Review: New book - Singing from the Floor

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 11:50 AM

"Places like Walthamstow used to get up to 200 on a night",
not every week,more like 100 most weeks,Of course I am talking pre 1990,
I have been living in ireland since then.
Three blackbirds was a well attended club in the eighties and would get 100 on a very good night, but averaged more like 50.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Mar 14 - 06:39 AM

"To give the Harrison in Kings Cross its due, they might be able to, if a club were interested in forming there, to give it credibility."

Coincidentally, I was thinking about doing exacty that once, putting on a regular traditional folk club there. Simply because they have so many well-attended sessions there: an American old-time, an Irish, a klezmer... seems like pretty much the only folk music unrepresented there is British folk song! Also, the one or two gigs that I have put on there have always been real successes in terms of unexpectedly good audience turn-outs.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Mar 14 - 08:18 AM

I spoke to them when they were refitting nigh on two years back, looking for a venue for a CSH Choir boozeup. They are certainly up for it, so go ahead.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 01:47 PM

everyone agrees it was paradise. everyone agrees there were snakes in the garden.......

nearly finished the book

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,Laurence Stevenson
Date: 13 Mar 14 - 09:15 PM

I'm halfway through. I only have experience of Canadian folk clubs, particularly Toronto's Fiddler's Green, but the whole thing seems to ring true. A great read for those of us who love this kind of music.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Mar 14 - 01:12 AM

A poster once described my Pedantry as Legendary: so allow me, as another old enough to remember most of the book's incidents, to question the author's recollections on one important matter:--

The first prize at the competition at the first Cambridge Folk Festival, 1965, was not won, as he asserts, by Derek Brimstone, who took second prize; due partly perhaps to his having forgotten his capo and so being compelled, as he put it, to sing down in his boots. You'd have thought someone would have come forward with the offer of the loan of a capo, but nobody did.

First prize IIRC went to a young English concertina player from Bury, whose name I do not recall, but I remember sang, inter alia, The Leaving Of Liverpool -- not so very familiar a song then as it subsequently became: nor, indeed, the concertina so familiar an instrument.

The first 'group' prize went to The Strawberry Hill Boys, later the Strawbs.

~M~

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 14 Mar 14 - 05:12 AM

Dave Laing and Richard Newman's history of Cambridge FF, published for Cambridge's 30th, states that Derek Brimstone won (according to recollections of judge Pete Sayers) but there were 6 categories.
Concertina players from Bury (assuming that's Bury Lancs, not Bury St Edmunds) in that era might have been Bernard Wrigley (actually, he's from Bolton), Lee Nicholson, Dave Brooks...
Derek

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Mar 14 - 05:53 AM

No, Derek; it was not anyone who went on to make a name, I am sure of that. & the ones you name would probably have been a bit younger at the time. The category was Male Solo Singer. Pete Sayers is dead, alas, so we can't ask him. But I have a very retentive memory, & I am sure I am right.

Anyone else there? Remember anything of it?

I have lost track of Derek. He is still around, is he not? Could he be asked?

~M~

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 14 Mar 14 - 07:52 AM

I'm still around Michael :-) but I presume you are referring to Derek Brimstone. There was a thread about him recently.
Derek

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Mar 14 - 08:41 PM

yeh he's still around - he phoned me up last week. he was stuck in the house, confined to barracks as Jeannie had had a fall and he had to take care of her - so he was phoning everyone up.

I finished the book. a bit depressing I thought. the folk clubs have gone down the tubes. all the stars have got their kids playing the festivals. everybody's happy as jam with the situation.

if it gets any better, we'll all be watching celebrity dancing on x factor.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Mar 14 - 03:32 AM

I finished the book. a bit depressing I thought. the folk clubs have gone down the tubes. all the stars have got their kids playing the festivals. everybody's happy as jam with the situation."
all the stars have got the kids, spot on nepotism is rife.
young english concertina player from bury, here is a wild guess lea nicholson, but the person who might know might be jean seymour, she used to run bury folk club and sang in a 4 part harmony group called the valley folk, with steve heap

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 15 Mar 14 - 05:14 PM

"I finished the book. a bit depressing I thought. the folk clubs have gone down the tubes. all the stars have got their kids playing the festivals. everybody's happy as jam with the situation."

