E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Giant Folk Eyeball (inactive)
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 01:46 PM

Peace, the 'Oh Jaysus' wasn't a reflection on your post!

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Peace
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 01:53 PM

LOL, Nigel. Either way. I know where your heart comes from. Not to worry.

I am disappointed that Lizzie Cornish's posts were removed. They were good. Lots of people have enemies. When that enemy has the power to either edit what you say or prevent you from saying it, I think maybe it's time to re-look at things. And the way they're done. IMO.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Giant Folk Eyeball (inactive)
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 01:55 PM

"The gentry of old in their feudal tradition are sitting duck targets for live ammunition" ... from 'Blood' off the Astronauts' 1983 album 'Its All Done By Mirrors'. I think they were being ironic...

I've not heard this lovely album in years. I'm listening to it now at Kill Your Pet Puppy! Pop it in the search engine and have a listen. Particularly to 'Typical English Day' which is as tender and beautiful as anything I've ever heard and is actually relevent to this thread! Strangely.

Cheers

Nigel

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 02:04 PM

Punk - as punk - was a one-trick pony. The best things it produced had an additional dimension - for example as cited "Eton Rifles" (not really a "punk" song in style) - or "Peaches". Or "God save the Queen". But it really does illuminate matters somewhat to reflect that Johnny Rotten is a property speculator now.

If you do bother to listen to the early Tom Robinson stuff - not just "Glad to be Gay" or "Motorway", but the political stuff - he was a very powerful lyricist and tunesmith.

Quite apart from "the Winter of 79" which was prophetic -

"I'm sorry if the soldiers have to hurt you Mr Harris
But we've seen you with these people several times.. (etc)"

Damn it the man even had Dumbya predicted.

And he even wrote something that could become folk if enough people sing it - but actually he was a sod of a musician (simple sounding tunes with complex progressions underneath) and I can't figure out the chords or I WOULD do it - the Liddle Towers song.

But, of course (to keep you happy, WLD) he was not a folk singer, nor were his songs folk songs.

Nigel, most of punk was vacuous. Even teh frisson dies after 4 songs that sound just the same. I went to see Stiff Little Fingers once. They were supporting Ted Nugent. Worst gig I ever saw. Probably the second worst was the much feted Doll by Doll. Go shoot up a Ramone or something.

Lizzie - don't be soppy.

Englishness is not just about the Vicarage clock at Grantchester, or the phobic bigotry of Kipling, or the effortless sense of superiority of Richard Hannay in the 39 steps (or Biggles, or Dan Dare, come to that). It includes the violence for cause that did give us a revolution against the Jacobite kings, the blood spilt by the miners, the Peterloo massacre. It includes the violence without cause celebrated by the Dandy and the Beano. There are more pools of blood on the dancehall floor than there are Bronte sisters - and where would their muse have been without insanity and we can speculate on the wellspring of that.

It also gave us many of the world's most influential writers on constitutional law, but it never gave us Machiavelli, Hitler, Napoleon, Mussolini, Pol Pot or Stalin.

It gave us the society in which Karl Marx could write.

Englishness is a complex thing. Probably beyond one song.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: GUEST,The Molre Catcher's Apprentice
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 02:06 PM

"People who get angry about directions threads might go in the future are going to get ulcers. Why not wait till it happens? Very strange goings on."

sorry..hate to disappoint you, but I was merely making an observation, which in part seems to be on its way to being fulfilled. It would take a good deal more than a Mudcat thread to anger me

Charlotte (you must be joking of course)

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 02:29 PM

Why have Lizzie's messages been removed? The ones I read seemed inoffensive.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Mole Catcher's Apprentice (inactive)
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 02:33 PM

"Why have Lizzie's messages been removed? The ones I read seemed inoffensive."

apparently she's been barred from posting on this site..AND there are a few "Mudcatters" who think that I, The Mole catcher's Apprentice, an Lizzie Cornish using yet another alias. I do have this from a VERY reliable source by the way.

Charlotte (chuckling away to herself)

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 02:40 PM

Bryan Ferry is Englishness as well as the Kinks.

Did you know that Bryan was born in Washington?

