The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 06:18 AM

"By the way, David. Whether one is singing off-pitch or not is not subjective. This is scientifically measurable." (Don)...I didn't say either - I said whether folks happen to like particular piece can be subjective...one man's meat...
And Volga added on - I watch Songs of Praise (BBC) nearly every week, and have some good Christian recordings, and am sure that the top singers in this genre are affecting their voice so as to sound sweeter, more-angelic, etc.
And, from the "Chords in Folk?" thread, it was said that English folk music is not all about the tune but it is/has been mostly
so.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 05:16 PM

I do detect a difference when I listen to your WISTWC. The rest of the songs are sung out of pitch, off key and in a ridiculos accent, but WISTWC adds a touch of twee to the mix. As Don said, try to sing honestly.
Doesn't have to be perfect (or Sunday best), in fact that renders it bland. When you sing WISTWC, you need to be living out the words. That would call for emphasising certain words, for putting feeling into it. If you weren't so closed-minded about 'Your Own Good Culture', you could pick up a lesson or two from Jewish paraliturgical music (piyutim).   

Stu - I keep playing a line, singing a line, playing a line...and listening to others too, of course, etc. And that's one thing I am very sure of - working on the TUNES is a good thing for an English folkie to do.

The tune is far from the most important part of a folksong. The important part is getting the story across.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 04:30 PM

Excellent, Paul!!

By the way, David. Whether one is singing off-pitch or not is not subjective. This is scientifically measurable.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 04:06 PM

IB - you are getting a tad carried away...we didn't meet on the tele, e.g.; some say polymer tenor recorders can sound just as good as woods (though I've never tried the latter); and on "When I survey the Wondrous Cross" I'm surely singing in a sweeter Sunday-best timbre, whatever my intonation, than on my folk songs, on myspace.

Thanks for adding some storytelling to the mix, PB.

Stu - I keep playing a line, singing a line, playing a line...and listening to others too, of course, etc. And that's one thing I am very sure of - working on the TUNES is a good thing for an English folkie to do.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST,Stu sans cookie
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 01:20 PM

Sean - I can't tell the difference in tone between coc and wistwc either. Intonation however is an area where in all sincerity I believe wav could make massive improvements with the help of a teacher/singer/musician who was prepared to give him some honest help and criticism.

Stu

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 10:35 AM

Nice one, Paul - I've got a recording somewhere of Seamus Ennis telling that in prelude to The Lark's March (if my memory serves me rightly).

Oddly enough, in a music shop in Lancaster on Saturday (is there only the one music shop in Lancaster I wonder?) I was trying out a few whistles, fumbling my way through the old Wheelwright's Tune of the Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance which pushes any whistle to its upper limits, thinking to myself what a racket I was making in the process. However, on our way out the young woman browsing the sheet music thanked me for my beautiful playing! How's that for truckley-how? Needs must I persevere with my whistle playing, as I have been these past 30 years...

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Paul Burke
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 08:49 AM

It's an old story, but perhaps WAV would like to read it, and ponder thereupon.

There was once a young Irish fiddler, the old country jigs and reels and all that. Nobody thought much of his music, there were always plenty of good players over there. Then, one night after being ignored once more in the pub session, he was walking back through the woods, when he heard a tiny voice cry out: "Help, for pity's sake, help!"

He looked all around, and at first he couldn't see anything. But a shaft of moonlight lit up the glade for a moment, and he saw a tiny little man dressed in green, caught in a huge spider's web.

It was the work of a few moments to free him, and the little man's gratitude overflowed. Of course, he was a leprechaun, and he granted Kieran his dearest wish as a reward. "I'd love to be a good fiddler", said Kieran. "Done as soon as said!" cried the leprechaun, "But tell me, do you want to play to please yourself, or to please everyone else?"

"Well, I'd be happy just to please myself", said Kieran. "Well, if you're sure about that, so be it", said the leprechaun, and in a twinkling he was gone. Kieran walked home bemused, perhaps it was all a dream, too much Guinness.

