Gathered From Coincidence: British Folk-Pop Sound Of 1965-1966 /Various

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Prior to the early Sixties, folk and pop musicians inhabited largely different worlds. There were folk records that had become crossover pop hits, but in essence there was little or no common ground in terms of instrumentation or ideologies. But in the wake of the British beat/R&B boom (or, if you were in America, the British Invasion) and the emergence of Bob Dylan, such barriers were broken down for good. With British acts making music that, for the first time in nascent pop history, matched the quality of their American counterparts, suddenly everything was grist to the mill and musical cross-pollination was almost de rigueur. Dylan and The Beatles impacted heavily on each other, while The Byrds were pitched midway between the two - although their combination of jingle-jangle guitars and world-weary harmonies was heavily indebted to folk-pop pioneers The Searchers. By 1965, the folk-pop nexus was at it's glorious peak. That was particularly true in Britain, which saw many variations on the basic pop-meets-folk theme (in America, folk-rock had a relatively genised sound). Across three CDs and 79 tracks, Gathered From Coincidence examines every aspect of the British mid-Sixties folk-pop boom, incorporating Dylan-inspired singer/songwriters with a commercial pop sensibility, the more introverted beat groups, Marianne Faithfull-inspired female chanteuses and R&B hoodlums in newly-pensive mode, all bound together by the 6 or 12-string thrum or Rickenbacker clang. Ranging from massive chart hits to records that barely sold in double figures, Gathered From Coincidence includes the true believers, the musical dilettantes, the young wannabes, the cash-in merchants, the old guard looking to resuscitate a fading career and, of course, the earnest protest singers - and, just for good measure, we've also rounded up a handful of folksploitation discs from those positioning themselves for roughly three minutes as anti-protest protesters. With a significant number of tracks making their CD debut and even a couple of previously unissued cuts, Gathered From Coincidence is a fascinating, even revelatory overview of a still largely-neglected stitch in pop's unending tapestry: that curiously downbeat two-year period between the dying embers of the beat boom's irresistible exuberance and the arrival of psychedelia's swirling multi-coloured hues.