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Peace
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 02:42 PM

I like Ferry's work. His "Dylanesque" was great, much of it.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Mole Catcher's Apprentice (inactive)
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 02:50 PM

Based on the phrase Englishness...On An Island - David Gilmour was described by a critic, whose name escapes me at present, as

"a laid-back, utterly elegant English record"

some electric, some acoustic, personally I like the record.

Charlotte (open to good music)

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 02:51 PM

Bryan Ferry was in the class below me at primary school in Washington. As was Howard Kendall.
(Just adding to the heap of useless and irrelevant garbage this thread has, predictably, descended into).

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:03 PM

Now now countess.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:07 PM

Well they certainly did a lot better than you have ever done Diane.
Your intrusion has just dropped it down into super garbage.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:26 PM

As it goes, a tiny fraction of the Grauniad debate on Englishness was lifted from Another Place where it I had initiated a discussion in its proper context. Yes, CONTEXT is all. Richard Bridge rightly outlines the idiocy of citing Grantchester, Kipling and Hannay. And he's probably the only other participant here who has actually read the Grauniad piece.

Actually, it's a great pity Ferry's son Otis wasn't sent to Usworth Colliery Junior mixed School as well then he might not have got mixed up with the cruel country sports mob.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:32 PM

Do I see the green envy of jealosy Diane?

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:39 PM

Hey Peace, what about Bryan Ferry doing Donavan "Donavanesque"

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:41 PM

Excuse me, are you asking whether I am "jealos" (sic) of those whose preferred, ever so "English" pursuit is to gallop around the countryside brutally killing hares and foxes?

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:45 PM

No sorry I spelt it wrong. I meant jealousy

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, 10th Edition defines jealousy as "a jealous disposition, attitude, or feeling," where the word jealous is defined as being
intolerant of rivalry or unfaithfulness,
disposed to suspect rivalry or unfaithfulness,
hostile toward a rival or one believed to enjoy an advantage,
vigilant in guarding a possession.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Peace
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:46 PM

'Hey Peace, what about Bryan Ferry doing Donavan "Donavanesque"'

Ya know, THAT would epitomize the term 'folk' and freeze it in time, imo. GOOD idea.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:50 PM

Do you think it should be him on his own, or with Roxy Music, Peace?

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Mole Catcher's Apprentice (inactive)
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:51 PM

"killing hares"

On the fourteenth of May
at the dawn of the day
with me gun on me shoulder,
to the woods I did stray
I search of some game, if
the weather proved fair,
To see could I get a shot
at the bonny black hare....

you mean that pastime?

Charlotte (the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible)

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Ian Burdon
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:54 PM

"Richard Bridge rightly outlines the idiocy of citing Grantchester, Kipling and Hannay. And he's probably the only other participant here who has actually read the Grauniad piece."

er, no: I read it too and I'd suspect that the person who started the thread did too.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Peace
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:54 PM

Villan, Villan, Villan. WITH Roxy Music, else the 'folk' part doesn't apply.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:00 PM

OK, I will give him a call and suggest he does it with Roxy Music then. Do you mean in the style of Virgin Pain

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:01 PM

Tsk, now you're just being . . . indelicate.

On reflection, I'd make an exception for Mr Lakeperson's albino bunny.
Open season on that . . . (looking up jugged hare recipes).

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:04 PM

Oops sorry, I did a spell check but it didn't pick up the error.

I meant Virginia Plain. A bit like this Virginia Plain

My wife thinks he is very sexy and wouldn't think twice about leaving me for him.
Incidentally, is the drummer a woman?

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:15 PM

"Another contibutor to the article(cant remember who) picked out Ray Davies of the Kinks as the example of Englishness(Waterloo Sunset the specific song). Totally agree with that, though I think Dediocated Follower of Fashion would be my choice. He was a definitve chronicler of Enmgland(well, London, anway).
Maybe Oasis for the northwest?"

Don't forget We Are the Village Green Preservation Society. I think the quintessencial English artist was Vivian Stanshall.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Peace
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:17 PM

"Virginia Plain" on YOUTUBE.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:35 PM

My missus thinks he oozes sex, Bryan Ferry that is.

