What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 29 Sep 14 - 07:43 AM

Where there is prissy folk dancing let there be mighty raving and rioting!

Fair enough, but it's a question of how you get there. Tell a polite well-meaning middle-class folkie to adhere rigidly to a pedantic definition of 'folk' and you may get Two Pretty Boys* or The Cruel Ship's Carpenter. Tell the same person they can draw freely on the untapped wells of their primal inner creativity and you'll probably end up with "let's all join hands and save the weasel".

*One of my very favourite songs. I don't do it much, though - people seem to find it a bit of a tough listen (all that blood).

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Sep 14 - 06:11 AM

but then Folk survived the industrial revolution

The concept of folk / folklore post-dates the Industrial Revolution by some years, so - er - not quite! Folk is still in its infantile neo-logistic state being bandied about with various degrees of authority as it vainly searches for a meaning. The pragmatics of the case are obvious enough, in terms of its - er - Meta-Folk Usage. One chap up here once wrote a song and introduced it in our local club with the zen-like : "This isn't a rock 'n' roll song, but a folk song about rock 'n' roll". This sums it up quite neatly & reflects the pragmatics of the case perfectly. Likewise Peter Bellamy, whose own Folk Usage was utterly idiomatic as evidenced by pretty much everything he did, right down to coming up with a better tune to do justice to his theme song of latter years (On Board a '98). Even his Kipling-Folk thesis, which only really worked when he used tunes that he wrote himself.

*

The collected evidence of Traditional Song is, for sure, overwhelming - but evidence for what? The unnatural selection process notwithstanding, it's all a testimony to ordinary honest to goodness popular music making which was no different then to how it is now or, indeed, at any other point on Planet Earth in the 50,000 year tradition of human music making. Idiomatically diverse, and then some, but music is music is music, just as people are people are people. The whole concept of Folk is born from noxious apartheid directly echoing that of the English class-caste system that defines it even unto this day. These 1954 Folkers in their snooty imperialistic fundamentalism remind me of Creationists who see in the strata of billions of years evidence of Noah's Flood of but a few thousand. It appreciates the stars as astrology rather than astronomy.

Folk is not so much a matter of definition, but a matter of personal faith. Where there is righteousness, let there be heresy! Where there is order, let there be chaos! Where there is prissy folk dancing let there be mighty raving and rioting! Happily, in the real world, that's exactly how it is. Human Creativity thrives whilst Folkies turn their backs on the real world in dread the life they're all wearied for in their po-face pedantic piety.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 29 Sep 14 - 05:18 AM

I used to sing the former and the previous Mrs Musket used to sing the latter. I suppose I must like them. I don't play the oboe on the basis I don't like the sound. (Oboe. Noun. Kindling for a bassoon fire.)

You are sad in my opinion for dismissing my comment that folk clubs should be a good night out and entertainment, which has always been my experience. The provenance of the song is of interest, whether it harks from Somerset with a similar song from Sussex showing the popular story line in c18 England or if the song was one of the first Paul Weller wrote for acoustic guitar and voice after The Jam split. Either way, it's a person or persons getting up and trying to entertain a room of people.

In a folk club.

Playing folk.

As expected.

"In the folk idiom"

Or folk, as most of us call it.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Sep 14 - 03:01 AM

Sorry to have saddened you Ian. But genuinely cannot make out wherein the sadness resides.

Entertainment? Hmm! Suppose it depends what you find entertaining. I recall being entertained to the utmost first time I heard Bert sing a set of songs like Pit Boots & My Husband's Got No Courage In Him. OTOH I get unbelievably the-opposite-of-entertained by a neverending stream of protest songs perpetrated by patronising middle-class dogooders.

But none of that has much to do with this persistent catachresis - "noun. the incorrect use of words, as luxuriant for luxurious": or, as further example, 'folk' for 'whatever happens to take my fancy'

and pseudo-syllogism, as eg, "I like folk. I like The Rolling Stones. ∴ The Rolling Stones are folk". Doesn't follow. As I once put it, in a letter to The Guardian IIRC: "I happen to be fond both of eating and of the novels of Jane Austen; but I have never as a consequence mistaken Mansfield Park for a chip butty".

