The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #154480 Message #3628461
Posted By: Will Fly
27-May-14 - 04:30 AM
Thread Name: Why Do Musicians Work For Nothing?
Subject: RE: Why Do Musicians Work For Nothing?
Al - I have to say I really don't understand your thesis that the "folk revival" players - however you define them - were frozen out by the more traditionally-minded club organisers, and that people like Wizz Jones, Gerry Lockran, Bert Jansch, etc., were deprived of places to play. In short, vibrant modern folk entertainment was shifted into second place in favour of traditional singing by clubs with a preference for performers like Martin Carthy.
If that's your argument, I find several problems with it.
1. Its' more likely that the public's taste for performers like Jansch and Renbourn simply waned. "Folk" music was ever a minority interest anyway. I was a huge fan of people like Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Al Stewart, John James, Keith Christmas (remember him?), The Incredible String Band, and played some of their stuff in clubs myself. And then I started to tire of it. Partly because of the lack of progression of some of the performers themselves. Graham took heroin and went tits up; Jansch drank; the Pentangle travelled swiftly up its own arse, and so on. Partly because of my own changing preferences. I started playing jug band music, then 20s dance music, then jazz, then other stuff. Many of my mates did the same - changed musical directions and tastes.
2. If there really had been a huge demand for the folk revival entertainers, then surely enough like-minded people could have started their own clubs to cater for that audience? It's not impossible. I started my own session in my village about 6 years ago because I needed a local musical "fix" in between the monthly one I attended, and still attend. It can be done. You say that there were 3 or 4 folk clubs in most decent-sized towns. Perhaps in your neck of the woods. There was but one in Lancaster, my home town - and that's a county capital. Even that faded and died, simply because the music in the area took on a different focus - blues, rock, and so on.
It seems to me to be too simplistic to say that one set of musical ideologues "killed off" another set, as though it was all political. Musical tastes and requirements are ever shifting. My local city of Brighton had a thriving jazz scene right up to the 1990s - I was part of it. There's very little jazz in Brighton now, and not a club that I can think of. There are pockets of manouche - gypsy jazz - here and there, and some little pub gigs - and that's about it. C'est la vie, eh? You can't legislate for peoples' tastes - they shift all the time.
Now I may be all wrong here. I stopped actively going to folk clubs in the late 70s, and only started popping into them again a few years ago, therefore my knowledge of the scene in the intervening years is sketchy. They look very different in some respects - the prevalence of music stands and books of songs I find highly amusing and rather sad - but one thing hasn't changed, and that's the friendliness and welcoming faces of the club organisers.