I tell you what's brought a big smile to my face, the fRoots and Mumford & Sons 'fiasco'.

Now, only a short while back they were all apoplectic about Mumford & Sons being labelled 'folk'....Steam was coming out of their ears left right and centre, snidey comments about their musical skills and knowledge abounded...and they were most definitely being shouted down as NOT FOLK!! with those exclamation marks flying through the air.

But then....the band did a Radio 1 'live' gig..where they 'chose' the venue to be.....wait for it....CECIL SHARP HOUSE.

Well!! Stone the crows, eh!! Who'd a thought it! LOL

So now, Mumford & Sons ARE FOLK and they're the new heroes for bringing Cecil Sharply House MORE publicity with their one gig than that place has had for years! (Great move, lads!) The audience were described, patronisingly I thought, as being 'fairly intelligent'....Gosh, who'd a thought that either, a 'fairly intelligent' bunch of people who follow such a band...Wow, wonders will never cease eh?   ;0)

Anyways ups, here's Ian's report on the gig, taken from the fRoots board, which I'm sure is quiet at present because all its posters are out busily tracking down their 'We LOVE Mumford & Sons!' T shirts and associated paraphanelia...

>>>Tue Oct 12, 2010 1:38 am    Post subject:   

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Well . . . first of all I had a 20 minute natter with Andy Parfitt, head of Radio 1, who seemed genuinely interested in what was going on and the building in which it was taking place. The sight of a full Radio 1 stage rig, lighting, branding etc in the Kennedy Hall was pretty impressive too.

I found it all pretty hard to fault (not that I should have been trying to). It was for and played to an audience who have a completely different set of references and almost certainly none of mine, which probably applies to presenting DJ Zane Lowe too. However, you couldn't dispute his real enthusiasm for what he was fronting, and Cecil Sharp House probably got more appreciative plugs in the 3 hours of this show then it's had in the entire lifetime of Radio 1. You could say it was worth it for that alone.

So: from here it's down to personal tastes which aren't really relevant. I found Laura Marling perfectly acceptable but indistinguishable from loads of other current singer/ songwriters over the past two or three decades. Decent voice, average playing, not much stage presence, hard to figure out why her among all the others but may her good luck continue. Bombay Bicycle Club were much the same too, though they did have a reasonably engagingly nerdy/cute front man. Nothing to either dislike or inspire, really.

By this time I was beginning to realise that the general vibe of all this scene is fairly retro: no barriers are being pushed at, no horses being frightened - oddly, there's a lot more of an interesting innovative edge among current performers of traditionally based music and its connected circles. Sorry to mention Emily Portman and Ruth Theodore again in this thread, but I found myself thinking that tonight's audience would probably consider what they do extremely weird and left field by comparison.

Couldn't work out what the Maccabees were doing there. An OK mainstream indie rock band. None of the boxes ticked at all that make lazy mainstream hacks say "folk" (no acoustic instruments, banjos, accordeons, just 3 electric guitars, bass, drums and some shoegazing).

I warmed to the Mumfords, and not just because it was made clear they'd chosen CSH and were proud to be there. Their songs aren't that notable on first live encounter but their audience knew them off by heart. They delivered it well, with that strong confidence that bands often have by the time they've graduated to owning guitar techies. They seemed likeable blokes, harmonised well in that US soft rock/West Coasty way, and generally came across more like a UK pub scene band from the Burritos era than the 25-years-on Boothill Foot Tappers which I'd anticipated - and none the worse for that. They did do one genuinely thrilling number with brass section, cello and the keyboard player switched to accordeon, where they actually began to sound English in a slightly Home Service/ Tams-y way.

The encore of Dolly's Jolene with Ms Marling on vocal duties seemed oddly serious and non-ironic . . .

As a PS, their fans seemed a decent, fairly educated bunch: from conversations overheard I can quite easily imagine some of them picking up on the tangents that may lead in our direction.

No harm done then!"<<<<<<



Taken from here..

I'm not sure what is NOT folk, as the title asks, but I know that 'what is NOT good manners' is to look down on bands and their audiences as being kinda halfwits, who really wouldn't understand certain traditional singers if they fell over them. And for me, it's that patronising, pseudo-intellectual, looking down their noses, aren't we sooooo clever! attitude that has really put me off so much traditional folk music and some of the very musicians who perform it.

Great shame.