The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #118140 Message #2552657
Posted By: Will Fly
30-Jan-09 - 04:51 AM
Thread Name: Peter Paul & Mary on BBC4
Subject: RE: Peter Paul & Mary on BBC4
I should stress, for the benefit of Tinker in Chicago, that although I used the words banal and nice, I also tried to stress the very mixed feelings that I had - 40 years ago - when listening to them. It's very difficult to put properly, though other 'Catters may have expressed it better, but I'll try again.
They were obviously excellent and sophisticated musicians. They sang and performed with passion. They were very good, and at the top of their profession. And yet, and yet... there seemed to be a veneer of "showbiz" about them, to me, that somehow undercut all those qualities. Remember, I'm over here in the UK - at the age of 21 at the time of that concert clip - not being as familiar, perhaps, with the world of protest and politics in which they moved in the States. They just seemed a little too smooth - and I liked my folk (and blues) a little rougher!
Watching them again, after an interval of 44 years, I still had those same mixed feelings. And I would accept that all this probably says more about me than them...