A long while back Sandy was good enough to put out a couple of LPs of this old (older every day)folksinger. In my notes to the first one, __That's The Ticket__, I wrote the following:

My favorite songs have always been the story songs--the ballads. These grand poems with muscic added form word pictures -- full color images -- on the most sensitive of all emulsions--the human mind. Here are a few of those expressive story songs (where each verse furthers the action like a chapter in a novel). Some are old and traditional; a few were composed more recently. All seem to possess a certain quality, a form, a word style that gives them the same feel as the older traditional ballads. That's why I like them so much.

Yes, good people, this is a good thread alright. But it's just a polemic where we champion our own preferences (actually quite natural) in the face of changing times where our oxen are, musically, sometimes getting gored. And it's painful to watch our ox going through his moribund and impotent thrashing about---especially 'cause we feel he's probably the last of his kind. (The cows have been extinct for a while now.) I do know what I like. And it's sad to realize how much is tied into misinformation and miseducation by people who, simply, don't know what the hell they're talking about!

Yes, there are some good "new songs". But in this era of "everything is folk", where both Woody and Liberace are seen by the Folk Alliance as being folk music, and navel-gazing pop singers use said Alliance as a springboard to Nashville, I personally feel we owe it to ourselves and the oral tradition and all the great public domain songs to RESIST learning the tripe even if it's a decent "self help" tool and we're going through a major depression.

Being strong enough to let the crap go by the wayside because I made an educated, though picky to some, distinction, never fails to cheer me up. And I can still look myself in the mirror.

Art Thieme

Art Thieme