Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 10:48 AM

to sing it in anything other than an attempted "strine" accent made it sound ridiculous

Not sure why - I think I've only ever heard it sung in a fairly broad Lancashire accent. Sounds fine.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 11:14 AM

Don't you think it is rather rude of you to doubt my word about my friends' reaction, Hoot ~~ to me and to them? But, hell, "what cares I for praise!"

~M~

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 11:22 AM

I'd have thought that any attempt to sing anything to an audience is a performance - whether you're singing in your own accent or someone else's. By performance I mean making the effort to breathe some life and drama into the song by whatever means necessary.

Jim suggests "once you sing a song in an accent that is outside your own personal experience, then you run the risk of placing the song at arms-length from you and it becomes a 'technical performance' rather than an emotional interpretation". The difficulty with this, is that one's own experience is not merely limited to accent but also to the content matter of the song. In my case it would mean limiting myself to little more than songs about growing up in the Black Country in the 1970s and being a social worker. I don't know many traditional songs (or contemporary ones for that matter) about either subject. I suspect we need to worry less about authenticity - our entire folk revival is a pretty artificial construct anyway and none the worse for this - and more about enjoying the songs. If that means - for some people - performing in terms of accent and delivery as well as attempting to emotionally inhabit world other than our own, bring it on!

If I sing about a "minister's daughter in the north" murdering then being haunted by the ghosts of her children, I am not and will not become that minister's daughter...

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 11:32 AM

Not sure why - I think I've only ever heard it sung in a fairly broad Lancashire accent. Sounds fine

That'll be because of all those wild dingoes roaming the Lancashire hills, Pip.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 12:57 PM

Pip Radish: "Pub with no Beer" written by an Australian I believe and certainly made famous by an Australian singing about dingoes and the outback. It might sound fine in broad Lancashire but in my opinion it doesn't sound right in my accent despite some Americans mistaking my natural speaking voice for someone originating in the Antipodes.

MtheGM: Not being rude at all or doubting your word about the reaction you got, just suggesting that your friends like mine may have been too polite to react honestly to your efforts.

I too have a tendency to be polite about people's efforts unless I am being asked to pay money to see and hear them.

In the end it doesn't matter a jot what accent you use if the end result is enjoyable.

Enjoy the music and don't get too serious. Most of us do it for fun.

Hoot

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 02:29 PM

Remind me - what does an English Accent sound like again ?

I don't even recognise my own kids accent as English ( and they definitely are ...) !!

Ken

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: Tim Chesterton
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 03:16 PM

I have a natural mid-Atlantic accent. I was born in England, lived in several different parts of it, then moved to Canada at the age of 17. I'm now 52, and my natural accent is half way between. In conversation with fellow-Canadians, it gets more Canadian. In public speaking (I'm a pastor) it reverts to its British roots. I don't do this on purpose - it just seems to happen.

But I do agree that some English folk really make me laugh when they sing with American accents (funniest of all, to me, is Sting singing about being 'An Englishman in New York' in a very non-English accent!).

But I question this statement: ' "once you sing a song in an accent that is outside your own personal experience, then you run the risk of placing the song at arms-length from you and it becomes a 'technical performance' rather than an emotional interpretation".

That may be true if you were singing your own compositions. but if you're singing traditional folk songs, most of them are outside your own personal experience.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 03:38 PM

The comments about Jamaican accents and so forth reminded me of a social work colleague of mine who used to find people were taken aback when they met her on a first visit, because they'd assumed from her Jamaican accent that she must be black. In fact I believe something like one in five Jamaicans are white.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 04:51 PM

