What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Sep 11 - 01:51 AM

...uestion also, has a certain proclivity likewise to lead to Transatlantic misapprehension, esp when qualified by adverb 'up': which here means to awaken on time in the morning but over there doesn't!...

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Sep 11 - 01:44 AM

Ah, thanks YY ~ I see. The term 'knock', in q

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 24 Sep 11 - 06:25 PM

Hi Michael --
I'm not confusing the two games (am not knowledgeable enough to do so: I didn't even know the term "nob" occurs in cribbage!).

I was referring to the fact that in the US, if you say "knob" (or "nob," for that matter), people will assume you mean a doorknob ~99% of the time. I never heard it used to mean anything else 'til I moved over here -- and was (at first) quite surprised by the slang meaning it often has.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Mo the caller
Date: 24 Sep 11 - 08:29 AM

Thanks Ian. I thought it might be something like that, but had never heard of it before.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 01:04 PM

Most songs go down OK. A lady at our club asked me for a song with a bit of innuendo.

Wait for it...


So I gave her one.

:D

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Musket
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 12:56 PM

Many pubs used to provide large boards.

a) Bricks don't get covered in stale ale.

b) Bricks don't disappear on the floor during an energetic shuffle, (usually about six pints in.)

A cribbage board is also useful to peg out the score...

Incidentally, that is how you told the difference between crafts down the pit (and indeed on the pit top.) Electricians played nomination whist, fitters played dominoes and blacksmiths played with themselves.

Twenty five years after leaving the pit, I bumped into an old mate, who reminded me of the night the King of hearts was played twice in the same game, and how our shift charge hand slipped a disk turning the table over..... Happy days (nights.)

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 12:14 PM

YY ~~ the 'knock' came from dominoes; the 'nob'[not 'knob', please ~ 'nob' is an old word for head, not the other thing!] was referred to in re cribbage. Please do not confuse the two noble games.


❤~Michael~❤

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Will Fly
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 11:51 AM

Ah... knob... well now, let me think... :-)

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 11:43 AM

Thanks for the explanation, Will -- I hadn't understood at all (even after my husband explained that you have to "knock" if you can't "go"; I was expecting sexual innuendo and thinking that "double blank" might have something to do with "firing blanks"...)

YY
who tends to assume there must be some kind of sexual innuendo involved, ever since learning that (over here), "knob" has certain connotations not generally ascribed to it in the US!

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Will Fly
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 08:44 AM

Cribbage is a great game - pub or anywhere else. I used to play with an old boy - I'm going back 30 years now - in my local in the village. I, being a rank amateur, used to have to laboriously count the points in my hand, He - having played for 50 years or more - could just look at the hand and instantly know the points in it. Needless to say, he beat me every time. There's an art in knowing what two cards to throw away to make up the box...

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 07:14 AM

'19', indeed: I was fumbling for that one. Thanks, Richard.

~M

For any mystified, '19' is the recognised facetious declaration of a hand empty of any scoring combination; that being the only number under the max possible score that cannot, under the rules, be achieved.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 07:00 AM

19

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 05:28 AM

Ah, now you're talking. This is a folk forum, after all, and what game has more traditional lore & language associated than cribbage? Why, some has even become proverbial ~~

One for his nob!
Two for his heels!
Fifteen two, the rest won't do.
Fifteen two, fifteen four, hold your tongue & say no more...

Lovely!

~Michael~

29 - 2's in time...

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Mo the caller
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 05:04 AM

Board???
I've never played dominoes in a pub, but at home we never use a board, that's cribage.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Musket
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 04:22 AM

Fives and threes in Worksop.

Now I live in North Lincolnshire, will I have to learn a new game?

The game I used to play on a Sunday lunch in The Unicorn, my Uncle Albert used to say "Never start with the 5/4 as tempting as it seems." Whilst my cousin reckoned he played elsewhere in the country where such things would be academic as you can only start on a double.

A bit of a bugger, dominoes. Most family feuds start when the board comes out and the pint pots have to be put on the lower ledge. (Pub table manufacturers don't seem to include them these days....)

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 04:09 AM

Dominoes illuminatio mea ~~~~~

motto {sort of} of Oxford University. Knock-knock: they can't go either, ho-ho tee-hee...

