What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 03:22 AM

Workers' music.

Piss off

They are revived, revered and sustained by a broad cross section of people.

I used to be bemused hearing social workers, cost accountants and teachers sing about how hard it is working down the pit. I'd reciprocate with a song about shagging in barns and bugger off before last orders due to having to go down the pit at 5.30 the following morning. Most of my muckers found it odd but funny that middle class warriors could be so condescending.

Many traditional songs have a beauty of their own and need no link to a struggle that has no bearing or comparison with any issues of today. A few draw parallels and many songs are being perpetuated without merit. I don't need the folk police to help me decide thank you.

Music is an abstraction. Only you can decide whether to listen or pop for a pint and piss. Just don't admonish others on your way to the gents eh?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 03:38 AM

"They are revived, revered and sustained by a broad cross section of people. "
They were masede and passed on by the working people - they reflect their lives and experiences down they ages - they are workers songs just as surely as the songs you sing are products of the music industry
You'and jack Blandiver and Al ... have shown us the respect you have for the working people - in your case, especially when they grow old and risible.
Nuff for me Muskie, for all your blustering.
Jim Carroll
A RURAL CARPENTER

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 03:53 AM

You fellers can sure dish it out, but you seem to have trouble taking it
Jim Carroll

that's cos you lie about us and over simplify. i never saw joe heaney, or several others, i should have. i became a professional singer out of financial necessity. playing anything a jobbing musician had to to make living. i learned to respect songwriters whose work put food on the table. when i wasn't working in pubs - i visited my fair share of folk clubs, but i admit not as many as i perhaps should have.

i did buy joe's double album from a fine singer/songwriter called Pete Coe, who carries round albums by joe and others like him for people who might be interested.

Joe of couse used to sing some songs in Irish. perhaps he did this at a Clancy's concert. they were a very public face of folk music type act. i never saw them. but i remember Ian Campbell saying they had this thing, where every night they used to run on stage and and throw aside a stool that was put there every night for them to throw aside, in a lets get down to business sort of gesture.

At our song club in the Vernon, Derby we had a singer who regularly sang in Gaelic. we all listened respectfully - though admittedly without a great deal of comprehension to hear him do his three songs. Hugh Lamont. we also listened to every other sort of music.

you really are talking bollocks about the English folkscene - we aren't a hard nosed gangs of 1950's concert goers who next week will be listening to MJQ, and expect exactly whats on the ticket.

I on the other hand exaggerate not a jot when i describe the reaction oF your mates at the Grey Cock folk club in Birminghan and their arrogance and unfriendliness - I will never forget it.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 03:54 AM

Nice bit of self promotion Dick (I think!!) - not sure of your point, but at least no-one can accuse you of being backward about coming forward!
spot on, Jim, my point is that you can ascertain what kind of folk music from seeing who is advertised, if you saw jim mcfarlane you would know that you were going to get irish unaccompanied folk songs, martin carthy trad songs with guitar, leon rosselson contemporary songs with guitar, so what it say on the tin you are going to get.
   singers nights, are of course different,incidentally the i can think of only two singers who occasionally include fifties pop songs that is andy caven and dave burland, dave, does include trad songs too.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 04:37 AM

