Various - Gather In The Mushrooms: The British Folk Underground 1969-1975

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 – 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 which proved
influential in the 00s neo-folk boom (Devendra Banhart,
Joanna Newsom, Alasdair Roberts, Tuung 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 Mushroom”, 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 such as 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.

Track listing
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