But the next evening, he got out his fiddle and thought about what had passed. "I wonder, will it make a difference?" he thought. He tentatively tried a tune... hey, that was good.. another, the Rakes of Mallow, pouring out of his fiddle like nothing he had ever heard. It was true!

You can be sure he could scarcely wait for the next session. He waited for a lull in the music, then launched off into the Spinning Wheel, lovely tune, perfect.... "Aw, shut the f*** up, Kieran, give us a break!" People were actually leaving, what had gone wrong?

Walking back home disconsolately, there in the woods, who should he meet but your man the leprechaun again. "Ah, I thought ye'd be back", he said. "It didn't go according to plan then?"

"No, it sounded fine to me, but they all hated it", said Kieran. "Well", said the leprechaun, "You could always try the other choice." "I'll give it a try," replied Kieran. And once more the leprechaun vanished.

It was days before he had the heart to get out his fiddle again, in the kitchen of his cottage. And the foul scraping noise that he made! He persisted for perhaps half an hour, but each tune was worse than the last, and in the end he put the fiddle away, vowing never to touch it again.

No sooner had he done so, than there was a hammering at the door. Opening it, there he found Mick McGowan and Jimmy Moloney, the two best musicians in the session. "What was that record you was playing there?" they asked, "We've never heard fiddling like that, who was it?"

"I don't know what you mean, I was just scraping on the fiddle," said Kieran, "I haven't got a record player or a radio." "God, man, that can't have been you? Play it again!"

After much persuasion, he got out the fiddle again, and started a tune. Boys of Blue Hill, as bad as any beginner, he stopped half way through. "There, I told you," he was saying. "Go on man, that's marvellous," gasped the others, "You've been putting in some practice on the QT!"

Kieran couldn't believe it, but they hauled him out to the pub, got all the musicians of the area together, and the session that night was remembered for years. Only Kieran hated every minute. Scrapes, missed notes, forgot the tune ("Jaysus man, that's a wonderful turn you've put on it there!"), everything was wrong, and everybody was screaming for more.

And that man the fiddler Kieran Mulligan (google for him) is renowned to this day. And widely known for his modesty, patience with learners, and reluctance to put himself forward. And the moral is that the true artist is his own harshest critic.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 08:36 AM

PS -

I still think that, within limits, it is good to affect one's voice for the genre, and have attempted such on, e.g., "Cob a Coaling" (E trad) versus "When I survey the Wondrous Cross" (E hymn) on myspace.

What exactly is the difference in your singing of WISTWC and CAC? I notice on both you attempt the same Northern Vowel Sound Approximation, and whilst in the latter the lack of accompaniment masks the intonation problems which are painfully evident in the former, I don't think this is an adequate argument for singing UE per se, rather an indication of how sloppy your approach in relation to the arrogance that would assume anyone would want to listen to it, let alone that it is somehow worthwhile. Yes, yes, it's all very subjective I know, but when it comes to the point where the only person you're fooling is yourself, then perhaps it's time to face a few home truths?

Get out of the mire and dry your trousers, Wavy - there's still a hell of a long way to travel before your life's work is at an end.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 08:24 AM

It would appear our wee Wavy gets his entire understanding of English culture from his television set. Try Channel U for a change, Wavy - last time I looked it was right next to the classical channel you mention, though classical in what sense I know not - dire pop-schlock MOR AOR more like. Interesting to note that if you got rid of Sky TV you could save yourself £300 a year and buy yourself a couple of decent wooden recorders; just goes to show where your real priorities lie!

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 08:07 AM

I still think that, within limits, it is good to affect one's voice for the genre, and have attempted such on, e.g., "Cob a Coaling" (E trad) versus "When I survey the Wondrous Cross" (E hymn) on myspace.

