1965 was a time of great uncertainty for folk music. Dylan had ‘plugged in’, many prepared to ‘drop out’ and tragically no one ‘turned on’ to see The Pines TV debut on the BBC’s new but short-lived folk showcase ‘Humstrum.’

Some arcane details of the broadcast are recalled by ‘Nodding’ John St. Ives, the show’s researcher, producer and presenter: “The Pines were a rather obscure act outside of folk circles – they were barely known even within them – but you have to remember that as Beatlemania waned and a huge number of ‘pop’ acts clamoured to fill the void, there were a few ‘serious’ artists like The Pines who were positively going out of their way to remain obscure.”

Not being noticed became the new thing and it was my job, I suppose, to get out there and largely ignore all of the up and coming talent.”

ANDY BLACKWELL: And was that why your show was pulled after only three programmes?

‘NODDING’ JOHN ST. IVES: For the show to be a genuine success I felt I had to represent what was actually happening or should I say what wasn’t happening.

AB: I’m not sure I follow?

NJS: Well, not showing up for gigs was rather in vogue at the time. Playing live was generally regarded as rather passé, certainly too commercial, so ‘not going on’ was really what was going on. Or not.

AB: I’m confused.

NJS: Bands turning down a record deal or any contract were regarded as hipper than those who’d been signed up. Walking out of the studio was a very cool thing to do.

AB: So, many of your acts simply walked out?

NJS: Most never turned up. Or perhaps I never invited them. I can’t honestly remember.

AB: But you did memorably turn down Peter, Paul and Mary. Why?

NJS: Look, ‘Humstrum’ set very high standards. We had to maintain the same integrity as that of the artists. Our audience demanded it. Had I been seen to book ‘popular’ acts then our core demographic would never have switched on.

AB: And most of them didn’t.

NJS: Precisely. ‘Humstrum’ remains to this day the least well-remembered folk platform. And that’s a legacy that I’m immensely proud of.

AB: There was certainly something in the air at that time with the whole ‘New Obscurist’ movement. Were The Pines a part of this, or…?

NJS: The who now?

AB: The Pines.

NJS: (Shakes head)

AB: The Pines, the act you booked instead of Peter, Paul and Mary?

NJS: Ah yes. It’s hard to know if they were part of anything, really. But they were definitely influenced by people like Nick Drake and Conway. There was even talk of them getting together with Conway and not doing an album. Sadly, that never happened. Or did. Depending on how you look at it. I mean a lot of the great folk acts were no longer making records, many weren’t even writing songs. The Pines, as I recall, were well ahead of the game in this respect really.

AB: They didn’t write songs?

NJS: Not in the traditional sense. Not in any sense actually. They were working on this thing they called ‘smat’, a kind of folk take on jazz scat. ‘Smat’ was a sort of lyrical mumble, a smattering, if you like, of loose vowel sounds, a smart mutter really. As soon as I heard it I thought how wonderfully inaccessible it sounded. I booked them for our third, and as it turned out, final show.

AB: Tell us what happened.

NJS: We’d had a few technical issues in the previous weeks. We went out live as you know and with the majority of our acts not wishing to be seen as selling out, most of them refused to even appear. We generally just broadcast a shot of an empty studio or a stool under a spotlight. The art crowd really dug us.

AB: How could you tell?

NJS: We couldn’t. But that’s how we knew. It was 1965. Even poetry was popular. Then along came… what were they called again?

AB: The Pines?

NJS: Of course. They asked us to dim the studio lights in response to Bob Dylan plugging in and folk being dead or something. By the time we went to air we were in complete darkness… and with their insistence that we remain unplugged, in total silence too. Anyone who did tune in would have just seen a black screen. That was the last of ‘Humstrum’ and the last of whatever-there-name-was too. A fitting end really.

AB: Right…

NJS: You’re not actually going to publish any of this are you?

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