Alton Kelley (1940-2008)
[by Ken Hunt, London] San Francisco’s graphic artist, painter and poster and collage artist, Alton Kelley died at his home in Petaluma, California on 1 June 2008 at the age of 67. It would be hard to over-estimate him as one of San Francisco’s foremost psychedelic artists and his impact on that scene’s rock music in visual and graphic terms. He was central to that blossoming of great handbill, poster and album art that people associate with San Francisco.
14. 6. 2008 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] The German protest movement, in which song was a mightily important element, first truly broached my consciousness in 1971. Formative experiences included attending anti-nuclear protests of the ring-around-the-plant kind and sitting at trestle tables with beer, bread and Bockwurst and with old (well, they looked old to me) comrades singing Kampflieder (‘songs of struggle’) and spouting Kampfsprüche (‘jingles’) at rallies that seemed to last for days. But all that was politics and protesting often in almost a carnival atmosphere, despite the constant presence of the camera-wallahs busily snapping away.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Like Ron Edwards (1930-2008), the Australian folklorist and folk recordist, folk journalist and archivist Edgar Waters was a pioneer in the field of Australian folksong and folklore. In 1947 he co-authored Rebel Songs with Stephen Murray-Smith, a booklet for the A.S.L.F. – a slim volume similar to the Workers’ Music Association booklets that were being published in Britain.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Goldfrapp’s fourth album Seventh Tree (2008) was reviewed in several places in the British press along the lines of it being “psychedelic folk”. Reviews came with a sprinkling of words such as “pastoral approach” and, oh the joys of semi-accurate quotations, “middle of the public bridleway”. It was the dangled carrot of talk about psychedelic folk that attracted me. Sort of. Not because I am an acolyte of psychedelia’s darker folk arts. I had a decade when editors told me how important every twee and fey, post-Wicker Man manifestation of “psychedelic folk” was. It drove me up the wall and “psychedelic folk” still turns me itchy-twitchy. 
[by Ken Hunt, London] You’d be hard-pressed to find a finer and more authoritative curator for a programme of folk music than Shirley Collins. After all, she is one of the singers who poured ideas into Britain’s second Folk Revival. Under the banner Folk Roots New Routes (a title lifted from her and Davy Graham’s 1964 duo album), she curated the five-day season of folk-themed concerts at London’s Southbank.