The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #138897   Message #3185104
Posted By: Ian Fyvie
10-Jul-11 - 06:41 PM
Thread Name: Steamfolk
Subject: RE: Steamfolk
Lots of angles to go on in this thread!

I've skimmed virtually every posting and would highlight Brian Peters as taking some sensibles lines. I'll pick up on the class angle.

If the 'Folk' we participate in is a middle class construct, then that helps explain some other features of folk, clubs; and many people who run them - they carry baggage!

That baggage is the relationship between themselves at leisure, and the working classes. They don't really want the working classes there!

Most horrific of all for these middle classes is when a working class person wannts a floor spot!. You can almost read their minds; "Gosh - what an uncouth accent" "Will he swear on stage?" "Will she make lewd references?""Will they fart between verses?"

The idyllic construct of course would have no place for such things, but they have this percieved fear of workng class behavior. The Subjects of their songs may be fresh off the trawler, the farm or the factory floor; but they can only trust their own middle class kind to portray 'The Workies' on stage.

Yes I know there are tangents here I should have rounded, but if anyone reading this comes along to one of our singarounds, I'll sing them a song called "Guy with the Golden Finger in his Ear" which makes the main point better than here where I'm trying to be brief..

Ian Fyvie.