Nor has it much to do with this peculiar air of wounded virtue you all adopt at any questioning of these catchreses and syllogisms in which you appear to take such a perverse delight.

You think you don't, but you do.

Makes me sad.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 29 Sep 14 - 02:24 AM

Funny but I have heard just about every form of folk music you can think of in a folk club and what's more, we clapped having enjoyed most of it.

A post somewhere above said people don't relate to Imagined Village. Correct. But Imagined Village related to the multicultural society we live in, whereas trouser tit aficionados rattle on about music of the people. By their reckoning, folk means stopping the clock at some idyllic point in time.

In 1954, music of the people was Max Bygraves doing the working men's clubs and a young Morcambe and Wise doing the end of pier shows.

Benjamin Zephaniah and Eliza Carthy singing Tam Lin Retold, about as good a bridge between traditional music and music of the people as you will ever hear in my opinion. Yet just like the "working people" MacColl patronised and romanticised, the people it reflects have possibly never heard it. Yet if they did, there is more chance of people liking it than the latter. In a pit of 2,600 men, only two to my knowledge had heard The Big Hewer. I was one. The other came to folk clubs too.

Michael scoffs at the idea of folk clubs trying to entertain. It would be funny if Jim said it but a bit sad coming from Michael.

No matter. Jim will be back from Dublin soon. He will have filled his boots with the authentic Dublin folk music. (Every fecking pub having a kid in the corner with a guitar singing Galway Girl and Tart with a Cart for the American tourists.)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Sep 14 - 01:15 AM

"a broad church" sez Musket

Rest my case...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 11:49 PM

Yesyesyesyes very inclusive and nonpartisan and niceworkifucangetit

but as Peter Bellamy never tired of saying & I never tire of quoting

That's not a folk club it's an anything club

so why be so toffeenosed & morally superior about it

Musket might think that's bollix but that's for the very simple reason that he's got it all wrong

I mean just listen 2 yourselves == 'inclusive' 'fun' 'decent night out' 'music out of what theyve got'

all v virtuous & egalitarian & self-justifying for busting the trades descrptns act

but nowt to do with folk which is a perfectly good term which had a rational referent till all you HumptyDumptys happened along after which it has ceased to have any real meaning at all

& if you really can't all of you hear the moral superiority that puts in your tone then you should all go to whatever is the aural equivalent of Specsavers

but then Folk survived the industrial revolution and the world wars and all that stuff despite all dire predictions and it'll survive the bollox&pigshit you're all talking

so carry on & hope it keeps fine 4U

☺〠☺~M~☺〠☺

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 07:48 PM

'Ave Maria? Freude schöne Götterfunken? Das Forelle? Johann Sebastien Bach? Stockhausen? Walton's Belshazzar's Feast? Handel's Messiah? Paradise Lost? The Faerie Queene? Mick Jagger? The Who? Under Milk Wood? The Iceman Cometh? Eskimo Nell? A Couple of Swells? Rhapsody In Blue? My ♥ Belongs to Daddy?.................'

And why?

cos it sounds like a decent night out to me!
Seriously, the point is that people make music out of what they've got. and nowadays people have access to all that stuff and more. and they turn up at your door, when you run a folk club having made music -in much the same way that poor Americans made guitars out of cigar boxes - all they had. but nowadays people have lots of stuff to draw on.
they make music informally. it is bastard process. that is how every folksong in the world ever came to be written. jim seems to think that breaking away from singing the old songs makes people slaves and pawns of the music industry. nothing could be farther from the truth.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 06:48 PM

... and the annual family getaways in caravan park holiday camps..

[same caravan every year in Rockley Sands @ Poole,
next to the railway line, and sewer outlet into the boating pond -
floating turds are great fun to play with when you're six years old..]

..anyone doubting my genuine working class council house credentials...???

And yes,.. absolutely no trad folk in the holiday camp nightclubs.

So I'd say, that at least 40 years ago, as a working class kid
aquiring a familiarity with trad folk culture
would have been similar to someone learning English as a second language..

