In 1963, The Beatles revolutionized pop with a distinctly
English ear for melody and harmony and an uncompromised big beat yanked from
the yanks. That same year Dylan rearranged the face of folk with a ragged edge
that brought the sanitized harmonies of The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, &
Mary to Earth and a surreal ways with words that kicked it back into the
cosmos. As dissimilar as their styles were at the time, there was already some
cross-pollination between folk and pop happening. As early as 1962, Dylan
rocked up his hootenanny with the obscure “Mixed-Up Confusion”, and The
Beatles’ debut single, “Love Me Do” was more folk than pop with its turgid
beat, absence of electric six-strings, and wheezy harmonica. Once Dylan and The
Beatles became aware of each other, such heavy petting was over and the
marriage was officially consummated as Dylan’s influence loomed all over “I’ll
Be Back” and much of Beatles for Sale
and The Beatles’ beat inspired Dylan to plug in… though his stripped down,
thumping sound was always more Stones than Beatles. It took The Byrds to pointedly
fuse Dylan’s far-out poetry and The Beatles’ clean jingle-jangle, officially
putting a face on the new folk-rock genre.
Between Mersey Beat-dominated ’64 and psychedelic ’67,
folk-rock was the dominant pop style for young, white artists. Even such hardened
souls as the Stones, Kinks, and Pretty Things got sucked into it. Appropriately,
Grapefruit Records’ new triple-disc collection Gathered from Coincidence: The British Folk Pop Sound of 1965-1966
limits its scope to those two years, and while it’s reasonable to wonder if its
location and period limitations result in a limited listening experience, they
don’t.
Instead of just spotlighting songs that reflect The Byrds’
12-string shimmer, Gathered from
Coincidence presents a variety of sounds that fall within its narrow premise.
There is electric jangle (Peter and Gordon’s “Morning’s Calling”, The Silkie’s
“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”, The Hollies’ “Very Last Day”) but also
solo acoustic pieces (Donovan’s “Catch the Wind”), full-band acoustic rambles
(The Kinks’ “Wait Til the Summer Comes Along”), heavy-beat rock (The Pretty
Things’ “London Town”, Manfred Mann’s “If You Gotta Go, Go Now”), shades of
distinctly British baroque pop (Marianne Faithfull’s “Come and Stay with Me”),
bubblegum folk (Twinkle’s “Golden Lights”, Heinz’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s
Alright”), elaborate productions that fly in the face of folk’s dogged
simplicity (Murray Head’s “The Bells of Rhymney”, Justin Hayward’s “Day Must
Come”), and some of the turgid, old-fashioned stuff that Rock & Roll mostly
swept away (Ian Campbell Folk Group’s “The Times They Are-A Changin’”, First
Gear’s “Gotta Make the Future Bright”).
As you probably sussed from the artist and song names, Gathered from Coincidence contains some
big groups and a lot of Dylan covers. It also has some varying perspectives, as
parodies such as Alan Klein’s “Age of Corruption” and Micha’s “Protest Singer” protest the protest singers, though neither are particularly listenable
(however, John Cassidie’s “Talkin’ Denmark Street” is the uncanniest Dylan send
up I’ve ever heard). Fortunately, such bum tracks are pretty rare and Gathered from Coincidence ends up a mostly consistent and varied collection of songs
from the beginning of pop’s most fruitful period.