"that's cos you lie about us and over simplify."
Show where I lie Al - I really don't go in for that sort of thing on a public debate forum, I don't see the point.
I spent most of my life visiting folk clubs, not because I "should have" but because I wanted to - it was my introduction to folk song and what I heard inspired me to take it further.
I had hoped that others would continue to have the opportunities I had, but now, it seems, it's necessary to send out search parties beforehand to make sure you are given what you have been promised.
Funny about your experiences at the Grey Cock - mine was always exactly the opposite.
I always found them welcoming and I was guaranteed a night of good to excellent singing there whenever I was able to go.
A surprise blast from the past - a friend recently presented me with a recording of the night I guested there with my accompanist and fellow singer friend in the early seventies - I thought it wore quite well down the years, though I am far more critical of my singing than I was then.
The Grey Cock, via one of its founder members, Charles Parker, can boast 'The Radio Ballads' and the considerable output of other radio programmes that pioneered the work of giving working people a public voice - helped change the history of public broadcasting as far as working people are concerned.
Charles, and other members of the club, revisited and recorded Cecilia Costello and wroked with chainmaker, George Dunne, putting a whole batch of new material into the revival.
Charles' work, in all its glory, can now be accessed on the top floor of Birmingham Central Library for all to listen to.   
The club extensively researched Midlands songs, saving them from extinction.
Early members, such as Roy Palmer, continue to do invaluable work in producing book after book of songs about working class life and experience - our understanding of industrial, military and nautical songs would be very much poorer without his work.
I never got round to seeing Banner Theatre, but I'm told they did excellent work.
I wish I could clam a fraction of that about our work.
What did you do in the war daddy!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 04:55 AM

jim, i cant really talk about singers nights and give an overall picture any more than you,because last year i only visited 3 in england, all in the north east, nobody sang fifties pop songs, but of course it could have been happening somewhere else.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 05:04 AM

I think it's best not to prejudge your audience & fellow-singers

I'm not judging or prejudging, merely pointing out how things are with respect of Folk as a middle-class construct that operates at several very significant removes from the culture in which these songs originated. In over 40 years of folkin' I've never found it to be any different : the more Trad the club, the more middle-class the singers. Over here in our proletarian sea-side Shangri-La you'd be lucky to hear ONE traditional song in the local folk club, which is why I gave up long ago - not because I'm too stuck up, but because there was little point in them trying to enjoy my shit, or me trying to enjoy theirs. Fair dos, I suppose.

This is not a judgement though, it's an observation on the very nature of Folk as a cultural artifice born from long years of bitter-sweet experience. Ultimately I see no real harm in it & in most cases it's a very good thing in providing the catalyst for some amazing music, but none of it quite so amazing as the real thing which, unfortunately, it does tend to obscure rather, despite seeking to somehow represent it.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 06:34 AM

"This is not a judgement though, it's an observation"
It appears to be an extremely restricted observation
At least half of the clubs I frequented were predominantly, if not overwhelmingly working class based.
None were the rose-tinted 'son's of the soil' purveyors you describe (imagine from your middle-class armchair?).
The repertoire itself defies your description if you examine it in its entirety.
The Irish scene on which you pour your contempt, as is the Scots scene, from what I have gathered
Mus#ch of the invaluable work done in Scotland has been drawn from those good-old middle-class institutions, the bothies, and they and those of us in Ireland have taken our lead from the repertoires of the middle class nobility of the roads, the Travellers.
If it hadn't been for the latter, you wouldn't have a centuries old ballad repertoire you now appear to be prepared to pour down the gutter.
A direct link between Scots folk music enthusiasts and Travellers in the form of the Elphinstone Institute has long been in existence, and the School of Scottish Studies publications, Tocher and Scottish Studies has benefited and been enriched by the material given by the 'despised' Tinkers.
Such is the veracity of your "pastoral dreaming"
Maybe we should all buy folkie greenhouses as second homes - then we could enlighten ourselves with regular visits to the land of armchairs and curling pipe smoke.
You really do need to get out more.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 07:23 AM

You know - as these post-equinoctial evenings draw in I really miss my clay church warden; one of the true joys of my old Brancepeth Castle days, holed in from the tempest, leafing through hoary old copies of Child and centuries old Popular Ballad collections in search of something truly strange before a roaring fire of logs & coal whilst necking a cheap bottle of Hungarian merlot to a soundtrack of Transylvanian field-recordings, or Ritual Flute Music of New Guinea or Bach's B minor Mass or Popol Vuh's Affenstunde or my cherished vinyl of The Clemencic Consort's Carmina Burana originals.