"I think it no accident that two of the greatest of folksingers, Ewan MacColl & Theo Bikel,"
Can't speak for Theodor Bikel Mike - my memory of him is a multi-language album not long after I became involved in folk; seem to remember him being a somewhat polished singer who didn't really leave much of an impression - sorry, probably being very unfair.
Ewan's connection between singing and acting was a somewhat complicated one. Don't know what he was like as an actor, but I know that he used Stnislavski's acting techniques to get a singer to connect with a song rather than to perform it - to internalise the song and make it part of them, using things like 'emotion memory' and 'application of the idea of 'if''.
His 'bible' in runnng the Critics Group was Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares. He in no way advocated a singer acting out a song, or using theatrical techniques, but to bring a song to the singer rather than a singer to the song.
It was quite a difficult process to get used to, but when it worked, I saw some of the most electrifying performances from some not very experienced singers using this method.
People have often accused MacColl's singing of being 'theatrical' - I have to say that, apart from some very early recordings, I never really saw this (though I do have a fascinating recording of him singing 'The Death of Hector' made for the BBC some time in the forties, I think) .
I don't really think accent has very much to do with this, except that, for me anyway, singing in an accent other than your own, or one you are not very familiar with, has the effect of not only externalising the song, but of holding it at arms length.
Happy to discuss this fully, but will have to sleep on it first (or rather, to have several pints, then sleep on it) - it's been a long time.
Another thought - when we started recording in Ireland, we got a load of very singable songs, but I avoided putting them in my repertoire because of my fear of sounding 'Oirish'.
The same with my love of Scots ballads; I spent most of my life listening to them but not singing them because I felt my Liverpool accent (now all but disappeared) didn't suit them.
Over the latter years I have taken to Anglicising the songs I like, and nowadays, now I am not singing as much, these are the ones I fall back on in sessions. Most of them (but not all) work perfectly.
Now where did I put that Guinness?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 06:06 PM

Hoot ~~ without wishing to be heavy or touchy or any such, feel in justice to them & me that I should make clear that I am talking of real friends of 40+ years standing ~~ the sort from whom one will expect & get candour; not the sort of casual acquaintance who would feel obligated to be 'polite' to avoid offence.

Jim ~~ enjoy your Guinness.


~Michael~

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,glueperson
Date: 04 Nov 10 - 06:17 PM

The definitive spoken mid-atlantean was Kent Walton. Vintage grapple fans will recall him commentating on a Mick McManus vs Jackie Pallo bout from a crumbling town hall surrounded by abusive dowagers. Kendo Nagasaki, Les Kellet, Steve Logan and Mike Marino, we will not see their like again.

"Have a good week - till next week".

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 04:04 AM

I refresh this thread with some hesitation ~~ it had gone on & on for some while ~~ because the unhappy death of Gerry Rafferty, & consequent U-Tube links on his obit thread to his Baker Street, have brought it all back to mind. Not speaking ill of the dead if I say that that was a perfect example of the phenomenon which made me OP this thread in the first place last Autumn ~~ a Scotsman (born Paisley) singing about a street in the West End of London in an accent which would have been much more appropriate to a street running somewhere between Broadway & Central Park in the W80s.

Again ~~ why oh why? And did nobody but me think it strange?

~M~

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:01 AM

A conundrum, eh, Michael? Well, you could say - if you wanted to - that the song is about a stranger in a strange land. It's about the hopes and dreams and failures of a non-Londoner musician in the harsh world of 'trying to make it down in London' who's yearning for home. So that, perhaps, crosses off one of your caveats. :-)

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:40 AM

Good point, Will ~~ but does he sound as if he's come there from Paisley? Honest, now...

~M~

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 07:15 AM

You're a man of accents yourself, MtheGM - when you sing Butter & Cheese & All (for example) it's hardly in the persona of your true Glittering Groucho Club Gliterato self. Likewise the down-home rusticity of Cotton Mill Girls isn't quite you either, is it?

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 07:24 AM

Zis "MtheGM" - 'e eez 'oist wiz 'is own petard, n'est-ce-pas?

(Just trying out a French accent over my native Lancastrian...)

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 07:29 AM

GR had that soft rock accent down pretty well. The sound of Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, a lost highway of broken dreams, the accent of fallen archangels one likes to think.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 07:47 AM

But, Sean, if I now & again depart from my native accent, I endeavour to do so in some way relevant to the topic or milieu of the song. Butter&Cheese is a Norfolk song. Cotton Mill Girls is a down-home rustic American one. But if I sang every one of them in the same cod-Mummerset [as so many folkies do], then 'oist should I surely be wiz my own petard {Mille remerciments, Will}.

~M~

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 07:50 AM

... & glueman, the accent of fallen archangels is surely nearer to Miltonic blank verse than to Fleetwood Mac?

