Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?

Subject: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Doctor John
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 05:51 PM

Listening to an ageing LP "English Sporting Ballads" by Martyn Wyndham-Read and The High Level Ranters, brought to my mind the Wesley quote about the Devil having all the best tunes. Here are the new 'devil' songs about fox hunting, hare coursing, bull baiting, cock fighting and bare knuckle boxing - all very non-PC subjects. However, this LP has the best songs, melodies and arrangements I've heard and is among my favourites. What do other Mudcatters think of this. Dr John

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From:
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:10 PM

What's a PC song? proto-Celtic?

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: John of the Hill
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 07:32 PM

I don't know about a PC song, but a Mac song is probably Scottish.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Ely
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 10:42 PM

A little off the thread:

American tunes have that problem, too ("Year of Jubilo", anybody?)

I don't know--I can think of a lot of old gospel tunes to which I would love to square dance if I didn't think it felt a little 'wrong' (and I'm not even religious).

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Margo
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 10:50 PM

Maybe the PC songwriters aren't good poets. The words, IMHO, have a lot to do with the melody.

Margarita

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: _gargoyle
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 11:46 PM

Because those who are "non-PC".....don't give an Amster---damn, damn, damn.....about.....

the correct way, the establishment way, the make-no-waves-way, of doing things.....

They know that politics and correctness have nothing to do with creativity.....

And they..... Don't Worry About IT!!!

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 11:48 PM

Maybe it cause they are generally better songs. I find good manners and consideration go along way life and I'd never want to hurt anyones feelings. But songs are like peoples lives in many ways. WE need just enough sand in the vaseline to keep things interesting.

If that don't start a fire nothing will.

Don "The Agitator" Meixner

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: _gargoyle
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 11:54 PM

The songs of the late 60's had woderful lyrics....they were spawned from a noble "contempt of the established order."

The "wanna-be-ex-flower-children" (who never were) (40's & 50's) are so vitally concerned about NOT offending, fags, lezs, vegis, vegtans, animis, enviros, cults, wicans, hedonists, and mantraists.....that they are left little else to say.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: _gargoyle
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 11:56 PM

Nice to have you here Don.... the good Lord knows I can use a little help

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From:
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 01:02 AM

I finally got it! - Politically Correct. I thought they buried that alongside psycho-babble when it, too, was proved to be useless for communication.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Bryant
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 03:20 AM

They don't. There are quite a few fine songs I can think of that would get a thumbs-up from all the hard-core leftists intent on demanding eco-friendly, victim-empowering, tofu-munching folk songs. Peggy Seeger's "Gonna Be an Engineer" is the sort of tune that gets feminists all swooning. It's also dead-on accurate, incredibly well-written, and wickedly funny.

Good tunes are out there. Whether you use 'em to decry the plight of the spotted owl or praise hunting small, furry animals for sport is up to you.

Bryant

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 09:17 AM

Interesting how the pendulum swings! Two centuries ago John Wesley was complaining "Why does the Devil have all the best songs?" and challenged hymn writers to come up with memorable tunes. Early 1900s the hymn tunes and patriotic tunes were so good that the Wobblies used those tunes to fit their subversive words to. (I was blown away when some of my gospel-singing friends taught me the real words to Power in the Blood) And here it is 1999 and Dr. John is reminding us of the Wesley quote! I'm not sure he's right-- I would match the words and music of I'll Fly Away against just about anything. And I agree with Bryant on "going to be an engineer" (I have three almost-grown daughters and have taught them they can do ANYTHING they want to do) Sometimes I think that what makes a topical song really memorable is humor. Example: of all the antiwar songs the Almanac Singers did before June 22 1941, the only one that has survived despite efforts toward suppression is the Ballad of October 16th (I hate war, and so does Eleanor, but we won't be safe till everybody's dead) Sufficiently confusing? All I'm really saying here is that "all generalizations are false, icnluding this one"

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: margaret
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 11:51 AM

just provide a wee (and i mean wee -- can't stand when musicians yack on and on about their songs -- just sing it already!) bit of historical context if you want to perform them. it's pointless to try to make the past (or all other cultures) live up to contemporary cultural ideals. and if you're just listening to them, not performing the, well, hey, let go of the guilt! i'm a vegetarian and i tend to love poaching songs. and how can you beat reynard the fox?

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Tony Fisher
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 01:02 PM

You have to catch him first, Margaret, which is what all the songs are about.