Times I might yearn for the whole antiquarian whiff that these days seems long gone as I snuggle up on the sofa in centrally-heated domestic bliss to watch The Great British Bake Off, or the new BFI DVD of The Changes full of spectral Folk Horror & Hauntological inspirations in the classic soundtrack that has Paddy Kingsland conducting his sonic seance in the Radiophonic Workshop which rests at the heart and soul of a whole Folk Vision, itself born of a yearning for that which never was but never the less seems a good deal more real to the increasingly bland MOR shite that passes as Folk these days. To my ears at least, because...

Thing is, Old Man - it's all a matter of taste. And the best of it is, it will ALWAYS be new to someone, so - Keep Moving Gentlemen, even if it is just on your grandad's old rocking chair.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 07:42 AM

More middle-class armchair musings
Did you ever trace a copy of your book on fly fishing, I wonder?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 07:55 AM

Jim, i don't care if charles parker built the pyramids at thebes -it still didn't give his acolytes any excuse for acting like arseholes.

and to be honest -it pains me to say so - if i ever need a whiff of their attitude of superiority, it does tend to hang round your postings occasionally.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 08:07 AM

And ALWAYS be Folk to someone too, regardless of any orthodoxy or consensus, because these things have a life of their own, just as they did Back In The Day when the Old Songs ranged throughout the English Speaking World in feral abundance until licked into shape in the name of Folklore, without which, of course, most of us might never have got wind of them in the first place. BUT, like other examples of exhibited savagery (the shrunken heads in the Pit Rivers Museum come to mind, similarly 'Collected' and 'Itemised' and subject to the objective scrutiny of an Imperialistic Academia) we can can only press our faces against the glass and gaze in mute horror as we imagine sights unseen, now sanitised for the entertainment of the civilised. The Folk Heritage is hoary horror on a cultural feedback loop, echoing from generation to generation as they decide what it means to them and redefine notions of Tradition and Invention just as MacColl and his ilk did back in their day. Like Religion, it remains very much Optional, despite the overtones of Pure Blood Authenticity one still encounters like when Steve Roud announced a few years back (somewhere on this very forum) that a Bogus Folksong (.e. Shoals of Herring) becomes a Real Folksong when collected from a Bonafide Traditional Folksinger & earns the Chufty Badge of a Road Number. Seems to me only a matter of time before The Revealing Science of God gets a Roud Number too. It is, God knoweth, this sort of nonsense that puts me right off however much I might love the scholarship otherwise.

Fly fishing, Old Man? Nah. I was always more of a guddling man myself. Cheaper and more effective when there's hungry mouths to feed.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 08:09 AM

Road Number? Predictive text on my new middle-class MacBook!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 08:24 AM

Nothing middle class about a MacBook. Even we goose steppers and haters of music have them...

I reckon quite a few people are reading this thread. Last night I sang an unaccompanied traditional song which I usually use the guitar for. I referred to my unaccompanied rendition as the tit trousers remix. Got a laugh and a slight applause..

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 08:39 AM

The last great folk protest song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxPsXPCR5MU

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 08:48 AM

"it still didn't give his acolytes any excuse for acting like arseholes."
I'll stand by what they achieved - goes for me as well.
Maybe they didn't give you a booking, or even worse, weren't impressed with what you do - real arseholes?
Thank you for continuing to make m point Jack - saves me the bother
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 08:56 AM

"At least half of the clubs I frequented were predominantly, if not overwhelmingly working class based."

Perhaps this is the source of the apparent confusion between us. Clearly we were visiting very different clubs. My experience has been that the overwhelming majority of people I have met in the folk revival have been middle class, by education and occupation if not by origin. If that matters.

The folk revival is of course entirely separate from the actual tradition. It's not often I agree with Jack Blandiver, but here I do. The folk revival is an artificial construct which does not even attempt to replicate the environment in which folk music once existed. Many of the audience are attracted by the modern way of presenting the music and have no interest, and would even be turned off by, authentic traditional singers. I was like this myself, once.

