M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 01:01 PM

I have only seen Jim once at Whitby Festival. He was extraordinary but I can't really say why.

Live music hey?

L in C#

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 12:52 PM

I'd never heard of Jim Eldon. Just listened to him on YouTube performing "Dancing in the Dark". I'd be a bit more blunt than the good soldier. I think he's crap. Just my humble opinion, of course...

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 11:18 AM

you are welcome, as far as I am concerned freedom of speech should be available to all even if its an opinion I differ with, The only things I find offensive are racial abuse and sexual abuse,
I have found you always to be a courteous man to cross swords with

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 10:35 AM

one of his pastimes is stating his views in such a way that people who wouldn't often swear at others in a face to face discussion might be thus provoked?

Hardly my intention anyway, Les - but typical enough around here it would seem where one must constantly tread on eggshells. I honestly thought we were having a fun chat; obviously not...

Jim Eldon speaks to my heart, he always has, both in his own songs and his masterful essaying of traditional material in which he surpasses (in my opinion) pretty much anyone else in the revival. He is, in short, my icon of what a Folk Singer ought to be. Ewan Macoll, on the other hand, took away my will to live on various occasions; his own songs are as heavy handed and outmoded as his political agenda, and as often as I've basked in his balladry it's too much of a put-on to take seriously when I hear it now. Just my opinion though, to which I am no doubt welcome.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 10:16 AM

Could it possibly be that that Mr Ashtray has a different perspective on music in all its glory and that one of his pastimes is stating his views in such a way that people who wouldn't often swear at others in a face to face discussion might be thus provoked?

Best wishes Mr Schweik

L in C#

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 10:08 AM

Values? you are entitled to your opinion as are those people who like britney spears, but honestly comparing Eldon to MacColl, is a bloody joke.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 09:59 AM

Calm, calm - both of you, this is a public place!

L in C#

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 09:53 AM

Beg to differ there, GSS - it all depends where your values lie I suppose, but give me Jim Eldon's earthy storytelling to Jez Lowe's mawkish Cookson-esque popular fiction anyday!

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 09:45 AM

"Next to Peter Bellamy, I'd say Jim Eldon's the greatest Traditional Folk Singer & Idiomatic Folk Song Writer in the UK."
hilarious, of course we all have different opinions, in my opinion, jim is a very good performer,but to compare him as a songwriter to jez lowe richard grainger ,leon rosselson, Ewan,or peter bond, s absolutely hilarious

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: theleveller
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 09:41 AM

Thanks for that, Jim McLean, I've been trying to find the source of that quote for ages - it appears in Hill's Liberty Against the Law as "Give me the songs of the people - I care not who makes their laws" but without specific attribution. You've made my day!

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Jim McLean
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 09:28 AM

"I knew a very wise man that believed that . . . if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation. - Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun" (He was a strong opponent of the Scottish union with England in 1707.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 09:26 AM

Must admit that Rosselson has always struck me as too self-consciously determined to be absolutely right-on; counter-productively so, in its effect on me.

~M~

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 09:15 AM

I have always been totally smitten with Rosselson's 'Digger's Song'.

Funny thing, that strikes me as precisely the kind of glib, preachy, self-conscious sloganeering that gives protest singers a bad name. (I'm not a big fan of Leon Rosselson generally, it has to be said.)

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 08:59 AM

"So, is this asong or a tune that had somekind of political effect?"
From research for a talk at our local history society entited 'Song and History'.
Jim Carroll

"According to one source the words "lillibulero" and "bullen al-a" were used as a rallying cry for the Irish to recognize one another in the uprising in 1641. Later (1687) Thomas, Lord Wharton (1640-1715), wrote a set of satirical verses titled Lillibolero regarding the Irish problems and set them to a melody arranged by Henry Purcell in 1678. Purcell's arrangement was based on an older tune under the name Quickstep which appeared in Robert Carr's Delightful Companion (1686). It became popular immediately. After the Stuarts were deposed, Lord Wharton, a strong supporter of William III, boasted that he had "rhymed James out of three kingdoms" with his tune".

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Jim McLean
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 08:55 AM

Sorry to be pedantic, Jim, but the king was James II of Ireland and England and VII of Scotland.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 08:40 AM

"Lillibellero"
The song that sang a king out of three kingdoms (James II)
Jim Carroll

So, is this asong or a tune that had somekind of political effect?