Yes, that does sum up the last chapter, though I didn't get the impression at all that everyone (or even anyone) was happy about it.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 16 Mar 14 - 04:58 AM

Just when I thought it was safe to join in the thread turns nasty:

"all the stars have got the kids, spot on nepotism is rife."

Don't understate your case - say what you really think.

The current collection of 'young people' who are popular in our little genre of music are hard working, talented and full of good ideas.

As for the book? I first went to a folk club in 1964 and have been going ever since. I have seen or read about nearly all the people who are quoted and so I am enjoying the narrative. The format suits the narrative. If I didn't know anybody it might not be so fascinating.

Thanks to JP Bean

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Mar 14 - 05:35 AM

you know, I hadn't considered that. what would it be like reading the book if you didn't know any of these people.

But then you'd be somebody else, wouldn't you....

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 16 Mar 14 - 06:52 AM

i could have been someone - but so could anyone ................

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,m m
Date: 16 Mar 14 - 03:15 PM

"you know, I hadn't considered that. what would it be like reading the book if you didn't know any of these people."

I think the format of the book is such that you feel you know them all pretty well by the end,

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Mar 14 - 03:36 PM

difficult to say.....perhaps if you asked a foreigner. characters like Hamish Imlach.....you couldn't really imagine him.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Mar 14 - 03:36 PM

difficult to say.....perhaps if you asked a foreigner. characters like Hamish Imlach.....you couldn't really imagine him.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Mar 14 - 04:21 PM

The answer is not to give a monkeys about the old established clubs who'd rather die than admit fresh blood, work up a repertoire and make your name in the newer ones. They exist: we have one in North London a year old, and another one discussed above. Why are new ones opening? Because the old ones have gone stale. Which is sort of the conclusion you've come to.
Should the old ones sort themselves out? I think the question is rather CAN the old ones sort themselves out? If most of your members are in their sixties, you deserve to rank as old-time dancing for the previous generation of pensioners, you've become exactly what you accused Cecil Sharp House of being back in the 1980s. The pop world wanted to pick the brains of the folk scene, but all of you were too old to go with them. Where are your teaching courses in your local schools? Yours, not the EFDSS' - such as they are/
I look at Scotland, where the Commun na Clarsach took the decision to put one folk harp into every school - and did it. I'm not talking a folk harp here, but something which would lead the kids using it into the clubs. A basic accordion or summat.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 16 Mar 14 - 06:21 PM

"we have one in North London a year old"

Hi guest. Which folk club are you referring to? I always like to know about new folk clubs in London to attend.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 06:06 AM

Why are new ones opening? Because the old ones have gone stale.

A generalisation, of course, which - like all generalisations is only partly true. There are several long-established clubs in my part of the country (Sussex) and, yes, many of the attendees are grey-haired - but many are not - and a large proportion of the guests booked are up-and-coming youngsters.

What really pisses me off about many of the threads of this ilk is the stupidly artificial division of performers into "oldies" and youngsters" - as though some point has to be made and as though it matters. Music is for playing and it doesn't matter a tiger's tit whether you're 16 or 66 - as long as you can do it. You can gauge for yourself the stupidity of trying to make divisions by age when you look at the variety of good people on the scene. Young Sunjay Brayne performed in Lewes recently; the slightly older Carrivick sisters have been down here in Sussex a couple of times. We had the middle-aged'ish Michael McGoldrick, John McCusker and John Doyle down in Shoreham a fortnight ago and the fairly old Tom Paley has performed in Lewes on several occasions. Why would you want to "classify" these people by age when all that matters is whether they can do the business or not?

Seems to me too many people are bullshitting about the "politics" of the scene - whatever they might be - rather than getting down to some hard practice and concentrating on making the music. You see - if the music is good, people will follow it regardless of age, sex, class, etc.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 06:07 AM

Apologies for the endless italics...

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: doc.tom
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 07:35 AM

Hi guest - who are you? Posting without revealing who you are or your interest is impolite.

Why are new ones forming? - because finally, and after a long time, younger people are actually doing somnething about it rather than just looking for 'I can make a living out of this' stage outlets. Good on them. About time too.