Occasionally the likes of Walter Pardon and Fred Jordan could be found performing at folk clubs and festivals, but on the whole the folk revival exists within itself, and the revival style of performing traditional songs bears little resemblance to the actual tradition. Even when songs are performed unaccompanied they might bear little resemblance to traditional singing styles but rather a generic 'folk voice' (although with more recorded material available I think this has changed in recent years).

Where the real tradition still survives it is (almost by definition) within working-class communities, but I suspect they have little use for folk clubs.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 09:03 AM

.... and here are the words and chords..

play along, sing along, clap along, in perfect harmony...

Let's all protest together in harmonious folkie unison...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 09:26 AM

When the "tit trousers" label was first minted, thousands of postings ago, it was a snooty, offensive jibe. Now it's quite funny. The tit trousers remix - I'll have one of those, please.

Is this what they call the Folk Process?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: johncharles
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 10:25 AM

How well I remember my father. Dressed in his Tit trousers, staggering home from the pub with eight pints in him and belting out Nellie Dean. Happy days.
john

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 11:14 AM

The last great folk protest song...

That I lived to see the day when I could listen such music at the click of a button! What a perfect joy.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 11:18 AM

Justy linked to it on my Facebook page. Any Facebookers here? Come! Let's be friends!

Sedayne Blandiver's Facebook Page

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 11:18 AM

"Perhaps this is the source of the apparent confusion between us"
Then there is no great confusion.
In many ways, the clubs were are artificial as Sharp's drawing rooms - from what we were told, so were the pubs.
Sam Larner sang regularly in 'The Fisherman's Return' and competed in fishermans' competitions up the East coast, but he old Parker and MacColl, "the serious singing was done at home or at sea" - that's where he sang his loner songs.
In Ireland, all the music, singing and storytelling took place in farmhouse kitchens.
Travellers sang in family groups or at gatherings like Ballinasloe or Puck Fairs.
Again, they said, "you wouldn't get the attention for the big songs in pubs".
Walter Pardon's experience was at family/friend gatherings like Christmas parties and birthdays - he couldn't remember the harvest suppers.
The only time he ever saw pub singing was after an Agricultural Workers Trade Union meeting when he watched through the window when his Uncle Billy sang.
This is why it would be nonsense to attempt to revive the tradition.
The clubs gave us townies, or those who no longer had local singers, a chance to hear the songs and to hear some of the surviving singers - wouldn't have missed it for the world.
They provided us with venues at which we could sing the songs we fancied, meet up with other enthusiasts and swap ideas and material - something else I wouldn't have missed.
It enabled us to, to some degree, spread the awareness of folk song and maybe even put feelers out for local material - London and Birmingham did it, we did it to some extent in Manchester, and singers like Harry Boardman became known for his Lancashire repertoire.
The Singers Club pioneered The themed 'feature' and 'poetry and song' evenings.
The clubs allowed us to become creative artists after we'd washed the days dirt off and had our meal - now that's something I would not have missed.
As I said, virtually all my friends were workers - me and a mate first stumbled into the Spinners Club in Liverpool - I was an electrical apprentice on the docks, he was a fruit stall worker at Paddy's Market, most of the audience had similar jobs.
In Manchester, Terry Whelan was a trouncer (driver) for a brewery firm, my mate/accompanist, Barry Taylor was a clerk for a shipping firm at Manchester Airport, Eddie Lenihan was a retired building worker and Tom Gilfellon and Dave Hillary were students.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 01:27 PM

Many of the audience are attracted by the modern way of presenting the music and have no interest, and would even be turned off by, authentic traditional singers. I was like this myself, once.

