The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #77902 Message #3537100
Posted By: MGM·Lion
13-Jul-13 - 05:05 PM
Thread Name: Fairport/Steeleye - unequal respect?
Subject: RE: Fairport/Steeleye - unequal respect?
Steeleye Span had a name taken from a traditional song {Horkstow Grange}. & were yer actchul folk group ~~ i.e a group which sang traditional songs and played traditional dances, more or less straightforwardly, except that they used electric backing; and occasionally went in for some creative collation, as in combining three different but topically-related songs to make a rather fine IMO track of Weaver & Factory Maid; &, less successfully, for some reason singing the words of Farewell He to the tune of All Round My Hat, which I always found profoundly irritating {I mean ~~ WHY?}, but underlined the taste of the fine old pop-listening public by hitting the charts. Oh, well!...
Fairport Convention, OTOH, had a name which communicated zilch SFAICS (what sort of "Convention" would that have been then?), & were an indifferent (to my ears - but I admit I was never much into yer·ole·rock'n'roll) rock group who played a few jigs'n'reels for no reason particularly apparent to me, & sang mainly rather boring self-composed songs, with one or two traditional ones included, as I felt, a bit ½-♥-edly & absent-mindedly, interrupting them in the middle with apparently improvised show-offy instrumental interludes ['breaks', I think they are called with some appropriateness] of such tedium & interminability that by the time they were over one had forgotten what the bloody song was about — an odd habit which worked much to the detriment of a few initially quite promising soundalike groups who formed in their wake, e.g Trees, who however could never quite shake off this particular irritating compulsion, apparently feeling it was somehow expected of them as a soi-disant folk-rock group.
I think it obvious where my preferences lay.
~M~