But I thiink you are wrong to suggest that 'the answer is not to give a monkeys about the old established clubs' - where would we be if the older clubs (who were young once) had 'not given a monkeys about' the old singers?

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 09:07 AM

"Because the old ones have gone stale."
I've just been indexing some of the 100 or so recordings we have of folk club evenings recorded in London - some of them going back to the early 1960s.
What still leaps out is the enthusiasm and energy of the performers and audiences - as well as the skill and commitment of all concerned.
We may have been lucky but - they just don't make them like that any more - the proof of the pudding is in the listening.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 09:11 AM

no use getting steamed up Will. people are only telling it as it is, and as its been brewing up since the traddies opened up hostilities - back in the1970's. you're gonna reap what you sow.....and they were dismissive of real English folk talent, because it didn't fit their bloody silly understanding of the phenomenon of folk music.

Sunjay Brayne I know very well. His Dad was on old folkie - thus he has measureless respect for the old guard.

but guys like Gaz Brookfield - they're just ignoring the old guard. the whole shooting match - the festivals, the awards, the old clubs - but his gig last month in Dorchester was standing room only. His albums bristle with originality.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 09:27 AM

Well the point is exactly that, Al: what's the "old guard"? Is Tom Paley "old guard"? Are McGoldrick, McCusker and Doyle "old guard"?

In the long continuum from youth to age, at what stage do the "old guard" suddenly appear?

I've mixed with musicians of all ages, colours, habits, genders and styles over a period of 50 years - all that mattered was whether they could make the music.

Mind you, not all of it was in folk clubs...

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 11:38 AM

one of my favourite albums that I bought from Ewan nd Peggy was the Tom Paley one with Peggy. And lets face, in her time she's said plenty to contribute to the present stand off.

call it guilt by association.

you don't need to convince me that Tom is bloody wonderful, and has spent his life doing great deeds.

the words have been said, the deeds have been done. frankly I don't see a way back -and as I said when talking about the book. the old guard are smug as bugs in a rug and quite happy with the situation. the public schoolboys on the festival stage, the dwindling numbers of youngsters attending clubs -well it vindicates their position. quality will out -and that leaves the rest of us nowhere.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 12:28 PM

"Since the traddies opened up hostilities - back in the1970's" I helped run two folk clubs throughout that decade and one of them (that I was involved with for eight of those years) was a folk & blues club which also attracted its share of contemporary singers. It was my opinion that during that said decade it was the traddies who were the more welcoming and the more open minded than all the other offshoots of the music.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 08:35 PM

well as you know Dave, there were arseholes on both sides of the fence.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 06:18 AM

I haven't ordered the book yet but I think I should.

My local club, the Herga, has greatly changed in character since I was a regular attender in the 70s. Nowadays mostly oldish people but mostly recently made songs: make of that what you will. It's not much to my taste so I go there only on special occasions; but it IS still going strong, after over 50 years.

The only club that I attend regularly nowadays is Sharp's, at Cecil Sharp House. There we get a mixture of ages and a mixture of kinds of material, but with a good proportion of traditional songs. Occasionally there as many as three guitars in the room, other times none. (And on rare occasions Tom Paley brings his, and we're in for a real treat.)

Quality of performances ranges from dire to brilliant, with most being at least pretty good. I can put up with the dire because there's not a lot of that and because I can look forward to the next person probably doing something completely different and much better.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 06:36 AM

Richard, I've only been to Sharp's three times, but every time I thoroughly enjoyed myself and actually felt I learned something. In those three occasions I think I only heard one singer perform a self-penned song, everything else was trad. And every time I was introduced to at least one traditional song which I'd never even heard of before, let alone heard aloud.

On one occasion I sang one song accompanied by banjo and one song unaccompanied. Probably the greatest compliment I've ever had was Tom Paley saying he'd have liked to have heard more of me playing banjo. I say "probably" because of course he might just have meant I can't sing! :)

Of all the folk clubs I've been to (and I've only been to London clubs), I've found Sharp's to be the closest to what I imagine a "proper" folk club is.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 09:00 AM

That's true Al - you din't know which way to turn.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 09:37 AM

not only that - it led to the under valuing, an totally wrong classifying of artists.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 11:09 AM

One thing that rarely gets stated in discussing why folk clubs have declined in popularity, or in suggesting ways folk clubs could appeal more to the young, is that, quite simply, traditional music merely stopped being so popular.

