Comments on: Acid Folk? Classifying Caedmon

By: grimtraveller

grimtraveller — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:29:45 +0000

“And if you were the blog reviewer who wrote ‘I mean, come on, what’s with the Caribbean-Celtic tracks?!?’ ”

Whoever that blog reviewer was that wrote that, in my opinion simply doesn’t appreciate the wide musical collective head of the band, or bands of the ‘63-’80 period. Mind you, the same has to be said for many actual influential band members of so many bands, both great and small, in relation to the people who bought their albums. They ignored the fact so often what made them popular was the very fact that they were diverse. I’ve long marvelled at the way Lennon fought McCartney over songs he thought were soft ‘granny music’ – but it was the three songwriting Beatles’ different styles that makes them so enduringly good. Styx split over the musical direction of the band with Tommy Shaw on one hand, Dennis Deyoung on the other. Yet their two styles of writing made that band what it was in it’s heyday {James Young too}. Mott the hoople fell into the Ian Hunter or Mick Ralphs camps with Ralphs leaving and ironically becoming a big star with Bad Company. But Mott were the band they were precisely because of their writing diversity. And so the list goes on and on and on and on in different genres.
Yet it must be observed that band members are not a class apart from those who listen to their art and I can never understand why so many of them fought for creative control when the very diversity that came with different writers with eclectic, diverse tastes so often was what made those bands so interesting.
I really dig Caedmon, mainly coz their music was fantastic and their songs special, but you can hear an interesting cocktail in most of their pieces. Like a good party punch……

By: grimtraveller

grimtraveller — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:55:01 +0000

That Pete Ryder of the above comment – he truly is a top man ! The album he refers to is by Paradise Square and it’s good but rare as hen’s teeth. Rarer, actually…..

By: Quincy

Quincy — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:10:57 +0000

I’m a 24 year old Canadian male. I found out about your album a few months ago, and am digging it hard. What you guys have recorded, be it naive or amateur, is great. Aside from the Trees Community, yours if my favorite acid folk album. It’s transcending the folkies from the 60s and 70s and still living.

By: Pete Ryder

Pete Ryder — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:02:22 +0000

I too have found myself, to my surprise and amusement, retrospectively classed as ‘pysch folk’ on the web review of a long defunct and distinctly amateur vinyl album from the early 70s; the song in question was in open tuning, so the explanation above fits!. I never heard Caedmon live (yet- now I am living in hope) but was so impressed by the album that I bought two! A good decision – have just sold one on e bay for a little more than I paid for it, even allowing for the rate of inflation. I have played it to friends who have neither folk nor Christian sympathies, yet who have been most impressed. Roll on the next album.

By: grimtraveller

grimtraveller — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:52:20 +0000

Yeah, classifications ! They can be so misleading but they are also really important – as long as one recognizes that those classifications are merely a guideline. Caedmon actually serve as a good example of this; there are so many influences in the music and also, the band utilized what it had to hand. So they would be hard to classify. Obviously because of the acoustic content alongside the fuzzy guitar and bass, they were comparable with folk rock groups. Because of the jamming nature of some of the stuff, it came over as quite mind expanding, despite there being no drug involvement { I would argue that a life in Christ could only be mind expanding ie psychedelic }. The Christian/spiritual underbelly would have pitched them in a ‘gospel’ box though they were actually a much deeper group lyrically than what most of us think of when we hear that term. Personally, I’ve long felt that someone who is in a relationship with God almighty is going to have more to see and write about than even someone who has roamed the universe on acid. Alot of ‘christian’ rock/pop/folk/R&B artists for me let themselves down, even now and particularly back then, because it was felt that every song that a christian wrote had to somehow be “about” God or Christ. But of course life is much more expansive than that and as { I think it was Merton } someone once said ” I believe in God like I believe in the sun. Not only because I can see it, but because of what I can see by it’s illumination”. Fortunately, there were plenty of christians that took a wider view of their lives and Caedmon were one of them. Even in the metaphorical songs, they were good enough to be taken on more than one level.
But you know, at the end of the day, though you could compare the band with loads of others, fact is they stood on their own merit. They wrote and performed great songs of originality that sound as good now as then, if not better.
I’m glad the band didn’t spend more time on recording the LP because it sounds fab as it is.