The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #99963 Message #1999732
Posted By: Big Al Whittle
17-Mar-07 - 05:47 PM
Thread Name: It isn't 'Folk', but what is it we do?
Subject: RE: It isn't 'Folk', but what is it we do?
These are the thoughts that sustaine me as an artist and they have come to me through years of working as a musician and artist.
they are what I understand, because they are what I have seen.
i don't know what you two have been doing. As you won't put your heads above the parapet, i can't see why you're so damn keen on insulting my views.
my views are the basis of a working attitude - yours just seem to spring from the need to insult.
the point is that public and minority radio has never been about market share and all that music industry bollocks. (and if you'd ever worked in the music industry - you'd know that's exactly what it is -just sophistry by rich guys making crap decisions).
To return to my point there has always been a sort Reithian intention about the BBC but it falls on its arse when it comes to music.
I used to gig in a country and Western band (in the 70's the Brit country and western scene was awash with talent - mainly from the Irish showband scene that was coming to an end), and I'd slip out in an interval to a rock club - from someplace where the audience had been going mad throwing their knickers in the air. you'd go across the road to a rock club that was empty, but it was the rock club that got the Peel sessions , the reviews in NME, etc.
And the reason that thecountry scene was never reviewed or written about was that it was working class.
And the same situation obtains here and now with the folkscene.
that's the way English people continue to be disenfranchised from their folk voice, by the 'tradition'.