I guess that in the end songs never really have a political effect but can they be "signs or signals of something or other?

What about that French one - The Marselais?

L in C#

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 08:16 AM

"Ewan wrote a lot of songs from other people's characters."
As far as I know MacColl took all the songs he wrote in the person from acutuality (one of his constant song-making practices) - Shoals of Hering from Larner and Ronnie Balls, Freeborn man from Minty Smith, Belle Stewart, Gordon Boswell etc., Just a Note and Drivers Song from Jack Hamilton, Shellback from Ben Bright. Can't recall him writing songs in first person on Apartheid victims or miners, though I know he occasionally used commentary from news interviews (I actually gathered some of these cuttings for Festival of Fools sketches).
I believe that what he did find 'dishonest' was some of the pastiches, where the writer pretends to be an 18th century highwayman, or a 19th century sailor under sail - he argued that many of them sounded arificial and many appeared to have come purely from the writer's imagination rather than reality.
To me, this sometimes to be the case, though I'm not sure it isn't a generalisation on his part - I have always been totally smitten with Rosselson's 'Digger's Song'.
"Lillibellero"
The song that sang a king out of three kingdoms (James II)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 07:17 AM

Wasn't Lillibellero supposed to ahv some kind of effect?

L in C#

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: theleveller
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 06:00 AM

"isn't the folklore that John Gay's The Beggar's Opera [1728] was instrumental in bringing Horace Walpole down?"

Christopher Hill discusses The Beggar's Opera in the context of the repression and radicalisation of the poor at some length in his seminal work, 'Liberty Against the Law'.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 05:50 AM

As for "Oh What A Lovely War", well, certainly a great anti-war musical and film - but what did it actually stop or prevent?

I did it as part of an O-level drama course when I was sixteen, and it prevented me from persuing the subject any further, though several of the songs therefrom remain in my unrecorded / unperformed repertoir...

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 05:49 AM

Not actually Posy, Will; I think she did do a bit of work for Valerie, but unhappily I don't have any originals of those. Have several Colin Wheelers, tho. When Valerie went to work there, she found the originals were just being binned after the paper was printed, so she rescued them [she was the Features Ed who made the selections anyhow] & now they hang on my stairs & my study wall. The 'peer-group' one is signed "Mo". Have several others of his also; but not sure who he was...

~M~

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Will Fly
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 05:44 AM

Gay certainly satirised [Robert] Walpole in "The Beggar's Opera", but he survived all that. It was a combination of things that got him out of power - principally the naval disaster against Spain in the Battle of Cartagena in, I think, 1742.

As for "Oh What A Lovely War", well, certainly a great anti-war musical and film - but what did it actually stop or prevent?

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 05:24 AM

Don't know of a single song, offhand [tho see below]: but isn't the folklore that John Gay's The Beggar's Opera [1728] was instrumental in bringing Horace Walpole down? And such a good piece of work in its own right that it goes on being performed purely for its entertainment value nearly 300 years later, when all the actual issues it satirises are dead and forgotten. And song's like "That was directed at me" still bite..., even if Walpole represented as a receiver of stolen goods and his opponents as thieves & highwaymen & pimps, no longer means anything to us at all.

And how about Joan Littlewood's {Mrs E MacColl's!} Oh What A Lovely War?

I remember Ralph McTell once remarking sadly that Streets Of London had done more for him than the people who were its subject ~ but who can tell, in the long term, what effect it might have? And will it still be sung? & maybe Ewan's Go Down You Murderers & Karl's Guns And Comics had some influence in the cap-pun debate. Who can tell?

~M~

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Will Fly
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 05:15 AM

Good one, Michael - sounds a bit like Posy Simmons!

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 05:13 AM

Similar thing, Will ~~ I have the original on my wall of a cartoon published in The Teacher newspaper when my wife was Features Editor, 1960-63. A group of schoolmasters, all in 3-piece suits & spectacles, carrying briefcases and smoking pipes, emerge from the staffroom as two male pupils dressed in the teen-fash of the time walk by. "Isn't it funny," says one teacher, "how they can never shake off the influence of their peer-group?"

