The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #162917   Message #3885895
Posted By: Jim Carroll
31-Oct-17 - 05:51 AM
Thread Name: What is Happening to our Folk Clubs
Subject: RE: What is Happening to our Folk Clubs
"You are the one saying the medium is dead and then turn around and say the opposite. "
I say the clubs are fucked up, not the music is dead
That is the whole point of this argument - do try to keep up
I did say that th oral tradition as a living entity was dead, but that's a different thing altogether - Shakespeare's long dead but his work lives on and thrives
"You are the one worrying the 1954 defintion to death, not me"
No I am not - I dexscribed it as a rough guide and have never at any time applied it to what happens or should happen at clubs - that is down to you and yours
If you didn't mention it - who wrore "but if you accept the rigid defintion of 1954 then folk music is no longer being created - you are merely worrying a corpse"?
You people are still failing to produce this redefinition we are supposed to accept - are you saving that one till Christmas for under the tree?
Can we clear up this thing about boring - there is nothing more boring than a pop song - - not just to those who don't particularly like 'em, but to the followers of pop
Many of the songs that continue to give me pleasure are centuries old
All pop songs come with a short shelf-life - that is how the music industry operates
Kids will listen to songs for a few months, become bored with them, throw them away and look for something new
Mention a song that was popular a few years ago and you might be talking Elizabethan Sonnets.
Now and then, the industry runs out of ideas and will dig out something that passed its sell by date and put it up again - the Beatles is typical of this happening
I find myself singing my way through songs I was weaned on being played on tele - advertising everything from soap to sanitary pads.
The last few English folk clubs I went to tolerated Cliff Richards and Buddy Holly numbers badly performed (one read from a crib-sheet)
How relevant is that to today's world?
Jim Carroll