Principal Edwards Magic Theatre

This UK band was formed in 1968 at Essex University, England. The artistic hippie co-operative revolved around Belinda ‘Bindy’ Borquin (vocals/recorder/violin/piano), Root Cartwright (guitar/mandolin/recorder) and David Jones (percussion) who were initially joined by Jeremy Ensor (bass) and vocalists Martin Stellman, Monica Nettles and Vivienne McAuliffe. Numerous dancers, technicians and stage hands took the line-up number into double figures and, having recorded Soundtrack for John Peel’s Dandelion Records label, the group abandoned university to establish a commune. Second album The Asmoto Running Band, produced by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, preceded an ambitious season at London’s Hampstead Theatre Club.

Principal Edwards Magic Theatre were one of those support bands you’d encounter in the colleges and town hall venues of the UK in the early 1970s…

Principal Edwards Magic Theatre is one of those hard-to-classify bands that made the late '60s a musical adventure playground for listeners. What was more, the live music scene and airwaves were broad-minded enough to give bands who dared to be different the chance of exposure. They enjoyed the attention of the late John Peel who broadcast them on his BBC shows and made them the first band to be signed to his Dandelion record label. The Devon Tapes was recorded in the summer of 1974 under the shorter name Principal Edwards. This is the first time these recordings have been made available to the public.

VA - Dust On The Nettles: A Journey Through The British Underground Folk Scene (1967-72) {3CD Grapefruit CRSEGBOX030 rel 2015}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.22 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 554 Mb
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© 1967-72, 2015 Grapefruit Records / Cherry Red Record | CRSEGBOX030
Folk Rock / Pregressive Folk / Psychedelia / Pop Fok / Electric Folk / British Folk

With 63 tracks and a total running time of just under four hours, Dust On The Nettles examines the metamorphosis that British folk underwent during the late 1960s, when the influence of psychedelia and the counterculture saw the idiom being twisted into all kinds of new and exotic shapes, as the finger-in-the-ear folk clubs of yore were inexorably drawn into a brave new world of Arts Labs, free festivals and the nascent college/university circuit.

Various Artists - Milk Of The Tree: An Anthology Of Female Vocal Folk & Singer-Songwriters 1966-73 (2017) {3CD Set}
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© 1966-73, 2017 Grapefruit Records / Cherry Red Record | CRSEGBOX039
Folk Rock / Pregressive Folk / Psychedelia / Pop Fok / Electric Folk / Singer- Songwriters

Notwithstanding one or two isolated exceptions, it wasn’t until the mid-Sixties that independent female voices really began to be heard within the music industry. The feminist movement naturally coincided with the first signs of genuine musical emancipation. In North America, Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie emerged through the folk clubs, coffee-houses and college campuses to inspire a generation of wannabe female singers and musicians with their strong, independent mentality and social compassion, while the British scene’s combination of folk song revival and the Beatles-led pop explosion saw record company deals for a new generation of pop-folkies including Marianne Faithfull, Dana Gillespie and Vashti Bunyan.

Medicine Head - New Bottles Old Medicine (1970) {Dandelion–Cherry Red CDMRED314 rel 2007}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 464 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 189 Mb
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© 1970, 2007 Dandelion Records / Cherry Red Records | CD MRED 314
Rock / Blues Rock / British Blues

When, in early 1970, legendary Radio 1 DJ John Peel ventured up to Wolverhampton’s Lafayette club to do a gig, he came upon two guys who called themselves Medicine Head, the uniquely configured duo of John Fiddler and Peter Hope-Evans. So impressed was Peel that he signed Medicine Head to his label, Dandelion Records and later that year released “New Bottles, Old Medicine” the 1st of three studio albums that Medicine Head would release on the revered label. The walrus-moustached Fiddler would simultaneously sing, play guitar and operate a bass drum and hi-hat cymbal with his foot, augmented by the equally hirsute Hope-Evans on harmonica, jaws harp, mouth bow and strange concoctions of percussion.

Released in 2015, Grapefruit’s 3-CD multi-artist British underground folk compilation Dust On The Nettles was widely praised, with a five-star review in The Times hailing it as “a delight from beginning to end”. A long-overdue follow up to that set, Sumer Is Icumen In tightens the mesh by focusing on the point when traditional folksong and the burgeoning late Sixties counterculture collided, largely courtesy of seminal acts like the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Pentangle.