~M~

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 05:03 AM

Jim Eldon was the best at this political protest song lark, telling it like it was by way of basic reportage. He added various lines to this effect to his classic cover of Brice Springstine's Dancing in the Dark (...Working for the Grocer's Daughter I just can't feel proud of myself, we came like lambs to the slaughter, now we're just stock upon her shelf...) which rang very true at the time, but one knew that Jim was in there with the rest of us, writing about experience & simultaneously operating as a one-man Folk Process rather than the card-carrying paternalistic righteousness of Ewan MacColl. Next to Peter Bellamy, I'd say Jim Eldon's the greatest Traditional Folk Singer & Idiomatic Folk Song Writer in the UK.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Will Fly
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 05:01 AM

Interesting, Pip. I've always believed that - for better or worse - the real moments of pivotal change where they had a direct impact - i.e. at the top - have come about through more direct, and often violent action. Thatcher didn't repeal the poll tax because someone like Billy Bragg sang about it. It was ended because people voted with their feet, on the street, first in Scotland and then down here. Get out on the street, burn some cars, trash some shops, act violently - whatever the raison d'etre for these actions - and you'll get column inches in the press and heated debate in Parliament. Sing about the same raison d'etre and you'll probably achieve bugger all.

I'm not a proponent of such actions, by the way, but - in the scale of things - people are moved to it, not by folk song, but by the impingement, and the severity of that impingement of something on them personally. And that includes politicians.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 04:52 AM

Ewan wrote a lot of songs from other people's characters. That's what he did wasn't it? Herring fishermen, travellers, power station builders, children of striking miners, victims of Aparthied... No oppressed minority on Earth was safe from his polemical doggeral; he was the real Voice of the People that man. Heavens, could it all have been (gulp!) dishonest I wonder??

At some point in the mid/late 1980s I was moved to write a letter to Folk Roots on this very issue after being bored to suicidal shitlessness by an evening of his tedious middle-class paternalistic politicising (after which I went to see The Fall, as I recall). I don't have it any longer, but I wrote it under the name of Ralph Harris & they published it under the rather nifty heading Ewan Whose Army?

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 04:47 AM

I remember my younger sister taking the p. out of "We will overcome", the verse that goes "We will ban the bomb" in particular. My older sister, who was more of that generation, got a bit defensive at this point - "Well, we did ban the bomb..." It took a moment before she realised that actually, no, we didn't. Great campaign, though.

I suspect it's a fool's errand looking for Songs that Changed the World - how could we ever be sure that the song made the difference? - but I do think songs, & popular culture more generally, has wider effects. Jeff Nuttall said that the most significant thing about the first wave of CND in the early 60s was that it failed completely - thousands of idealistic kids were left revved up and with nowhere to go, but with a little extra dose of cynicism about achieving anything through 'the system'. Result: the counter-culture of the late 60s, and everything that followed from that.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Will Fly
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 04:19 AM

Stuart, I also rocked along to the joyous strains of "Fixin' To Die Rag" (even though Country Joe didn't have the grace to acknowledge that he'd nicked the tune from Kid Ory's "Muskrat Ramble) at the time. I'm not quite as dogmatic as I might appear - and I'm certainly not apolitical by any means. I have very strong views on the ways of the world and will engage with anyone in a reasoned debate on them - but I like to keep my musical world separate from that all that. If I really wanted to influence public opinion in a political sense, then my method would be through print, or via the net, or by personal interaction, and not through song.

I asked, many weeks ago, in a similar thread, for 'Catters to name me one overtly political folk song which had, to their knowledge, actually had some effect on the political spectrum and really changed something 'at the top'. I didn't get one response to that question. I'll repeat it here - and I'll be happy to hear of any. Country Joe may have had some effect on the 'stoned youth of Woodstock' (whoever he was), and on the anti-Vietnam movement, but I suspect in my cynical old heart that the Vietnam war stopped when the US politicians at the top realised that it was really lost in Vietnam.

For me, the problem of singers performing 'protest' songs at a folk club - even in the early days - was always the tacit assumption that, because you attended the club and were interested in folk song, you were necessarily of the same political persuasion as everyone else there. And even if we were of the same persuasion, what was the point in preaching to the converted? If you really want to get your musical protest heard - sing it on the steps of 10 Downing Street, or outside your local town hall, or outside the houses of prominent politicians.

