The Concept of FREED Folkmusic

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 08:34 AM

Okay Cornhole.....If they stop citing specific examples, howabout YOUR DUMBASS STARTS GIVING SOME and STOP YOUR GENERALIZATIONS. Your arguments have no credence. Name some names Dickless.....Give us a lsit of BAD PROFESSIONALS who don't live up to your standards.

C'mon Bigmouth......or are you willing to admit you're nothing but the blowhard and asshole that you have repeatedly proven yourself to be in this thread?


Spaw

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Howard Jones
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 08:36 AM

Tootler, I wasn't suggesting that Tommy Armstrong's work is completely unknown in the NE - but, as you say, it's a minority interest. I would hazard a guess that if you were to stop random people in the streets of Newcastle or Durham only a handful would know who you're talking about, and even fewer would know any of the songs.

These days, most people in Newcastle work in public administration, with finance and real estate the next largest sector. What relevance have songs about mining disasters to their lives? Of course, for some there is the historical interest and link to a past culture, but they are a minority.

Conrad, it is you who keeps quoting the exceptions, and describing situations which the rest of us don't recognise as the norm. As we've told you repeatedly throughout this thread, all the things you are demanding are already happening. Just because some events don't meet your stringent requirements doesn't mean that they don't meet other people's, or that alternative events are not available - but if they're not, organise them yourself, since you tell us how easy it is.

...a link to a place where the history of the songs sung and lyrics can be found. At $13.85 a time? I don't think so.

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Bettynh
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 10:08 AM

" I have also agressivly promoted the whiskey priests"

Are you talking about this band? As far as I can see, they were a hard-touring band that never left Europe and fizzled out 10 years ago. Are there any current performers you admire?

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: *#1 PEASANT*
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 10:22 AM

gary miller of the priests is still at it
cutting edge of the development of the tradition of the North East
Conrad

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 10:23 AM

BEUK!

Here's my post from earlier:

Will - For the record, Conrad filched the title Beuk o' Newcassel Sangs from Joseph Crawhall's publication of 1888 (as published by Mawson, Swan and Morgan - who would later go on to form Morton Sound who produced your Jack Armstriong LP) along with many of Crawhall's singular woodcuts, which Conrad reproduces with little respect for their essence. Either way the title is ludicrous, as was Crawhall's intention as a well-heeled Antiquarian Novocastrian. To include Tommy Armstrong's songs in any collection of Newcassel Sangs is way off the mark anyway...

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Bettynh
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 10:24 AM

"Whenever I get a chance I push for the proper music whereever broon is sold. The company had no interest. I have also agressivly promoted the whiskey priests as they play up beat folk but although the people in the places liked the music when demmoed the owners favored rock....but I work on it."

On second reading (actually the 15th or so, you require careful translation), this sounds like a specific incident. Is this a translation to American English?:

You were drinking at a bar. You asked the bartender to play a cd you brought of music you remember fondly. S/he played it. No one liked it. You do this as often as you can afford (the beer). This is your idea of education.

If I got it wrong, forgive me. I'm not a professional storyteller. You are. Tell us a story, Conrad.

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 10:45 AM

PEASANT: Its quite lost over here.

People dont generally learn songs from recordings, most dont they use them for further entertainment whilst remaining mindless.

try again

er, WHAT???!!!

What you'ved been saying is that people basically learn songs from listening to others sing them live.

Do you have ANY evidence that this is the case, or is this just another of your crass generalisations?

There are VERY few people I know who could pick up a song sufficiently well to reproduce it after one live hearing. Even after 4 or 5 hearings, they're unlikely to have it down pat.

These days, since recording media have become ubiquitous, I'd say the vast majority of people learn their songs from recordings, whether you gradually acquire the words after hearing repeated airplay in your car, or sit down with a CD or a YouTube clip with a definite "mission" to learn it.

You seem to just make up assertions to support your narrow-minded prejudices without feeling the need to back them up with ANY evidence.

You've been asked for evidence that most people don't learn songs from recordings, and you've been asked REPEATEDLY for a few named examples of these "jet setting folkies" who live by the pool, show disdain for their audiences, and work hard to limit the accessibility of folk music in order to keep their fees up.

So far, nada, because you have NO such evidence. We know it, you know it, and any passing lurker knows it.

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 11:03 AM

S: Either way the title is ludicrous, as was Crawhall's intention as a well-heeled Antiquarian Novocastrian. To include Tommy Armstrong's songs in any collection of Newcassel Sangs is way off the mark anyway...

I've always thought of Tommy Armstrong as a *Durham* poet/ songwriter. He was born in Shotley Bridge and moved to Tanfield. Tanfield's marginally nearer to Newcastle than to Durham, certainly, but, AFAIK, he spent his life in the *Durham* coalfields and so would qualify only marginally, if at all, as a "Newcassel" songwriter.

