This story, one of many fascinating tales told by Rob Young in his epic study of the various transformations of British folk music in the 20th century, is illuminating on many levels. Talking about Fairport Convention’s talented drummer, Dave Mattacks, he doesn’t note just the “funky plod” of his attack. Electric Eden is some kind of achievement which may be best taken in small 50 page doses and not eaten whole like I did.

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. Both Bush and the WMA had strong connections to Topic Records, going back to the label's formation in 1939, and stem from an era before any of the major post-war folk revivals, as we know them, had actually taken place (Ewan MacColl and his gang didn't really get going until several years later).The electric EDEN pays tribute to the original Citroën Méhari while perfectly meeting today's constraints in terms of equipment and safety certification. Better to regard Electric Eden as what it is, at heart: the best of the currently available books on the modern British folk phenomenon. I'd even say this book constitutes a work of academic value as he successfully argues that the music of this era, which was created by the post-WW2 generation with its attendant childhood trials and restrictions, as one that turned away from industrialisation/urbanisation, and harkened back to an idyllic rural Britain that was in touch with its mythical and spiritual past (that never really existed). He originally conceived “Electric Eden,” he says, as a group biography of artists including Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Pentangle, Vashti Bunyan and the Incredible String Band.

There is sufficient space given to the major artists of this genre, particularly The Watersons, Pentangle, Ashley Hutchings many projects, The Incredible String Band Etc.A member of the delighted audience noted that it was "the first time that the song had been put into an evening dress".

Nick Drake, desolated by his lack of commercial success and acutely depressed, took a fatal overdose of antidepressants in 1974. The beauty of this work is in the amount of information Rob Young gives the reader on those early pioneers who went to the trouble of finding this music in the remote areas of England and America, then archiving the work so that the songs didn't die with those who still knew them. In his coverage of leftwing balladeers such as Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Young does acknowledge British folk as a voice of anti-authoritarian protest but, as the 1960s advance, he dismisses them as irrelevances "holding their breath until the revolution came". Until this year I’d only seen the film once - in the early 90s, Channel 4, on a tiny portable black and white TV.Add one star for getting off his arse and interviewing a lot of people and getting some great quotes.