Seriously, though, PC is a very late-20th-century point of view. The writers of hunting songs wouldn't understand what we were talking about.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Frank Hamilton
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 01:27 PM

Boy is this a loaded thread. PC for whom?

I don't like preachy or exhortative songs whether someone calls them PC or not. As I remember, the term PC is used to determine a doctrinaire opinion usually given by left-wing or liberal points of view. Somehow, the right-wing conservatives seemed to escape from this definitional prison. Could we say that Bascom Lamar Lunsford endorsed right-wing PC songs because the racial and political overtones in his selection enforced his point of view? Songs that contain racial derogatory epithets are PC because they are equally doctrinaire in their ideologies?

I agree with the poster that states that the term PC stands for Poor Communication.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 02:11 PM

I don't know about PC or non PC songs having the best tunes. Most of my favourite tunes do not have any words.

Jon

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From:
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 08:49 PM

Yeh, It's cause you can't make words in them without any of those letters after G.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From:
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 10:50 PM

Forgot the magic combo, FACEGBD, where there are two words and 5 chords from consecutive letters.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Dave Swan
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 11:14 PM

As Margaret says a little bit of context can do a lot of good. And Frank rightly asks P.C. for whom? There were times in the 1980's in Berkeley when working in coffee houses and pubs meant that you took your life in your hands singing just about anything. Taking offense was a very popular sport in many circles. When we reached the first drinking/hunting/whaling/marriage/sex/Christmas(fill in the rest)song of the evening, we'd first explain that some of what we did was P.C., or politically correct and some was P.F., or politically.....incorrect. The resulting laugh helped de-fuse the immediate situation and allowed us to set pieces in their contexts as we introduced them. There's a lot of great stuff we needn't loose because times have changed. And some things which never need be sung again. Cheers, Dave

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Doctor John
Date: 14 Oct 99 - 03:29 PM

I started this because I was intrigued - amused even - by the LP "English Sporting Ballads", particularly as fox hunting is a hot subject in the UK here at the moment. Does anyone have this LP and what are your thoughts? I agree with the remark "PC for whom?" I depends when and where you're standing and in whose shoes. There was a rather pathetic review of Nic Jones's first rate CD "Penguin Eggs" in Folk Roots (now curiously Froots: Mike Raven , if you're out there I agree with your comments reprinted in the editorial of this magazine) which complained about the inclusion of whaling songs. The same magazine almost appologized for reviewing A L Lloyd's CD of whaling songs. Well, I for one want to know about whaling, the men who sailed, the life they led and what they thought and from where better than the songs they wrote and sang. I think it's very wrong to suppress original material because you don't like it. I started a thread a while ago about why there are no (or few) right wing folk songs particularly as many "folk" have particularly nasty right wing views. It was thought that perhaps such songs were supressed by collectors (or the singers even to please the collectors) with left wing sympathies or views. This gives us a distorted view of history even if it removes material we don't like. The "folk" rarely have a voice, perhaps because they are illiterated or censored - except in folk songs. Dr John

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 14 Oct 99 - 05:16 PM

Interesting, I detest fox hunting and would dearly love to see some of those that enjoy the sport hunted by the horses and the hounds and then tell me how they enjoyed the experience but "There was Dido, Bendigo, Gentry he was there Oh..."

Jon

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Oct 99 - 01:19 AM

Me, too, Jon. Have to say, I don't know if I could read it now, but one of the very best gems of the written word, IMO, is MacKinlay Cantor's Voice of Bugle Ann, about the love of an old hunting hound and her master. Not a very long read, but absolutely lyrical, haunting, and heartbreaking. I read it for the first time about 25 years ago and have never forgotten it.

One of my favourite bumpers stickers is "Support Your Right To Arm Bears".

kat

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From:
Date: 15 Oct 99 - 05:43 PM