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 11:23 AM

he spent his life in the *Durham* coalfields and so would qualify only marginally, if at all, as a "Newcassel" songwriter.

My point exactly.

He wrote of the Durham coal-field and the culture thereof, though he did write of missing a train to Newcastle once, did he not? Must check up on that! He celebrates the parochial in such a way that certain of his songs still survive in folk memory. For example you can talk to people who know about The Marley Hill Ducks who know not of Tommy Armstrong, nor yet the song; on one occasion I overheard a Stanley man singing the chorus of Oakey Strike Evictions but whilst he didn't know the rest of it (just something his father used to sing) he could tell me where Oakey's Houses used to be.

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 11:35 AM

Does anyone think they canput together a list of mistakes, untruths, or outright bullshit on Corny's websites?   For a blowhard demanding more education from others, he has shown himself to know less than diddly shit on his web pages.

At the start of this thread I got blasted for picking on poor Conrad and ask why I was so mean to him or whatever. After 1200 posts can everyone see why I think this guy is a doofus and deserving of absolutely no respect?

Spaw

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Bettynh
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 02:30 PM

"Its quite lost over here"

There's no doubt that you're the one lost. I've already described one magical moment when an audience of about 2000 people, without songsheets or accompaniment, sang, with harmony, a song they most likely learned from a record or (even more likely) a sappy movie. They knew all the words. Sorry, but you don't get to dictate what music will last with "the folk," or even how "the folk process" will occur.

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 03:08 PM

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 11:35 AM

Does anyone think they canput together a list of mistakes, untruths, or outright bullshit on Corny's websites?

Having been recently hacked and still as I'm too unwell to put back together - I was in hospital on a detox 4 weeks before and trying again to pick up the pieces and dropped the rebuild as I could not face it and the temptation to have a drink to "get me through". It may be one of the last things I'd do to another.

Do I get where Conrad comes from though? Politely, I don't understand the man.

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 03:34 PM

There are so many misconceptions and so much misinformation in Conrad's posts that I think it IS valid to ask him what planet he inhabits!! One statement from several of his posts back:

"People dont generally learn songs from recordings, most dont they use them for further entertainment whilst remaining mindless."

The vast majority of the songs I know (pushing 700) are learned from recordings. In fact, during the mid-Fifties and into the Sixties, everybody around here was buying recordings (Folkways, Elektra, Riverside, Vanguard, and others) to learn songs from—AND we would borrow each other's records and often tape them (most of us bought tape recorders—big, honkin' suitcase-sized beasts back then), not with the idea of bootlegging records, but as a means of swapping songs. We would often lug these tape recorders to hoots and songfests, turn them on, and let them run, with the idea of trolling for songs. Later, small portable cassette recorders saved the wear and tear of lugging around both a guitar case and a tape recorder. Now, there are neat little digital recorders like the Zoom H2 which we use for the same purpose.

The "folk process" has gone high-tech!

I have four feet of shelf space devoted to vinyl folk records that I bought over the years. And recently, I have at least seven feet of shelf space containing CDs of folk music—from which I am STILL learning songs. And the swapping is STILL going on.

I have many records of early Burl Ives, Susan Reed, and Richard Dyer-Bennet up through Ed McCurdy, Joan Baez, Jean Redpath, Ewan MacColl, hordes of Seegers, and on up to just about everything that Gordon Bok has recorded—and scads of other singers in between.

I have dozens of tapes I made years ago. Bob Nelson (Deckman) has over 300 tapes, most made at song fests and "hoots," that he is digitizing for archiving purpose—to be made available to anyone who wants to learn songs from them.

An even more high-tech, not to mention long-distance, method is the number of web sites devoted to folk music that offer MP3s of entire songs that one can download on one's computer.

PLENTY of material to learn and sing. More than one can possibly learn in a dozen lifetimes!

Jayzuz, Conrad!! Join the 21st century!!

Don Firth

P. S. Perhaps, Conrad, if you'd show up sober and be willing to simply shut up and listen instead of insisting on telling people they're doing it all wrong, you might learn of more musical events going on in your immediate neighborhood. There may be a very good reason why you think that you (and the rest of the world) are living in a barren desert. Quite possible (judging from a lot of things you've posted here) that you've made yourself so obnoxious that local singers don't want you around, so they make sure you never hear about local songfests and musical events.

Because the folk music realm isn't barren at all. It's quite lush and green.

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Tootler
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 08:27 PM

The "folk process" has gone high-tech!

And we have You Tube. Isn't it wonderful!?

My audio library on my computer has a folder called "You Tube" where I store songs I have downloaded so I can learn them.

It's an incredible resource.

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 09:59 PM

Yea, verily!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 05:42 PM

OK, Don, Conrad, Spaw - go for 2,000!