~M~

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree
aaaagggghh don't get me going...

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 08:19 AM

Hmmm - never been too good with accents myself, which is why I never bother; even Santa Fe Trail tends to come out in the voice of a ex-pat Northumbrian Border settler, though I've felt odd bits of Americana creeping in of late - that said even on Hog of the Forsaken I don't stray too far west of Backworth.

My old favourites The Manband (or just Man as they called themselves to look big on posters in the days before internet search engines) sang beautifully largely on account of their being Welsh but did so in American accents. The great Eric Burdon is a Geordie who absorbed the blues as much as the blues absorbed him (even finding his way onto the cover of the Mothers' We're Only in it for the Money) and whilst his stage intros are done very much in character, in interviews it's Walker all the way.

Happily, people can - and will - do what they want.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 08:35 AM

Akkadian is the favoured language of archangels, I like to think, a knowledge of Babylonian being pretty essential in the smiting business. This must surely be the soundtrack of any descent to the underworld:
Go

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 08:46 AM

Ha! No shit:

The Hog of the Forsaken got no reason to cry
He got to chew the angels fallen from on high
He ain't waiting for no answer
baking woeful pie -
Pie of eyesight pie blue-black
Woe that pie
The pie of by and by

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 04:10 PM

Just reading back with disbelief at some of the sneering sods criticisng Ralph McTell's accent.

Some people wouldn't recognise creative endeavour if it bit their balls off.

Personally i count myself blessed to have seen Ralph work and own some of his recordings. His lifetime of songwriting work speaks for itself. His guitar work has been inspirational.

Over a period of forty odd years Ralph has established through his many achievments the right to sing in exactly the voice he wants. he has proved with his life the artistic validity of his contribution.

In the bowels of Christ, consider that what you think you know about folk music might be wrong.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 05:28 PM

I say again, Al ~~ I have nothing but respect for Ralph McTell's CREATIVE ENDEAVOUR. Please reread my posts of 03 Nov 10, 06.10AM & 04.45PM. But that doesn't compel me to admire the taste or manner of his performance ~~ whatever might have been his contribution for however long

Have you ever heard T S Eliot reading The Waste Land? Toneless & horrible, to my ear. Any competent actor could do it better. I can't offhand think of a cover of Streets Of London; but I am sure there must be some more appropriate to the atmosphere & milieu of the song than Ralph's own renditions. The creator is not necessarily the best person to perform his own work: nothing ~ not even the fact of being the author, or having contributed for 40+ years ~ gives anyone "the right to sing in exactly the voice he wants", if that voice fights [in this case, literally, absolutely FIGHTS] the milieu & atmosphere of his work. The man has reduced his own cogent social comment to a crooning sentimentality which sets the teeth on edge. What amazes me is how he can have failed to have observed this anomaly for himself.

In those same bowels, consider you may be critically incorrect here.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:14 PM

When I was 18, TS Eliot reading the Waste land was my favourite recording of anything. I listened to it many times. That is the voice that creared the Waste Land. The rhythms and resonances of of old Toilets voice still echo in my mind every time I read the lines now.

But that's neither here nor there Mike. what is crucial is McTell's right to create with exactly the brushes from the pallete that HE chooses. Not some prefigured stereotypical way a Croydon lad should sing.

Charles Strickland in The Moon and Sixpence is asked to consider what if he turns out to be a bad painter - should he have abandoned his wife and family.

Strickland says something like, when a man finds himself drowning in the river - he has to swim. It doesn't matter whether he swims well or badly. All he knows is, he has to swim, and that is my predicament. It doesn't matter whether I paint well or badly, I have to paint.

And I think that is Ralph McTell. A completely committed artist, who has put his best foot forward (as it feels to him) and people have to make what they will of it. Thankfully there are quite a few of us who find what he does acceptable - remarkable even. We know we couldn't do it as well.

What is stunning is that this chap from a very poor background has realised his ambition to be an artist. Ralph, when he started out had this persona as a sort of ragtime cavalier. His reference points were US folksingers and the glamour of the European continent that few of us had seen, but he had.

It was an ambitious pose. Perhaps a bit uppity for a working class kid. But I reckon he pulled it off, pretty damn well.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:15 PM

PS happy new year Mike!

