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This is not the first book to describe this period of radical musical change and social "revolution". Several books have been written by some of the protagonists of the London hippy scene of the mid/late 60's - e.g. Richard Neville (him again) now wealthy back in Oz, Mick Farren describing The Social Deviants (and Pink Fairies) and International Times, 'Lost In the Woods' a biography of Syd Barrett and the rise of Pink Floyd, 'Out-Bloody-Rageous' the Soft Machine biography. Now here Anglo-American record producer Joe Boyd has come up with a most readable gem of an autobiography, concentrating largely on the period 1964 to 1971. The book's title 'White Bicycles', refers to the white bicycles frequently seen then in the Netherlands, (which were for anybody to use - echoing the intended freedom to share 'each other's goods, plough each other's earth', and the related hippy ethos), and of course the hit by one of the first bands he managed, Tomorrow.boyd with terry gross on fresh air / another book review
Boyd relates how he fell into the music business, discovering a long forgotten blues singer was happy to do a gig at a Harvard Uni student hall for 25 dollars as long as he got a ride to the show. Boyd had a whip round taking a dollar each from everybody who attended, and so was able to give the musician a 75 dollars bonus. Then the summer jobs working for record labels. Or acting as goffer at the Newport Jazz & Folk Festival in 1965, when he claims rock came about i.e. when Dylan brought his electric folk band on stage with Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper in that line-up, so shocking the folk purists such as Pete Seeger, that they walked out of the Festival. Then road managing ancient blues singers around Europe. The love affair with the UK, after Boyd talked himself into a scouting job for talent for Elektra Records, for example claiming how close he was to grabbing Floyd for the label. Discovering Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention, and then getting Denny into the band. Being stunned by Nick Drake's demos and then being more stunned that nobody bought Nick Drake's records when first released - although when John Cale asked Boyd who was new, on hearing a work-in-progress tapes for '5 Leaves Left', Cale went straight round to Drake's digs, sorted out a couple of tunes, then they recorded these together the following Monday. The rise and fall of the Incredible String Band.
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upcoming : Alejandro Escovedo, Leon Russell , Dick Dale, Gram Parker.
A little over a year ago I did this post about this blog I had come across by a guy named Hanszun that I was surprised to see was giving away lots of complete, in-print CDs (including box sets), instead of the ultra-rare out-of-print stuff usually made available by most "sharity" sites. I said that "Blogs like this Hanszunblog (not to pick on him- I'm sure there are hundreds more) are going to be the death of music blogs and are going to bring the wrath of the RIAA down on ALL of us". This led to a bit of a flame-war in my comments which I finally shut down when some guy threatened to contact Arthur Lee who he had "had some correspondence with a bit in the past, and have his email address" to report me for posting some Love videos because I had "pushed a good friend of mine just a little too far."