Bob, I think you may find more agreement than not. I DO self-censor, but in the way you talk about. I try to write songs I think people would want to hear, but sometimes I write just to get things out of my system, just to see if I CAN, just to get started or find out what my ideas are. Sometimes, these things just don't seem worth developing. Other times, one that seems horrible is one that, down the road a bit and with some work, might make the best song. My songs usually don't make it out of my computer, though.

I once read a discussion in a newsgroup that, no matter how it started, wound up being about folk songs as history. Somebody, I think it was Dick Gaughan but I can't prove it, said something that made a lot of sense to me. The following is my opinion, but I give him credit for presenting the idea so I could think about it.

Folk songs are not historical. (Most history isn't historical.) They can allude to historical events, but every last one of them is told from the perspective of the songwriter. The perspective of the songwriter is influenced by society at the time: laws, morals, taboos, religion...basically anything about which a bunch of people can share belief.

This becomes a problem, because societies change, beliefs change, but songs that come down to 'now' after being plucked out of time, don't change. They can, but they're often just dropped, as John & Tony did with the Magician. Some songs can be altered to be less offensive. Other times the offended really need to be altered, but that isn't practical or legal. The bottom line is that, while songs can't be taken as history, they're a very good indicator of how people FELT about what happened.

Without going into specifics, I'm sure everyone can think of things that offend us now that society took for granted when the song was new. Name an 'ism' - the growing-up of the western world seems to be find us in that phase where we question our 'isms' and spend a lot of time offended about what we think we should change. I figure, as a species, that makes us teenagers.

With really sensitive subjects, the icky, 'not-with-a-10-foot-pole' ones, humor (even if only sarcasm) and poetic obfuscation/metaphors are some ways to soften the dead-on, in-your-face, shock of some subjects. This last may be something the songwriter wants to do - to grab people and shake them up. That's what it seems like Ochs was doing in Yorkshire Yankee's example. The problem with that is that, for a small number of listeners who don't have good reactions to the finger-wagging, lecture type of songwriting, no matter HOW goood, it's going to turn us off. Some people love it because they're sure it's aimed at Other People. I know better.


Genie, I believe I heard an interview where the writer of 'Timothy' said he was a mule. (Timothy, not the writer.) In this case, the song was a huge hit and the belief it was about cannibalism probably helped it. There are lots of traditional folk songs about people who eat people. If they aren't about some significant event, they're about sailors since they're more apt to be stranded without food. Well, except fish, but you can get tired of fish pretty fast.