Ray Davies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkUsF-tJ0XY&feature=related

Kate Rusby http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRK6U5vIHCs

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:39 PM

what a stupid question.why are the Guardian wasting their time on half witted questions like this.
Englishness means something entirely different to Prince Charles,or a member of the Landed Gentry,than it would to a single mother in Lewisham.
Nick Griffins definition of Englishness,would be quite different from Ken Livingstone.
All it does is tell us something about the person being interviewed,now if they had asked this question of Karl Marx or Bertrand Russell or Einstein [when they were alive]we might have got some interesting answers.
instead of which we get a load of half baked squit.Dick Miles

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Mole Catcher's Apprentice (inactive)
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:42 PM

"we might have got some interesting answers."

to misquote Mr. Miles

interesting means something entirely different to Prince Charles,or a member of the Landed Gentry,than it would to a single mother in Lewisham....etc..etc...

Charlotte (non-vested interest)

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:53 PM

Nobody batted an eyelid when Dick said he went to the same school as Tom Robinson but when I remarked that Bryan Ferry and I attended the same primary school it caused a riot.
Is this interesting?
I think not.
Though why exactly should a perception of "Englishness" be determined by how much money you have?
Discuss.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 05:05 PM

Of course its interesting Diane, you mentioned it.

I guess that people think of England as the place where everybody has loads of money and owns a stately mansion, just like they portray on the Tv and films. That is what Englishness is seen as IMHO.

My mother's perception of englishness is Upstairs Downstairs and she is 91 (God bless her cotton picking socks). She is in a sort of Mansion. Its called a Nursing Home. We all know what nursing homes are like these days - don't we. The place where they leave you to hang out and die. That is what Englishness is about these days. A place where we don't care about our eldrely.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 05:10 PM

*Elderly

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 05:18 PM

Most of the support for xenophobic political parties,comes from poor white working class people,who fear they will lose their jobs to immigrants,who are not English.these people perceive themselves as English,and feel threatened.
Prince Charles perceives himself as English,however because he is wealthy and educated ,he does not have the same fears.
his perception of being English will be quite different.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 07:00 PM

unless you're a folksinger, then you lose your job to the middle class bores.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 09:55 PM

Al, folksinging and folksong singing are not jobs, they are callings. And at times Prince Charles seems to have a good handle on some of the things that the English fear and for which the English hope - his enunciation of the fear that brutalist architecture evokes, and realisation that communities need t obe mixed and to the human scale goes way beyond the appreciation of most town planners, for example. At other times he makes the same mistakes as many men when (like McCartney) he fails to spot that a simper hides a honey badger.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 01:57 AM

You gotta admit though Richard, we're not getting a lot of working class input into the folkscene these days. I sometimes wonder where its all going. You sit there in the folk club and its full of daft old gits like oneself. And theres something missing.


Writers like Ian Campbell and Bert Jansch. We don't seem to attracting young people of that quality, these days - writing about their lives, like we did at the start of the game. Perhaps the whole movement is running out of steam.

I know we do our best. But the songs you write aged fifty and sixty aren't the ones you write when you're young. I didn't even find a voice til my mid 20's, by which time lyric poets like Keats had snuffed it or done his best stuff. Probably Bert Jansch and the Beatles too.

Poor sods like Carthy and Lakeman (2nd generation rum tum tiddlers) aren't going to come up with the answers for us. Perhaps if we can just locate those young people with a bit of fire in their belly........England will break free the icy hand of The Fisher King and all will be well in the Garden of Albion.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 02:18 AM

Purely in the interest of accuracy, when Richard cites The Young Tradition as adding a line (in fact it was an extra verse) to their recording of 'The Ploughshare' or 'Seasons'...

"There's a boy on a tractor a-going like hell,
And what farming is coming to sure no-one can tell"

...it was in fact Jim Copper (from whom they'd collected the song) who wrote it as his own comment on the modern methods of farming circa 1950.

This of course adds nothing to the debate except perhaps an English love of pedantry.
Some wit will no doubt think that should read peasantry.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 03:01 AM

Thank you Jon, I didn't know that. I suppose I should have checked "Coppersongs" before uttering.