~M~ MA Cantab

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Will Fly
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 04:04 AM

In Lancashire, by the way, it's known as "Fives and threes". :-)

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Will Fly
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 04:02 AM

A great game - with a double-six to double-nine set of course.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: theleveller
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 03:59 AM

Threes and fives is a much better game.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Will Fly
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 03:49 AM

It IS from the game of dominoes. If you don't know the game, the words are as clear as mud!

Basically, the object is to get the opponents to "knock", i.e. lose a turn and pay up. In the classic double-blank to double-six, four-handed game, all the dominoes are off the table at the start and, as the game progresses, a good player will know, by the play, what each of the other players has in their hand.

A common stratagem is to get the same number up on both sides - only one number to play at (as opposed to two) and see if anyone knocks. If the whole table knocks - say you play a blank at each end - then the double blank gets you another round of knocking. More money!

The metaphor in Formby's "Me grandad had to knock, he couldn't go" is that he couldn't die because the clock would "chime a double blank" - strike nothing. A Lancashire audience would have got all that straightaway.

Pretty surreal for a working-class lad from Victorian Lancashire. You can find the whole song in the DT (added by me some time ago).

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 22 Sep 11 - 07:10 PM

Never seen/heard that verse of Grandfather's Clock before, Will!

"Anyone not get that?"

Ummm... I'm afraid I may not have. I think I have a pretty good idea about "double blank", and my husband explained to me about dominoes and "knocking" when you can't "go", but wonder if I'm still missing something...

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 11 - 04:38 PM

there was this chap who used to do "songs from the shows" in a Gordon MacRae type voice

I went to the folk night at the Cadgwith Cove Inn in Cornwall a year or so ago. Not a vast amount of traditional material, it has to be said, unless you count rugby songs. Al Jolson numbers were very popular, too.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Musket
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 01:40 PM

Hey Al, wasn't that written by the Northern irish song writing duo, Henry Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzhenry?

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 12:24 PM

In you-endo, or inmy-endo. Your place or mine.....

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Marje
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 12:09 PM

Thinking about it again, the odd floor spot of smut/music-hall would probably be perfectly acceptable in most folk clubs, provided that it's properly rehearsed and well presented. A whole evening of such material wouldn't be to my taste, but then again, I wouldn't be likely to find myself there by accident. If it was to be a guest appearance taking up a large proportion of the evening, it would be advertised for what it was, and people could decide whether to attend or not. It would be up to the club organisers to decide whether this was an act they wanted to book, and people would know what they were coming to hear. So either way, I don't really see a problem.

Marje

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 11:18 AM

There`s nowt wrong with a bit of innuendo after all the humour that goes with it is often the reason for the giggles. So keep the "smut" coming and lets all have a laugh once in a while

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Will Fly
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 11:15 AM

Her comment was: "if they want to sing about shagging, why not just sing about shagging, instead of wrapping it up in obscure references to ploughing and stealing herbs?"

Ah - they've never heard of "poetry", eh? Don't they know that just a glimpse of ankle can be sexier than the whole leg...

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 11:08 AM

Will...I've taken a friend of mine in her early 30s to the High Brooms singaround a few times.

Part way through the first visit she whispered to me "I like most of the songs, but the unaccompanied ones don't do much for me"

I said: "Listen to the words a bit more closely, they're *all* about sex."

She picked up on a few of the references in the next couple of "traddy" unaccompanieds but a lot of them went right over her head and I had to explain afterwards why people had laughed at certain points!

Another friend in the same age group thoughht those songs were "bizarre". Her comment was: "if they want to sing about shagging, why not just sing about shagging, instead of wrapping it up in obscure references to ploughing and stealing herbs?"

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 10:25 AM

I think the Folk Police must have had their budget cut

Budget? What budget? We never had one in the first place...

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Will Fly
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 10:16 AM

Odd isn't it? The daughter of one of my fellow band musicians is coming round to my place on Friday afternoon this week because she wants to learn "some of those funny old music-hall songs you do". She's in her early '20s.

What I don't sing, if I can help it, are the more obvious "Music Hall" songs - Harry Champion song, for example - as even I find them a bit tedious at times. (Apologies to those who think Harry Champion is the hound's equipment...). There are some superb monologues and songs from that era - many of them now well known - and an evening with my mate Jim Ward would demonstrate this. There's also a particular way of putting these songs across (Jim's also excellent at this). In those days, performers had to project without amplification, often over an orchestra, to large audiences. Such an approach might not suit a smaller folk club audience these days, and a more confiding, lower-key performance may be more appropriate.

