Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Creative Accounting #45

Fleet Foxes = Crosby Stills Nash & Young + Beach Boys + The Band

3 comments:

Douglas Miller said...

To me their biggest influence is English folk music. I think the lack of acknowledgement that traditional english music has had on the American music scene - Dylan, Guthrie are obvious examples - is a great unrecognised story. Particularly in the '60's.

Perhaps the low point came when Paul Simon managed to claim copyright on Scarborough Fair - a traditional english folk song that he made minor adjustments too!

ArkAngel said...

The Irish folk contribution, by contrast, was well recognised in the documentary series Bringing It All Back Home made by Philip King of Scullion.

Douglas Miller said...

Yes absolutely. I think the perennial 'vogueishness' of Irish traditional music (as good as it can be) has pushed the english folk scene out of the way. The English scene became big in the sixties often performed by Scottish musicians such as Bert Jansch and by groups such as Pentangle and then Steeleye Span. Neil Young has often cited Bert Jansch as one of his primary influences.

Traditional folk music has always been associated with struggle and I guess the english haven't had so much of a struggle in the last 100 years or so.

I have recently enjoyed some Breton folk music as performed by Malicorne and Tri Yann. Very closely related to both Irish and English forms as one might expect.