Salut! Live

Andrew Curry writes: When I was doing some research here for my recent review of Oysterband’s Barbican concert, I realised that the first time that I had heard the band was on a compilation record released by Folk Roots magazine in 1987. The sleeve notes to the compilation, Square Roots, are by Andy Kershaw.

(Square Roots. Photo: Andrew Curry: CC BY-SA-ND 4.0)

Its editor, Ian Anderson—who has certainly been one of folk music’s tireless advocates down the years—had renamed his earlier fanzine, Southern Rag, and relaunched it as a proper magazine in 1985, even if Kershaw also complains about the design:

a better layout would make it easier to absorb. Any designers reading this take note and call the editor.

In these days where there is a firehose of music available to us everywhere, it is difficult to recall how hard it was to find new music in the 1980s, especially music that didn’t sell in huge numbers or didn’t fit comfortably into recognised industry genres. I bought my copy at Rough Trade in Notting Hill, which was one of the places that did stock this stuff.

The timing is interesting too: it was released in 1987, which is the same year as the smaller labels interested in less mainstream music got together and co-opted the ‘world music’ label, to help record stores stock the music by helping fans to find it.

Andy Kershaw captures the moment well in his sleeve notes:

“Folk Roots magazine came just at the right time. Post Pogues and Billy Bragg, there were many new enthusiasts for simplicity, soul and spontaneity.

“The weekly music press couldn't help much. Their alternative to studio-constructed 'rahk' was, save isolated aberrations, to build a ghetto in which the largely ambitious but talentless huddled together around the musically irrelevant notion of being 'indie'.”

A compilation like this was therefore invaluable to a music fan.

Looking through the tracklist, you can see the range: as well as The Oyster Band, as they were then known, June Tabor is here, and so is the Copper Family, and there’s a band fronted by Martin Simpson. The notes promise a forthcoming record on Topic Records from ‘Martin Simpson’s Flash Company’, a group which included his first wife, Jessica and Mary McLaughlin on vocals, as well as John B Spencer on guitar and Laurie Harper on violin. Kathryn Tickell is here too, at the age of 20, playing with Rory McLeod.

The folk group Swan Arcade are represented, along with Ian Anderson’s then group Tiger Moth.

The range extends beyond folk music. There’s also Billy Bragg, and the American Ted Hawkins, found busking on Venice Beach in Los Angeles, who had a voice for the ages. The blues guitarist Brendan Croker—fresh from recording A Close Shave—has a track on here.

And then there is a set of artists we’d describe now as “world music”, from Bulgaria, from West Africa, the London band 3 Mustaphas 3, as well as a field recording from Senegal.

Listening to it again, I loved the energy, at a time when mainstream rock and pop tended towards the bland and the polished.

And looking back, it was a sign of a couple of things. First, that folk music was recovering its energy after a bit of a downswing in the 1970s and early 80s; and second that the exposure to world music—which Andy Kershaw championed—had helped with this.

(I know that Kershaw’s reputation has been eclipsed by the well-reported struggles in his personal life in the late 2000s, but I’d like to put on record here that he pointed me, and I’d guess many others, to all kinds of folk and roots music in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In fact I found in my collection a compilation that he had assembled around the same time as this which is just wall-to-wall pleasure that I’ll write about here in the near future.)

Kershaw notes that Anderson got a certain amount of criticism when he launched Folk Roots:

“lan took his fair share of flak from trainspotters, pewter tankard owners and those who believe Britain is the only country on the planet capable of producing a tune.

“Some senior observers in the music media sneered, "We've been through all this before", and much of it they had. But there was a growing number of listeners, Stiff generation downwards, who had not been through it before. Discovering that some bloke called Dick Gaughan was harder than the Redskins was quite traumatic.

“Equally, there were those who bought Freewheelin’ back in '63 and liked Billy Bragg for the same reasons.”

Here’s the tracklist:

Side 1

The Oyster Band: Liberty Hall

Dembo Konte and Kausu Kuyateh: Solo

Billy Bragg: Hold The Fort

Brendan Croker: Oh That Nagging Wife of Mine

Kathryn Tickell and Rory McLeod: Song for Busking Ronnie/ The Remember Me Hornpipe

Swan Arcade: Children’s Crusade

Nadka Karadjova: Nedelyo, Nedelyo

Side 2

Tiger Moth: Nail That Stoat

June Tabor: Bird in a Cage

Ted Hawkins: Dock of the Bay

Martin Simpson’s Flash Company: Bluebird (Judy G.)

The Copper Family: By the Green Grove

3 Mustaphas 3: Speed the Traktor

Alpha Dialo, Mama Dialo, and Papy Sissokho: Rowing Song (Part 1).

I’ve tried to reassemble the Square Roots tracklist as a Spotify playlist, but it wasn’t straightforward. For one thing, one of the secrets of a compilation like this is that it has its share of hard to get or otherwise unreleased music, which have never arrived on Spotify.

The June Tabor recording seems to have fallen out of a Topic recording session that may never have been released; the Kathryn Tickell/Rory McLeod collaboration may never have made it to disc. The Martin Simpson track may have been released as a single, but it’s not on True, Dare or Promise, the record that came out of the Flash Company sessions. Similarly, The Copper Family track seems to have been recorded with the songs on Coppersongs but not made it onto the disc.

And while Spotify gives the illusion of being comprehensive, it isn’t. Brendan Croker is barely represented here, and Rory McLeod even less so (perhaps for good reasons to do with making a living from music).

So in the playlist I’ve started out with everything I could find, and filled in the gaps with something by the same artists that seemed similar to the songs on Square Roots. Enjoy.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/78bdPkZjijTBObPW0BNLJU?si=PXID--5gS3C020PpttlTdA&pi=e-jK7Av54qR9mO