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:20 PM

I refresh this thread with some hesitation ~~ it had gone on & on for some while ~~ because the unhappy death of Gerry Rafferty, & consequent U-Tube links on his obit thread to his Baker Street, have brought it all back to mind. Not speaking ill of the dead if I say that that was a perfect example of the phenomenon which made me OP this thread in the first place last Autumn ~~ a Scotsman (born Paisley) singing about a street in the West End of London in an accent which would have been much more appropriate to a street running somewhere between Broadway & Central Park in the W80s.

I hadn't noticed that song until he pulled off the ultimate publicity campaign for it this week (and will probably forget it forever in a few hours, in fact I can't remember anything of the tune a minute after it stopped, except that it was a faux-Dylan droning monotone of emasculated blues).

It does sound American to me at about the three-minute mark, but earlier on the voice is more like that of a Scottish actor trained in RP to get a job in the English-dominated drama cartel (I have known quite a few of them and always find their very existence depressing). Rafferty's Scottish origins are so throroughly disguised that if I didn't know better I'd have guessed he was a Liverpudlian putting that accent on.

Nice sax solo, though.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:40 PM

Nick Keir of the McCalmans sums it up in this song!

http://www.the-mccalmans.com/lyrics/lyrics-American-Accent.htm

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:41 PM

ok,lets cut the crap.
he sings with a southern English accent,CUP, NOT COOP,he clearly enunciates, pity, not piddy, in the version i heard.
he does sing gal instead of girl, does that make him an upper class twit or a yank. his[mctells] diction is pretty good. my guess is that he is a south londoner possibly Streatham/Brixton /Tooting, not even soUth east london, his accent is fairly similiar to Carthy, who is a south londoner, and to myself, I was born in lewisham.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAeV6EfzEs

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:48 PM

ok i have just googled Mctell, he was born in Croydon and raised in Farnborough kent, I was born in lewisham, lived there until I was 10 and then moved to Downe kent[DOWNE IS 5 MILESfrom FARNBOROUGH]
Mctell has almost the same accent as myself, and it is hardly American.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:49 PM

Croydon to be precise (that's if you're talking about Ralph, GSS - cross-posting has rather mixed things up!) I've just read his autobiography of his childhood and earlier years - fascinating stuff!

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:55 PM

Hootenanny, grr grr grr
Pub with no beer was written by an irishman,
It was popularised by slim dusty an Ausralian

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jan 11 - 06:58 PM

TATTIE BOGLE correct MCTELL was born in Farnborugh kent raised in Croydon

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 12:57 AM

Al ~~ Somerset Maugham's point, tho, is surely that Strickland's compulsions were a matter mnemonic to him, but did not place the actual achievement of his art above criticism by qualified & interested third parties. Thus surely too McTell??

Thank you: & a Happy New Year right back to you...

〠Michael〠

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 06:52 AM

So, lets get this right, you're going to be the 'qualified and interested third party'.

best of luck with the role, Mike.

al

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 07:23 AM

A coop is where chickens are kept. A northerner pronounces cup as 'cup', not 'cap'. The Beatles sang as they did because they were influenced by Jerry Lee Lewis and Leadbelly and they, like numerous other English performers, used the 'voice' of their medium and unselfconsciously spoke scouse when not singing.

Billy Bragg, Neil Tennant, Morrissey, Noel Coward, used different forms of vernacular English to sing with, others like Gerry Rafferty use universal rock and roll. Who cares as long as it sounds good?

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 07:37 AM

Glueman ~~ the director of the Cambridge Folk Fest, many·many years ago, said to me that most people didn't care what music he gave them so long as it was good. He never responded to my request in my very next Folk Review column for the the Allegri String Quartet playing Beethoven's Late Quartets + the London Bach players performing all six Brandenburg Concerti as mainstay of the next year's festival. Wonder why?

Al ~~ your tone is saecastic; but why? I didn't say I was going to be the qualified and interested 3rd pty; but as I have been a professional critic of folk music since 1969, for journals as diverse as The Times, The Guardian, Folk Review, Record Mirror, TES, Cambridge Evening News [cont p 94], in what way do you regard me as a 3P neither qualified to comment on, nor interested in, the topic, please?

