Old Music: The Incredible String Band – The Hedgehog Song

Despite a recent reissue series , and a revival of interest that has seen younger musicians starting to offer tribute , the Incredible String Band remain one of the less rediscovered of the great 60s bands. ISB was one of the first groups to make a nationwide impression after the folk revival lead into young musicians writing "new" folk songs. The Band, as we often called them, had hits before Pentangle or Fairport Convention . Their superb technical ability on any instrument was typical of the contemporary Scottish folk scene – I was reminded of them with the recent death of Bert Jansch , a man of similar skill, who also helped the revival of folk music for the counterculture generation. It was a marvellous period for British music, with the Celts leading the way in the folk tradition and David Munrow charging into medieval and baroque classical music. What they shared was a fascination with forgotten instruments and an ability to reach a high performance standard. They inspired others, too: I purchased my own hammer dulcimer from a craftsman who had started out in Cardiff making folk guitars. Their songs may seem a bit twee in this age, but remember we young hippies were rediscovering the outdoors and countryside, going camping, even holding marriages in forests. I still like the sound of the Hedgehog Song: it's about a young man whose fancies are not aggressively macho and to my generation of folkies it felt as timeless as The Foggy Foggy Dew .