Your favourite Protest song.

Subject: RE: Your favourite Protest song.
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Apr 23 - 05:19 AM

Thank you Charlie. I did not know this poem .

There is a sort of warp and weft to the words. A conversation between the man, his guitar, the strings he plays, the words, the world of which his songs lyricise and reflect upon.

The nature of folk guitar being what it is - few of us are fully in control of what we produce musically. The choices are not quite as existential and free as the poet suggests.

I suppose we are about as free as the rivers in Ireland.

Subject: RE: Your favourite Protest song.
From: GUEST,Roderick A. Warner
Date: 16 Apr 23 - 08:55 AM

What larks! Stumbling across Wallace Stevens on a Sunday morning: late/coffee and oranges indeed but I wonder what the nature of folk guitar is? Your control of what you produce is in your own hands, literally. Why embrace limits. Bill Evans said: acquire your technique… and then forget it. Good advice for any musician imo…

Subject: RE: Your favourite Protest song.
From: GUEST,James Phillips
Date: 16 Apr 23 - 10:56 AM

As far as anti-war songs go I'm very partial to "Lots of Little Soliders" by Matt McGinn and as sung by Barry Dransfield.

My name is what-you-call-me
and my fathers was as well.
Of a little game he taught me
now the story I will tell.
We had lots of little soldiers
and as sure as the day would come
I sent them into battle
with a rattle of my drum

(chorus)
I put them on the table
and I marched them all around
then I battered them with cannonballs
and watched them falling down.
I had lots of little crosses
that I laid upon the dead
Then I patched up all the wounded
and I sent them home to bed.

I went round and asked the neighbours
for a penny or a dime
to help me buy some soldiers
just to help me pass the time.
They were always very kindly
in supplying me with guns
and some of them even let me play
at soldiers with their sons.

Whenever I went to the shop
to buy my guns and tanks
The man there always smiled and patted
my head and whispered "Thanks.
If it wasn't for your soldier game
I don't know what I'd do.
You keep my business busy, son,
so here's an extra few.

One day I bought some aeroplanes
but here is what I found:
when I sent them in with bombs to help
my army on the ground,
they bombed up every soldier there
and proved a sorrowful flop -
I had to buy another hundred
crosses from the shop.

I would very much have liked to teach
this little game of guns
to my seven beautiful daughters
and my fourteen lovely sons.
But the man in the shop, he gave me down
a bomb from off the shelf.
It blew up every soldier, all my
neighbours and myself.

Subject: RE: Your favourite Protest song.
From: GUEST,Diolch
Date: 16 Apr 23 - 01:54 PM

It seems to me there are two types of protest songs that become classics: the timeless lyrics, such as Bella Ciao that was mentioned earlier; and the lyrics that are open to being endlessly rewritten, such as Rigs of the Time.

The oldest fully applicable protest song I sing without changing a word is from about 1850, but there are some very good contemporary writers about now too.

And I can't resist adding my favourite Matt McGinn line as he's just been mentioned:

They're never ever satisfied, though millions they have made,
But still they think that you and I are grossly overpaid.
    There's nothing that they widnae steal,
      they even grudge your kids a meal

Subject: RE: Your favourite Protest song.
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Apr 23 - 03:48 PM

Maybe Roderick. I'm a pretty fair guitar strummer - but the guitar surprises me as to if it works, how it works. I think the possibility of finding new stuff - or new stuff emerging as I practice - that's what keeps me hoping to produce something worthwhile.