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 05:57 PM

My parents dragged me to the local factory social club just about every weekend
from when I was a little boy to my late teens..

Don't remember much/any trad folk music ever played by the top of the pops
inspired semi-pro agency booked music acts...

..and it's still the same now in the local ciderheads workingmen's social clubs.


I think my only early childhood experience of 'folk'
was on the few occasions I was made to attend Sunday school,
and I didn't put up with that too happily...

On our council estate,
[built to serve the only big factory in a small provincial town]
'Folk' was certainly not our culture.

Unless you can count my dad's Adge Cutler LPs...???

My childhood/early teens entry into 'folk' was due to the reasonabe amount of coverage
on local west country TV music shows.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 05:53 PM

1000!

Couldn't resist.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 05:51 PM

MGM asks:

"Inclusive" of what, Al? And why?


I'm not Al, but let me play the other side of the street for a moment and attempt an answer.

Before I sat under the traddie bodhi tree I was an eclectic so-and-so. Songs I did at the Folk Club included...

King Strut (Peter Blegvad) (done as a dramatic monologue)
Nicky (Momus) (free translation of Brel's "Jacky")
Round Midnight (Monk/Henighan) (after Robert Wyatt)
Dominic Takes A Trip (Edwards) (a song of my own whose sole purpose was to take the p*ss out of two other regulars at the club)

You get the picture. Inclusive of what? Any damn thing. Why? Because I thought it would be fun.

And the fact is, it was fun. Having somewhere you can go where you can get up on stage, as a complete amateur, and sing anything you feel like, to an audience mostly consisting of other amateur performers - it's great. I still go there from time to time, and I wouldn't be without it. Acoustic nights and open mics, and unmiked 'open stage's; they're great.

But I think - choosing my words carefully - that the word 'folk' has a very important meaning which has very little to do with this kind of club, and nothing to do with any of the songs I listed above. I think folk-meaning-traditional songs need preserving and celebrating and enjoying and messing about with, and the anything-goes FC environment doesn't encourage that; if anything, it encourages forgetting them altogether. I also enjoy the 50+%-traditional singarounds I go to now much more, partly because I enjoy the songs more and partly because they're much better performed; I've really worked on my own singing as a result, in a way that the FC would never have encouraged me to.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 05:34 PM

It includes but is by no means limited to the pompous pronounciations of what people thought sixty years ago, but includes everything since. Jim might be a 1954 reenactment society but that's no reason to take him seriously.

That may not be moral superiority, but it's certainly "striking airs of superiority". As I think you'd see if you read it back.

"Most working people in the UK" don't relate to any single thing (certainly not to The Imagined Village). The only music that's worth a damn is the music that inspires you, however many other people get it.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 05:21 PM

Michael. What's all that bollocks about moral superiority?

Folk is a broad church. It has many facets. It includes but is by no means limited to the pompous pronounciations of what people thought sixty years ago, but includes everything since. Jim might be a 1954 reenactment society but that's no reason to take him seriously.

Folk is the music of the people? Yeah Right. Most "working" people in The UK wouldn't and don't relate to yokels rattling on about maypoles and cockades. The Imagined Village is all about seeing that.

With knobs on

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 03:42 PM

"Inclusive" of what, Al?

Ave Maria? Freude schöne Götterfunken? Das Forelle? Johann Sebastien Bach? Stockhausen? Walton's Belshazzar's Feast? Handel's Messiah? Paradise Lost? The Faerie Queene? Mick Jagger? The Who? Under Milk Wood? The Iceman Cometh? Eskimo Nell? A Couple of Swells? Rhapsody In Blue? My ♥ Belongs to Daddy?.................

And why?

Just asking...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 03:23 PM

What makes a new song a folk song?

The prospect of keeping the songwriting royalties!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 03:07 PM

My last comment above was in reply to Al.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 03:04 PM

I must be going soft - I agreed with every word of that!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 03:03 PM

Phil - oops.. apologies for an idiotic typing mistake,
on re-reading my post I notice I got the !!!s confused with the ???s

I do wonder if iI'm developing some kind of dyslexia as I'm getting older.