Y'know, rather than looking for institutional reasons why folk clubs waned, isn't it bloody obvious that folk's popularity was a pretty unlikely fluke to begin with? It's fairly weird that the folk boom ever happened in the first place. One of those odd twists of fashion.

Rather than it being anything to do with traddies versus singer-songwriters, or the rise of comedy-type folkies in the 70s, or the lack of strong voices or whatever ... isn't it simply just that folk was always a bit square ... and so it was only a matter of time before its holiday in popular culture had to end.

I was talking to someone from an organisation that provides funding for specialist music genres recently. And they were calling for submissions of ideas of making folk (among other genres) more accessible to young people. I told them that I genuinely thought they were throwing their money away: you can only make folk cool by making cool folk music. And, face it, Sam Lee is never going to seem as cool as Fat White Family, Tyler the Creator or Micachu & the Shapes.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 11:47 AM

interesting ideas Matt.

I think we're talking about two different things.

organisations like Folkus in Lancashire do sterling work in introducing young people to folk music. and I'm sure there are other such organisation the length and breadth of the land.

but what conferred 'cool' status on folk was mainly to do with its espousal by left wing bohemia - playwrights like MacColl and John Arden, the Greenwich village set in America, revulsion at the cold war and the threat of nuclear war - all made it cutting edge.

when the Cecilites started insisting that what folk music was about was the ladies dancing at Whitsun, and the row between the cages - that was the start of the downward spiral.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 11:55 AM

"traditional music merely stopped being so popular."
Couldn't agree less.
The clubs emptied when they stopped presenting what it said on the label.
My last visit to a club I hadn't scrupulously checked out first was the night I returned home from a folk club without hearing a song that didn't remotely resemble a folk song.
Many of us stayed with the songs, but on a different level; some of the best researchers and writers on the subject are refugees from a folk scene that abandoned its roots.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: doc.tom
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 11:56 AM

Nearly finished reading the book. I can't remember the clubs declining that fast or that early - i.e. if you believe the quoted performers who went off into stage acts at about that time (QED). I think it is a very valuable book - I just had to keep reminding myself that it was suposedly about 'Singing from the floor' (although the quotes come from professional performers and organisers rather than floor performers!) and alledgedly about the folk clubs (althgough it includes about half of the diversity and completely omits swathes of really significant contributors to the scene.) So long as we recognise the huge gaps in the book - both in the history of the clubs and in the performers who made such wonderful music through the 70s and 80s, then it is a notable assemblage of anecdotes from some individuals. It lets a few of those who were there remember their own experiences - but no more.

So. Now. Who's going to fill in the gaps?

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 12:15 PM

The Welsh have the eisteddfod movement, the Irish flead, the Scottish their kids circles. And now you know where the gaps are. You begin with your grandkids.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 12:20 PM

@Jim, I'm not being facetious here, it's a genuine question: do you think the decline in the popularity of folk clubs really had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the decline of the popularity of folk as a popular musical genre then? Do you ascribe that to pure coincidence?

You think that if all folk clubs had continued to present nothing but traditional folk songs we would still have a thriving folk club scene, packing 'em in every week?

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 01:16 PM

As I remember, as best I can, we went to folk clubs for a range of reasons: the music, the venue, friends, beer, sex, politics, the feeling of being part of an obscure underground activity and more.

As I/we aged some of these features fell away either personally - friends/sex or socially - venues closed.

Few of the audience continued to go every week and so clubs closed. The 60/70s folk clubs were our generational thing - we have grown old and died together.

Now, back to the Book! I think it is an excellent read and a great way to explore a musical and social phenominon.

