Oi! Traddies please!

Like Bright Phoebus you mean? That's what happens when the Trad meme sparks in the sparkling hearts of creative souls in the inventive vats of Popular Music. Phoebus is the risen glory of its era whose light shines on eternally, but no more so than ISB, Strawbs, Amazing Blondel et al whose contribution to Folk is vast. And my favourite track on Phoebus is the perverted rockabilly Danny Rose which maybe prefigures what Jim Eldon did on Loaded Dice and The Sharpshooters album with Custom Car Kid, though with less bathos.

Times (late at night, muttering in my cups) I might wish Folk had left Trad well alone really; I could live without the humpty-dumpty macrame beat makeovers and the crazy juxapositions of the old & new - Airs and Graces always did my head in, and Because it's There features a Gilbert and Sullivan song FFS. Hardly the wonder I started listening exclusively to the old guys... I still reckon The Battle of the Field is a top album though; I note that Vic & Bob must be onto it too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y04Qb9bLub4

(Strawhead... how did I not know about Strawhead?)

Stawhead were doing the FC rounds in the mid-seventies when I first started crossing the murky threshold. I think I first saw them at The Bay Hotel in Cullercoats in 76 or so, where the Whitley Bay Guardian billed them as 'Medieval'. They came in somewhere around the St. George's Canzona* meets Amazing Blondel but were unlike anything I'd ever heard. They inspired a laege & devoted following who eagerly buying their innumerable albums. Friday nights at Fylde have always been Strawhead nights - we'd always go in to check the atmos which was always inspiring, with Ron Baxter as emcee; they will be sorely missed & bitterly mourned.

* The Canzona teamed up with The Druids & others (including rhodes kind Dave MacCrae) to become Giles Farnaby's Dream Band for an eponymous LP of folk rock for Argo in 1973. But then there was GRYPHON and GENTLE GIANT so the zeitgeist was really kicking back then, which brings me back to Bright Phoebus.

Anyway, all this folk talk is making me slightly queasy. I'm off to listen to some Rahsaan Roland Kirk whilst making my breakfast...