And, Don, I agree about '"The Planets," a seven movement orchestral suite by Gustav Holst. I'm quite familiar with it. I believe what Holst had in mind when he composed the work is more the mythological attributes ascribed to each planet rather than their astrological characteristics. Very nice work, actually'...but there is indeed also a classicalish band called The Planets, which I thought you may be interested in.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 08:24 PM

Good point, Little Hawk, about Dylan being young and trying to imitate the people he admired.   But I think he carried it to extremes. There was one comment I read (I think it was in Hajdu's book, but I can't swear to it) that after visiting Woody Guthrie at the hospital, Dylan was singing someplace and was staggering and twitching all over the stage as he sang. "Someone muttered, 'He's not just imitating Guthrie, he's imitating Guthrie's disease.'" (Huntington's chorea).

I think that in becoming Bob Dylan, Bobby Zimmerman kinda got lost somewhere. . . .

And just to be clear, I'm not advocating that people should try to "sing pretty." Truth to tell, some really fine singers don't have particularly pretty voices. Dave Van Ronk, for example:   the guy sounded like a rusty hinge. But boy! could he put a song across!

Trying to "sing pretty" can actually detract from a song. Just sing honest.

Re: protest songs. I don't often sing protest songs, and definitely not the more blatant ones. It has to have something to justify it as a song other than the protest, otherwise, it's just bitching. I will occasionally stick something like Johnnie, I Hardly Knew Ye (I don't sing the more strident verses; I sing just the four verses I learned from Walt Robertson, which more than adequately delineate the personal tragedy without beating the audience over the head with it) or Guthrie's Deportees into an evening's program, and then move on to something lighter.

In the concert Bob Nelson and I did together last year, in the second half, I sang Eric Bogle's The Green Fields of France and Bob followed with Tom Paxton's My Son John—two very heavy songs, especially one after the other. Left the audience a bit stunned. We'd made our point. Then, we moved on and lightened the mood a lot.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, I don't think I would equate taking a strong stand on a moral or ethical issue with "self-righteous posturing." Granted, there is a bit of that here on Mudcat, but I think most people here have some pretty definite opinions. And some folks even have the facts to back them up!

Man! Some people hate that!!

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 05:50 PM

I will also say that the key with protest music (usually) is to work just enough of it into an act to present a contrast to the rest of the material and keep things interesting. In other words, mix things up a bit. Inject some humour. Add some romance. Some sad stuff. Some happy stuff. Some thoughtful stuff. Many ingredients make for a good stew.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 05:41 PM

"Part of it may be that so many singers of protest songs seem so damned self-righteous."

Yeah...just like most of the membership here seem whenever they start discussing politics, social issues, religion, morality, incidents in the news, each other's posts and general attitude, etc.

We are daily awash here in a sea of self-righteous posturing. Thank God it is not all put into song, eh, Don? ;-)


You are quite correct that Bob Dylan deliberately altered his voice after becoming enamored of folk music. He did this instinctively, mainly because he had fallen in love with the music of people like Woody Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and a bunch of the old acoustic blues singers. He took on all the husk and bark of those men...with rather remarkable results. Some liked it, some didn't. I can well understand why you didn't like it, and I didn't like it at first either. My natural instinct is to sing purely and on key, not through the nose, with resonance, without the husk and bark.

I can't fault Dylan for doing it at the time, though, because it's so common for young people to take on an accent or vocal style in that way. Why do country singers all seem to sing with a "twang"? Why do male country singers wear big hats? Well, because they grew up wanting to, that's why. They were imitating a style they admired. All young Bob was doing was imitating a style he admired...and that style was the style of the specific musicians he was inspired by the most at the time. He probably considered it "realer" than singing "pretty", but it's not a style you admire. Fine.

I quite agree that deliberately singing badly is not required in order to sing folk music. ;-) It can also be rather hard on the vocal chords.