No, WLD, I don't agree with you again. There are plenty (proportionately) of working class it seems to me in folk clubs, and very few plummy accents. I speak RP but am not plummy (IMHO) thanks to a young childhood in Australia and a conscious rejection of upper middle class values as a rebellion while I was at public school. I hear very very few people in folk clubs who speak better than I do.

I don't see many young people (and from my perspective that's people under 40) and fewer still young women. That puzzles me a bit in that it was treated as a given when I was at university that when people like me then went to listen to underground rock, or to discos, many women went in stead to folk clubs where they would not feel so sexually intimidated.

But then I look at my daughter's female friends dressed for a night's hunting and realise that perhaps today it is the young women who are almost as often the sexual aggressors. Every so often some of them will come with her to a folk club if she is going to sing and they will always say that they really enjoyed it - and last year at Sweeps fest one of her friends (not, as it happens, a female one but a male one, who plays in a dark metal band) commented that what he really liked most about it was that people were making music rather than just consuming it as product.

At the end of the day, however, the evening out for the young is driven by hormones, probably more overtly than ever before, and the folk club is not now a suitable venue for that.

Nonetheless, there are still many young people writing songs. They just aren't folk songs. They are still playing them. Just not in folk clubs. The medium of rejection of the values of ones parents (a common part of starting to grow up) is no longer the acoustic guitar, and gradually less and less (IMHO) even the electric guitar, but the electronoc loop. I submit that it is a lot easier to express the anger with which you reject oppression by the gerontocracy by the use of an electronic loop, using skills you acquired playing shoot-em-up games, than by having to learn an instrument.

Which may be why the instrumental skills of the young we do see in instrument-playing music are so remarkable.

What I can't explain is why with almost the sole exception of my daughter, who can be very very loud indeed as a singer, young singers and particularly young female singers don't sing out unless they have a microphone and some don't even then. Metallers growl. EMO singers scream. Those are the exceptions. Indies whine rather less loudly, and most of the rest mumble and simper.

I can't make up my mind whether this is thread drift or not.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: KeithofChester
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 03:05 AM

"...Perhaps if we can just locate those young people with a bit of fire in their belly........England will break free the icy hand of The Fisher King and all will be well in the Garden of Albion".

Oh, they exist alright. They are just in bands like the Arctic Monkeys and the Kaiser Chiefs and were in a band called the Libertines. Most in their own generation have spotted them and their songs except those that restrict their musical diet to only "folk". Several of them seem to have made it through the "dangerous" age of 27 too, despite their copious consumption of "substances".

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 04:08 AM

Richard, I bet you look good on the morris dance floor!

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: KeithofChester
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 04:38 AM

Slightly less sequins than in the "traditional" arrangement!

Diamonds Are Forever

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Rasener
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 04:47 AM

England by Ralph McTell

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: KeithofChester
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 05:12 AM

Technically this folk song is from Greenock via Bournemouth and California, but it's set in England and in a specific time and place too.

Gina In The Kings Road

I often wonder how many Al Stewart LPs Neil Tennant listened to in his youth, because he gets the delivery, if not the lyrical content, spot on!

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 08:27 AM

Wee Little Drummer: as KeithofChester said, why should you expect the youngsters with fire in their bellies to go to folk clubs to sing their songs? There are plenty of other outlets where young songwriters can find young audiences, which is generally what they want.Why should we expect Amy Winehouse or Pete Doherty, for example, to come and sing at a folk club?

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 02:22 PM

Heaven forfend we should get Amy Whitehouse, we want some beer left for us!

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 02:41 PM

I saw Mick Jagger in Padstow one Mayday,
And on the Ruzzer thread Ronan Keating is sounding off about going to Spiers & Boden gigs.
But then, he's Irish.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 05:06 PM

Er, my bad, Winehouse. Mind you I don't want Whitehouse either.

Subject: RE: E Carthy/S Lakeman on Englishness
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 05:17 PM

Englishness is how it used to be before we had "communities", and when we had 2 postal deliveries before midday and 3 at Christmas, and when nobody got "offended" on behalf of others who really couldn't care less!