partner, Martin Carthy, joined Steeleye Span in 1971 to the astonoshment of many in the folk music world. Five Hand Reel a band formed out of the remnants of Spencer's Feat proved to be one of the more successful and influential folk rock bands. Releasing four albums with Topic/RCA records they were popular in Europe, where they gave most of their performances. Unlike the 'English' genre of folk tunes prevalent in the other popular bands, Five Hand Reel performed powerful Scots & Irish songs and won Melody Maker's "Folk Album of the Year in 1975" Second were groupings created directly by the members or former members of Fairport Convention, which can be seen as the nexus from which a family of organisations or performers emerged. Sandy Denny's short-lived group Fotheringay was one of these and Steeleye Span was another, the latter formed as a traditionally focussed, but essentially electric outfit, by Ashley Hutchings after his departure from Fairport in late 1969. He left Steeleye Span after three albums and eventually formed the Albion Country Band, later the Albion Band, which broke up in 2002. The Albion Band in turn spawned one of the most musically talented British folk rock groups of the 1980s Home Service, whose third album Alright Jack (1985) is often seen as representing another artistic highpoint for the genre. A much smaller group of English bands were formed in emulation of existing folk rock bands. Most often the model seems to have been Steeleye Span, as it was for the Cambridge group Spriguns of Tolgus, the Northumbrian band Hedgehog Pie and the Oyster Band, who started as the unpromising Fiddler's Dram in 1978. Fiddler's Dram were often dismissed as "one hit wonders" for their single "Day Trip to Bangor", which peaked at no 3 in the UK and for their clear status as "Steeleye Span soundalikes". What was remarkable is that they proved to have a singer-songwriter of genuine talent in Cathy Lesurf, and after she had left for the Albion Band in 1980 the remaining members regrouped as the Oyster Band (latterly Oysterband), an increasingly heavy and politically aware folk rock unit who produced some of the best work in the genre in the 1980s and 1990s, merging into the developing folk punk and independent scenes. Decline and survival 1977–85 For a time electric folk threatened to break through to the mainstream, peaking in the early-to-mid-1970s