Word: schmidts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Popular music today is a serious business--with contracts, promoting and merchandising, and it all comes out looking like so many cans on a super-market shelf. Nevertheless, America's last three decades have fostered small but musicall potent "scenes." Eric von Schmidt is a lover of Cmabridge's own folk scene, and his 309-page book, Baby Let Me Follow You Down documents it all in words and photographs. Most would say this scene went out of existence with the last Molotov cocktail that flew through the window of the Charlesbank Trust Co. But to von Schmidt, the Cambridge...
...Schmidt examines the roots and characters of the Cambridge folk scene from its inception in the late '50s, entering old coffee houses like Tulla's--once near Cahaly's--that first heard the voices of young folk singers like Joan Baez. This...
...NAMES. Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, Richard Farina, Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tom Rush, Pete Seeger, Taj Mahal, Geoff Muldaur, Bonnie Raitt, John Sebastian, all spanning a decade. Von Schmidt sees an enduring musical "scene," based on the fact that people wanted to hear this music. Today that scene doesn't exist, and while von Schmidt wants badly to believe that the listeners are out there, he acknowledges popular decline of the folk movement, and the powerful appeal of electronic music...
...This book is an attempt to recount that era," von Schmidt adds, "to show that this existed, and that it may happen again." The author balks at considering folk alongside other American "scenes," such as any rock and roll scene, including today's burgeoning punk/new wave scene...
...Schmidt's bias gives his book its power. His knowledge and understanding--both of the folkies and their detractors--lends credibility and a certain ghostliness to his recall. Baby Let Me Follow You Down succeeds where many "rockumentary" efforts fail--these are not idle memories scribbled down for pleasant reading; they are real experiences...