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The Bothy Band – 1977 Where do we turn next? That’s the question I imagine many new breed neo-folk musicians were asking themselves then. The rise of Punk, Metal, and New Wave groups, coupled with the further fragmentation of Rhythm away from Blues had many musicians searching for a way to go forward. Take a…
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John Martyn – 1977 Talk about a meeting of worlds. At the intersection of Echo and Delay, in 1977 met John Martyn and Lee “Scratch” Perry. By then, they had treated listeners from both of their traditions to mind expanding sounds that stretched and blurred the lines of roots music. In England, John’s treatment of…
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Al Stewart – 1976 You all know or have heard Year of the Cat right? It was nearly four decades ago that this single became neo-folk steam train that could. Little things about its creation distilled in a wonderfully universal way nearly all the transformation, and rungs that neo-folk had taken by then. You hear…
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Nigel Mazlyn Jones Nigel Mazlyn Jones, now this is another great artist waiting to be rediscovered. His album 1976’s Ship to Shore introduced a thoroughly unique take on the singer-songwriter genre. He was part of the second wave of progressive folk styles that Roy Harper, John Martyn, and Al Stewart sorta introduced earlier in the…
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Horslips – 1976 Let me go back in time for a bit. Back in April, when I had a small kindling to start this blog, I wrote of a track from The Book of Invasions, “Warm Sweet Breath of Love”: “[This track] has everything that could be so right about music. Its all of these…
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Simon Jeffes on bowed guitar (left) with David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto Wow, what a loaded track title and what a loaded track. This band was born out of a hallucinated dream experienced by one Simon Jeffes while recovering from food poisoning. In one fever dream he saw an all seeing eye viewing a couple…
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Straws – 1975 Ghosts album cover photo session. Let’s get out of 1975, and start floating through the decade. It has to be that way. This is the year too many other musical movements (Punk, New Wave, Arena Rock etc.) had started to change everything culturally that English people now tuned to. Making it so,…
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Kubrick and friends – 1975 Now here’s something a bit out of step with the times. We all know Stanley Kubrick correct? Notorious perfectionist and quite intelligent artist whose muse seems to wander to and fro. In 1975, he treated film goers expecting some bit of shocking thrills to a bit of shocking melodrama. Barry…
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Steeleye Span – 1975 Just after slagging them off yesterday. Here I am championing them again. A few months before releasing “All Around My Hat”, and before the lure of cashing in was too much, Steeleye Span was hungry to present their viability as artists, that could be at the vanguard of something, first and…
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Pour down like silver. What an apropos name for whatever the hell was going on in classic English folk and folk-rock music in 1975. Nothing you’ll find this year from overground artists like Richard and Linda Thompson, Steeleye Span, Sandy Denny and more would truly be as valuable as the stuff that poured for from…
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