I am coming rather late to this conversation, but when these bands first became known to me in California -- which would have been about 1969, I think -- I rushed out to acquire everything I could from Fairport and from my third member of the holy trinity, Pentangle. (Didn't discover Ashley Hutchings until years later.) Steeleye Span I liked very much too, but I never got around to rushing out to buy any Steeleye records, though I happily listened to them when someone else put them on.

The reason, I've always thought, is that I saw what both Fairport and Pentangle did as "fusion" -- of folk and rock in Fairport's case, folk and jazz in Pentangle's.

I found this fusion, an entirely new concept to me at the time, deeply stimulating and conceptually more interesting than SS's music, which it seemed to me was performed in straight folk style and just happened to have some electric instrumentation in the background. Steeleye didn't "challenge" me the same way the fusion bands did. I listened to them more for source, background, and singalong material rather than for intellectual stimulation.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I found the fusion style more innovative and transformative of my own budding musical style than the electrified folk of SS. But again, let me stress that I think I liked all three bands equally, if in different ways.

My two cents...

Claire (ducking and covering)