I'm definitely a sloppy typist and seriously need eye testing for reading lenses...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 02:36 PM

well i'm not anti the long ballads. or anything really. got to admit if someone did Tam Linn followed by Desolation Row, i'd get a bit pissed off.

i just want folk clubs to be inclusive. i think the thing is however -if you take on a big song. it is a committment. i will not be entertained by someoneplaying an irritating samey chord arpeggio for twelve or fifteen minutes, or reading the words to me. if i want to read the bloody words i can do it myself.

a song - short or long - modern or traditional - is a compressed and passionate statement. if you don't embrace the challenge performing it properly - find something you can commmit to - gardening perhaps, or car maintenance.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 01:52 PM

Categorising, defining,... hmmm.. yes.. very difficult...

Especially when it almost inevitably leads to'proscribing' !!!

"Almost inevitably"?

My experience doesn't go back very far, but by the same token it is current. I've sung in Hartlepool, Helston and several places in between, including almost all the clubs currently running in Manchester. And I have never, ever, ever seen anyone proscribed, barred, discouraged, criticised or so much as gently sniffed at for bringing a new song to a folk club. It just doesn't happen; maybe it did at one time, but it doesn't now. You're much more likely to be discouraged from doing a long ballad - my local FC actually has a half-serious 'rule' banning songs longer than 20 verses (which would exclude most versions of Musgrave & some of Lord Bateman & Patrick Spens). (Never mind that Lord Bateman taken at a decent pace takes about half the time of Desolation Row or Percy's Song.)

Anyway, I'm not proposing that anyone should change what they do - I don't always sing traditional songs myself (I even write my own sometimes, shock horror). I'm just saying that you shouldn't call something a folk song if it's not what Child, Sharp et al would have called a folk song. But this is such an incredibly straightforward point that the disagreement it provokes obviously isn't motivated by failure to understand it, so I'll stop restating it.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 12:37 PM

An old school friend of mine is a respected novelist and critic.
Many years ago I was part of the same youthful social circle,
moving up to the big city,
harbouring half baked notions of making it in the arts & media...

So there was a time when I was seriously 'intellectually' engaged
and could have sustained an intelligent conversation at an art gallery party..

that was a long time ago...

So please don't think I am just a thick yobbo dismising notions of critical categorisation out of hand.

It's just not particularly important or meaningful in my musical world at this stage in my life...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 12:18 PM

well........ MGM·Lion, you're right there !!!

Collecting, archiving, preserving, are concrete tangible activities..
lifetime jobs well deserving of all respect and honours.

Categorising, defining,... hmmm.. yes.. very difficult...

Especially when it almost inevitably leads to'proscribing' !!!

Problems that can too easily affect all areas of modern arts curating and criticism..

Thankfully I just muck about with musical equipment
and have no real talent or any ambitions as an academic or critic...???

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 11:58 AM

Thanks for that reasoned response, pfr. Interesting. But isn't "general popular consensus" a bit of an over-generalised cop-out when trying to establish any sort of preecision of category? I mean, if 'generalised popular consensuses' are to be the order of the day, why try to define anything whatever?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker[out of bed and back on his co
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 10:48 AM

MGM·Lion - I'm in my mid 50's,
son of a factory shop floor trades unionist and an old folks care home arse wiper;
average 1960s civilised working class council estate upbringing:
until passing the 11 plus complicated my life for ever after afterwards...

I'm no scholar - one of my more neurotic degree lecturers took a dislike to me
and condemned me as "being anti-intellectual !!!"..

So in my rather simplistic outlook:

'Trad Folk' is the good old pissed up singalong playalong stuff which came into being
long before any of us were ever born

'Contemporary Folk' is anything created since then which a general popular consensus
could consider 'folky enough for whatever reasons'
as long as it aint obviously so far removed it's something else....

with allowances made for exceptions to the rules
as long as the disputing don't become too violent.........

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 10:03 AM

Jim, it seems to me, has been cogently arguing for a rational restriction of the "Folk" category nomenclature, to apply to work at least idiomatically/thematically related to the traditional music & songs of the - errr - well -- err ···

··· "The Folk" -- that traditionally identifiable community to whom such a title would naturally, by longstanding sociological & semantic agreement, pertain.

