[2025-04-25] Various Artists "Gather In The Mushrooms: The British Folk Underground 1969-1975" (Ace UK)

Linda · **Posted:** Thu Mar 20, 2025 12:14 pm

Amazon USA
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F1G43RNG/?tag=imwan-20

Amazon Canada
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0F1G43RNG/?tag=imwanca-20

Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0F1G43RNG/?tag=imwan-21

Description
Compiled by Bob Stanley to document the acid folk scene, “Gather In The Mushrooms” was first issued in 2004 on Sanctuary as a CD-only release; it proved popular enough for a sequel entitled “Early Morning Hush” two years later.

This new edition of “Gather In The Mushrooms” contains the cream of both long-deleted compilations with a few additions – COB, 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 which proved influential in the 00s neo-folk boom (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Alasdair Roberts, Tunng et al) but 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, Angry Brigade and 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-modernist.

It may not have resonated with dyed-in-the wool political folkies, but over five decades later this music sounds very evocative of an England of yore – not necessarily one of poachers and pedlars, but one of long-haired youths in tie-dye T-shirts, bikers and hippies, acoustic guitars played in white stone cottages. Groups like Midwinter and Oberon made primitive, privately recorded folk albums; today they sound as distant and mystical as the field recordings of Alan Lomax. The sincerity and folk knowledge of a group like Forest becomes irrelevant once you hear something as eerie and evocative as ‘Graveyard’. Home-made, homely, warm as soup or chilling as a hoar frost, this is music of innocence and rare beauty.

Tracklist
1. Corn Rigs - Magnet & Paul Giovanni
2. Morning Way - Trader Horne
3. Nottamun 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 - COB (Clive's Original Band)
18. The Herald - Comus

Linda · **Posted:** Tue Apr 08, 2025 4:01 pm

All of the pre-order links in the first post are now active.

[2025-04-25] Various Artists "Gather In The Mushrooms: The British Folk Underground 1969-1975" (Ace UK)

Who is WANline