"apart from Jim Carroll that is."
Just after the acting group broke up Karl Dallas organised a symposium to mark MacColl's 70th birthday at County Hall in London.
I was asked to speak on the Critics Group, which I (extremely reluctantly, given the prevailing atmosphere) agreed to, but only on the understanding that I could speak to and record as many ex members of the Critics as was practically possible and include what they had to say in my presentation.
Despite the bad taste that the break-up had left behind, I was staggered at the positive response I got.
While a number expressed some reservations about the overall achievements of the Group, virtually all I spoke to said they felt that they had got a great deal from their being members an working in the way we did.
I am still in regular contact with two members of the group, both friends, excellent singers and unstinting in their praise of the work we did.
"how it should be done before turning on the mic"
I assume you haven't bothered to read what I have written above - why bother with facts when you can write your own script. It was never a case of "how it should be done" - it was a self-help group run on the lines of singers working in a workshop situation from suggestions and ideas from every single member of the group
The first thing that was suggested to me when I joined was that I should get hold of as many traditional singers as I could and listen to them - no instructions, no rule book, no "right way to do it".
The last workshop I attended - a few months ago, I, along with a whole roomful of people was handed song texts (of some songs I had heard before, but mainly not) and asked to sing them - that appears to be what passes for singing classes nowadays. I am in no way knocking that, but to be honest, I got far more from our group criticism work than I ever got from the 'singing-by-rote' method that appears to be used now.
I still have all the recordings I made for the symposium, and I also have all the recordings made of Critics Group meetings (around 200 cassettes worth) so I'm not relying on a fading memory, Chinese whispers or malicious rumours when I describe what was said and done by the group - it's all on the shelf behind me..
As Janet Topp Fargion pointed out, there are some of the Group meetings on the British Library web, and hopefully Birmingham Central Library will one day make all of these generally available from The Charles Parker Archive which is housed there.
Did I attempt to tell the Travellers, the West Clare veterans who had been singing all their lives, Walter Pardon.... and all the other source singers we were priveleged to have met, "how it should be done"? I am not sure whether to regard that question as extremely crass or just the old usual snide I have long come to know and love.
It has never been a case of telling people how it should be done, not for MacColl, not for the Group members, and certainly not for me - the last thirty odd years my life has been a learning curve and the generosity of the people who I came into contact with still leaves me both moved and grateful.
Can I assume that you regard all workshops, schools, learning sessions.... as "telling people how it should be done", or do you reserve your snide just for MacColl and Seeger.
Jim Carroll