I used to think an evening of never knowing what kind of music (or what standard of performance) you were going to get - and being able to get up myself and sing anything I liked - was just the bestest thing ever; if asked I would have said that that was the great thing about folk clubs. Then I found the door in the hill that let me into Tradworld, and I've never looked back - I just enjoyed it so much more. (OK, it wasn't quite as sudden as that - more a case of 'first gradually, then all at once'.)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 02:28 PM

"In Ireland, all the music, singing and storytelling took place in farmhouse kitchens."
would it not be more correct to say most, rather than all, I mean what was Margaret Barry doing busking on the streets,when she shuld have been in her rightful place "the kitchen"

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 02:31 PM

Many of the audience are attracted by the modern way of presenting the music and have no interest, and would even be turned off by, authentic traditional singers

Fuck them, then.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Sep 14 - 05:33 PM

not impressed with what i did....

they never found out

who are your influences?

well i like Ralph McTell

Well I'm sorry, we've got to draw the line somewhere. you can pay to come in, but you're not singing here.

well with difficulty i had got my disabled wife up the stairs. i had also brought my mother and father in law, who were keen supporters of me.
We paid for our tickets and were treated to the biggest most arrogant load of shite, i have ever witnessed. And in lifetime of listening to folksingers, that's saying something.
When i sang and played like that. i stayed at home and practised - in solitude like Sam Larner. you don't become proficient keeping company like that.

i can see where you get all your attitude from though - jim. they really thought they were god'd chosen ones.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 02:15 AM

Tit trousers was a term of endearment from when I first used the term, accompanying Tom and Bertha Brown to clubs and festivals 30 odd years ago. Like all the other "originals" Tom wore clothes to folk gigs he certainly never wore at home. Brilliant theatre, and taught by his mate Fred Jordan.

It only has been seen as an insult on this thread because Jim explodes at anything that doesn't worship the high waist banded ones in revered tones. I was called a goose stepper for saying some songs can't ever sound worth listening to...

The late Tony Capstick used to tell a joke (the one about two old blokes in a pub, a dog licking his balls and a packet of crisps, you know the one..) and tell it as if it were a conversation between Sam Larner and Walter Pardon. Personalising it just made it funnier for a folk audience.

In case anyone forgot, comedy has always been a key ingredient of The UK folk club genre.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 03:39 AM

"In Ireland, all the music, singing and storytelling took place in farmhouse kitchens."

so without a farmhouse kitchen - you were pretty much bollocksed. actually its not the impression you get from the short stories of James Joyce.

from Joyce, you hear the folksongs sung by schoolkids, travellers on a train, in a pub, the ferret cage competitiveness of the feis, by sportsmen, medical students, political meetings......

okay, I know what's coming next.......well they weren't really folksongs. just like nobody in English folk clubs is singing folksongs.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 04:06 AM

"Well I'm sorry, we've got to draw the line somewhere. you can pay to come in, but you're not singing here"
Know where you're coming from now Al - met hundreds of you when I used to help with the door at the Singers Club
The clowns who turned up and demanded to sing, no matter what they sang or whether they were able to hang two notes together.
Or the ones 'looking for a gig' who would give the door-person their name, as the to "give us a shout when it's my turn" then sit in the bar, not showing any interest whatever in what was happening upstairs in the club they were asking for a booking, or demanding half a dozen songs when there were a dozen visiting singers on the list.....
I avoided clubs that would put up with that shit like the plague - those were the ones you were guaranteed to go home from not having heard a folk song, or having heard a night of mostly crap singing - if there was ever a 'golden age' on the folk club scene, it was when clubs like that where virtually non-existent.
The Grey Cock, The Singers Club and virtually every club have been part of, were policy clubs in the sense that we tried to present what we believed was folk song and tried to establish a standard of singing that wouldn't send the audience home thinking, "folk song is tuneless, talentless crap and not worth bothering your arse about".   
I've been happy to go to clubs where a fair amount of time is given over to floor-singers occasionally, but not as a general policy, and the best of these nights have always been the ones that were organised to attempt to guarantee a bias towards singers who didn't have to read their songs from crib-sheets and could hold two notes together.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 04:40 AM

>I personally have largely stopped singing the old songs out of an increased sense of cultural awkwardness with respect of this. <

So what can I expect at your Sheffield gig in November, sirrah? It's says "Heretics Folk Club" — that's what it says on the tin.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 04:56 AM

Musically speaking, many of your heroes couldn't hold a note together either Jim. Don't bring the components of music into the discussion, you are on a hiding to nothing.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 06:42 AM

"Musically speaking, many of your heroes couldn't hold a note together either Jim. "
Name one?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 07:25 AM

To be fair to Al, there are few things I dislike more than turning up at a club and not getting to sing - and turning up with family in tow, paying to get in and then not getting to sing would piss me off in a big way. So I can certainly sympathise.