I feel that by 1965 Dylan had become an extremely effective singer in his own right, with his own style. He had considerably moved away from the Guthriesque thing by that time, both vocally and lyrically.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 04:56 PM

I must admit (at the risk of being stoned in the streets) that Bob Dylan is not, and never has been, my cup of tea. I found him grating right from the start, and it was a bit later that I began to understand the reasons for my immediate and visceral negative reaction to him.

It seems that when he was in high school, he was singing rock and roll (nothing wrong with that) and that he had a fairly nice singing voice, not unlike Buddy Holly's. The word is that some of his school friends were more than a little appalled when they heard his first folk records. What had he done to his singing voice!??

I believe it was in Positively 4th Street that David Hajdu described the "transition" that Dylan went through once he reached Greenwich Village.

What he was doing was suppressing his natural voice, singing through his nose, wandering off-pitch (which he hadn't been doing before), and generally trying to sound like he was ninety years old and toothless. This, apparently, was his idea of how folk songs should be sung!

Well—there are a lot of people out there who seem to feel that if you want to be a folk singer, you should not try to sing well—or that you should try not to sing well. This shows a level of contempt for one's audiences and it demeans both the songs themselves and the source singers who sang them, some of whom are very good singers by almost any standard.

If a song is worth singing, whether it is a folk song, a pop song, or an art song, it is worth trying to sing it to the best of your ability. I don't mean that you should try to make a folk song sound like Schubert lieder; one should stay within the stylistic framework of any genre of songs. But intentionally singing badly is not an inherent characteristic of folk music, and to do so intentionally is both phony and degrading to the whole genre.

My apologies to Bob Dylan enthusiasts, but them's my sediments.

As far as protest songs are concerned, heck, I sing a few of them myself. But a little bit goes a long way. I really hate it when I pay good money to hear someone sing and they spend the whole evening trying to propagandize me from the stage, "lecturing" the audience with their choice of songs. Part of it may be that so many singers of protest songs seem so damned self-righteous.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 02:46 PM

"The Planets," a seven movement orchestral suite by Gustav Holst. I'm quite familiar with it. I believe what Holst had in mind when he composed the work is more the mythological attributes ascribed to each planet rather than their astrological characteristics.

Very nice work, actually.

Midi renditions of the suite HERE.   Very "electronic" sound compared to the orchestral versions, but interesting nonetheless.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:49 PM

1000

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:45 PM

Don - we get a mostly-classical channel here called "oMusic TV," for some reason, and on it are featured a group called "The Planets"...I think they could be you and your party's cup of tea; meanwhile, I'm into town for some poetry readings...

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST,Stu sans cookie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:37 PM

I'm sure there's a poem somewhere that would cure the ills of the Solar System Don

Stu

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:32 PM

On the matter of being awarded planets:   none of them are what one could call a real prize.

Mercury is not much nicer than the moon, really. Same general landscape, no atmosphere. Warmer climate perhaps. The mean temperature on Mercury would melt lead. Venus, I have mentioned above. Earth is already inhabited by an odd species that is constantly fighting over its land and resources, which it is about to run out of because they use them up as if there is no tomorrow, and they breed like bloody rabbits. Mars may have a few things going for it, but atmosphere and climate aren't quite them. Jupiter has a fierce gravity and its atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen and methane. Cattle and people produce more than enough methane right here on Earth, and I think that as much methane as Jupiter has in its atmosphere would have quite a bit of "hang-time," don't you?

Now, working inward, Pluto has recently been demoted. It appears to be more or less similar to Mercury, but smaller. Pluto is as cold as Mercury is hot. And Nepture, I have also dealt with above.

And as to the one remaining planet, if you were to say to people, "I like Uranus," I think they'd probably give you some pretty funny looks as they quickly backed away.

That's today's astronomy lesson.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST,Stu sans cookie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:19 PM

Four Stars. Wow!

Next will be an OBE for your political efforts. Did you notice I don't swear at you?

