Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning??? (MacColl)

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning??? (MacColl)
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 07 May 23 - 04:49 PM

with respect, Dave politics is more than just petty squabbles about the royals, has anyone here suggested it was about petty squabbles about the royals.
I certainly was concerned aged 10 about the threat of nuclear war in 1961 re the Bay of Pigs invasion.
king edward the 8th and his wife appear to have been nazi sympathisers
.
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Historians believe the Duke of Windsor actively collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War | CBC Documentaries Loaded
The Passionate Eye·New documentary


The late Duke of Windsor is perhaps most known for abdicating the throne in 1936, less than a year after being crowned King Edward VIII, to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson. But what happened afterward is where the true scandal lies.

In the documentary Edward VIII: Britain's Traitor King, experts unearth documents that suggest the duke's dealings with the Nazis during the Second World War were extensive — and that his actions were covered up by the British government after the war.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning??? (MacColl)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 07 May 23 - 05:09 PM

Yea, whatever...

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning??? (MacColl)
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 08 May 23 - 12:56 AM

This song like some of his other compositions is worth studying from the point of view of writing songs.
He is writing from personal experience, this was a factor in success of the radio ballads too EXAMPLE using voices of fishermen in Singing the Fishing, Wqrds and phrases were used like that in Shoals of Herring, So Ewan had never been a fisherman but the song becomes convincing because he listened to the words phrases and the speech rhythms of Sam Larner and others and it became the song.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning??? (MacColl)
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 08 May 23 - 01:25 AM

“What I think about songwriting is that you have to reduce what you say, reduce it to its bones”PeggySeeger
Seeger says, “reduce it to its bones, so each person listening can put it together in their own way. The ballads do that. This gives the listener the chance to create from their own experience. So they are important to the whole thing.”

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning??? (MacColl)
From: GUEST,RJM
Date: 08 May 23 - 01:37 AM

He was born and grew up in Salford in the middle of the 1930s depression in appalling conditions which gave him a life-long hatred of the system that produced it.
His life experience inspired him to look out 'ordinary' people (whatever they are), listen to and record what they had to say and make songs based on what he was told. Songs like Freeborn Man, Shoals of Herring, Shellback and Tenant Farmer were based on actual recordings of fishermen, farmers, Travellers, coalminers.....
The Radio Ballad 'The Travelling People' helped draw attention to the persecution of Travellers in Britain and helped bring about changes in the laws regarding stopping places for them.
The Radio Ballads gave 'ordinary' people a voice they never had before, Navvies, railwaymen, fishermen, colaminers....
Far from being "racist", songs like 'Sharpville' and compositions like 'White Wind' exposed extreme murderous racism... and helped immortalise some of it worst excesses.

He drew attention to the fact that the music we love came from working people and was almost certainly a reflection of their lives throughout history - the 'lower-class art of people who are still considered as being 'artless'.
quote Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning??? (MacColl)
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 23 - 03:57 AM

I found another intersting quote from Jim Carroll, re Ewan and songwriting
" had been staying with them one time while Ewan was making tunes for his songs; he would pick a source tune and wander around whistling and humming it under his breath, adapting it as he went until he reached a satisfactory conclusion - drove everybody barmy.
What I got from these experiences never left me - I now find myself trying to match up tunes with others to see if they are related      
I came to the opinion that Ewan's favourite 'adaptable' tune was the air of 'Famous Flower of Serving Men' from Gavin Greig's 'Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads'.
https://soundcloud.com/ewanmaccoll/sweet-william-the-famous
This was used for 'Shoals of Herring', 'Freeborn Man' and at least four more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ov81aogaxg
'Tunnel Tigers' was adapted from a version of 'William Taylor' sung by Paul Lenihan, an Irish singer living in London."