Thanks Mr Bean

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 02:06 PM

"The clubs emptied when they stopped presenting what it said on the label."Jim Carroll.
I want to make it clear I have never met Jim Carroll, and have no personal animosity,I find myself continuously disagreeing with sweeping generalisations made by him , which he rarely is able to back up with evidence, an example is his quote above.
Firstly no one on this forum has been able to define folk song, secondly, I am sure I visit folk clubs more often than jim carroll, and i can categorically state that in the folk clubs that i get booked in, my repertoire, and the repertoire of the performers I have heard in those folk clubs, are either traditional folk songs or songs by contemporary songwriters such as MacColl , Seeger,Twney, Lowe, Rosselson, Peter Bond, Bill Caddick.,PeteCoe, song wirters who are generally considered to be writing in a style based on the tradition. Jim you are clearly, out of touch with the english folk club scene, your one experience cannot be takenas the norm ,you are generalising from the particular.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 02:17 PM

Matt;
The folk song revival was never more than a minority interest.
Having said that, it involved a fair number of devotees who took it fairly seriously.
The people I knew who walked away did so, not because they lost interested in the songs but because of the rapid decline in the places where it was possible to hear them.
The period was marked by a long-ish running debate in Folk Review under the title 'Crap Begets Crap'
Earlier there had been a sharp decline in audiences when the Music Industry lost interest in 'erzatz' folk song and moved on to pastures new, but the blandness of 'The Smothers Brothers at the Purple Onion', Peter Paul and Hairy's 'Puff the Magic Dragon' and The Kingston Trio's cabaret-like performances never really counted in my book - though I did dabble in many of them (but I never inhaled!)
One of the great failures of the revival was that it never caught the imagination of a wide audience.
As Tom has suggested - lots of gaps to fill, lots of intelligent non-agenda driven research needed.
I set out gathering old articles from magazines like Fred Dallas's 'Folk Song Magazine, Tradition, Traditional Topics... all of which I regularly visit when I need some information.. or simply just cheering up.
I can't begin to tell you was re-listening to MacColl's The Song Carriers or some of Bert Lloyd's Third Programme offerings does for my morale it manages to remind me that maybe I didn't waste a half century of my life - good days!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 02:46 PM

you're a nice man. I am sure Jim.

but it saddens me that you can ascribe no value to a group like peter, paul and mary.

they taught folksongs to millions of people. I believe the watersons learned the soulin' song from them.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 03:07 PM

"One of the great failures of the revival was that it never caught the imagination of a wide audience."
There were in my opinion several reasons for this,
.1. The Establishment were frightened of a movement that had a political edge to it and so discouraged the media from promoting it.
2. Ewan MacColl.I am sure he had the best of intentions, but his influence upon the revival was, in my opinion, a double edged sword, he encouraged political song writing, which was good, at the same time he influenced people to look to their uk roots, in some ways that was good,but it was never going to be of interest commercially.
by contrast look at Pete Seeger and the Weavers, this guy was brilliant, because despite being ostracised during the MacCarthy years, and subsequently he was able to get on to the us media and present programmes that got beyond the folk afficianados, he was eventually able to present songs of social comment and songs of underprivileged people on the us media and get his message across to thousands of people., check out rainbow quest, and other you tube.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 03:10 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VucczIg98Gw
pete seeger showing where we all went wrong

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 04:01 PM

"but it saddens me that you can ascribe no value to a group like peter, paul and mary."
Didn't say I ascribed no value to them - I'm sure they gave many children many moments of pleasure - but their blandness had nothing to do with the folk songs that gave me half a century of pleasure - a little like filling a three quarter empty bottle of Highland Park with water to make it last longer.
No they did,'t "teach" many millions folk songs - they projected an anodyne image of folk song that did nothing one way or another.
As for teaching the Watersons their souling songs - I think you'll find Dorothy Furbar, Matthew Hollinshead and Phil Tanner and all that lovely crowd from the 1950s BBC recording project had far more to do with that - (please say who? Al.)
Some of these groups did lead on to higher things - I started off at the Liverpool Spinners Club - but most of them generated a taste for their own watered-down take on the genre which non-plussed many who were presented with the real thing - saw it happen dozens of times.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 04:32 PM

Someone above mentioned Folk being "cool".
Folk was never "cool", it has always been a minority sport. As I remember it the majority of performers in the late 50's into the 60's had "real jobs" and performed because they liked the music and enjoyed doing so. They didn't do it because they wanted be famous. I still see people like that at clubs although I must admit that I am not a regular club visitor.
If radio and television would have some real programmes on on a regular basis exposing the music more then it might generate wider interest but there ain't much chance of that.
I thought the book was a good read despite the fact that many clubs and performers were omitted, and it brought back many memories.

