"I can think of no better way to put young people off folk for life than to play them Walter Pardon singing Cupid the Ploughboy."

Jim Carroll has been 'throwing his toys out of the pram' about this on another thread. Sometimes I worry about his blood pressure: all this high dudgeon and anger (as it appears to be from his posts) cannot be good for him. It isn't good for anyone. And it isn't going to persuade anybody to listen to or enjoy Pardon or to go to a traditional club. It seems to me more likely to put people off.

Cupid the Ploughboy was the first Pardon song I listened to, chosen at random from the selection available free on Spotify. I have to say that I didn't like it, and judging from what I know about the musical tastes of most young people, few of them would. So that is why I made the comment I did. And I think I should be permitted to make an honest comment to that effect without being harangued in an unpleasant manner.

If there are young people happy to sing such songs in such a style then fine, though I am suspecting that these youngsters may be a fairly middle class lot. Not that there is anything wrong with being middle class.

But it isn't for me. I find the lyrics peculiar. The idea of a ploughboy named after a classical god striking me as strange and unlikely. I don't like the tune, especially as the difficulty of singing it after what, for the sake of simplicity, I will call a 'key change' towards the end apparently results in Pardon starting the second verse on a different note from the one used in starting the first verse. It has no rhythm. There is no sense of natural speech patterns in the way the words are 'sung', in the sense that emphasis is put on unexpected words. You can tell that the singer is elderly, it seems to me. None of this, I feel, is likely to appeal to the young of today's ethnically diverse UK. Nor would being expected to treat either singer or song with some sort of quasi-religious reverence be much of an encouragment.


Hands off Jethro Tull! They were good fun:)