There's a wonderful piece of satire in the Tony Hancock film "The Rebel" where he's talking to a group of young admirers sat round him. He's recounting his previous conformist life in the office where he worked - wearing a suit, regimented, all workers looking and acting exactly alike - to a a crowd of young people all wearing black polo neck sweaters and black beards, all nodding in unison. My point exactly.

I really thought MacColl's diktat to write a song about Vietnam "by next week" - and then to criticise Charles Parker's effort in the most stupid terms was loathsome. If he genuinely thought it was dishonest to write a song in someone else's character, then I wonder what he would have made of Randy Newman's wonderfully constructed and subtle songs - like "Rednecks" or "Short People". Two songs, by the way, which I love and would accept as subtly political - but I still don't think they've changed the world.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 04:09 AM

Sociology lecturer. (Actually Criminology, but I work in a Sociology department, so it's close enough.)

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 03:47 AM

No, no ~~ a poet, obviously... ;-}

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 02:57 AM

R U A brain surgeon

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 02:53 AM

Mudcat was having problems when I posted and one correction I thought I'd got in time was missed; penultimate line was meant to have low degree

I wish you hadn't posted that correction - I love the idea of hundreds of Mudcat-reading floorsingers, a month or two from now, solemnly singing Folks may sneer at my law degree! (The corrupted last line should of course read
But at least it's not Socio-o-logee!)

(Guess what I do for a living.)

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 02:42 AM

well if it had not been for Alex Campbells kind hearted generosity, Peggy Seeger would not have been allowed into the country, there probably wouldnt have been a Critics group, and this thread wouldnt have existed,Fred Baxter wouldnt have been called a Burglar,Vic Smith would not have got on his high horse and started tilting at wind mills its all Alex Campbells fault.
Pewking up on people was almost the norm at one stage in the folk revival,There was another well known folk singer who pewked up out of Mervyn Vincents upstairs bedroom window, and straight over Mervyns daughter, aye, standards were definitely higher on the early days of the revival.
VicSmith, Fred Baxter told me THAT he was a burglar, so either he was, or he was a Walter Mitty, I found him a pleasant guy and I enjoyed his club, he was not a pompous. humourless self important person

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 06:49 PM

"I suspect the reason many ringbinder singers sound sapless and unengaged is that they are basically indifferent singers, and learning the words would have little effect on their ability to inhabit a song. What they probably need is Ewan MacColl breathing fire into their ear."

In the absence of Ewan perhaps a good kick up another orifice might prove efficacious!

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Acorn4
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 06:31 PM

"Masters of War" was pretty unsubtle.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Stuart Reed
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 05:52 PM

Will Fly wrote: There's nothing that puts me off music more than an overt political message...

Although we have never discussed politics, knowing you as I do Will, I suspect that we share a broadly similar world view but I think you are being dogmatic here. There is a tide in the affairs of men etc. and a time too, when dissenting voices must be heard - including those of musicians.

This has an honourable tradition in Britain, exemplified by venerable examples such as The World Turned Upside Down and The Diggers' Song from the mid-17th century. And the German Die Gedanken Sind Frei predates that by at least four centuries.

What everyone would agree on is is that the "message" alone is not enough to make a good protest song: The Streets of London works because it oblique rather than declamatory.

But sometimes a blunt, direct approach works best - I mean how influential in the anti Vietnam protest movement was Country Joe McDonald's wake-up call of, "One, two, three, what are we fighting for?" to the stoned youth of Woodstock?

I'll own up here to having recorded a couple of Critics Group songs in the 70s, neither of which pulled any political punches but it was at a time when political movements were less sophisticated and, apart from street demonstrations and marches, the folk music world was a crucial area of influence.

The band I played in had a broad repertoire which included some pretty cheesy, crowd pleasing stuff, but we could follow Whisky in the Jar with, say, the Critics' Grey October and get a huge reponse, even with its (to use your word) overt slogan, "Children die, while we stand by and shake the killers by the hand."

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Acorn4
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 05:43 PM

"Writing a song from another person's point of view is dishonest" - if you've got to, in a sense, get in role to sing a song, isn't it possible to write from someone else's point of view - this could almost be a separate thread.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 05:08 PM

>Well, Raymond, I've just listened to that section again, and got angry again. Nothing wrong with frank opinions or criticism - Harry Boardman used to offer plenty of both in days of yore, and I never got angry with him. It's the aloof and dessicated certainty with which EMC pronounces some poor sod's song 'dishonest' that I can't stand. Whatever happened to 'IMO'?<

Would there really have been a need during a Critics Group cut and thrust session to presage every vinegary utterance with "in my opinion"? I suspect they were used to opinions bluntly expressed.