Doctor John, I'm not familiar with the English Sporting Ballads LP. But this is a really interesting subject to me because I deal with it alot in my field of work, which is living history museums. In deciding what components of daily life to present programatically to visitors we constantly (and usually subconsciously) filter out stuff that would be really repugnant to most museum-goers (you know, we don't leave full chamber pots sitting around, we don't toss garbage in the streets). When I was working in Wisconsin, we were given an incredible trove of scripts for plays that had been performed in the 1870s in one of the historic buildings preserved at the museum. I thought "fantastic! Not only do we know exactly what was performed here, but we've got the marginalia saying which role was played by which members of the little rural community and we've even got reviews of the performances written up in the local newspapers of the period!" What more could I have asked for in designing public programs for the museum? Trouble was, just about all of the plays (and they were your run-of-the-mill amateur-oriented plays that were being cranked out by the score during this period, and, I think, pretty indicative of popular culture) included characters that were total stereotypes, of the sort we would find utterly unacceptable today. I just couldn't stomach repeating the representation of African Americans as sambos, Irish as drunken brawlers, or Native Americans saying "ugga wugga wigwam" or whatever, even though in so doing we would be revealing the mind-set of a broad base of people. I thought a lot about it, and considered doing some kind of stop-action in which we'd suspend the play at those critical moments when stereotypes had just been presented, and do some sort of deconstruction that would push the audience to think historically about what they were watching. But that seemed really didactic and anyways it would be getting far removed from a 19th century theater experience in which case we might as well not have performed a 19th century play. . . well, at the bottom of the stack of 20-odd plays was the gem, "Above the Clouds," a sweet little play that pitted city slickers against country bumpkins with the final lesson that the city and the country could not survive without one another. Nary an unbearable character, and still got at one of the more important issues of the period. So while it was tempting to turn the offensive stuff into a history lesson and social commentary, I finally decided that because I did have an alternative I'd put the other plays in the archive and let the academics have at 'em. Now I'm working at a museum in New York state that is about to revise its interpretive program to focus on the lives of the enslaved Africans who worked at the property in the 18th century. This has a whole other set of challenges, but I've really been rattling on here longer than I meant to, and some of you may be wondering what this all has to do with whales by now, so I'll close!

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: margaret
Date: 15 Oct 99 - 05:46 PM

(but on the other hand if anybody wants to know more about enslaved Africans in 18th century New York, I'd be glad to rattle on some more!)

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Freddie Fox
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 12:57 PM

The point is... if you write a non-PC song now you might get slated for it. However, singing a song from a period in history even if it is glorifying fox-hunting or whaling or whatever, is reflecting a past culture. F'rinstance, one of my favourite authors is Dorothy L. Sayers - but her comments about 'niggers' and'jewboys' etc. would go down like a brick budgie today. Quite right too. At the time she was writing, they were the norm. If we're going to look at any history at all, it's got to be the lot, including bits that people may not like.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: wildlone
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 01:35 PM

As a re-enactor who has done a lot of living history I try to base my self on how I would have acted at the time.
I am a 17th cent merchant so I would have been part of the slave trade, Bristol,Africa,America, but it can also be used as a teaching aid to explain why what was done was wrong.
Hindsight is 20/20.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 10:20 PM

Hello Wildlone,

I am not very PC. I refuse to be PC infact. I rely on the notion of good manners. And the good sense of other people realizing that O would never intentionally say or do anything that would hurt feelings or make someone feel inadequate. That being said, about your reenactors persona, There were abolistionists as long as there has been a slave trade. Even among the maritime merchants. Can't you be an abolistionist if it suits your sensibilities?

Katey,

Ever seen the film , "The Voice of Bugle Annie" ? Starring Lionel Barrymore and probably Beulah Bondi. I remember it quite fondly.

Don

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 11:46 PM

No, Don! I didn't there ever was a movie of it. And, I always enjoy Lionel barrymore. I will have to look for it. Thanks! Re: PC....if only the rest of the world would go by "good manners", as you do, Don.

kat

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: DonMeixner personal to Kat
Date: 17 Oct 99 - 09:24 AM

Kat,

There was a radio play of it done in the 40's with Lionel Barrymore which I have heard on Public Radio locally a few times. My imagination is such that I can visuallize (if not spell:-)) every word I hear. Now I'm wondering if I only heard the story or saw the film or both.

Whichever, I agree its a charming story. My daughter would love it and thanks for bringing it back to my attention.

Don

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: wildlone
Date: 17 Oct 99 - 09:37 AM

Thanks for that Don I hav'nt come across any abolistonist merchants in my research's but then again I hav'nt looked,
I will get on to that soon.
As to good manners as my late Father always said "Breeding will out". Cheers Don wl.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Oct 99 - 10:10 AM

Thanks, Don. I will have to look through the NPR site and see if they have a copy for sale or something. You just gave me an idea for a new thread. See ya there. Hope your daughter enjoys the story.

Kat

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Lowden Unruly
Date: 17 Oct 99 - 10:31 AM

Poltical correctitude, which is just enforced good manners has actually served this society pretty well (IMO). As recently as 1952 we had a president that openly referred to blacks as niggers and more recently we've had and an interior secretary that referred to one of his subordinates as a cripple. It's hard medicine to swallow for some and it's unfortunate that we have to institutionalize politeness but I think it's made us (slightly) kinder and more tolerant as a whole.