That said, my nightmare folk club is one where lots of people do their own material, lots of other people do Harvey Andrews/Jez Lowe/John Conolly numbers and a few daring souls do pop songs - and anyone doing an unaccompanied traditional song is made to feel like an archaelogy lecturer who's interrupted a rave (and good luck if you're expecting anyone to join in on the choruses).

And it sounds as if Al's nightmare club is one where everyone does unaccompanied traditional songs (probably with choruses), and anyone who gets a guitar out is made to feel like a raver who's interrupted an archaeology lecture.

I think we've got a Difference of Opinion here.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 08:08 AM

So what can I expect at your Sheffield gig in November, sirrah?

Oh - a lot of disconcerting electro eventlessness by way of the seasonal dark I shouldn't wonder but no fiddle 'n' banjo with P&CT headlining. Happily we've no such qualms about doing ballads & fragments without any actual bona-fide traditional precedence, just don't call it folk when Rachel's in earshot.

Ever hear this? Best thing we've ever done by way hauntological horror with distant echoes of BitBag (how's the reunion coming along anyway? Or has it come & gone?).

Long Lankin - Live in Leicester June 2013

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 08:46 AM

I could name more than one.. Unlike you, I dont confuse aspects of entertainment.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 09:12 AM

"To be fair to Al, there are few things I dislike more than turning up at a club and not getting to sing "
Only if it's a singaround club surely
I can think of many hundreds of clubs where you wouldn't be asked, without having taken offence.
That was the policy of most clubs at one time
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 09:49 AM

It's the norm now for visiting singers to make themselves known to the MC. Maybe Al was just ahead of his time.

Recently I've only been to one club where I wasn't given a chance to sing, and I don't think that was deliberate; I wrote about it here. I wasn't very pleased, but what the hell, it was only one night (plus I was on my own & hadn't paid a lot to get in).

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 10:04 AM

well actually no, they couldn't sing, play,guitar, or penny whistle. it really was dire. they all had fisherman's smocks. i think the problem with grey cock was, they had a tradition of being shite.

thought it would be my fault though, being a clown etc. Jim this is getting like a conversation with 'the old gits'!

and on the contrary, i go to lots of folk clubs Phil, where i don't sing - intending just to listen and learn. went to one last night, where a fine traditional singer called Bob Lewis was singing - probably not traditional enough for some present, even if he was Irish.

however unlike the people who voted for Cameron, I know shite when i see it. The grey cock residents - you wouldn't want them on your shoes. like Jim though, they thought they had impeccable taste.

quite beyond peradventure.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 10:13 AM

"i think the problem with grey cock was, they had a tradition of being shite."
Simply untrue
They NEVER wore fishemen's smocks, and residents like Pam Bishop were among the most skilful musicians and music teachers on the scene.
Topic thought they were good enough to produce an album of them
You appear to be suffering from a sad dose of THIS
C'mon Al - you're better than this
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 11:34 AM

Don't know if anybody's interested, but the MacColl/Charles Parker series, 'The Song Carriers' has just been put up for downloading 'see - Ewan MacColl, The Song Carriers'
If you haven't heard it, it's a must
It includes some of the best traditional singers from Britain and Ireland and a brilliant analysis of the tradition - 50 years old and never been surpassed I.M.O.
The same good fairy has also put up Lloyd's 'Songs of the People' (13 programmes).
You want to hear what folk singing is all, about......?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 11:37 AM

Traditional enough? A song's either traditional or it isn't; and you can accompany it however you like as far as I'm concerned, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the song. As for the performer being traditional enough...

