Monday, August 09, 2010

Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music by Rob Young | Book review | Books | The Guardian

Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music by Rob Young | Book review | Books | The Guardian: "Electric Eden is by no means the first book to trace the modern reinvention of folk music. A farrago of essays called The Electric Muse, originally published in 1975 to accompany a triple-LP set, was the standard text in its day, but several comprehensive studies have been published since the millennium. Britta Sweers's 2005 overview, Electric Folk: The Changing Face of Traditional Music, features valuable interviews and is pitched at a reader with no prior knowledge (dutifully explaining who Bob Dylan is), but it shows its origins as a young German's university dissertation. Michael Brocken's The British Folk Revival 1944–2002, which focuses more on the mainstream and politics than Young's tome, would suit readers who wish to study the 'movement' rather than have their tastes expanded."