The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #126930 Message #3159592
Posted By: Rob Naylor
24-May-11 - 04:44 AM
Thread Name: Songs you shouldn't sing in UK folk club
Subject: RE: Songs you shouldn't sing in UK folk club
Michael: I see what you mean, Rob; and appreciate you were repeating the words, & experiences, of a former poster. But I can't help still feeling nevertheless that, as a folk club is, by definition, a place where people go to hear a certain kind of music, and if they wanted to hear another kind of music then they would have gone elsewhere to a club where that was to be expected, then there was a certain ~ what is the word I want, now? ~ 'wilful', perhaps. or 'perverse'? ~ element in confounding their expectations as what you admit was a sort of experiment. The same considerations do not perhaps apply to a mixed singaround, which you now say this is what this was; but in that case why not come clean at the start as to what you were doing, rather than singing from cold, with, it appears, some suspicion or foreknowledge of what the reaction was likely to be when you eventually did come clean in retro?
I guess curiosity would sum it up. The songs I sang are actually quite "folky" in style (Grantchester Meadows, eg, actually *is* a "certain kind of music"...very "folky" in style and content and it would be unlikely that anyone not in the know would identify it as a Pink Floyd song. In fact I sang it once at Tonbridge Folk Club (which is a *proper* folk club) and it went down very well there, with some very positive comments.
Lively: That's not to say that the people in question were not being hypocritical as you suggest, but it is *possible* that they were just clapping because clapping is what you are supposed to do.
It was a bit more than that. Typically along the lines of: Listener: "That was lovely, where's it from?"
Me: "It's by Pink Floyd, off their 'Ummagumma' album". Listener: "oh" (in a somewhat deprecating tone. End of conversation).