I repeat: people will say kind untruths that won't help you to improve, but may encourage you to continue.

Many people here will say unkind truths in the hope that you won't continue unless you improve.

Stu

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 12:45 PM

Heh! Well, it's a matter of personal taste, right? He has sung in so many different voices by this late date that one would wonder which one of them bothers you more...or less....

Now, if protest songs bother you, then does Buffy Sainte-Marie get on your nerves too? What about Joan Baez? They have both done plenty of protest material in their time. Judy Collins did too. All a protest songs is....it's a political or social comment on something that is going on in our lives, suggesting that there is need of a change.

Given the fact that we all discuss such things amongst one another on a reasonably frequent basis, I don't see why we can't write songs about them too. A song can be about anything.

It is undoubtedly true that many protest songs have been poorly written, make their point in a strident and clumsy fashion, and therefore are not very good songs. That can be irritating to listen to. Some, however, have been exceedingly well written and are very good songs.

If you look back through the catalog of trad songs of Scotland, England, Ireland, and America you will find a simply vast number of songs in which things are protested....because people then were very concerned about the political and social issues of their day, just as they are now. You will find protests against the rich, protests against English colonialism, protests against war, protests against the cutting down of old forests, protests against both petty and great tyrants of all sorts during those times. Those are trad songs, Insane Beard, and those are among the songs you apparently like, correct?

Why then does it become a problem for you when the protest song is moved into the present era?

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 10:14 AM

I must confess I find Dylan actually painful to listen to; maybe it's my Traddy Folk Implant (see below) which goes haywire when faced with singer-songwriters, or (God forbid) protest singers, but I do enjoy his Theme Time Radio Hour shows as much for the music as the sound of his voice which is like a cross between Zappa's Central Scrutiniser and Vic Reeves' Kinky John / Inspector Fowler. A high point of our cultural lives was when Vic used one of our paper tissues to stuff up his cheeks so he could do the Fowler Voice at his reading as part of the Durham Literature festival a few years back.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 09:42 AM

Without Joan Baez and the heaps of hype Bob Dylan would have taken, I estimate, about 1 year longer to have achieved much the same level of success that he did achieve. The man was simply unstoppable, and he was stunningly talented (and unique) as both a lyricist and a musical performer...which is exactly what attracted Joan to him in the first place and caused her to give him so much help with his career. She rendered him a great service in so doing, but he would have made it in any case.

Just read Joan's excellent autobiography "A Voice To Sing With" for confirmation of what I have said. She regards Dylan as the finest songwriter of her generation (or any since). She had heard a lot of buzz about him before she met him, and she said that upon searching him out in the New York coffeehouses and seeing him perform she immediately realized that the buzz was more than justified. She said something to this effect (I paraphrase) that "Some people get jealous in the presence of genius. I don't. I get excited."

The clearest indication of how impressed she was is that she has covered more of Dylan's songs in her own discography than of any other writer, and she went so far as to do a double album entirely of his songs.

Thanks, Joan! ;-) It's one of my favourites.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Paul Burke
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 08:35 AM

Tell you summat WAV, if YOU'd had Joan Baez rooting for you, and loads of hype, Bob Dylan would still be the better poet. So would I, and so would Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 07:46 AM

Judas.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 05:30 AM

...where would he be without Joan Baez, and then heaps of hype?

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:46 PM

I found that downright shocking!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 05:24 PM

Bah! Humbug! You're probably still bitching about Dylan going electric too, aren't you?   ;-)

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:20 PM

And think of it! The Greys might take to telepathing English folk songs! And if that weren't bad enough, they might do it with the wrong accent!