Some -- Musket most prominently SFAICS - seem for some reason to feel they have a right to strike airs of some sort of moral superiority, in insisting that there is something somehow inherently evil in wishing thus precisely to define the term; and that when it comes to defining the category, "anything goes" must be the watchword or some definite though unspecified dire consequences will follow, till all sense of a recognisable identity to the category shall be lost.

I am greatly exercised as to WHY these people should view such an outcome as desirable.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 10:01 AM

well they weren't my fellow performers - their choice.

I don't know where you're coming from at all - why are you standing for this gang of toffee nosed kids - the bullingdon club of the folk revival.

and what exactly was wrong with Ralph McTell. he was a hundred times more the voice of the working class than that crew.

Ralph (i imagine) would probably concede that he's not one the great divergent thinkers of folk guitar.like Davy Davy Graham or Martin Carthy. But he turns up when he's supposed to with his guitar in tune, he has worked out what he has got to say to present his music, he knows all the words in the lyrics and he sings in the right key for his voice. In short he has workingclass pride in his work, and a work ethic.

your mates in the Grey Cock....diletante would flatter their approach. and the fisherman's smocks are etched into my memory with venom, gall and wormwood - not to mention gnashing of teeth.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 09:28 AM

never been too keen on the boomtown rats on mondays or any other day of the week;
but would definitely consider songs by ian dury, wreckless eric, and xtc
as prime candidates for 'folking up' at drunken social singalongs...

...and more than a few other well remembered punk era classics and pop charts obscurities.

unfortunately this kind of 'just for the fun of it' punk to folk adaption has been lately appropriated
by ade ed mundson 's bad shepherds,
and promoted by fawning shallow showbiz journalists
as if he's the artistic genius who invented and owns the idea.....


[typed and posted in bed from our lg blu-ray player browser app-
- as if like being back in1998 on dial up and using a broken keyboard...]

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 08:51 AM

Gee,thanks, Daddy-O.

Anybody's in West Side Story

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 08:39 AM

I used to love your columns and reviews in folk review. so witty and wise.

Clive James. George Melly and Mike Grosvenor Myer - the three great reviewers of the 1970,s!

What a man!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 07:06 AM

I wrote in Folk Review about 1972, in a column of mine on this topic, as many one or two of my "Taking the Mike" back-page columns were: "It's a free country; call them all 'folk' if you like. Except that this impairs communication, which is not altogether a good thing. If every article of household furniture was called a chair, we wouldn't know where to park our arses."

This formulation much caught Peter Bellamy's fancy: I must have heard him quote it a couple of dozen times.

It seems to me there are those on here who are well-meaningly defending & augmenting such confusion of nomenclature, in the interests of some putative "freedom of expression" or such. Just be careful, as they say, what you wish for.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 06:38 AM

Inbetween bouts of arse scratching and getting the kettle on for Mrs Musket getting back from ringing, I just counted the previous "lyrics req'" threads recently and for the previous 30 threads, only four, (although I may be mistaken of course, relying on my head) are for songs that would fit in the old fashioned 1954 absurdity.

And this is a folk website if I'm not mistaken?

At a gig the other night, I got into a conversation about 1954, and after explaining what it was to two professional folk musicians, they had a giggle about how in those days, everything from working mens' clubs to pigeon fanciers had to have committees, so the more pompous fools could feel important. One person (who just about everybody here has heard of) let a fart go (quite impressive) and asked if it could be tabled as a motion...

You see, there is a difference between stamp collecting and posting letters...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 06:29 AM

I haven't been given the 1954 definition any more than you have been given the 2014 definition.

There is no such thing as the 1954 definition because, amongst other things, 1954 was a fucking long time ago. As was 3rd August 1182 at 3.23pm.

The difference is Jim, I call Banks of The Roses a folk song. You don't call I Don't Like Mondays a folk song. It is you who is being narrow and out of date. It is I and reading this, many others who are being inclusive and understanding of the evolving folk tradition.