> That and the MacColl passage are plain rude.<

This is a cabal of Marxist class warriors we're talking about, not a bunch of dainty milksops who wouldn't say boo to a goose.

>And of course what he says at this point is utter bollocks anyway.<

Did you forget your "IMO"? Play the game now...

> "You're trying to get us to accept the fact that you are a Vietnamese..." Really?? Was there a funny accent, make-up or perhaps a bandanna and set of jungle fatigues involved in the attempted deception?<

I'd love to think so...

>MacColl states baldly the nonsense that writing a song from another person's point of view is "dishonest" and "a hoax". Dear me, all the times I've heard singers in folk clubs earnestly pretending that they actually are Sam Hall, Jock Stewart or William Hollander! Sounds to me like he is making up the law off the cuff just to put an inferior in their place.<

Maybe it wasn't the principle he was deriding, but just this particular example of it? I can't help feeling that if the Critics Group was no more than a MacColl power trip to assert himself over everyone else present, it would have ended five years before it did. Who's to say the aspiring songwriter didn't go away and write a far better song as a result of Ewan's critique? Sure, he was an ideologue, and we have the benefit of forty years hindsight to debate whether his insights were valuable or mere bollocks. My verdict? A bit of both.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 05:04 PM

(Post not related to main thread

SA

You're right - that's a much better copy! (I'd forgotten about that site; I still haven't copied all my bookmarks from my XP machine to my Linux one).

Mudcat was having problems when I posted and one correction I thought I'd got in time was missed; penultimate line was meant to have low degree; while holders of law degrees may have been sneered at, that wasn't the writer's intent.

Mick

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 04:57 PM

"My abiding memory of Alex was watching him chucking up over the front row of a club audience in Manchester - sorry."
yes, well he wasnt the only one, Margaret Barry[ TradSinger] did it also, in the Marquis of Clanricade club.
Another well known singer, an icon of the scene, and still performing puked up in someones bed in Nottingham, and just turned the mattress over.
I saw Alex Campbell about 1974, he was superb, absolutely hilarious.
I doubt if he was booked Very often by Vic Smith.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 04:27 PM

Having read Jim Carroll' remarks about Alex Campbell and seeing the response from Mike, Will and John I must agree with them. I don't know how many times you saw him Jim and I wouldn't try to excuse the incident that you witnessed, but there was a period in the sixties when he was regularly on at the Ballads & Blues Club on alternate week-ends. Alex to my mind was an entertainer,singer and raconteur and always managed to get a good turn out. I saw him for a number of years from when he first came back from France with a young Joe Locker. The "near enough for folk" comment has always been used light heartedly. Surely you have been around long enough to know that
I was a regular at the B & B from 1957 at the Princess Louise until it finished in 1965 at the King of Corsica and so am quite aware of the way Ewan did things and mostly had the feeling that he was a little remote from many in his audience and often quite humourless.
Exactly opposite to Alex. One evening at the King & Queen at Paddington Green Ewan was far from pleased when Alex told a farting joke and he was even more pissed off when Eric Winter followed up with his joke about the man who was always scratching his testicles.
Needless to say the audience enjoyed both.
Neither Alex or Ewan were perfect, and who is? but I believe Alex was probably responsible for bringing more people into this music than Ewan.

Hoot

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 04:27 PM

Two dogs indeed!

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 04:19 PM

The Chethams Axon scans are so much nicer; contrast & compare (and yes, it's a dog, not a cockroach...)

http://www.chethams.org.uk/axon_ballads/104.htm

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 04:18 PM

(Post not related to main thread)

SA

The scan isn't that bad; the words are clearly readable and make better (or at least different) sense in some places than the version above. Here's my transcript.

Mick

---

OUT WITH MY GUN IN THE MORNING

I live a jovial country life
Happy am I with my home and wife,
Some men are richer, I envy none,
I'm rich enough with my dog and my gun;
Early in the morning I leave my home,
That is the time in the fields to roam,
Down in the valley my house you will see,
Folks say it's small but it just suits me.

