hi Tom
My criticisms come from two places: firstly, I did think that some of the performances were a bit dodgy. Not just not to my taste-and here you have to remember that I play with several of the people involved and rate them all as musicians and mates-but poorly done. But it isn't just that. It's the prancing around and the gurning and the wearing of stupid outfits. I thought that died in the seventies. Dad has a memorable story of being on Jim'll Fix It (BBC wish-granting show for kids, US catters) with Steeleye and having to wear mediaeval get-up , including a ridiculous velvet pancake hat that he refused to put on in the end, pretending that they were all at some banquet with the little kid who had written in all dressed as a princess. The watersons sitting on haybales in a West London TV studio in the sixties. This kind of thing relegates us firmly to the past, not a movement of current interpretors, not part of the natural continuum. It's ghettoisation and it's insulting and the media just seem incapable of treating us any other way, don't say to me that this is a part of some evolutionary step that I just don't understand. It's completely retrograde, unimaginative and a shame.
It's not that I don't have a sense of humour or that I think the programme should have been a history lesson. I just think it made us all look like idiots trying far too hard. That kind of treatment of traditional music makes novelties of us, strips us of dignity and sex, two things I think English music possesses in abundance; makes sideshows out of us that can then be dismissed. Plus the broadcast sound WAS bloody awful.
xe
ps thanks for suggesting that i'm not a part of this new gang and that no-one would have heard of me by the way-i wasn't available but you're probably right. trying not to let it get to me. i have a few things left to do before i pack it in yet! i promise it wasn't bitterness prompted the rant-just red wine and a need to say something that's been brewing for a while...i'm not saying there isn't room for everyone...i just thought it was an awful representation of something i'm involved in.