Ghastly!! Simply unacceptable!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 03:02 PM

Nah, LH, I think folky aliens would be uncool too.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST,Insane Beard
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 02:58 PM

And IB - from where I was standing on that clear day, the Lakelands were indeed seen behind Blackpool Tower

I don't doubt it, Wavy - but clear is the last think it is in your poem.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 02:57 PM

Rival forum? Mudcat doesn't have any rival forums.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 02:34 PM

And I would really think twice before accepting them. Neither of them is what you could call "prime real estate." Neptune is a gas giant and it's colder than a well-digger's knee out there. Venus is relatively nearby, but it's hotter than a pizza oven. Not particularly nice places to visit, and I certainly wouldn't want to live there!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 02:11 PM

David, Neptune, Venus, etc., are planets, not stars.

Who's giving out these planets, anyway, and how did they get the deeds to them?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 02:04 PM

"Strangely in that 'poem' WAV I think one of your spare punctuation marks would have helped.'...bees, and folks on Southport rides' usually you have a few too many for intelligibility" (Stu)...no, I'm happy with that bit of poetic licence, thanks Stu - the bees, at that bit of Southport, were flying about on "rides" of sorts.

And IB - from where I was standing on that clear day, the Lakelands were indeed seen behind Blackpool Tower.

P.S: speaking of Neptune, Venus, etc. - I got 4 stars, from someone, for that particular piece, on a rival forum!

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 01:24 PM

It really deserves a thread all of its own, in my opinion. It's the best thing I've read around here in quite some time.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 01:22 PM

WOW! That clears up a lot!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 01:05 PM

That is F-ing BRILLIANT, Insane Beard! LOL! Look, man, you have a lucrative career ahead as follows:

- the talk show circuit - contact Art Bell at once!!! Then get booked on all the radio and TV talk shows you can and flog this thing!

- publishing - Your revelations would resound through the New Age and Ufologist communities and would, I am sure, result in the sale of at least 600,000 copies in the first year! In the longer run, I'm thinking you might outstrip Carlos Castaneda in total book sales and become so famous that you will have to get plastic surgery and a sex change and then move to an undisclosed location in Patagonia in order to escape the attentions of your most fanatical fans and readers.

- movie rights - I'm thinking BIG here. Tom Cruise material for sure. Tom plays you. We'll get Angelina Jolie into it somehow too. Work on building that angle, okay?

- I will serve as your agent for a small reward. Really quite small. Only maybe in 7 figures annually, more or less.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 12:52 PM

You puzzle me, Insane Beard. Here you are obsessing about WAV's poetry when you could be abducted and subjected to embarrassing probes at any moment! ;-)

Okay - I might as well come clean here. Having been a regular abductee since the 7th of March 1975 c/o a particularly pernicious hive of Greys one of the only ways I might counter the trauma is by obsessing over Wavy's poetry. Though they're not from Venus, they do have a base there, albeit several hundred miles underground in the deep subvenusian cool; they also have a crystal residence on the surface of Neptune which is much preferable. How I love those blue monochrome sunsets - anal probes notwithstanding of course - especially if they forget to warm them up first. But hey, its a small price to pay for a front-seat blast down the proximal worm-hole to the star we humans know as Megrez. I won't attempt to render it in their language, which is almost indecipherable on account of their telempathical communication, which has rendered their capacity for actual speech vestigial to say the least.

The main thrust of the Grey mission to our planet these past 50 years or so has been the collecting of folk songs, their own traditions in this respect having died out completely on account of the aforementioned telempathical communication. Essentially, this is a non-linguistic form of interaction based on the direct transferral of intellectual images, concepts and meta-theorems in non-symbolic form. Consequently, they are, as you might imagine, hungry for both symbolism and emotional experience, having rationalised the fun out of life several millennia back when they evolved to the stage where such base animal functions as fucking, eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, disease, ageing and death became a thing of the past. The more folky Greys however, are eager to revive their lost traditions by somehow reversing certain aspects of their physical evolution thus enabling them to experience, albeit vicariously, the pleasures we humans take for granted. Hence the anal and rectal probes, which they employ in a stimulation of the male G-spot in an effort to synthesise the experience and intensity of the venereal spasm with none of the consequent mess and discomfort. As you might imagine, not all Greys see it this way, regarding the entire mission as backward and reactionary, hence the covert nature of their operations in our solar system.

