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...hoping that Jack Fear is going to weigh in at some point and tell us all hundreds of brilliant secrets that only he knows.
Been weighing my responses, you know? Pondering the question. Because really, Simon & Garfunkel and the Beach Boys have fuck-all to do with the Great Folk Scare of the Sixties, with Bob Dylan (whom they pointedly mocked in "A Simple Desultory Philippic"), with Phil Ochs, or even Joan Baez.
See, I've been thinking about Simon and Garfunkel and trying to analyze what they were all about and what their place was within the scene of the time. A few thoughts:
SG were mostly apolitical. Yeah, "Scarborough Fair," yeah "Silent Night/Six O'Clock News," yeah yeah. Exceptions. SG were primarily romantic, intellectual, philosophical in a playful way—inner-directed, rather than outwardly engaged. Confessional. Neurotic, even. But definitely more oriented to personal actualization than changing the world.
SG made pretty records. Bob Dylan croaked: Phil Ochs snarled. But Paul and Artie crooned. And where Bob and Phil and the Farinas kept their instrumental accompaniment pointedly simple, as ostentatiously plain as their regular-guy (read: aggressively un-pretty) singing, in the name of "authenticity," SG were crafting lush, intricate arrangements.
SG focused almost exclusively on singer-songwriter material, recording very little of the "folk" canon. Exceptions: again, "Scarborough Fair" and "Silent Night"—each, not coincidentally, radically recontextualized by its quodlibet setting. Early Dylan sets were typical of the times in that they were full of traditional tunes and Woody Guthrie songs: the British wing of folk-rock was even more informed by traditional music—simply because the tradition in the British Isles was of much greater antiquity and far better documented. I suspect this may have something to do with Ganesh's antipathy towards BritFolkRock—it's simply not modern, darling, not modern at all, and frankly (much as I love the genre) hearing an electric-blues outfit pretending to be minstrels in the court of Henry VIII can shade into the risible.
Mostly, SG were intimate. The sheer righteousness of the political folk movement—particularly when dealing with traditional material—often led to a declamatory style that many (myself included) find off-putting. Joan Baez's "foghorn full of honey" (great phrase, BTW) is still a foghorn for a'that and a'that. Double dittoes for Sandy Denny, Maddy Pryor, June Tabor, and esp. Judy Fucking Collins. There was this weird diva thing going on—you were invited to be awed by the pristine beauty of their voices, which is fine, but it's all kind of cool and joyless. SG were relaxed and conversational, and when they shaded into melodrama ("For Emily," f'rinstance) it was with a surfeit of passion and not the calculated theatricality of the divas (viz. Judy Fucking Collins doing "Send In The [Fucking] Clowns").
And that's because SG were making pop records, friends—making, like the Beach Boys, uncommonly sophisticated pop that took in a variety of influences not usually heard in the days of the Brill Building (strains of folk, but also of world music, art song, and chamber orchestra) and drenched them in close vocal harmonies. Their true peers are not the faux-authentic banjo-spankers of the Great Folk Scare (yer New Lost City Ramblers, yer Kingston Trio et al.), but the singer-songwriters who blossomed in their wake—yer Cat Stevenses and James Taylors and suchlike.
So: all that said, all that analyzed: recommendations? Sure.
For the best of the Sixties, I'd say The Byrds. They took the electric-twelve-string groove of "Sounds Of Silence" and turned it into a career. Took Dylan's tunes and made them pop hits, more power to them. Three guitars weaving, dense harmonies, songs of ecstasy (Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!") and unease ("Eight Miles High"). Still glorious.
Joni Mitchell, of course—taking the confessional approach to its apotheosis, songs increasingly overstuffed with words but always with a keen ear for melody and a sharp eye for image. Back catalogue is vast, but I'm still partial to Hejira.
On the Brit side: yes yes yes to (The) Pentangle—Jacqui McShee much less dour than yer stern Sandy Dennys, loose and joyous and jazzy, and Paul Simon nicked all his best guitar parts from Bert Jansch.
Haven't heard a great deal from Lindisfarne, but I've liked what I've heard—warm, prettily arranged and passionately played. Hippie folktones with one foot in pub-rock. "Winter Song" and "Fog On The Tyne" top the list.
More contemporary stuff in the S&G vein: Firstly, The Story. Coming out of Boston in 1990s, a core duo—a singer/songwriter/guitarist and one who just sings—with delicate instumental backing and twining, complex harmonies and rich, abstruse songwriting. Then the twist: they're women! The second album, The Angel In The House, is the best: title track and "Missing Person Afternoon" are classics, I tells ya.
In their early-90s heyday, Pennsylvania's The Innocence Mission were pegged as the poor man's 10,000 Maniacs—a massively unfair assessment, and one they've outgrown as they've ditched the synths and the drums and scaled back to sparkling guitars and Karen Peris's voice, sweet but never cloying. "Where Does The Time Go" and "Lakes Of Canada" (from the CD Birds Of My Neighborhood) are flat-out lovely.
The women of Canada's Be Good Tanyas play a sort of mutant bluegrass, sung in hushed, anxious drawls. An acquired taste, maybe, but on originals like "The Littlest Birds" and "Ship Out On The Sea" it's magical. The album Blue Horse also has a psychedelic take on the traditional "The Coo Coo Bird" and the finest version of "The Lakes of Pontchartrain" that I have ever heard.
ContempoBritFolk: both Kate Rusby and Bill (Belinda) Jones bring playful pop voices to mostly trad material. I like it, but it's not for everyone—it's an awful lot of the fol-de-rol-me-diddle-me-day-O. Worth hearing: "The Drowned Lovers" (Rusby) and "The Barley and the Rye" (Jones). WARNING: Here there be fiddles. And accordions.
Fluxington turned me on to White Magic, a young band out of NYC in the glum-folk-diva mold. Nice version of "Plain Gold Ring," but a band perhaps best taken in small doses.
And I long ago made you mix CDs of both Richard Thompson and Bruce Cockburn, but never got around to mailing them: they got packed away in the move. Here's my incentive to dig them out and get 'em off to you... |
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