~M~

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Sometimes The Norm
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 08:05 AM

Met a funny little German once who hung around for awhile.
(He reckoned he was an expert on the 5-String banjo and had intimate knowledge of the "Folk Music" of his forefathers)....
I somehow managed to get him so pissed that he fell over backwards before he ever samg a word.
Don't remember which direction he was facing when he came to....

[Norm]

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Sometimes The Norm
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 08:19 AM

Further to your complaint may I add that:-

1)I have just watched a wooden version of "King Arthur" wherein the Arch-Saxon drawls in an accent unbeknownst to any other incontinent but America.

2)A reversable question.... How did KC get away with it in "Robin Of Hollywood".

P.S. Forget Dick Van Dyke

Norm

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 09:14 AM

Well as you say Mike you're qualified all right - however any project which starts off with elocution tips for singer song writers....well I can see it being more of interest to elocution nerds than singer songwriters.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 09:20 AM

Northerners and midlanders pronounce cup differently from southerners, Ralph May[aka Mctell, has a south london accent,which is quite clear in his singing, it is a south london accent very similar to Carthy

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 09:21 AM

hi,Norman, welcome to the asylum

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Mr Red
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 09:25 AM

Mid Atlantic accent?

Where is Skarpi when we need him?

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: Old Vermin
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 09:54 AM

Pleased to see mention above of the Coppers. Bob had a lovely voice and very pleasant Sussex accent.

Not only is there still a Sussex accent to be heard from time to time, but there is also still a rural Surrey accent. Understated rural,not Hampshire, nor Sussex,a bit pinched maybe. Difficult to describe, and not glaringly obvious, but there nonetheless. I hear it sometimes in neighbours. The man next-door tells me his family have been local - well, a mile away in Farncombe - for the last three hundred years. A father and son up the road have a similar accent. They don't sing.

Don't think I've picked it up in 35 years, but who knows.

40-something years ago we might adopt a Scots or American accent or whatever in folk-club chorusing. As schoolboys, we did a cod-rural accent - extreme Borsetshire - for the Bog Down in the Valley-Oh. Wouldn't intentionally do any of that these days.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 10:30 AM

Bob Copper, Yes indeed a great singer and a good honest Sussex accent. But on one occasion when I visted him at his club he sang a blues number in his usual - as far as I am aware - voice and to me it just diddn't work. I seem to remember that he also committed a Sleepy John Estes song to disc which had the same effect on me. That doesn't mean that he shouldn't have performed them but for me it explains why a "cod" accent is sometimes preferable.
I know from a converastion with Bob that evening that we both shared a love and respect for American vernacular music and if we wish to sing it and enjoy doing so what the heck.

Someone above mentions the Barking Bard, one who does not sing with a cod or "mockney" accent. Personally I cannot listen to him especially when I have heard him do a Woody Guthrie number. But still he is a liberty to do so.

Regarding critics professional or otherwise, the opinions are only that of that one person.

Hoot

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 10:52 AM

Ah Mike! If only we were both younger, we could be teaching a course at Newcastle University - Elocution for Singer Songwriters 101.

All those lovely undie-graduates, we could have got our hands on......

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 10:53 AM

"Northerners and midlanders pronounce cup differently from southerners"

I'll borrow that brush to clean my yard. East midlanders and west midlanders speak differently from one another. Even within the a small area vowel intonation is different, a Birmingham dweller typically has a long 'south eastern' a, down the road in Wolverhampton, a short northern a is the norm.

Universal rock is closer to northern english than southern.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Allan Con
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 06:09 PM

"I have just watched a wooden version of "King Arthur" wherein the Arch-Saxon drawls in an accent unbeknownst to any other incontinent but America"

Mind I can't imagine a modern English accent would be any closer to how Arthur (if he existed)would have talked than an American accent is. Arthur would have talked in a P-Celtic language akin to Old Welsh.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 06:31 PM

There once was a king called Art
Who perfected the silent fart
He'd say, Arfur mo!
And he'd then let one go
but he said it in Welsh, which was smart.

Subject: RE: Mid-Atlantic (accent) ~~ Why?
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 06:49 PM

did he speak welsh with a mid atlantic accent