VARIOUS - Gather In The Mushrooms - The British Folk Underground 1969-1975 - CD [24 APR]

CD

This new edition of Gather In The Mushrooms contains the cream of both long-deleted compilations with a few additions—C.O.B., Roy Harper, Fotheringay—that weren’t available to Sanctuary at the time.

Though they aren’t traditional, these songs have an authenticity of their own, an autumnal atmosphere, and a naivety that proved influential in the 2000s neo-folk boom (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Alasdair Roberts, Tunng, et al.) but remain impossible to replicate.

For many of these acts at the end of the ’60s, folk music and the hippy world that surrounded them was a way of life—a way of opting out from the Vietnam War, the Angry Brigade, and the three-day-week early ’70s. Anne Briggs lived in a caravan in Suffolk, Shelagh McDonald lived in a tent, Vashti Bunyan eschewed electricity; they weren’t part-timers.

Listening to Gather In The Mushrooms, we are transported to a time when no one used the term post-modern.

Tracklist: 

1.CORN RIGS - Magnet & Paul Giovanni
2.MORNING WAY - Trader Horne
3.NOTTANUM TOWN - Oberon
4.GRAVEYARD - Forest
5.THE SKATER - Midwinter
6.WINTER WINDS - Fotheringay
7.LORD AND MASTER - Heron
8.FLY HIGH - Bridget St John
9.SHEEP SEASON - Mellow Candle
10.THE SEAGULLS SCREAM - Christine Quayle
11.FOREST AND THE SHORE - Keith Christmas
12.ROSEMARY HILL - Fresh Maggots
13.FINE HORSEMAN - Anne Briggs
14.THE WEREWOLF - Barry Dransfield
15.ANOTHER DAY - Roy Harper
16.WINDOW OVER THE BAY - Vashti Bunyan
17.ELEVEN WILLOWS – C.O.B. (Clive's Original Band)
18.THE HERALD – Comus