Thus co-opted, however so reluctantly, my interest in folk song is entirely the result of an implant in my brain which engenders a prospective urge with respect to the learning and the singing of traditional balladry and songs of ceremony & ritual that my particular implant is finely tuned to. All my experiences in this respect are recorded for later up-loading into the Grey Hive Central Cultural Processor (my own term I might add) whereby they might access both them and the attendant emotional pleasure which is entirely forbidden on account of their intolerance to alcohol. Indeed, the events of July 7, 1947 are crucial not only to our understanding of Ufology, but also the Folk Revival as a whole. This, in many respects, is Ground Zero, quite literally as one of the early Grey folk song collecting missions went seriously awry on account of their intolerance to the hooch they'd collected along with the songs from certain traditional singers the Ozark mountains. Innocent of its effects on their delicate nervous systems, they ended up downing their craft in Roswell, New Mexico on that fateful day. There was but one survivor, and though his physical body was entirely destroyed by both the effects of the moonshine and the trauma of the crash, they were able (by means of Grey Technology) to upload his essence into the mind of a 6-year-old boy - 6-year-old boys being particularly receptive in this respect. The name of this boy is recorded as Robert Allen Zimmerman, born May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. Thus did they learn from their mistakes and found other ways of engineering and, indeed, influencing The Revival thereafter...

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 10:54 AM

You puzzle me, Insane Beard. Here you are obsessing about WAV's poetry when you could be abducted and subjected to embarrassing probes at any moment! ;-)

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 05:36 AM

In that poem I'm trying to describe what I saw from the promenade that runs along the Southport coast...are you with me now?

I think that should have been made clear from the start, maybe even in the title, but the opening line unseats the entire thing even to one with the most casual acquaintance with the landscape in question. Far - the Lakelands behind Blackpool Tower implies that it's the Lakelands that are far, as indeed they are when seen from Blackpool Tower on a clear day. So right from the start we're up Blackpool Tower, looking out, up and down the coast which you go on to describe for the next six lines. It's the seventh, and last, line that threw me of course, about the busy bees on the Southport rides, but not enough to put myself through it again. Once was enough: as it was written, so it was read!

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 04:06 PM

Strangely in that 'poem' WAV I think one of your spare punctuation marks would have helped.

'...bees, and folks on Southport rides'

usually you have a few too many for intelligibility

Stu

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST,Stu s c
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 03:16 PM

No WAV the driftwood post is Stigweard's, not mine. Read for comprehension...

Stu

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 01:58 PM

Driftwood that "sprouted in other lands" and found its way to English shores?

OUT! OUT!   Get it out of here before it corrupts our "good English culture!"

Foreign driftwood, indeed!! Harrumph!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 01:13 PM

Re: ON A CLEAR DAY - SUMMER 2001, above.

"You did Blackpool and Southport in the same day?" IB - in that poem I'm trying to describe what I saw from the promenade that runs along the Southport coast...are you with me now? And, yes Stu, it included some F-ing driftwood that, I deduced, "sprouted in other lands". Plus, thanks clumps, LH.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 12:15 PM

Yes, I was particularly struck by that line too. It takes an unusual grasp of poetic form and function to come up with that, doesn't it?

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Stu
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 11:16 AM

"Plonked - the driftwood sprouted in other lands;"

In-fucking-credible.

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: GUEST,Stu s c
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 05:46 AM

Blackpool and Southport on the same day is easy if you can walk on water

Stu

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 07:33 PM

Lemme see . . . wasn't William Shatner "The Big Head" on Third Rock from the Sun?

Looks like there's a lot of that going around.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 07:31 PM

ON A CLEAR DAY - SUMMER 2001

You did Blackpool and Southport in the same day?