"for gods sake check your facts."
I damn well know the situatio with pubs - we walked our feet off looking for premises long enough to have been made aware of "the facts"
Time and again we were told that publicans with unused rooms couldn't be arsed having music because of the potential expense, or offering us rooms for exorbitant rents "to cover the costs".
Even when we ran Singers workshop we had trouble finding venues.
We got a perfect room in Fulham once, only to have the publican change his mind when he heard music was involved - "don't want those P.R.S. bastards in".
One sympathetic publican offered us the use of his room for a club once on the understanding that we didn't advertise.
There was actually a crisis in the revival at one time when the P.R.S. first made folk clubs subject to their tax - it was covered in Folk Review.
If you made your points less belligerently you wouldn't appear as stupid as you do when you are shown wrong - and these discussions wouldn't be pissing contests you people insist on making them.
"I put a lot of work into that post and you just brush it aside"
I don't brush it aside - I respond to them as I believe them to be - well covered inaccuracies.
"I have never experienced this and you have provided no evidence that it happens."
Yes I have - this argument with its "bob geldof songs are folk songs" and other such arguments are indications that this is what i will find at many folk clubs - silence and support for such statements show the position is accepted, as do ads for hip-hop, 1950s pop jazz..... as part of 'folk evenings.
Many clips put up i this and other arguments give me a chance on what I have been missing.
"So what did he think of "newly composed songs written using folk forms""
He actually sang some of them, in his inimitable style, on the films like 'The Irishmen' and on the radio ballads - that's how close they were to the traditional forms.
MacColl's best songs were not only based on folk forms, but the texts were often taken from actuality of singers and speakers like Sam larner (Shoals of Herring) or Ben Bright (Shellback) or Jack Hamilton (Just a Note) or a whole gang of Travellers or (Freeborn man and Thirty Foot Trailer) or a group of Scots Border farmers (Tenant farmer)
Joe admired the songs, though he never compared them with his own (unlike some folkies).
"For the umpteenth time of asking, can you tell me what is the "fairly solid definition" of "newly composed songs written using folk forms"
For the umpteenth time, you've been given examples of some, just thrown in a few more, with another reason why they are what they are.
Jim Carroll