I love my wife, my pipe, and my glass,
Gaily along life's road do I pass;
Jolly and free, it just suits me,
Out with my gun in the morning.

Who'd lie in bed when the lark sings high:
Up in the blue and cloudless sky,
Gay as the birds to the fields I go,
Back I return to the sunset's glow.
My dear little wife, as I cross the stile,
Welcomes me home with a loving smile,
Perhaps other women may fairer be,
But she's my own, and she just suits me

Winter may come, and the winds may blow,
Safe in my home, from the frost and snow,
By my fireside with my wife I sing,
I wouldn't change with a crowned King,
Happy an I, in my little cot,
Contented I be with my humble cot,
Fols may sneer at my law degree,
People call it poor, but it just suits me.


Source: Broadside: "I Have No Mother Now", printed by T.Pearson, Machine Printer, 4 and 6, Chadderton Street, Oldham Road, Manchester


MCP Notes: last verse line 6 last word should probably be lot
                      line 7 first word should probably be Folks

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 03:53 PM

"For me E MacC didn't really come across on those recordings as particularly arrogant or bullying, just a man expressing his opinions frankly in a situation where such frankness was apparently encouraged."

Well, Raymond, I've just listened to that section again, and got angry again. Nothing wrong with frank opinions or criticism - Harry Boardman used to offer plenty of both in days of yore, and I never got angry with him. It's the aloof and dessicated certainty with which EMC pronounces some poor sod's song 'dishonest' that I can't stand. Whatever happened to 'IMO'? I'm reminded of an infamous workshop in which a virtuoso player of a particular specialist instrument (to say which would give it away) reduced a female participant to tears by telling her rudely that the instrument she'd brought along (and no doubt spent much-needed cash on) was a pile of crap. That and the MacColl passage are plain rude.

And of course what he says at this point is utter bollocks anyway. "You're trying to get us to accept the fact that you are a Vietnamese..." Really?? Was there a funny accent, make-up or perhaps a bandanna and set of jungle fatigues involved in the attempted deception?

MacColl states baldly the nonsense that writing a song from another person's point of view is "dishonest" and "a hoax". Dear me, all the times I've heard singers in folk clubs earnestly pretending that they actually are Sam Hall, Jock Stewart or William Hollander! Sounds to me like he is making up the law off the cuff just to put an inferior in their place.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 03:49 PM

It's Jimmy Knights on the VOTP CD, Spleen, albeit without the dialogue. Different recording perhaps? Or another example of the editing that marrs so much of the VOTP series. Anyhoo - the exciting thing is that if you follow the old link posted up by Malcolm Green back in 2001 (see HERE) you get a shitty scan of a very exciting broadside that was printed by T. Pearson in Manchester between 1850-1899, 4 - 6 Chadderton Street, off Oldham Road. I was thinking of suggesting a pilgrimage out that way but having just visited it using Google Maps it doesn't look too inviting these days. Did it ever? No matter - I've been singing the song all afternoon & it's like being out there in the bucolic idyll it celebrates; a mythic realm as real as ASDA labels & 70s folk album covers, or broadside vignettes - like the one here of a chap out hunting with his gun. Whilst the gun is unambiguous, his dog looks more like a giant cockroach...

Epiphany tomorrow; how apt...

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 03:14 PM

Confession: I have used the line "close enough for folk" as a heckle, to wind up friends who were taking their time tuning up on stage. (That Martin McCarthy bloke has a lot to answer for.) But I only ever said it to people I thought would take it in good part - I'd never have said it if I thought it would actually encourage people to play without tuning up.

Subject: RE: M. Carthy on The Critics Group - Radio 4
From: TheSnail
Date: 05 Jan 12 - 03:13 PM

GUEST,raymond greenoaken

Agreed that singing from a text is ubiquitous nowadays

Enough already!

I agree nothing of the sort. Where does this happen? I know of one couple, in their seventies, who have an unobtrusive notebook that they hold at waist level and glance at occasionally to jog their memory. It is barely noticeable to the audience. I know of another couple (shall we say, late middle age) who do set up a music stand with words and music. I wish they didn't but they are clearly driven by a desire to get it right, not because they can't be arsed to learn it. Sometimes, when playing in an instrumental harmony group, I have the score on a music stand at low level as a safety net.

That's it. "Singing from a text" may be prevalent in some areas, but ubiquitous it ain't.