Oysterband

Oysterband (or the Oyster Band, as it used to be) are one of the few outfits still burning with the fire of punk, but managing to combine it with the ideals and knowledge of English folk music -- a balancing act they've made into a fine art over the years. And they have deep roots in the U.K. folk scene, emerging from both the Whitstable Oyster Co. Ceilidh Band, which formed in 1975, and Fiddler's Dram, a group put together in 1973 by Dave Arbus, whose fiddle work had graced releases by East of Eden and the Who. Prosser, Telfer, and Taylor were also in Fiddler's Dram, whose moment of fame arrived in 1979 with the British hit single "Day Trip to Bangor" -- released after they'd split up. They reconvened for a last album when Kearey joined them. He also became part of the band's alter ego, the roots-oriented Oyster Ceilidh Band, as they'd now become. With Fiddler's Dram no longer extant, the members put their energies in the newly renamed Oyster Band in 1981, playing gigs around England and self-releasing albums on their own Pukka label. It wasn't until 1986 that their first "commercial" release, Step Outside (produced by Clive Gregson), with its rocking treatment of the maypole song "Hal-An-Tow" and what's now become an Oysters classic, "Another Quiet Night in England." It established them as a force on a fairly moribund English roots scene and they capitalized on it as they continued to release albums, mixing folk tunes, original material, and a curious taste in covers, ranging from an incendiary version of New Order's "Love Vigilantes" (which put it into the folkier context it deserved) to Bruck Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time." More than anything, however, the band grew in stature as writers, railing again the politics of Maragaret Thatcher and then her...