus insures itself of being as insular, incestuous, and inbred as a family of Appalachian rednecks, and it's always much easier to create a big splash in a small pond.
The authors, as I say, rely on an outmoded and discredited Marxist "dialectic" at times, of "class analysis" and indeed they take an academe's condescension towards the young in general. Their claim "CSNY lasted little more than a year" reads as sincerely historically laughable, at this point.
I was disappointed in that where discussing Fairport they focused much more on the history of the shifting personalities in the band rather than actually on the material which the band interpreted- arguably its most salient feature! That material in many cases itself was drawn from the "proletarian" roots of English folksong and then electrified. If it were a sacrilege to accompany oneself with an instrument than how much more sacraligious it was to do so on electric instruments! And how can Tyger Hutchings be "arguably so right when he claims Steeleye Span were the first people to come oout of the folk club scene since Ewan MacColl to actually do something with English folk music"- If Steeleye did not exist, even, before Hutchings had left Fairport and Fairport had released Leige and Leif, THE work that made English folk rock a force of nature?
But nothing perhaps shows up as well the ignorance of the authors so fully than when they misquote lyrics. as if they had never really been listening to the music they write about in the first place. Examples: Lovin Spoonful's Summer in the City- "Hot days [sic} summer in the city" rather than "Hot TOWN, Summer in the city" or Jefferson Airplane's "Tear down the walls" as "TURN down the walls!" (They must have been some motherfuckin' loud walls, man! Yeh, hey, turn it UP! Dad's annoyed!) Nothing is worse than old men trying to show how "hip and expert" they are at something than when they can't even get the words to the song straight.
Displaying 1 of 1 review