File under: Trails and Influences. Other Pathways. Case #47/52.
There have been only a handful of books written (in part) about the curious interplay/explorations of folk/rock/psychedelia – more recently Rob Young’s Electric Eden, Jeanette Leech’s Seasons They Change and Shindig magazines Witches Hats and Painted Chariots…
…but if you should forage back to just after the high point of such things you may well come across Electric Muse: Folk Into Rock, the book written/put together jointly by Karl Dallas, Robin Denselow, David Laing and Robert Shelton and accompanied by a compilation album of the same name…
…and then if you should forage forward in time you may well come across the album New Electric Muse, which is an updating/extending of the earlier album (and it would appear that the march of progress has continued under its revellers feet and merriments), including on its discs various more recent works.
One of my favourites on the album is the Battlefield Band’s Tae The Beggin’; it’s a curious recording that puts a smile on my face every time I hear it. As a song it makes me think of some kind of collusion between a 1990s indie band with experimental tendencies who’ve just bought a synthesizer for 10p and are still in the learning to play it with one finger, traditional folkloric tales and fare and a falling back through time of Finders Keepers Records Willows Songs compilation.
(The plot, as it were? Well, Essentially Tae The Beggin’ is the story/thoughts of an itinerant(?), ne’er do well/beggar and his claims that the begging life provides for a fine life…)
There something about it that draws me in, lets me go and then draws me back again – a sense of an accidental(?) experimentalism in catchy folk(/pop?) clothing. It’s that keyboard, when it comes back in I just have to stop and smile.
I know little about the Battlefield Band and I’m quite okay with keeping it that way, just allowing myself to step back and enjoy this one particular song.
Finding the song in the ether in its recorded/disc encasement form may involve a bit of rummaging and foraging. A starting point could well be here.
Earlier pathways around these parts:
Electric Eden. Willows Songs. Seasons They Change. Shindig.
Electric Eden’s binders and sending forth-ers: tales from before and after such things up to and alongside “21st century pastoral electronica“.