In terms of "getting it", Rob is right to point this out. Here's an example, from the last verse of George Formby Senior's "My Grandfather's Clock":

...
And at nine o'clock the crank
Used to chime a double blank,
And me Grandad had to knock - he couldn't go".

Anyone not get that?

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 09:32 AM

I don't mind the odd Music Hall song or a bit of D'Urfey at a venue, but I think a whole set or evening of it would start to bore me pretty quickly.

And I think it would put yonger people off even more quickly, so check out your audience profile first is my adice.

I know some of the youngsters I take along to a couple of the local venues I visit find the Music Hall and Cockney songs to be the least interesting/ entertaining as they just don't "get it".

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 09:31 AM

It seems a bit specialised! But just maybe it would work!
Also, we could try to get Gordon's sometime co-star, the ever popular Doris Day, to open the club!
What a good idea!

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 08:29 AM

Why didn't your mate find (or found) a "Songs·from·the·shows"·in·a·Gordon·MacRae·type·voice Club?

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 07:46 AM

I think this is a personal thing. I know a mate of mine hates hearing old pop songs.
I remember years ago at my local folk club, there was this chap who used to do "songs from the shows" in a Gordon MacRae type voice ( "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" etc). That always sound odd and out of place - to me.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 07:35 AM

The number of similar stories that surrounded NTMC were one of the reasons that I never made it to one of their nights before it closed however having worked with a number of their residents and committee and met plenty of their old members over the ensuing twenty years I reckon that there were a lot of urban myths regarding the club (the song that Nic reputedly sang to shock them has varied from story to story).
We at Traditions at the Tiger (now Tigerfolk) always took it as a compliment to be described as "the successor to NTMC"

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Peter C
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 07:08 AM

I thought that if you went to a Folk Club, you would expect to hear folk music? Or am I being naive? If I went to a Jazz Club, I would expect to hear Jazz. Perhaps that is why so many Folk Clubs are not doing so well these days, they do not do what it says on the tin!

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: melodeonboy
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 06:38 AM

"Everywhere I've ever sung, ancient smut and music hall songs would go down very easily."

Likewise! :)

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 06:14 AM

If a club has the words 'Traditional Music' in its title, it seems pretty reasonable that they would expect performers to get the clue and stick to Trad.

But in most of the clubs that I've frequented, there's been a general air of '(almost) anything goes'. Sometimes too much of 'anything' for my tastes but, hey-ho there-you-go, it's variety that makes the world turn on its axis.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 05:54 AM

Nottingham Traditional Music Club did have that reputation...

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 05:51 AM

I recall a story concerning Nic Jones. An arch-traditional music club, known as the NTMC, had somehow managed to jump over it's shadow and book Nic.........Nic did an evening of straight traditionals......then came the encore..."Chattanooga Choo-Choo". The audience, by all accounts, loved it. Rumour had it that some of the NTMC committee however were slightly disgruntled.........

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Musket
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 05:08 AM

Ah, but without giving the oxygen of publicity to those who know their interpretation of the term "folk" is the correct one and nobody else's is valid....

My findings over the years is that folk clubs are excellent platforms for people to see if they can entertain others in a non hostile entertainment environment. My usual night includes many songs and tunes that could be classed in many genres, folk not being the first that springs to mind...

Interesting to read the word "Cosmotheka" again after all these years. I learned a few music hall numbers after being mesmerised by those two guys, and if I want to end the night with a good chorus number, a Harry Champion or Max Miller song can get an audience going everywhere, (other than one club in circa 1981, where the MC admonished me for the fact they only "allow" traditional songs, then sang a Shane McGowan song, thinking it was traditional. I told him I why I was laughing later in the bar and asked if being a two year old song by a punk rocker made any difference to the enjoyment of his crowd. Sad bugger told me HE decides what they like......

So.... any song should go down well. If it doesn't, the fault may not be your own.