Aye, bugger off to Dublin. They put on decent cabaret for the tourists...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 04:43 AM

Yakety frolics
Don't talk bollix

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 04:42 AM

yakity yak, dont talk back.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 04:07 AM

(is a new song folk if you sing it at a folk club? if Martin Carthy sings it? if lots of people sing it at folk clubs? No, no and no)

As a empirical pragmatist in such matters, and after long years of bitter-sweet experience in such matters even unto accommodating the MO of such stalwart Traddys as Peter Bellamy & Jim Eldon, I'd have to say Yes, Yes and Yes to this, and with some considerable evidence.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 03:27 AM

Mostly writing their own songs, mostly typical folk artistes yet by Jim's arbitrary definition using his particular narrow experience, not folk.

This is a perfect example of what I wrote less than a day ago, back here.

I think an awful lot of confusion - and heat - has been generated by people applying the word 'folk' to the performer and starting from there. ... If you get away from the idea that the adjective 'folk' applies to the singer - and apply it to individual songs - then the problem goes away. So Martin Carthy's a singer, Ewan MacColl was a singer, Seth Lakeman's a singer. Carthy sings mostly folk songs; MacColl sang folk songs and his own songs, most of which were in a folk idiom; Lakeman sings some folk songs and a lot of his own, some of them in a folk idiom.

It's a very simple definition which everyone can understand; it's clear and easy to apply, and it doesn't lend itself to endless argument about boundary cases (is a new song folk if you sing it at a folk club? if Martin Carthy sings it? if lots of people sing it at folk clubs? No, no and no). So there's probably no chance of getting people to adopt it, or rather re-adopt it.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 03:18 AM

" Jim's arbitrary definition using his particular narrow experience, not folk. "
The only "arbitrary definition" here is your own
You have been given the '54 definition which you have described as "out-of-date" which, just like your ridiculous claims about Child, you have totally failed to provide evidence for.
Your pathetic and disgusting attacks on those who don't accept your personal (that is what it is) definition, which apparently includes 'I Don't Like Mondays' (any evidence of anybody else supporting that view) sum you up - pathetic and disgusting.

This is hoow "personal" my personal view is Muskie - now let's see the %95 people you claim support yours
You can't even scratch up d decent definition between you - "anything goes" isn't definable
Pratt!
Jim Carroll
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 02:44 AM

Indifference and contempt.

The only examples of that are in Jim's dismissal of contemporary folk.

Michael. My 95% of people enjoying folk in more than just tit trousers barking out something about squires and wenches is based on painstaking research over many milliseconds. Notwithstanding as I said before, you can get bloody good roses from decent cow shit.

I suspect I personally have a nostalgic affection for an unaccompanied dirge or two, same as I have for many contemporary folk songs. Some of my more recent album purchases? Latest offerings from many heroes of mine. Mostly writing their own songs, mostly typical folk artistes yet by Jim's arbitrary definition using his particular narrow experience, not folk.

Fucking absurd.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Sep 14 - 01:34 AM

"you are devoid of argument jim "
You haave to be joking Al - you have had masses of argument from me on at leas two threads we have been involved in recently
You may not accept any of what I have had to say, but you cannot possibly claim that I haven't said anything
I don't care what you do - it doesn't impress me greatly, but that's my problem.
What concerns me here is your and Muskett's BEHAVIOUR.
Your attitude towards fellow performers and enthusiasts I find totally unacceptable with your attempts to denigrate by presenting a dishonest picture of what they do - "fishermen's smocks" my arse - whatever their shortcomings, that's about as far from what the Birmingham crowd as you can get!
Muskett appears to be on another planet altogether with his indifference/contempt for what some of us have been involved in for most of our lives and his insulting behaviour of our late benefactors.
Even now you are referring to the music of working people as "total bollocks" - fine, 'cha-cun à son goût', as the saying goes.
I'm off to Dublin for some singing and a few good films - leave you and yours to it for a few days.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 10:06 PM

i'm a clown, now i'm dishonest........

you are devoid of argument jim - you deceive yourself. musket and i have listened to much the same stuff as you, and we have a different opinion of it.

we are not dishonest. we obviously just have higher standards. we have worked as professional musicians and entertainers and we have had to attain standards of stagecraft, musicianship and competence.

to my certain knowledge in at least one club, you are content to sit through evenings of total bollocks. okay - you stick to what you like.
and keep the abuse coming, but don't flatter yourself that i'm dishonest.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 06:59 PM

Yaks diddle. Otherwise, where would little yaks come from?