I just checked, and it turns out that Peter Bellamy and Tony Capstick were almost exactly the same age - they were born about six weeks apart. (If the stupid buggers had stuck around they would both have been 70 now.) When they invent time travel, a gig by one of those guys is going to be my first stop - but I'd have to toss a coin to decide which one. Preferring traditional songs doesn't make you deaf to everything else.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 11:40 AM

Sorry, that last comment was a bit opaque - it was taking off from Al's line about a fine traditional singer called Bob Lewis ... probably not traditional enough for some present.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 11:40 AM

Ah costume... I keep thinking about getting a red hankie and tying it round my greyhound's collar. Give me some street cred with the "live the dream" crowd.

Right. This afternoon I wrote a song, but it wasn't the best I have ever written to be honest. In fact, after getting initially excited about it, it is a damp squid.

Bear with me.

I have changed a few words so it sounds a bit older, you know, "petticoat" "squire" that sort of thing, and I intend to stick it on a few trad websites and call it traditional, on the basis nobody will know who wrote it.

So.. What makes a new song a folk song? That'll do for starters.

Give it time and some will have learned it at their mother's knee.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 12:37 PM

Jim - "You want to hear what folk singing, is all about?" (sic)

Everybody knows what folk singing is all about. It's what you perceive it to be. And I doubt with my background and experience I need you to point it out to me. Ditto most of the Mudcat browsing public.

You really think people who see folk for what it is actually don't like the traditional section of the word folk, don't you?

Yeah, Bert Lloyd was folk. So is Seth Lakeman, Eliza Carthy and The Oyster Band.

💤💤💤💤💤

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 01:00 PM


Oh - a lot of disconcerting electro eventlessness by way of the seasonal dark I shouldn't wonder but no fiddle 'n' banjo with P&CT headlining. Happily we've no such qualms about doing ballads & fragments without any actual bona-fide traditional precedence, just don't call it folk when Rachel's in earshot.<

Eventlessness and banjo — sounds like my kinda night.

(how's the reunion coming along anyway? Or has it come & gone?).<

Neither, yet. It's complicated at our age.

Keep talking — we'll be the first to hit the thousand mark...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 01:29 PM

" It's what you perceive it to be."
Nope - it's what it is and it can be heard at it's best on 'The Song Carriers'
That id what is defined and documented and will be remembered as folk song when you've all gone to your 'Gracelands in the Sky' - unless you follow through your arguments and burn all the books.
"You really think people who see folk for what it is actually don't like the traditional section of the word folk, don't you?"
I have no idea who you are talking about, but if you are referring to yourself, your distasteful attempts to piss on it and denigrate the people who passed it on - it's doesn't rocket science to work ot what you feel or know about it.
Happty to accept Eliza, The Oyster Band and Lloyd base what they do/did on folk song, but Seth Lakeman?
Always sounded like a mediocre rock performer to me -plenty of them on the scene - not too many in the charts though.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 05:54 PM

Aye. Mediocre.. Whether he be singing, playing guitar or fiddle, I suppose his jeans end south of his belly button eh?

You know, most of mudcat know what folk is, and as they are the other side of the pond, they must be bemused by your insular narrow minded nonsense.

Must dash. About to do our last set. Playing with a folk band tonight. That's folk by the way.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 06:07 PM

the music charts are hardly a meritocracy. all i can say is, if the gang at the grey cock is your idea of competent folksinging and accompaniment - your views are widely divergent from anybody without hearing problems.

I can only think you are so soaked in the values of the tradition, you have developed the dreaded fisherman's smock blindness condition.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Sep 14 - 01:23 AM

As I have mentioned before, I did list in one of my literary guide entries (The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, ed Ian Ousby 1988) certain singer-songwriters (MacColl, Tawney, Bellamy, Pegg, Coe) who have contributed "new songs convincingly in the traditional idiom". I am not sure whether Seth Lakeman has quite the same mainly traditional-singing background as these, as I am not as familiar with his background and antecedents; but I must say, having sought him on YouTube, that I do find some of his songs quite "convincingly in the idiom".

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