I have to admit though that Non-PC songs can be fun like Mojo Nixons' "I ain't Gonna Pis in no Jar" which contains the excellent lyric -I ain't gonna pee pee in no cup, 'Lessun Nandy Reagan gonna drink it up.

Wildone - You could consider reenacting the role of that slave ship captain who put the beautiful lyrics to Amazing Grace. LU

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From:
Date: 17 Oct 99 - 10:59 AM

Newton had given up the slave trade years before he wrote "Amazing Grace".

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 17 Oct 99 - 01:21 PM

Ted Sturgeon once described someone who gave up his birthright for a pot of message...

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 18 Oct 99 - 09:34 AM

I don't know who it was but I don't think it was Sturgeon. (I remember him best for Sturgeon's Law and of course More than Human--which sets me to thinking. . . ) The person described was H.G. Wells; compare the early stories esp. War of the Worlds and the Time machine vs. later works which do get very preachy! Is Mudcat great or WHAT?!

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 20 Dec 04 - 10:57 PM

Pete Seeger has spent his life singing things which were not (at that time) PC... Woody Guthrie did a lot (but not all) the same. Arlo doesn't follow those antecedents,however...

As they say, it used to be I dint no how to spel ingineer & now I ar one.

My father was an engineer, I am an engineer, none of my three sisters wished to be one. My daughter doesn't wish to be one, but my son wants MAYBE to be a scientist. An Engineer, for those who don't know, is one who applies in the real world, what the scientists find out in theory. One of my first bosses was a female engineer, who transferred from the Structural Dept to Civil Dept because the head of Structures didn't seem to think (it was reported) that a woman could do it. She was one of the best bosses and one of the best engineers I've ever worked with or for in the last 30 years or so.

I have to admit, however, that I have never heard a really good PC song. You have to have a point, something to focus your attention and the lyrics (and subsequently the music) on to keep the attention of the people who listen to it and may sing it or buy it. Therefore, except for the True Love and Love Lost routines, most songwriters will need to be non-PC, if only slightly, for the course of the song -- whether they actually feel that way in real life or not is immaterial. If it weren't for non-PC lyrics, you never would have had a lot of Joyce Kilmer's poetry, none of Service's "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man", etc. from WWI, etc. You wouldn't have had the protest songs of the 60's, and we'd ALL be "Blowin' in the Wind"

However, there are notable exceptions to this, such as Ralph McTell's "Streets of London", although some references in the song may be "something we just don't talk about" as one aunt once said, it was well said and not offensive, because it reflected real life.

Real life is not PC, and, as Steve Goodman said in his song of the same name, you have to "Read in between the lines"

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: s&r
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 06:38 AM

Lowden - you can't enforce good manners

Stu

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 06:56 AM

Interesting how some people seem to equate "leftist" with "inoffensive". In the current climate, we can, indeed must, shout loudly about pretty much everything our governments say and do, and against the apathy of the majority of appeasers who want to bring back David Blunkett, ID cards etc.;who by their silence support war on the weak and disposessed. I could go on (and frequently do!)
Bring back fox-hunting!
Richard

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 06:58 AM

If Kilmer's "Trees" is now non-PC we're all done for.

Subject: RE: Why do non-PC songs have the best tunes?
From: Ferrara
Date: 22 Dec 04 - 01:38 AM

Not much here about the original question though.

Of course there are plenty of great songs that aren't about sporting or drinking or whaling or racial slurs or whatever. As a good fr'instance take "Rolling Downward Through the Midnight," a Christmas song that John Roberts & Tony Barrand have recorded. As Bill (my non-Christmas-celebrating spouse) says about it, "However you feel about the content, there are times when the words and melody of a song just express the intention perfectly." And, it's great to sing. Lots of ballads have magnificent tunes, too. Although you could say that murder, etc is non PC, couldn't you?

But back to the question. Why do sporting (and drinking) songs so often have such great tunes? Actually they didn't all have great tunes, but -- there were so many of them! Lots of good ones became popular and survived. They were sung in rowdier circumstances than most love songs, and loaned themselves to a more up-tempo treatment. Nothing else would have worked.

But I think the real key is that sporting people, especially people who liked a good chase, tended to have a lot of energy and would enjoy bouncy, energetic songs. The fact that a lot of drinking often accompanied hunting for sport didn't hurt either; everyone felt energetic and "high" and it was reflected in the songs.

Any thoughts? Or is it really a non question at this point?

Rita