(Sorry, I'll go now....)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 06:52 PM

I know the song, just hadn't heard of the idiom - Yakkety Yak, like Diddle-De-Dee - as if there's a sub-genre of Irish Music out there where they Yak instead of Diddle...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Tootler
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 06:26 PM

What's Yakitty Yak, Dick?

or, if you like

http://youtu.be/PtTC3pGBjs4

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 05:58 PM

Yakety Yak" is a song written, produced, and arranged by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller for The Coasters and released on Atlantic Records in 1958, spending seven weeks as #1 on the R&B charts and a week as number one on the Hot 100 pop list. This song was one of a string of singles released by The Coasters between 1957 and 1959 that dominated the charts, one of the biggest performing acts of the rock and roll era.k" was written by Leiber, Jerry / Stoller



Take out the papers and the trash
Or you don't get no spendin' cash
If you don't scrub that kitchen floor
You ain't gonna rock and roll no more
Yakety yak
(Don't talk back)

Just finish cleanin' up your room
Let's see that dust fly with that broom
Get all that garbage out of sight
Or you don't go out Friday night
Yakety yak
(Don't talk back)

Just put on your coat and hat
And walk yourself to the laundromat
And when you finish doin' that
Bring in the dog and put out the cat
Yakety yak
(Don't talk back)

Don't you give me no dirty looks
Your father's hip, he knows what cooks
Just tell your hoodlum friends outside
You ain't got time to take a ride
Yakety yak
(Don't talk back)

Yakety yak, yakety yak
Yakety yak, yakety yak
Yakety yak, yakety yak
Yakety yak, yakety yak

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 04:58 PM

says stop playing diddley music, and play bluegrass like yakitty yak,.

What's Yakitty Yak, Dick?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 04:18 PM

"The "extreme" idiots are the ones who turn up at a place of entertainment and try to tell you what is wrong with your music. "
Never came across any of them - came across plenty who stopped turming up to clubs because they found they were being conned by the stuff that was being put on in place of folk music"
haha,jim there is one in our village, who when he is very drunk, turns up and says stop playing diddley music, and play bluegrass like yakitty yak,.
he clearly doesnt know that yakkityy yak is not bluegrass, he is an extreme idiot who is rather like a record player that is stuck, he cannot play anything himself but think it is his prerogative to tell others whats wrong with their music, his comments have racist overtones, so i fecked him off good and proper

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 01:24 PM

What is your statistical basis for that very precisely numerated assertion, please, Ian?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 01:23 PM

"The "extreme" idiots are the ones who turn up at a place of entertainment and try to tell you what is wrong with your music. "
Never came across any of them - came across plenty who stopped turming up to clubs because they found they were being conned by the stuff that was being put on in place of folk music
Your extremism comes from the way you dismiss and insult people who don't adhere to your "folk is anything I care to call it" attitude - particularly despicable is the way you insult the older generation who gave us our folk song.
I'm quite happy to argue with people I disagree with - you don't argue, you bully when you can't get your way - you belong in a schoolyard.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 12:33 PM

If someone running a pub would like to host a club, run by Jim and with Keith Price sat listening earnestly over his shandy, it leaves the way clear for the rest of us to enjoy folk music.

Jim, where did I give the impression I am an extreme anything? The "extreme" idiots are the ones who turn up at a place of entertainment and try to tell you what is wrong with your music. Now, if I couldn't sing, couldn't play and people were wishing I'd shut up, that's one thing, but the ones who try telling you what is and isn't folk are as fucking annoying here as they are in a pub full of people out for a good night out.

What inspires people to stand or sit there complaining that folk isn't what they want it to be after all? You'd think they'd get a life.

It's thanks to such buffoons that Folk clubs are rebranding themselves as acoustic nights or acoustic roots etc . And that's a shame because the vast majority, nay, 95% of us enjoy folk in its widest sense.