Subject: RE: What Songs Do NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: LesB
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 04:57 AM

Nowt wrong with Johny Mathis.
I did see a performer once at Fylde festival, whose act & songs were far more suited to a stag night / working mans club, than a folk club. In fact a friend & his wife walked out. ( Incidentaly the performer is a frequent contributer to this forum)!
Cheers
Les

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 21 Sep 11 - 03:14 AM

Johnny Mathis on a bit of paper - scrubs one item from list

To be fair, the MC did comment on that one. But the singer got through the song and people clapped, so I couldn't honestly say it went down badly.

I think the Folk Police must have had their budget cut.

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Howard Kaplan
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 10:47 PM

I thought "innuendo" was the opposite of "defenstration".

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Commander Crabbe
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 08:16 PM

"Innuendo" that's Italian for suppository!

CC

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 07:37 PM

In an English folk club, you could probably get away with a recital on the Albanian nose flute, if you did it well. Check out a marvellous duo from the 1970's called Cosmotheka - named after a Victorian London music hall where Dan Leno made his debut.

Cosmotheka performed the kind of material you describe and did it so masterfully that they had few critics. They were simply one of the most entertaining acts I have ever seen. Ian Campbell knows a thing or two about folk music, and he described them to me as the only really new addition contributing something of lasting worth in the 1970's.

They were stunningly different from anything that had been seen before.

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: tonyteach1
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 06:53 PM

Johnny Mathis on a bit of paper - scrubs one item from list

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 06:20 PM

What doesn't go down well? Overt racism. Extreme drunkenness. Aggressive heckling of other acts. Demanding two songs when offered one (or three when offered two). Doing Desolation Row (or the long version of Patrick Spens) after the MC has asked for short songs. Doing the same song more than two weeks in a row.

Other than those, I'm struggling to think of anything I've ever seen go down badly in a folk club. Singing a song by Johnnie Mathis with the words on a bit of paper? Yeah, whatever. Singing hideously obscene rugby songs and asking the audience to join in? No problem. Singing a song you've just written, breaking down halfway through and restarting? Don't worry about it.

Everywhere I've ever sung, ancient smut and music hall songs would go down very easily.

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: tonyteach1
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 05:27 PM

Already doing that but it is useful to get feedback as well from throughout the UK

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Marje
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 02:05 PM

I'm a little puzzled at why you have to ask this question. If you are planning to perform this repertoire at folk clubs, either as floor spots or as paid guests, it would be a good idea to visit the clubs, or some of them, first and become familiar with the way they work. You'll soon get a feel for the way the audience reacts to various types of material. That way you're much more likely to hit the right note in your choice of songs and in the way you present them.

Marje

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 01:40 PM

(All together now..): "It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.........."

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: GUEST,SteveG
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 12:28 PM

I've always found audiences at the vast majority of folk clubs very receptive to a wide range of genres, providing the perfomance is reasonably entertaining. Most audiences would welcome something a bit different from the more expected folk repertoire. I cut my teeth in one of the most demanding folk clubs in the country in the 60s, but even that audience were happy to hear a wide range of genres, even for a full night.

Personally I would find a whole evening of D'Urfey innuendo very entertaining. A heck of a lot of this material actually entered oral tradition. A mixture of D'Urfey and Music Hall would be sheer heaven.

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Leadfingers
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 12:05 PM

I am all for a bit of Innuendo and Double Entendre , but I feel a whole evening of D'Urfey might be a tad OTT for most audiences - But interspersed with Cockney and Music Hall should be fine !

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 11:32 AM

Innuendo and out the other...

Just don't do many Folk Songs & you'll do just fine ;-]

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Kevin Sheils
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 11:32 AM

D'Urfey's "Pills to purge melancholy" - if it's innuendo then those pills must be suppositories!

The old ones eh.

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: GUEST,Woodsie
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 11:28 AM

That sort of material seems to go down well most of the folk clubs I've been to in and around south East London & Kent.

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 11:25 AM

I would have thought that "innuendo" was altogether too mild a word.

Subject: RE: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: Mo the caller
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 11:19 AM

I don't know what an average folk-club goer likes, but maybe there's a difference between one song with a bit of inuendo and a whole programme of it.

Subject: What Does NOT go well in UK Folk Clubs
From: tonyteach1
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 11:12 AM

Some research here I am working with a singer who is a member of a famous folk family We are going to be doing Cockney songs and music hall I also sing Thomas Durfey type songs - are these too rude for most folk clubs