Hoot

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 05:39 PM

GSS, what actually killed it was a decision in 1975 within the music industry to kill anything which wasn't hip-hop or punk, for purely commercial reasons. It had nothing to do with folk, or heavy metal, or progressive rock, or concept albums, or...well, anything else was banned from Radio 1 and we nearly lost the folk shows on Radio 2. It's only because of people like Charlie Gillett that we survived as a subset of world music, other than in the clubs: we see it on Radio 3's Late Junction, about the only outward-looking program (as opposed to those where the fluff-gathering introspection led to this: Mike Harding being a case in point, a show so dedicated to insiders it never occurred to him to stretch beyond the boundaries of the club world).

Look at what's starting to happen outside your circle now. I came back into this courtesy of working with Stevie Wisheart, with whom I'd worked on a 2010 Proms composition, and Sheema Mukherjee at a mutual friend's Silver Wedding festivities. That was Early Music meets Indian. From Sheema I found myself sitting in on Martin Carthy's "arranging folk" seminar in the South Bank, which was almost entirely full of classical composition students from Uxbridge, one other folkie who was only there to adulate Martin, and me. From there I found myself singing with Cecil Sharp House Choir in Tapping the Source, last year's Southbank review of where we are going, alongside Martin, Pete Flood and Andy Mellon, and was borrowed by Mary King for their workshop. They've asked me back again this year to work again with half of Bellowhead in the Pull Out All The Stops festival currently taking over Radio 3, doing five gigs this weekend. It's new stuff written by Pete and Andy and somewhat arranged by the rest of us the performers, for example one piece of pure cockney taken from a basic idea of Andy's where he's had far more than he expected. A belly laugh, sure, but that's part of what folk should be about, getting out of the ivy-covered towers and into the real world.

I follow that next week with a performance of The Events with the Actors Touring Company, a deep examination of the Breivik killings on a Norwegian Choir. It's working in social reality in a way worthy of Ewan MacColl's Radio Ballads. We also have Oh! What a Lovely War back in Stratford. Yet all you're interested in is nostalgia and recreating the folkclubs of yore. Yawn.

The rest of the music world doesn't just live in specialist clubs, it gets out and gigs in pubs and clubs. Yes, the Sage does a lot for Northumbrian and Border, but when did any of you take over somewhere like the Sheffield Crucible? Unless you get out of your holy huddle, this genre will die in England. Don't expect them to come to you, go to them. As performers, you have a responsibility to perform, and although there may be material in the gander bag which is entirely applicable, add to it, ffs. There's enough going on in the world at the moment. You have an election coming up, why aren't you out there kicking? Or are you such lily-livered lummocks you're happy to go on as you are?

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 06:00 PM

The person above who mentioned the word 'cool' was me. If you re-read my post you'll see I basically agree with you. I was disparaging contemporary attempts to make folk cool. I was saying that you can't force young people to like folk music: all you can do is tell people about good folk music when you encounter it, and hope other people like it.

That said, folk music did have a huge youth audience back then. So, whether or not you like the adjective 'cool', it clearly wasn't something irredeemably fogeyish. It was part of youth culture in a way it has never been since, and never will again. Besides, being famous or being popular isn't usually a signifier of 'cool' anyway. I'd be surprised if anybody who saw Bert Jansch play in 1965 thought he was a right square.

Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 08:37 PM

the picture of Bert Jansch on the cover of the blue album - almost the epitome of cool.

Apparently not Jim, it was PPM, who furnished that song for the Frost and Fire album. They were very eclectic in those days. The first time I saw them, they sang High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire - a poem by Jean Ingelow.

Ring out! Ring out! you Boston bells

boston is my hometown - the reason I remembered it.

you know others of us have spent fifty years doing folk music - performing, teaching techniques, putting on folk clubs, turning up. with the best will in the world -why do you feel you have sovereign rights. Jesus said his fathers house had many mansions - why do you feel folk music is a one bedroom flat?